Going Through the Motions: American Bodies in Pharrell Williams’s “24 Hours of Happy”

The video promoting Pharrell Williams’s 2013 hit “Happy” is unusual: it runs continuously for 24 hours and displays a succession of around 400 people dancing to the song and often singing its lyrics and displaying with their bodies and facial expressions the spirit of happiness that the song epitomizes. This article analyzes the strategies chosen by the dancers to represent “happiness” and raises several questions: on what basis has the selection of moves and facial expressions been made? With what expected or unexpected impact on the viewers? Is there a specific “American” body language to display happiness? If so, has it evolved in time? Have other parts of the world been affected by similar changes? Does such a body language point to a pressure to conform and thereby raise questions related to freedom? What can we infer from the emphasis put on happiness in this video, and more broadly in US popular culture and public policies?