Why is the music video for Pharrell Williams’s “Happy” so
great?
It’s not simply because the song accompanying it is
undeniably catchy, or that it’s a revolutionary, mind-bending video which we’ve
never before seen.
It’s a pretty simple premise – Pharrell’s song plays while
the video cuts to a random person clapping and dancing, and lip syncing the
words to the song. There’s plenty of people shown – white, black, men, women,
short, tall, young, old. There’s a guy folding sheets and then there’s Jimmy Kimmel.
But the music video is great because it doesn’t actually
tell us why any of the people depicted are happy. They just are. Pharrell isn’t
telling anybody why they should be happy, or what to do to achieve this
happiness. He’s just happy himself, and so are the rest of the people in the
video.
And these people are all placed on the same level with each
other. Jimmy Kimmel doesn’t get any more screen time than the non-celebrities
in the video just because he happens to host a television show. He’s grouped in
right along with everybody else, because being happy isn’t something that’s
reserved just for celebrities or the rich and famous. Pharrell shows that
anybody can be happy – it doesn’t matter how, or why, or even if this happiness
is going to stay for a long period of time. He just shows that it exists, and
when it comes, maybe it’s worth stopping for a little bit to smell the roses
before going back to the grind.
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