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Music for Happiness: Contemporary Theories of Happiness and Films About Fictional Musicians

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Music for Happiness: Contemporary Theories of Happiness and Films About Fictional Musicians Music for Happiness: Contemporary Theories of Happiness and Films about Fictional Musicians Whiplash (2014) Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) Begin Again (2013) Frank (2014) Nicole Akkermans - 10324682 MA Media Studies: Film Studies Delftstraat 52-0215 Supervisor: Maryn C. Wilkinson 2015 BM, Haarlem Second reader: Eva Sancho Rodriguez +31637475561 Date: 23 June 2016 [email protected] Amount of words: 19.639 Music for Happiness 2 Nicole Akkermans 10324682 Music for Happiness Music for Happiness 3 Nicole Akkermans 10324682 Music for Happiness Abstract This thesis examines happiness and the way in which it is constructed in contemporary films revolving around fictional musicians. I challenge the idea that happiness is a given concept by investigating the way in which films are able to provide certain structures of happiness, particularly when they include musical performances. By considering the narrative structures of four films (Begin Again, Frank, Inside Llewyn Davis and Whiplash) as pursuits of happiness, I hope to locate the space of happiness in these films. I will combine the investigation of narratives with contemporary philosophies of happiness, such as Sara Ahmed’s concept of ‘happy objects’, and with the audience’s enjoyment of musical performances. The aim of this thesis is to find the structural recurrences of happiness in film. Keywords: music, happiness, happy objects, musical films 4 Nicole Akkermans 10324682 Music for Happiness Content Introduction 6 Chapter 1: Happy Attachment? 11 The Four Axis of Unhappiness 13 Actual Problems 15 The Promise of ‘Happy Objects’ 18 Affect Alien Andrew 21 Conclusion 22 Chapter 2: The Space of Happiness 24 Locating the Happy Objects 25 The Space of Happiness 29 Inside-Out 32 Expansion of the body? 32 Conclusion 34 Chapter 3: The Audience and Musical Enjoyment 36 Musical Happiness Bubbles 37 The Affective Community of the Viewer 42 Music and Film as Happy Objects 44 Conclusion 47 Bibliography 49 5 Nicole Akkermans 10324682 Music for Happiness Introduction “I thought singing was a joyous expression of the soul!”, exclaims Lilian Gorfein (Robin Bartlett) in response to Llewyn Davis’ decline to play the company a song after dinner. In this scene halfway through Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), Llewyn (Oscar Isaac) responds that he is not a trained puppy but that he “actually has to earn a living” by performing music. In this way, the film illustrates a tension between the socially constructed idea that music is an (individual) expression of the soul, and the idea that music is a world that for musicians becomes a community/industry in which he/she has to earn money to support oneself. These contradictory perceptions of music (and its relation to happiness) create a conflict between the two characters in this film. What interests me here is this link between happiness and music. For indeed where does happiness reside here; in self-expression and communal enjoyment, or in personal success and excellence? Is the expression of enjoyment and happiness through musical performances enough for the characters to be happy, to get by? Or can they only be happy after they have become rich and famous? This essay is about how films about fictional musicians function as narratives about happiness. Along with discussing happiness for the protagonists of the film, I am concerned with the construction of happiness for the viewer of the film. My research question is therefore as follows: How do films about fictional musicians construct structures of happiness, and what are the recurring strategies to bring the viewer into these structures? To answer this question, this essay will turn to contemporary philosophies of happiness such as those posed by Sara Ahmed in the Promise of Happiness. In the introduction to this book, she discusses the ‘new science of happiness’ as a strand of popular, contemporary philosophy that tries to determine what happiness is through measuring the way in which people describe that they feel good (4). Through researching how and why certain things (and not others) are associated with good feelings, Ahmed is interested in figuring out how subjects are positioned in contemporary society. Furthermore, Ahmed argues that describing happiness as ‘feeling good’ is a site of ambivalence, for there is no such thing as transparency and/or clear distinctions when it comes to feeling something, describing what you feel, and categorizing what distinguishes feeling good from feeling bad (5). For example, it is possible that a subject feels multiple feelings at the same time, to feel both good and bad. Another complication to defining happiness that Ahmed mentions (by quoting Csíkszentmihályi) is that: happiness is not something that happens. It is not the result of good fortune or random choice, it is not something that money can buy or power command. It does not depend on outside events, but, rather, on how we interpret them. Happiness, in fact, is a condition that must be prepared for, cultivated and defended privately by each person (my emphasis, Csíkszentmihályi in Ahmed 31) What interests me about this is, if in fact happiness is something that has to be learned rather than that it is something that is inside of us from the moment we are born, then how do we become cultivated 6 Nicole Akkermans 10324682 Music for Happiness and prepared for it? If there is no consensus as to what happiness is, then how is it constructed? Here, I will look at films and the way in which they structurally manufacture certain conceptions of happiness, since films are a site where meanings are produced and put into circulation. Happiness is one of the topics that everyone in the world at some point talks about, aspires to, thinks about, longs for, feels, discusses, dreams about etc. As such, it is a topic of major importance in culture, and narratives of happiness are often (re)presented in media such as on television shows, but also through art and literature. If contemporary culture is filled with narratives of happiness, then the plots of cultural products must most commonly revolve around (fictional) characters (the hero) who long for it and that have to overcome obstacles or difficult tasks in order to get the happiness that they want. However, having, being or doing what one wants to have, be or do does not implicate that the character is then happy. Think for example of films or television shows where the villain succeeds with his evil plan: is he understood to be happy? Considering reoccurring tropes in narratives (patterns) has its origin in structuralism and Propp’s Morphology of the Folktale. As Roland Barthes writes: the Russian formalists, Propp, and Lévi-Strauss have taught us to identify the following dilemma: either narrative is a random assemblage of events, in which case one can only speak of it in terms of the narrator’s (the author’s) talent, or genius – all mythical embodiments of chance; or else it shares with other narratives a common structure, open to analysis, however delicate it is to formulate (my emphasis, 238). In this thesis, I want to lay bare these underlying (‘common’) structures in the narratives of happiness in films about fictional musicians. More specifically then, this thesis will focus on contemporary American films featuring (more or less) fictional musical artists to see in which way they present a certain idea(l) of happiness, and to see in which way what makes the protagonist happy is negotiated. I will consider these films as representing a sub-sub genre that contrasts with established genres such as documentaries about musicians, biopics and (Hollywood) musicals. The difference between the films discussed here and biopics is that they don’t create expectations of narrative development, since the stories are fictional rather ‘real’ stories of real musicians that might be known by the audience in advance of watching the film. Narratives of musicals, on the other hand, are different from traditional narratives (of Hollywood films) since “values like causality and motivation, and the conventional opposition between narrative and numbers, are displaced by structures and devices of comparison and contrast whose role is to articulate the dualities with which any particular film is concerned” (Neale 111). Despite the fact that the films discussed here are not musicals either, I will discuss whether or not the structures of contrasts that Neale mentions in regards to this genre might be a trope that holds ground for them as well. This is because, just as is the case for musicals, the films about fictional musicians too feature a narrative combined with musical performance, which is a defining trope for 7 Nicole Akkermans 10324682 Music for Happiness the musical genre (Feuer 68-9). What is interests me about the films discussed here is the way in which they present the viewer with narratives of (the pursuit of) happiness as a theme of the genre. In order to explore this, I will compare the narrative structures of four films and the way in which they establish what is desirable (what will lead to happiness?) and what not. I have chosen to pick four contemporary films (two films from 2013 and two from 2014), since these can help to establish the way in which happiness is constructed at the present moment. What these films have in common is that their protagonists are on a journey or quest for validation as musicians; whether that be as musicians, singers or songwriters. Frank (2014) is a film about Jon (Domhnall Gleeson), an aspiring keyboard player and songwriter who through luck becomes member of an eccentric band that is led by Frank (Michael Fassbender)), a man who always wears a giant papier-mâché head. Secondly, Whiplash (2014) is about nineteen year old Andrew (Miles Teller), a drummer at a music conservatory who tries to make it as a jazz musician but is mentored by an instructor who will stop at nothing to realize a student’s potential.
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