The Happiness Restaurant
Joey Zhang
STUDENT ARTWORK
Category
Animation
Artwork medium
Maya
ARTIST STATEMENT
This satirical short is set in a restaurant where the posted rule “smile or pay $30” turns service into compliance. Drawing on Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times, it sets a cheerful diner interior against a worker’s strained obedience, exposing the commodification of emotion in service labour and the quiet violence of mandatory happiness. The film challenges exploitative systems, showing how rules become absurd when they police expression. The music repeats the words “new day” to underscore the irony that renewal never comes when time is owned by policy.
ARTIST INTRODUCTION
I’m a 3D animator, sound designer and video editor based in Australia.
CONTACT
Email: hanwenzoe@gmail.com
Acknowledgement of Country
UNSW School of Art & Design stands on an important place of learning and exchange first occupied by the Bidjigal and Gadigal peoples.
We acknowledge the Bidjigal and Gadigal peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the land that our students and staff share, create and operate on. We pay our respects to Elders past and present and extend this respect to all First Nations peoples across Australia. Sovereignty has never been ceded.
