The Ideal pursuit of happiness

[muhammad_abuzar]

Just as there is the idea of ‘model citizen’, there is also the notion of a ‘model migrant’ and ‘model minority’. Sara Ahmed argues that the host community provides the migrant with what we would consider a framework to become that aspired ‘model’. Here the idea of ‘freedom of happiness’ comes in. In the movie Bend it like Beckham, the explicit message is to let daughters find their own happiness in their desired manner (Ahmad, 136). But, the more implicit part of the film is the provisional framework in order to pursue said happiness. The freedom to pursue happiness is based on “not only freedom from family or tradition but also the freedom to identify with the nation as the bearer of the promise of happiness” (137). In doing so, the film implies that the supposed freedom has a pre-defined locum and a modus operandi. It resides within what the ‘nation’ with its distinct national philosophy considers to be markers of happiness.

In a paradoxical turn of events, freedom of happiness (whose normative definition is being able to create or at least pursue one’s own happiness in any desired manner) is restricted to the operative space defined by the national philosophy. In the case of migrants, happiness is considered embracing the supposedly better developed modes of life and to leave behind the past. This ipso facto implies letting go of the migrant culture (although perhaps not entirely). So, Sara Ahmad pushes against this notion of freedom because it requires us to assume a certain direction of freedom. In other words, it predefines a direction in which to move in order to be happy. But, this predefinition and the requisite assumption of a certain philosophy taken away that promised freedom.

In the end, the freedom is illusionary as it works only if exercised in this operative space that is closer to whiteness as represented by Joe and Jules. Thus integration may not require the complete abandonment of one’s customs, but it surely presumes the pursuit of white-defined notions of happiness to be superior.