Against Happiness - The Los Angeles Review of Books

[John Bailey]

Very interesting read. I think the argument ultimately ends up
cancelling itself out a bit - not sure if it's the reviewer or book's
fault.

It starts out positing that the closure and catharsis of mainstream
cinema fits the dictates of contemporary western capitalism's demand
for the "limitless pursuit of self-optimization that counts for
happiness in the age of neoliberalism" - being entertained has a
political function.

Feel-bad films opt out of the process, however. But in the end, the
value of a feel-bad text is apparently that it "empowers the subject
to reflect independently, as a free subject" and to "think
independently, more freely, and more radically".

Seems to me that this is exactly the kind of claim made by
neoliberalism, and that self-optimization via free, critical text
analysis isn't that radical a political stance.

On Sat, Sep 26, 2015 at 11:03 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
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