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Shiny Happy (White) People
Chekov, Grease, and the cult of ignorance.
In Anton Chekov’s short story “Gooseberries,” Ivan Ivanovitch tells the tale of his brother Nikolay, a “poor timid clerk” who achieves his dream of becoming “a real landowner, a gentleman.” Nikolay is someone who finds great delight in devouring a plate of “sour and unripe” gooseberries, not because they taste good but because he has grown them on his own estate, a home that, to him, represents the ultimate in achievement.
Nikolay Ivanovitch is happy. But how can he — or anyone — be truly happy? Shiny happy people, Ivan Ivanovitch reasons, can only remain that way when those who suffer do so in silence, unseen. Speaking through Ivan Ivanovitch, Chekov writes:
“…we do not see and we do not hear those who suffer, and what is terrible in life goes on somewhere behind the scenes… Everything is quiet and peaceful, and nothing protests but mute statistics: so many people gone out of their minds, so many gallons of vodka drunk, so many children dead from malnutrition… And this order of things is evidently necessary; evidently the happy man only feels at ease because the unhappy bear their burdens in silence, and without that silence happiness would be impossible.”
In other words, ignorance really is bliss. Being happy, which Chekov (through Ivan Ivanovitch)…
