The rise of anti-happy art almost exactly tracks the emergence of mass media, and with it, a commercial culture in which happiness is not just an idea but an ideology.

Sure, we find ourselves in a radically democratized and decentralized media culture that's producing an overload of information, an alarming amount of which is deceitful or just mistaken.

"What that said to me was that there is a kid culture and a media culture that transcends what we think kids should be reading," Dr. McGill-Franzen said.