Smile! No One Cares How You Feel

Smile! No One Cares How You Feel
General Information
Name	Smile! No One Cares How You Feel
Source	The Tragic Treasury
Length	01:51
Background Information
Composers	The Gothic Archies
Performers	The Gothic Archies
Associated With	The Hostile Hospital
Song Order
Previous	Crows
Next	Freakshow
Audio
Song

"Smile! No One Cares How You Feel" is the eighth track on The Tragic Treasury, performed by The Gothic Archies. It coincides with the book The Hostile Hospital.

Lyrics

Smile! No one cares how you feel 

Be vicious, vain and vile

Everything's yours to steal if you just smile 

Have you no dignity?

Have you no sense of style? 

You'll never be pretty until you smile 

Smile! No one cares how you feel

There's a world to beguile

You can make this world kneel

If you'll just smile 

Always the best disguise

A license to defile 

Everyone you despise will die 

So smile

References to A Series of Unfortunate Events

• Smile! No one cares how you feel
  Be vicious, vain, and vile
  • In The Hostile Hospital, the Baudelaire orphans are at large for (falsely) murdering (a man thought to be) Count Olaf. They join the ever cheery group Volunteers Fighting Disease, aka V.F.D., a volunteer group that walks around Heimlich Hospital and sings their saccharine though dreadfully ignorant anthem, in an attempt to camouflage and avoid both the authorities and Count Olaf. All they have to do to be a part of “V.F.D.,” and thereby remain out of jail, is to smile.
• Everything's yours to steal if you'll just smile
  • A line that chillingly could either refer to Count Olaf's goal of stealing fortunes, the Snicket File, and the Sugar Bowl by donning disguises, or the Baudelaires stealing Hal's keys by fooling him.
• Have you no sense of style?
  • Alluding to Esmé Squalor's sense of importance being tied to recent trends, and how she sometimes mocks the Baudelaires for being "out."
• You'll never be pretty until you smile
  • Unfortunately, likely a reference to the troupe's treatment of Violet Baudelaire- she is consistently harassed throughout the series by Count Olaf and the Bald Man mainly, something that adds an extra level of threat to her capture, especially as the Bald Man again refers to her as pretty while she is drugged and unconscious.
  • The specific phrasing references a common misogynistic phrase, "You'd be prettier if you smiled more," which is aligning a woman's value with her attractiveness.
• Always the best disguise
  A license to defile
  • While Count Olaf is in disguise, the adults trust him and do not notice the red flags until it is too late.
• Everyone you despise will die, so smile!
  • The theme of finding joy in death, specifically the passings of people you dislike, is common throughout the Gothic Archies' work. Their 1997

song “The Dead Only Quickly,” says:

“

It would be swell To see some folk burn in hell But when they go It’s just as pleasant to know That the dead only quickly decay

”

Details in the Song

• The first part of the title of the song can likely refer the smilely balloons that all the Volunteers Fighting Disease carry with them.
• The title of the song can also refer to the Volunteers Fighting Disease always being happy and positive and ignoring the needs of others such as when the patients they are singing to request certain things such as a glass of water. It addresses the ideas that happiness is beneficial, but one cannot ignore underlying problems or mask difficulties.
• Some can interpret the song to the idea that in the world today, humans often smile and pretend to be happy and most people do not take your emotions into account.