Textual analysis 3 - Happy

"Happy" by Pharrell Williams

Happy was released on 21st of November 2013 and featured as part of the soundtrack in the animated film "Despicable Me 2" and has become a world wide phenomenon, which resulted in a craze to make home made versions and uploading these on to YouTube.

From looking at the theory of Halls reception theory, this song does have different impacts and interpretations by different social groups. Stuart Hall said that "The producer of the media text encodes the meaning". There are three different interpretations which people judge a piece of media text by, these include:
Dominant - Agrees that the person/viewer gives good views and likes the video/media text
Negotiated - the viewer will see some dislike within the given media text but still finds it OK
Oppositional - The viewer will dislike the song either due to cultural, religious views or just honest hate for the song.
Applying this theory, much of the world took a dominant view and meaning from the song "Happy". The article bellow from "The New York Times"- Published 2014 gives an insight on Pharrells reaction to the popularity of Happy and the positive views on the song.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/04/opinion/pharell-williams-on-the-happy-phenomenon.html?_r=0
As he says -"I'm thankful for all the people behind the song’s success". This shows that Pharrell Williams has acknowledged that it was the world that made it want the song is in today's society.
Of course there are some people and countries such as Iran and North Korea whom took an oppositional interpretations as these countries deny access to western culture - especially American society as these countries feel that western culture corrupts their citizens. This is shown through the Iranian government after a group of young adults were arrested over endorsing western culture.

Looking at the success of "Happy", this would not had been possible- especially on a worldwide scale without Web 2.0. This is the second stage in the development of the internet which focuses on people sharing information and idea's upon the internet. This video was successful because , through the internet, people have found and created their own version of the song to express how happy they are and others. Entire cities such as Paris, London and other countries have made videos which commercially endorse their city and also spreads the trend of the song. Here are a few examples of these songs.






Without Web 2.0, This song would not have become as popular as it would have been without the influence of the worldwide viewers whom made the song such an icon in everyday life as many can relate to the song.