On the second single from Puberty 2, “Happy,” Mitski recounts a deceiving visit from happiness and portrays in its music video a challenging narrative that explores intimacy, self-doubt, gender politics and race relations (among others).
Squeamish viewers—beware :O
Directed by Maegan Houang and produced by Ben Kuller, the “Happy” music video shows Mitski’s frustration over “the exhausting cycle of the fleeting nature of happiness” through a new medium. Although the video does not feature the artist herself, it profoundly accompanies the song by telling the story of a once-happy couple whose relationship begins to fall apart until it reaches a bloody plot twist at the end.
a dark & stormy night
Beginning and ending with shots of our protagonist sitting in her car while it rains outside, the music video uses its external setting to substantiate its characters’ dynamics and emotions.
Low-key lighting has been used for dramatic effect, immediately signifying to the spectator that something is amiss and what they’re about to see is perhaps not so happy after all as the song’s title may suggest. The yellow light illuminates the woman’s face just long enough for us to see her tears, adding to the sombre atmosphere. Additionally, we see hints of pathetic fallacy with the exterior of the setting reflecting the protagonist’s emotional state. One can assume that the storm and rain that surround her could be a physical representation of her internal turmoil. This distinct mood, so far melancholic and dark, is accompanied by a sense of obscurity and foreboding: the dark lighting, incessant rain that blurs the view outside the car despite the working windshield wipers, the woman’s distressed expression (the cause of which spectators are initially unaware of), and the well-hidden blood on her wrist that many might not be able to detect during the first viewing all act as devices of foreshadowing and contribute to the development of a mise en scene that draws the viewers in with what Barthes would consider hermeneutic codes. One can, therefore, detect proof of Goodwin’s assertion of technical elements shaping a music video and its meaning in “Happy.”
The cyclical nature of the music video, with the first and last visuals we see as an audience being the same, plays into the single's theme of the exhaustingly cyclical and fleeting quality of happiness. Such narrative structures fascinate me to no end, so this is definitely something I would like to keep in mind as a potential source of inspiration for the music video project.
tale as old as time
Inspired by the work of Douglas Sirk and Wong Kar Wai (e.g. as illustrated by the use of the frame-within-frame composition of certain clips that underscores a feeling of entrapment and is reminiscent of In the Mood for Love (2000)), the video follows a 1950s Asian-American housewife as she's worn down by her husband's infidelities—often with idealised white women—over a period of time, eventually resigning herself to inadequacy and the disappointment of promises broken ad infinitum. The costume choices have clearly been informed by 1950s fashion and give the viewers the impression that they are witnessing a narrative that is just as long-standing as it is contemporary; the intertextuality Happy employs in its replication of 1950s sensibilities and visual inspiration from cinematic sources closely reflects John Stewart and Andrew Goodwin’s notions of intertextuality in this music video.
The video’s exploration of romantic relationships is inextricably linked with racial politics. Mitski explores how Asian-white intermarriages may be characterised by power imbalances, with control conferred on the white partner. The video opens with a Japanese American woman embracing her white, uniform-clad husband who has ostensibly just returned from war. What begins as a loving marriage quickly disintegrates into an unequal partnership, with the woman forced into domestic subservience. She is shown delivering a tray of tea to her husband, a scene coupled with the lyric, “I told him I’d do anything to have him stay with me; so he laid me down and I felt happy come inside of me.” This scene, paired with the connotations of the lyrics, depicts a relationship in which sexual intimacy is traded for emotional and economic security—the latter implied by the woman’s role as a stay-at-home wife.
Moreover, the video highlights the culture of domesticity which women are subject to in such relationships. In the second verse, Mitski sings:
“I was in the bathroom, I didn’t hear him leave; I locked the door behind him and I turned around to see; All the cookie wrappers and the empty cups of tea; Well I sighed and mumbled to myself again I have to clean.”
In the accompanying scenes, the woman is shown performing various house chores when she finds tufts of golden hair which she takes as evidence of her husband’s infidelity. This depiction of the wife likens her marital relationship to that of a domestic worker and employer since we get the impression that her sole purpose is to serve her husband. Thus, this video’s overall representation of a woman trapped in a loveless marriage provides a contrast to the moment of intimacy we first associate with the couple when their relationship is introduced to the viewers through the flashback to a tender embrace.
Through its representation of the protagonist’s role in a household dominated by forces of patriarchy and white supremacy, the music video becomes an extension of the song itself, amplifying its meaning in some way. In the aforementioned elements, the links between song lyrics and the music video are undeniable (e.g. the music video can be connected to the narrative of the song wherein the speaker loses the source of stability in their life—a man who treats them badly—much like the music video itself) and supported by Goodwin’s theory to a great extent.
hues of tragedy
Colour codes may play a significant part in giving depth to any sort of music video, and Happy is no different in this regard. In relation to this, the importance of Strauss and Carlsson’s notions of binary opposition becomes very apparent when one pays attention to the juxtaposition discernible in the video’s prevailing blue and warm yellow lighting as well as the symbolic code of the women’s eye colours (blue and brown).
The protagonist is frequently framed in cold blue light, her scenes of restlessness punctuated by those of her husband and his mistresses in warm light. Apart from its function as obvious symbolism for the lack of affection that characterises their relationship, the use of colour imagery plays the role of isolating the protagonist as well. This becomes particularly evident in the way the video highlights her otherness, especially as an Asian woman. Her husband’s infidelity is a burning reminder that she is a “forever foreigner” who, despite her devotion to him, will never be able to conform to American beauty standards. This sentiment is underscored when, upon inspecting a handbag her husband seems to have given as a gift, she finds an inscription on the inside which reads “for my blue-eyed cookie,” and then looks up into her own brown-eyed reflection in the mirror—a bitter and final reminder that of her position as “the other” in the narrative.
Most importantly, by touching upon themes of race and feminist ideologies, Happy’s music video appeals to Mitski’s fanbase to a great extent, particularly by representing a narrative that might resonate among Asian-American people who have undergone similarly tragic experiences of subjugation and otherness.
a gory affair
An arm extended over the empty space in the bed. An air of indifference exuded by the partner. Affair hair (if you will) discovered by an increasingly suspicious wife.
These classical storytelling motifs (similar to what has been described by Michael Shore, except this time not in the context of adolescent male fantasies) which point towards a partner’s infidelity in any domestic drama film or television show saturate the narrative of this music video, but the spectator soon becomes cognizant of a shocking case of situational irony; in Happy’s music video, these signs aren’t just that of a cheating husband, but of one who brutally murders his mistresses in the couple’s shared basement. In this way, it subverts the expectations of the audience by giving us the impression that we are watching something familiar through the depiction of easily recognisable tropes. Tricking the audience into expecting a specific cliche outcome, such as a final dramatic reveal of the husband’s cheating followed by a fallout or something else along the same lines, the video packs an emotional and shocking punch in the form of the brutal climax, lending a much more sinister meaning to the very first shot of the crying woman now that we are aware of the fact that she seems to have killed her husband in self-defence. The non-linear structure of the video’s narrative, thus, aids its dramatic nature and heightens the impact of the events that are recounted in it.
The climactic reveal the video leaves its audience with is marked by mounting tension and contrasts with the mostly slow-paced editing of the sequences that precede it. In sync with the loud and increasingly dissonant beats of the music, the ending scene rapidly intercuts between clips of the husband trying to choke the protagonist and the protagonist in her car after hitting him with the axe, mirroring the heightened state of emotional turmoil of not only the characters in the music video’s narrative but also of the speaker the song’s lyrics have been written from the perspective of. In this way, the music video also coincides with Goodwin’s theory about the relationship between a music video/its visuals and the music itself. Here, the cacophony of unsettling bass is, thus, aided by the equally disturbing visuals and vice versa, magnifying the overall mood of the music video.
The development of the narrative as a whole becomes characterised by a heightened sense of fragmentation and subversion as one might notice in the form of the protagonist’s use of cigarettes and an outburst that prompts her to throw a glass at the wall in rage. The audience can infer that the subservient wife is reaching her limit and an ugly ending for the relationship is inevitable—except the said ending is much uglier than we could have imagined.
Combined, these elements coincide with various conventions of the alternative/indie rock genre, such as the fast-paced ending scene, the general sense of foreboding that prevails in the video, and the subversion of expectations that is often associated with alternative/indie artists who have the freedom to explore their creative expression instead of being bound to their record label’s demands. The fact that Mitksi herself is not present in the video at all is also a testament to this as for some other genres, such as pop music, one can’t imagine a music video that doesn’t involve the artist in one way or another to attract audiences through a focus on the musician(s) as suggested by John Stewart.
reality check
The video cleverly represents various facades that occupy its diegesis and urges the spectators to anticipate their eventual deterioration as the events of the narrative progress. One prop we repeatedly get to see close-up shots of is the protagonist’s white pearl bracelet which highlights its importance in the narrative.
(cw for fake blood/gore in the second picture)
What one might interpret as a testament to the couple’s pure affection turns out to have haunting origins with the final revelation that the man/husband/serial killer collects his victim’s pearls after murdering them. This notion of deceiving facades is substantiated further in the overall visuals of the video too. It represents a glamorised and aesthetically-pleasing version of the 1950s behind which lie chilling secrets. One might connect this to the unattainability of the seemingly perfect American dream as well as this is a recurring theme in Mitski’s work.
Some moments in the video point towards the underlying tension and the weak fronts that are tearing at the seams, something that we can recognise in the recurring image of mirrors. In one clip, we see a mirror that looks fragmented which could be an intentional choice that aims to highlight the nature of the narrative and the character dynamics. In another, the mirror becomes a bitter reminder to the protagonist of the fact that she cannot be the archetypal conventionally pretty, white, blonde, “blue-eyed cookie” her husband seems to desire.
Featuring thought-provoking details, an Asian American woman’s poignant narrative, ever-present melodrama, and more than a touch of horror, this particular creation by Houang and Mitski is an immersive experience that emotionally impacts its viewers/listeners, and the strength of this emotional impact lies in the director’s masterful use of a unique narrative structure paired with technical elements that enhance the video aesthetically, allowing it to convey its message and aid the audience’s understanding of the song in doing so.
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