![\"YouTube](\"http:\/\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/y6Sxv-sUYtM\/0.jpg\")
<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nI find Pharrell\u2019s massive hit \u201cHappy\u201d really, really irritating. And, for that reason, I love it. In the same way that The Sex Pistols were Malcolm McLaren\u2019s massive joke on us, this song is, I think, Pharrell\u2019s attempt to pull a fast one on the economy of viral \u201cupworthiness\u201d–an economy that, as David has shown<\/a>, is really racist.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n So, before I get into \u201cHappy,\u201d let me first explain what I mean by the \u201cviral economy of upworthiness.\u201d To be really simplistic, what I mean by the term is this: the rhizomatic, exponential spread of positive affect (\u201cupworthiness\u201d) across social media, which uses fan labor (ie., the labor of sharing and spreading) to generate profits for media corporations (both the social media corporations, like YouTube, and the record companies, who profit from each play\/click.) In a way, the viral economy of upworthiness is a lot like finance capital–instead of algorithmically intensifying money, this economy algorithmically intensifies positive feelings and\/or affects. For example, as David argues, Upworthy videos \u201czoom in on heroic moments that are emotionally powerful\u201d; Upworthy banks on the viral spread of these good feelings. The viral economy of upworthiness spreads positive affect like a disease, because the business model only works when happiness spreads like cancer. Social media business models require users to share things (that\u2019s how we make \u2018connections\u2019 that generate the oh-so-valuable \u201cdata\u201d sold to third parties), and apparently positive affects like happiness are more shareable than negative ones (there\u2019s still no \u201cdislike\u201d button on Facebook, right?). What David\u2019s article brilliantly points out is that this organization of the means of production is also a racialized and imperialist one, one in which non-white, non-Western people do the groundwork for this economy of viral upworthiness. Capitalism says there can be no majority for the pity (Kein Mehrheit F\u00fcr Die Mitleid-<\/em>-who knew KMFDM basically predicted social media capitalism?), so to speak, so it outsources the work of transforming tragedy or bad feeling into happiness or upworthiness onto the same groups of people who have historically done the white\/Western world\u2019s un\/undercompensated dirty work.<\/p>\n OK, cheeky music jokes aside, let\u2019s talk about \u201cHappy.\u201d<\/p>\n For a number of reasons, the song sounds manic and anxious. First, there\u2019s the tempo. It\u2019s about 160 BPM. For some reference, Motley Crue\u2019s \u201cKickstart My Heart\u201d (whose first line is \u201cWhen I get high, get high on speed\u201d) clocks in at 180 BPM, Rihanna\u2019s \u201cWe Found Love,\u201d a proper dance banger, is 128 BPM, Kesha & Pitbull\u2019s \u201cTimber\u201d is 130 BPM, as is Fatboy Slim\u2019s \u201cEat Sleep Rave Repeat.\u201d So, \u201cHappy\u201d is a full 30 BPM faster than most contemporary EDM-pop songs, songs designed for crowds of twentysomethings hopped up on MDMA. In this light, \u201cHappy\u201d seems a bit like a super-sized dose of sonic Adderall, a properly legal and bourgeois dose of speed that helps propel us through our hyperemployed days and perform the upworthy affective labor so many of our jobs demand. We\u2019d need Adderall to make it all the way through the song\u2019s marathon 24-hour video<\/a>. Perhaps this video is commenting on hyperempolymen<\/a>t and real subsumption<\/a>, capitalism\u2019s increasing ability to realize its dream of the 24-hour work day? (And seriously, don\u2019t those drawn out \u201ceeeeeee\u201ds in the chorus suggest the clenched-jaws of a speed freak?)<\/p>\n Another reason this song sounds manic and anxious is because, as Kariann Goldschmitt (@kgoldschmitt) pointed out in a conversation we had on Twitter, the song never releases any tension. The song is basically one long plateau with two breaks that build a little bit of tension without releasing it in a hit or a climax (like the soar in \u201cWe Found Love,\u201d or the drop in something like \u201cTsunami\u201d or \u201cBangarang\u201d). The break from 1:49-2:13 builds sonic tension: the clapping intensifies the rhythmic texture, and the addition of the choir and the resonance of the church sanctuary intensifies the timbre, but the downbeat of the new verse doesn\u2019t release that tension. There\u2019s a condensed version of that intensification at 3:02-3:13, and yet again we are denied a proper climax point. Being \u201cHappy\u201d seems like a lot of affective labor with no payoff–the surplus value of our happiness labor goes to somebody else.<\/p>\n And I think that\u2019s what Pharrell is trying to point out. As I read his performance, he\u2019s slyly critiquing the affective labor \u201cupworthy\u201d white supremacist pop culture requires of black performers.<\/p>\n First, what role to black culture workers play in white supremacist upworthiness? As I have argued before, black culture workers are often like sous-chefs<\/a> who prep the affective\/emotional mise en place for \u201cour\u201d performance of upworthiness (they do the work of \u201corganizing\u201d whites\u2019 ignorance of ongoing racism). That is, they\u2019re supposed to perform positive affects and emotions–like heroic overcoming, as in the example David discusses in his post–that audiences then transform into a higher-order upworthiness. \u201cWe\u201d perceive \u201cour\u201d appreciation of \u201ctheir\u201d performance as evidence of \u201cour\u201d commitment to multiculturalism. However, if black people were manifestly unhappy, that would shatter the myth of post-racial multiculturalism. So, post-racial white supremacy demands blacks play happy. [1]. And that\u2019s just what Pharrell does. He plays happy.(Perhaps this is one reason \u201cHappy\u201d was the song that broke the recent 14-week absence<\/a> of lead black artists from the top of the Billboard Hot 100? It provided precisely the kind of surplus value people expect from black artists?)<\/p>\n But, there are (at least) two ways that his performance works against the literal interpretation of it as the expression of happiness. First, his vocal performance adopts some strategies used by Billie Holiday to transform banal, racist and sexist Tin Pan Alley rejects into nuanced art songs. Angela Davis discusses Holiday\u2019s \u201cworking with and against the platitudinous content\u201d of pop songs (Blues Legacies & Black Feminism, 163<\/a>) at length. Here, I want to focus on one specific type of vocal embellishment that Holiday uses all the time, and that Pharrell also uses throughout \u201cHappy\u201d: they both mimic, in their vocal melodies, the pitch shifts that people use in spoken language to indicate sarcasm. Holiday does it here in \u201cWhen a Woman Loves a Man,\u201d which, when taken literally, is a really sexist song. Listen to how she dips down and back up in the first verse (e.g., \u201cjust another ma-an,\u201d \u201cshe\u2019ll just string al-ong\u201d):<\/p>\n \n Sure, these are super sexist lyrics. But by mimicking the pitch patterns that Americans use when being sarcastic, Holiday ironizes these lyrics. She\u2019s not endorsing them, she\u2019s making fun of them. This is reinforced by the song\u2019s last line, which doesn\u2019t go down in pitch, but up. In spoken language, that indicates a question: \u201cThat\u2019s how it goes, when a woman loves a man?\u201d By phrasing this as a question rather than a declamation, Holiday sarcastically critiques the song\u2019s sexism. Pharrell echoes Holiday\u2019s vocal sarcasm in \u201cHappy\u201d\u2019s verses–for example, listen to how he moves the pitch around on \u201cballoon\u201d at 0:26 in the first verse. There\u2019s also \u201cnews\u201d in the beginning of the second verse. The choruses use another type of sarcasm: deadpan. The choruses are sung almost entirely on the same pitch. This mimics the flat deadpan one uses to indicate that you don\u2019t fully believe what you\u2019re saying or reiterating, often because you\u2019re expected\/forced to say it.<\/p>\n So, I think there\u2019s a good bit of musical evidence that Pharrell is critiquing the white supremacist expectation that he perform upworthiness for white audiences. But his visual performance also gives us some evidence that he\u2019s pulling a fast one on us: his hat.<\/p>\n He wears the hat throughout the video, but it\u2019s central to his overall \u2018brand\u2019 at the moment. It even has its own Twitter account. So, this hat is important.<\/p>\n The hat is a vintage Vivienne Westwood hat. As Alison Davis notes<\/a> over at The Cut, this is the same style hat that Malcolm McLaren wore in his hip hop video, \u201cBuffalo Gals.\u201d<\/p>\n \n This is the same Malcolm McLaren who formed and managed The Sex Pistols–mainly as a huge art prank. McLaren was the master of \u201cThe Great Rock \u2018n\u2019 Roll Swindle<\/a>\u201d. The \u201cswindle\u201d here is that the joke is on us–the Pistols are basically a prank, a massive troll designed to rile up the general public. The Pistols aren\u2019t authentic working-class rebellion–they\u2019re manufactured for some too-clever art-school condescension at bourgeois moralism.<\/p>\n And that\u2019s precisely what \u201cHappy\u201d is–it\u2019s trolling bourgeois upworthiness. That\u2019s what the hat is supposed to tell us: in the same way that McLaren was trolling Thatcherites, Pharrell is trolling Obama\/upworthy liberals.<\/p>\n Most (white) people seem to take the song literally. They don\u2019t get the sarcasm, or the troll. Perhaps the question this song begs most is: Ever get the feeling you\u2019ve been cheated?<\/p>\n![\"YouTube](\"http:\/\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/dDyQi6YxJlQ\/0.jpg\")
<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n![\"YouTube](\"http:\/\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/9SgvJY9xxcA\/0.jpg\")
<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
![\"YouTube](\"http:\/\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/QjgE4kNSU74\/0.jpg\")
<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n