This wasn't always so. The ear-liest forms of art, like painting and music, are those best suited for expressing joy. But somewhere in the 19th century, more artists began seeing happiness as insipid, phony or, worst of all, boring — in Tolstoy's1) words, “All happy families are alike.?We went from Wordsworth's2) daffodils to Baudelaire's3) flowers of evil. In the 20th century, classical music became more atonal, visual art more unsettling. Artists who focused on making their audiences feel good, from Usher4) to Thomas Kinkade5), were labeled “Pop”

　　Sure, there have been exceptions (say, Matisse's6) The Dance), but it would not be a stretch to say that for the past century or so, serious art has been at war with happiness. If someone titles an art movie Happiness, it is a good bet that it will be about deeply unhappy people.

　　You could argue that art became more skeptical7) of happiness because modern times have seen such misery. The reason, in fact, may be just the opposite: there is too much damn happiness in the world today.

　　After all, what is the one modern form of expression almost completely dedicated to depicting happiness? Advertising. The rise of anti-happy art almost exactly tracks the emergence of mass media, and with it, a commercial culture in which happiness is not just an ideal but an ideology8).

　　People in earlier eras were surrounded by reminders of misery. They worked gruelingly9), lived with few protections and died young. In the West, before mass communication and literacy, the most powerful mass medium was the church, which reminded worshippers that their souls were in peril and that they would someday be meat for worms. On top of all this, they did not exactly need their art to be a bummer10) too.

　　Today the messages your average Westerner is bombarded with are not religious but commercial, and relentlessly11) happy. Fast-food eaters, news anchors12), text messengers, all smiling, smiling, smiling. Our magazines feature beaming celebrities and happy families in perfect homes. (Tolstoy clearly never edited a shelter mag.) And since these messages have an agenda — to pry13) our wallets from our pockets — they make the very idea of happiness seem bogus14). elebrate!?commanded the ads for the arthritis drug Celebrex, before we found out it could increase the risk of heart attacks.

　　It gets exhausting, this constant goad15) to joy. If you're not smiling, what's wrong with you? Not to smile is un-American. You can pick out the Americans in a crowd of tourists by their reflexive grins. The U.S. enshrined16) in its founding document the right to the pursuit of happiness. So we pursued it and — at least as commerce defines it — we caught it.

　　Now, like the dog that chased and finally caught the car, we don't know what the hell to do with it. We feel vaguely dissatisfied though we have what we should want, vaguely guilty for wanting it, vaguely angry because it didn't come as advertised.

　　What we forget — what our economy depends on us forgetting — is that happiness is more than pleasure sans17) pain. The things that bring the greatest joy carry the greatest potential for loss and disappointment. Today, surrounded by promises of easy happiness, we need someone to tell us that it is O.K. not to be happy, that sadness makes happiness deeper. As the wine-connoisseur18) movie Sideways tells us, it is the kiss of decay and mortality that makes grape juice into Pinot Noir19). We need art to tell us, as religion once did, Memento mori20): remember that you will die, that everything ends, and that happiness comes not in denying this but in living with it. It's a message even more bitter than a clove21) cigarette, yet, somehow, a breath of fresh air.

　　情况并不总是如此。最早的艺术形式，如绘画和音乐，是最适于表达快乐的。但到了19世纪的某个阶段，越来越多的艺术家们开始认为快乐是平淡的、虚假的，甚或是——也是最糟糕的——乏味的，套用托尔斯泰的话说就是，“所有幸福的家庭都是千篇一律的。”于是我们抛弃了华兹华斯的“黄水仙”转而开始欣赏波德莱尔的“恶之花”。进入20世纪，古典音乐开始朝着越来越“不着调”的方向发展，视觉艺术也变得越来越混乱。而那些致力于为人们带来快乐的艺术家们——从亚瑟小子到托马斯·金卡德——则被贴上了“通俗”的标签。

　　当然，也有一些例外(如：马蒂斯的《舞蹈》)，但可以毫不牵强地说，在过去大约一个世纪的时间里，严肃艺术一直与快乐为敌。如果有人把一部文艺片命名为《快乐》的话，那么放心，那部电影描写的主人公一定极为不幸。

　　你可以争辩说艺术之所以越来越怀疑快乐是因为现代社会见证了太多的痛苦。事实上，真正的原因可能恰恰相反：现在的世界充斥着太多该死的快乐了。

　　当代有一种艺术表现形式，几乎是专门致力于刻画“快乐”的，究竟是什么呢？广告。“反快乐”艺术的兴起与大众传媒的出现几乎是同步的，随之而来的是一种商业文化，在这种文化中，快乐不仅仅是一个理想，而是一种意识形态。

　　在过去那些年代里，人们的生活充满困苦。他们工作到筋疲力尽，生活几乎没有保障，年纪轻轻就命丧黄泉。在大众传媒出现和读写能力普及之前，西方社会最强大的大众媒介就是教堂，而它提醒信徒们的是：他们的灵魂处于危险之中，他们的肉体迟早也将沦为蛆虫之食。此情此景下，他们完全不必再用艺术来对这种痛苦加以强调。

　　而今天，多数普通西方人所接受的信息轰炸不再是宗教的，而是商业的，而且是持续猛烈的“快乐轰炸”。快餐食客、新闻主播、发短信者，所有人都在微笑、微笑、微笑。我们杂志上的特写都是春风满面的精英人士和完美幸福的快乐家庭。(托尔斯泰显然是没有编辑过家居杂志。)所有这些信息都有一个目的——撬开我们口袋里的钱包——这就是为什么它们传递的“快乐概念”总叫人觉得虚伪和不真实。“欢庆吧！”宣传风湿止痛药“西乐葆”的广告曾这样叫嚣，但后来我们却发现该药会增加心脏病的发病率。

　　这种没完没了地驱使人们追求快乐的做法，真是让人筋疲力尽。如果你不微笑，那你是不是哪儿出了什么问题？不笑就不是美国人。你能从一大群游客中轻而易举地把美国人认出来，只要看看他们脸上那出于本能的咧嘴笑就知道了。美国把追求快乐的权利庄严地载入了建国文献中。于是我们对之孜孜以求，并且——至少像商业所定义的那样——我们将其抓到了手中。

　　现在，就像一条不停追逐最后终于赶上了轿车的狗一样，对于这到手的快乐，我们却不知究竟该如何处置。我们隐约感到不满意，虽然我们得到了理应得到的；我们隐约感到愧疚，因为我们曾有这样的渴望；我们隐约感到愤怒，因为快乐感并不像广告中说的那样妙不可言。

　　我们忘记了一件事——这也是我们的经济指望我们忘却的——那就是，快乐，远不止是没有痛苦的愉悦。给我们带来最大快乐的东西也最有可能带来失落和失望。今天，我们的周围充斥着各种各样的许诺，告诉我们快乐唾手可得。这个时候，我们需要有人告诉我们，不快乐也没什么，悲伤会使幸福更深刻。正如品酒影片《杯酒人生》所告诉我们的，正是腐烂与死亡的亲吻才使普通的葡萄汁变成了黑比诺葡萄酒。正如宗教曾经告诉过我们的，我们需要艺术来告诉我们那关于死亡的提示：记得你终将死亡，万事皆有终点，幸福不会因否定这一点而到来，却会因接受这一点而降临。这样的启示，品尝起来是苦涩的，甚至比嚼丁香烟还要苦，然而，从某种角度看，却似一缕清风，耐人细细品味。