Fourth International Conference on Tourism and Leisure Studies

Abstract

The 2013 song “Happy,” written and produced by performer Pharrell Williams, can be viewed as a useful tool in fighting stereotypes about cities in Africa. The song, along with its music video, was a global phenomenon that spawned numerous tribute videos, including examples from residents of Ouagadougou, Lomé, Bujumbura, Harare, and elsewhere, replicating the original’s visual presentation of ordinary people dancing in city streets. This paper uses tools from cultural studies to show how such productions challenge the common image of African urban despair and decay, replacing it with images of unrestrained fun and leisure. Of course, stereotypes are durable and hard to dismantle, but we suggest that these “Happy” tributes help to undermine emergent “Afropessimist” views, which suggest that continent-wide, urban poverty, despair, decay, and conflict has deepened to the point of hopelessness. In particular, these tribute videos’ representations of middle class urban lifestyles provide effective alternatives to such prevailing views of African misery. They provide examples of people taking charge of how their cities are represented, potentially re-writing urban Africa as spaces for tourists to embrace rather than avoid.