Change Your Image
cosmicaug
Reviews
Happy (2012)
Good but inadvertently promotes questionable values (such as ethnic cleansing and an idolatry of suffering)
Generally good but I have to remove some stars for a couple of reasons (were it not for these, it might have deserved around 9 stars —though I wonder if I am being too generous at that).
The first reason is the way it, effectively, holds up the nation of Bhutan as an example for the rest of the world to follow. While they do tangentially touch on things which might be seen to hint at a possible authoritarian streak in this parliamentary monarchy when they mention legally enforced manner of dress, language and architecture (presumably treating their citizens like school children who must be required to wear uniforms "for their own good"), they never follow through on them. In any case, letting anyone brag, unchallenged, about how this nation handles its social systems is simply inappropriate. This is a nation whose policies make Donald Trump seem like a flower child. This is a nation which ethnic cleansed itself of roughly one sixth of its population in the 1990s. I wonder if these expelled ethnic Lhotshampa count toward Bhutan's Gross National Happiness? When, to make a positive example of this nation, this documentary claims that this nation's government tasks itself with asking what it is that makes its people happy, we must wonder if ethnic cleansing (and enforced conformity) is meant to be part of the answer.
While this does not mean that there can't be any positives in the politics of this country, it is not acceptable to sweep some very serious shortcomings under the rug (which no one would know about from watching this documentary).
The second reason I must subtract some stars is their treatment of Mother Teresa's Kalighat Home for the Dying. While I have no reason to doubt anything relating to state of mind of the volunteer they talked to, one cannot ignore the fact that it is happening in a setting known for widely reported issues of willful negligence in the care of their patients (if not, at times, outright abuse). It is a setting created around a dogma, which was held by Mother Teresa, of suffering as virtue. It is not so much that suffering is seen as an inevitable state but that it is seen as a desirable one. Ignoring this context, promotes a faulty, popular mythology of Mother Teresa.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Mother_Teresa
See criticisms by Aroup Chatterjee, Christopher Hitchens and Susan Shields.