Oldspeak happiness: a review of the film Happy.

Charm works wonders; which is why persuasion is often sweetened with entertainment. Examples of this can readily be found in theatre, literature, cinema, song, comedy, political broadcasting, and, of course, advertising. The film Happy belongs in this broad tradition, but its cast of characters is anything but stereotypical, especially when compared to onscreen protagonists today. Instead of the usual figures of “inspiration” – pouting actors, fawning politicians, grinning goons selling car insurance – Happy introduces us to pensioners from Okinawa, Danish co-housing inhabitants, Namibian Bushmen, a disfigured former debutante from America, a surfer from Brazil, an Indian rickshaw driver, an amateur crab fisherman from Louisiana, and some unusually down-to-earth academics.

The film enlists all these unglamorous people in order to explain where happiness comes from. Strikingly, their most potent tool for the task is their most natural one – their smiles: genuine, warm, deep, long, enticing smiles. In a culture where vox-pops keep popping up all over the place, like those whack-a-moles in the fairground game, it’s unusual to see such lingering sincerity. It makes you pay very close attention.

In doing so, you are reminded of some plain, simple truths, which many of us had forgotten amid the distracting sensory bombardment of modern life: enduring happiness comes from such staples as supportive families, friendly communities, calm mindfulness, regular exercise, enjoying food in company, helping others, and savouring the beauty of the natural world. All of which – note – are relatively inexpensive, if not cost-free.

Note, also, that we’re not usually reminded of any of this. The psychology of human admiration is somewhat trigger-happy, a fact which consumerism exploits, day in day out, in persuading us to part with our money. Typically, a happy-looking person is paraded before our captivated eyes, and we instinctively resolve to emulate whatever they are doing at the time. Driving a big car. Carrying a designer handbag. Drinking an expensive bottle of wine. Much of human behaviour is associative, and, unless we are given good reason to do otherwise, we’ll keep pressing levers when we’re promised rewards. The problem is, many of these “rewards” not only fail to make us happy, they actually make us unhappy, through encouraging futile one-upmanship rather than sociability.

Watching Happy gives us reason to pause. The experience is like waking up from a caffeine-fuelled nightmare – one in which you were half-conscious, albeit manically suggestible. Real happiness, we rediscover, is delightfully normal; nothing we didn’t know about already, deep-down; it is a nostalgic feeling, which we can amplify, any time we like, into real and present pleasures. We are like the character ‘Winston’ in George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, inundated by phoney promises of happiness, a ‘newspeak’ version which is in fact a big lie; yet, unlike him, we can choose to embrace oldspeak happiness, the real thing, instead.

This analysis invites a question that’s not addressed in the film. To what extent should we turn Orwell on his head, and allow governments to influence, or even curtail, our choices so as to promote a happier society? A less melodramatic way of putting this is to ask: to what extent can policies promote well-being? Happy seems to be rooted in the so-called “American” tradition of focusing on bottom-up rather than top-down approaches. The “European” way is reflected, perhaps, in Swedish laws that ban advertising to children; or in prevalent proposals for consumption taxes or even planned recessions. Maybe there’s also a “spiritual” option, which is a bit of both, reflected in the Bhutan government’s pioneering efforts to put Gross National Happiness at the top of the political agenda. 

It would be inaccurate, however, to suggest that Adam Smith rather than John Maynard Keynes looms large in Happy. The film, after all, is generally disparaging about modern economies – even to the extent of showing footage of exhausted Japanese businesspeople allegedly on the brink of dying from excessive office work. The point is rammed home by romantic portrayals of pastoral life, bordering on ‘noble savage’ caricatures; at times the film risks obscuring the fact that it is economic progress which has propelled developed countries to such affluence that we can afford to worry about questions of happiness (not to mention the converse fact that one of the advantages of happier countries is that they tend to perform better economically). 

The most sympathetic interpretation of Happy would be to construe the film as responding to a socially-damaging mutualism that exists between governments and businesses; one in which commercial taxes fund governments, such that we should expect neither businesses nor politicians to be incentivised to promote happier, less consumerist societies – at least not without a sufficiently powerful outside impetus. Accordingly, the film suggests one possible such impetus: regular people. And, despite its hint of bootstrapping, this proposal makes good sense. Oldspeak happiness must surely arise out of desire if it is arise at all, so it will flourish only as soon as people decide that this is what they want. You could think of the situation as being like the early stages of a party. The preparations are in place. The DJ is playing. The dancefloor is beckoning. But the party will get going only when the party gets going.

From the point of view of the uninitiated viewer, Happy will surely have a positive impact. In this respect, the intellectual debates it will provoke surrounding the relative responsibilities of businesses and governments to maximise happiness are, at best, moot. At worst, such debates are a distraction. Arguably there is a more important role for intellectuals to play: to help promote oldspeak happiness; because even bottom-up processes require inspirational leaders, the proverbial movers and shakers (including film directors) who know how to operate levers on a human scale. In other words, the priority of intellectuals should lie in helping raise social capital – the extent to which a society is bonded together. Not just lobbying governments or businesses to do it. Not just denigrating them for their failure to do so. Action for Happiness – to cite the British charity – speaks louder than words. 

One particular irony in debates about where happiness comes from is that those lauded “European” models are often more bottom-up than the rejected “American” way. The relative happiness of Scandinavian countries, for instance, gets attributed to their welfarism rather than their high levels of social capital (an achievement exemplified in the Danes’ celebration of ‘Hooga’ – which means ‘enjoying life together with friends’). And America’s malaise gets attributed to a lack of government spending rather than a lack of social capital, despite the fact that for decades the former has been rising and the latter falling. Rightly, then, the film Happy observes that America needs to be more “American” – more bottom-up and people-centric – not less.

The overall goal in all of this should be a society in which oldspeak happiness is the motivator behind self-moderating consumer spending, so that the government can thrive in carrying out circumscribed responsibilities effectively, rather than being perennially mobilised into clearing up the recurrent huge mess caused by newspeak happiness. In stark contrast, our society is in thrall to insatiable big businesses and ungainly reparative governments; so it is for reasons of both efficacy and a balanced dispersal of energies that intellectuals should primarily be channelling their efforts into changing consumer demand – helping people to commune more closely with each other and with nature, and therefore make wiser choices.

In this respect, above all, director Roko Belic’s Happy is a hugely inspiring film. This was in evidence on the evening it was screened by Cambridge University’s Well-being Institute. In the discussion session, the atmosphere was exceptionally warm, relaxed and friendly – as it was during an impromptu meal afterwards which was enjoyed by an enthusiastic group of strangers who wanted to carry on chatting late into the night. It was as if the characters in Happy had shared with us their relaxed sense of companionship. We must keep that mood moving.

Ben Irvine is editor of the Journal of Modern Wisdom (www.modernwisdom.co.uk) and Cycle Lifestyle magazine (www.cyclelifestyle.co.uk).

To find out more about the film Happy, or if you would like to organise a screening in your area, visit www.actionforhappiness.org