Artists unmask society's soulless smiles

In Exile

By FR. RON ROLHEISER, omi

It's been a long time since anyone produced a masterpiece and called it, An Ode to Joy. Perhaps Leo Tolstoy spoke for modern art when he said: "All happy families are alike," implying that they are boring and unhappy families are not.

Is there a special depth inside unhappiness? Is what's broken more interesting than what's whole? Why are so many artists skeptical of joy?

Poniewozik suspects the problem is not that artists are skeptical of joy, but that they are reacting aesthetically, as one would to anything that's over-sweet, to the millions of unsolicited smiles that greet us from every billboard, magazine page, television ad.

Everyone we see there is always smiling, in perfect health, with perfect teeth, perfect hair, perfect family, suggesting a perfect life beneath it all. Happiness is so easy, it would seem, effortless really, all deep struggles can be put aside simply by using the right laundry soap, eating low-carb hamburgers, choosing the right shampoo and make- up, carrying the right mobile phone, making the right wine selection, and driving the right car.

Formerly, the Church did that. It had religious symbols that reminded us daily that we lived in a broken world, amid fractured dreams, that life was a struggle, that we were always vulnerable, that death posed a constant threat.

Religion made us aware that humanity had fallen from grace, that we were wretches in need of God's help, that we were here as pilgrims on earth with no real home, that the sublime came only after long sublimation, and that we lived in "a valley of tears" within which we shouldn't over-expect.

If love, beauty and happiness are as simple and easy as the latest television commercial suggests, why, like the prophet, Isaiah, would I feel so unworthy before them that I should want to cleanse myself with a burning coal?

But when I no longer see myself as a pilgrim in a fallen world, as a wretch in need of grace, then I don't have moral permission to feel as if I'm missing out on life.

Nor do I have permission to be alone on a Friday night, without a soulmate, lonely, hurting from broken relationships, caught inside a dysfunctional family, frustrated inside a far-from-perfect Church, not in great health and trying to find happiness without a perfect body or a perfect job.

Today, many of our artists are doing for us what the Church used to do, namely, they're telling us that it's okay not to feel happy all the time and that if we're trying to smile all the time we're probably in denial because life isn't simple, joy is elusive and it's perhaps found in places where we haven't been looking lately.

There are many reasons why artists tend to focus on what's unhappy. Partly it's the artistic temperament itself, its hypersensitivity, its tortured complexity, its capacity to name what's under the surface in the cracks of our brokenness.

Partly too, it is simple arrogance, an elitism, a condescending intellectualism that can easily make an ideology out of unhappiness because it secretly believes ordinary joys and laundry commercials are beneath its dignity.

But partly its an insight which sees life deeply enough to understand that happiness is not an easy thing, that a genuine smile should be sparked by more than just the right toothpaste, that there are problems that cannot be solved by a newer software, that there are lonely seasons too in life, and that honesty compels us to admit we cannot always be smiling and happy.

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