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Caizi Qi
Professor McLaughlin
WR133001
1 October 2016
The Myth Veiling Happiness
With the legacy of the US Constitution, which guarantees Americans the right to seek
individual happiness, social media is bombarded with discussions of happiness. Although
Americans have strived to obtain happiness, New York Times still ranks US as the 23rd happiest
country in the world (Revkin). Happy, a documentary film directed by Roko Belic, emerges
under this circumstance taking up the intellectual courage (What We Teach) to talk about what
is unpopular in the discussion of happiness. Providing real-life examples of people all around the
world who are happy or unhappy, the film criticizes the underlying materialism in the myths held
by Americans obsessed with happiness, providing counterarguments against the materialistic
interpretations of happiness. Instead, the film convinces the audience to consider the positive
impact of community and family on happiness. Backed by the presentation of expert testimony,
camera work and sound, the film makes a resounding contribution to the study of happiness,
unveiling the myth and uncovering truths related to happiness.
The expert testimony in this film provides the audience with an academic perspective to
look at Happiness, and appeals to the audience by building up proofs of credibility, what
Aristotle called the controlling factor in persuasion (What We Teach). Interviews of a wide
array of experts display that they all advocate the benefit of family and community in enhancing
happiness while condemning the detrimental effect of materialism on happiness. For example, a

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psychology professor at Knox College sorts the thirst for money and material goods as extrinsic
goal and the pursuit for intimate family and community as intrinsic goal, claiming intrinsic
goal tends to make people happier while extrinsic goal always leads to more depression and
less satisfaction (28:32-29:49). As viewers realize authoritative and leading experts are included
in the film, they will be more convinced that the argument made by the film- good family and
community relationships rather than satisfying jobs and materialistic goods are what going to
make us happier- is in alliance with experts opinions and therefore truth. Indeed, this credibility
is further built up by the breadth of experts covered in the film. The film interviews experts
ranging from psychologists, neuroscientists to spiritual leader, governmental clerk and author of
popular books who thoroughly examine the topic of happiness from various perspectives with
different methods. In order for the audience to notice the diversity of the expertise included in the
documentary, the film even uses different backgrounds when filming different experts. For
example, when interviewing a neuroscientist, the film sets the background with a closet of books
in neuroscience (1:04:29-1:05:10). In contrast, the film sets the background completely different
when filming the author of a popular book about happiness. The author stands in front of a large
group of readers (16:21-16:30). The different backgrounds utilized by the film not only draw the
viewers attention to the multifariousness of the experts covered in the film but also convince the
audience the credibility of each expert by filming them in backgrounds hinting their respective
professions. Therefore, with a wide range of expert testimonials presented in the film and the use
of different backgrounds to further emphasize the diversity and credibility of the expertise, the
film effectively builds up its own credibility, prompting the audience to believe in arguments
made by the film.

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Apart from appealing the logical sensibilities of viewers, the film utilizes a type of
camera work-panning. Panning enriches the content the audience can perceive in every scene,
thus emphasizing the different emotions laid in different examples in the film. And as Herrick
explains, appealing to or eliciting the audiences emotion is an effective way to persuade the
audience to accept an idea (13). In the example of the problematic Japanese Karoshi culture,
the film uses a scene of a train loaded with many passengers rushing to work. In this scene, the
camera slowly pans through different carriages of the train, shifting to different parts of it, all
crammed with fatigued workers (35:26-35:28). This slow pan adds up to the intense atmosphere
the film intends to convey to the audience, as the slow camera movement gives viewers time to
contemplate the image and to question its significance (Lancioni 110). Whats more, the scene
shows an endless line of sad people in an overworking culture, again intensifying the
oppressive atmosphere the audience can feel in this scene. On the other hand, in another scene,
the camera slowly pans through members in a large Louisiana family who gathered together for
food (26:31-26:36). This pan also gives a broader perspective but instead conveys a strong
exuberant feeling among the family members. Whats more, a similar scene of a dinner table in
the co-housing community in Jernstoberiet Denmark, uses the panning, this time emphasizing the
community (41:30-41:34). In general, the panning draws the audiences attention to the
relationship between individuals and the group in these examples, hinting the positive influence
of a strong community on happiness. Consequently, the film through the use of panning strengths
the contradictory emotional feeling the audience can get from these examples.
Besides panning, the film also uses another camera work-close-up, drawing audiences
attention to emotional details they may otherwise ignore. In the story of the Denmark co-housing
community, a close-up is drawn to the face of the divorced woman when she is interviewed

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(39.21-39:34). When she is narrating the experience of living in this co-housing community, she
has a big smile, a clear sign we relate to happiness. This clear facial expression vividly convinces
the audience that living in such a good community makes her very happy. Similarly, in another
scene of the Louisiana family food gathering, after a slow pane, close-ups are drawn to many
individual family members, each of them smiling and chuckling (26:03-26:07). In this type of
close-up, when the viewers see an individual whom they have just seen as part of a group shot,
they must make perceptual readjustments that may make them more conscious of the
epistemology of seeing (Lancioni 112). Hence, the audience is informed that not only the whole
community is happy but also more importantly everybody inside the community obtains
individual happiness. From another perspective, in a scene interviewing a black worker on the
street, a close-up is also drawn to his face (24:09-24:16). However, in contrast, when asked what
he thinks would make him happy, the man responds money and compresses his lips, showing
a clear sign of uneasiness and extreme uncertainty with his own answer. Receiving this mans
anxious emotional expression, the audience will question the incompatibility between the
perceived and the real importance of money on how happy this man is. Whats more, in another
scene of the Japanese woman, Hiroko, whose husband overworked to death, singing in a choir,
the camera after a panoramic shot of the choir gives a close-up on her sobbing (35:20-35:30). In
this scene, viewers can easily detect proof of unhappiness from Hirokos sob. When moved to
feel sad for the woman, the audience will also relate her unhappiness with her husbands strive
for more money through hard work. Then, viewers will doubt the assumption that working hard
to earn money will ultimately make people happier. Like panning, close-ups also cast a spotlight
on the emotional perspective of the examples in the film. However, unlike panning, in these
scenes, viewers can spontaneously pick up facial expressions symbolizing happiness and

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unhappiness, and attribute the cause of these emotions to different values people in these
examples possess, either preference with money or with a close family and community, through
viewers active logical reasoning process. Therefore, close-ups both make the audience feel the
intense appeal of emotions from examples in the film, and let them reflect on the meaning behind
these emotions. Whats more, as individualism is one of the focuses Americans pay close
attention to when talking about happiness, the close-up technique showing more individualized
details better fulfills the audiences existing expectation that their personal happiness be
addressed (Burnett 6).
Lastly but not the least, the film employs very contradistinctive sound in the different
scenes depicting people who regard earning big money as their way to obtain happiness and
those who put family and community as the priority on their happiness list. Sound itself can help
the audience construct an emotional feeling. Taking the scene of the Japanese woman singing in
the choir again as an example, the choirs song emerges in the scene is in the style of holy chant
with very depressing sound and low key (35:20-35:30). Music is also a symbol system that
employs notes, markings, sound, key, harmony and rhythm to communicate meanings, to the
audience (Herrick 6). The type of music used here helps the audience associate the visual images
with a sad tone, further building up the gloomy feeling of this scene, and thus convincing the
audience the intense torture experienced by this woman, moving them to feel sad for her as well.
The audience will be alerted that chasing after money could lead to a very miserable ending
rather than a happy one. On the other hand, in the scenes of the Louisiana family gathering, very
light-hearted and relaxing background music in the style of country music with various
markings, enthusiastic notes and great harmony is added to the scene by the film maker
alongside laughter within the scenes (26:31-26:33). Additionally, in the scenes of the Denmark

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co-housing community, the same type of joyous music is also used as background music (43:0143:39). Hence, the audience can obtain a positive feeling even solely from the background sound
and music. Upon receiving these positive signals in the background music and inherent sound wi
thin the scene, they will then naturally link this positivity to the intimacy of family and
community. Therefore, through the audiences active interaction with the sound in the film, they
will link signifiers (sound) with the signified meaning-happiness (Sturken and Cartwright 29).
Here, the films manipulation of the sound, either inherent to the scene or built-in, helps the
audience construct different emotional feelings for these different examples.
One might argue that in the story of Melissa who was ran over by a car, the film uses
many scenes to display how beautiful she was and how happy she has been because of her
possession of a high status as one of the most beautiful women in her state (17:35-17:47). This
emphasis contradicts with the idea that happiness is brought about by family and community. It
is actually confirming that extrinsic goals like appearance and status are very important to
ones happiness. This argument, however, is diminished when later in the film it talks about
Melissas bounce-back and a long-time close up on the picture of her husband accompanying her
is used (22:38-22:41). Whats more, she also says that its her family especially her children who
discourage her from committing a suicide, and help her recover (21:00-21:02). Therefore, the
story of Melissa is also supporting, though may not be very explicitly, the films key theme that
family is very important to our happiness.
Throughout the film, differences experienced by people who value money and who value
family and community are disclosed to the audience both emotionally through the camera work
(slow pan and close-up) and sound (sound within the scene and background music), and logically
through the expert testimony and audiences active interaction with the camera work (close-up).

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Through this contrast between people whose happiness is problematized by materialism and
people who find their happiness in their family and community, the film breaks down the fantasy
that money makes people happy and constructs a scenario in which everybody secures its own
happiness within the bigger context of community and family, trying really hard to let Americans
look at happiness without a culturally-skewed predisposition.

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Works Cited
Burnett, Simon. The Happiness Agenda: A Modern Obsession. New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2012.
Happy. Directed by Roko Belic, Wadi Rum, 2011.
Herrick, James A. The History and Theory of Rhetoric. 2nd ed., Boston: Allyn and Beacon, 2001.
Lancinoi, Judith. The rhetoric of the frame: Revisioning archival photographs in The Civil
War. The Western Journal of Communication, vol. 60, no. 4, 1996, pp. 397-414.
Revkin, Andrew C. "A New Measure of Well-Being From a Happy Little Kingdom. The New
York Times, 4 Oct. 2005, www.nytimes.com/2005/10/04/science/a-new-measure-ofwellbeingfrom-a-happy-little-kingdom.html?_r=0. Accessed 2 Oct. 2016.
Sturken, Marita, and Lisa Cartwright. Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture.
Oxford: Oxford UP, 2001.
What We Teach. University Writing Program at University of Notre Dame, 2016,
uwp.nd.edu/about-the-program/what-we-teach/. Accessed 2 Oct. 2016.