CONFERENCE ON THE FUTURE OF HAPPINESS
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Leo Buscaglia fans may rage, but it’s time the con game was exposed–Saturday Night Live’s Stuart Smalley, with his 12-step “Daily Affirmation,” can’t do it alone. Leave it to the Upright Citizens Brigade (creators of Virtual Reality) to concoct a fictitious “comedy experiment,” The Conference on the Future of Happiness, a spoof playing at five different theaters in January. Complete with lectures, audiovisual displays, and audience-participation therapy workshops, the two-hour “conference” reduces feel-good hype to the status of snake oil. And the cost for a lifetime of happiness? Only $145 (or $5 in real money).
Clearly modeled on bona fide self-awareness sessions, the conference proceeds in dead earnest. The session opens with videotaped interviews with “celebrities”: “Moms” Mabley, John McEnroe, and Art Garfunkel (all played by the same actor) testify to the empowerment they experienced hearing the Sentence of Happiness (a configuration of words assembled from the world’s most arcane wisdom). Audience members then put on name tags, take an “Emotional Variance Adaptability Test” (which provides information for the improv scenes), and applaud conference host Downey Perkins (Rich Fulcher), a perky glad-hander whose MO is corporate unctuousness and forced similes. After informing us that we’re less happy than we think, Downey leads the crowd in a cheer (“H-A-P-P-I-N-E-S-S!”) and introduces his “experts” on self-improvement.
Of course I dare not divulge the Sentence–but it was what we deserved for believing happiness could be taught.
