User:QuestionableSanity/sandbox/Laugh Track
A laugh track (also known as a laughter track, canned laughter, or fake laughter) is a device used by writers and directors of television comedies to simulate the presence of a live audience reaction when an authentic audience is not available. In comedy shows performed on closed sound stages, this grants the director the luxury of being able to film multiple takes from various angles over a long period of time, while still being able to provide the immersive experience of audience laughter.
Laugh tracks are widely criticized as being closed-captioning for the humor-impaired, used as a crutch to prompt home viewers on when to laugh. They are also generally regarded as intrusive; poorly-mixed laugh tracks can sound artificial and off-putting, as the simulated audience reacts uproariously to every remotely funny moment.
Examples of works famous (or infamous) for their use of laugh tracks
- Classic examples of live-actions sitcoms which abused the power of the laugh track include Gilligan's Island, The Brady Bunch, I Dream of Jeannie, and Bewitched.
- The drama-comedy M*A*S*H had one at the network's insistence, but the producers successfully managed to have it excluded from the comparatively grimmer operating room scenes, and were able to dispense with it entirely for certain later episodes. The DVD releases of the show offer the option to mute the laugh track.
- Every NBC Game Show until the 1990s, including Wheel of Fortune, Super Password, and Blockbusters, had a ridiculously loud applause machine. Dennis James nicknamed it "Mother MacKenzie" on an episode of PDQ.
- Laugh tracks have even been used sincerely in Western Animation. Hanna-Barbera is perhaps the biggest offender, as almost all of its primetime animated series of the 1960s and 1970s featured laugh tracks, including but not limited to The Flintstones, The Jetsons, and Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!.
- Both The Muppet Show and Muppets Tonight primarily used laugh tracks. Both television shows depicted stage shows being performed in front of a live audience of muppets. Due to the use of special effects and puppeteers, it was unfeasible to employ a human Studio Audience (although the stagehands occasionally contribute genuine laughter). It's been said that the laugh track of both shows was so authentic-sounding, some people believed that they could buy tickets to see the taping sessions in-person.
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A brief history of the laugh track
In the early days of television, comedies were "traditionally" performed essentially as short plays in front of a live Studio Audience, broadcast live or with minimal editing (see Three Cameras). As television production grew more sophisticated in the late 1940s and early 1950s, there was at least a partial shift from live performances to productions that were filmed movie-style in a closed sound stage. The adoption of closed-set filming gave the director more freedom in selecting shots and angles, as well as the luxury of multiple takes. However, there was no longer an audience to provide instant feedback on the humor.
American sound engineer Charles "Charley" Douglass attempted to rectify this perceived shortcoming by inventing the laugh track, an artificial audience that did nothing but react uproariously to anything and everything. Naturally, within a few years of its introduction, it was abused and overused. Every punchline, no matter how lame or subtle, would receive the same tsunami of belly laughs from the virtual audience. It became epidemic, even bizarrely forcing its way into cartoons. By the 1960s, it had become an annoying intrusion, hated but (in the minds of most producers) mandatory.
In the 1970s, most sitcoms began to switch from the single-camera, movie-style format to the multi-camera format with a Studio Audience providing real laughter, which producers found more pleasing because it helped them write better jokes. By the 1980s, the only hit that still used a laugh track was M*A*S*H, which mostly dispensed with its laugh track toward the end of its run, loosening the laugh track's hold on single-camera television comedies. It's still around, but it's not nearly as prominent or overused as it used to be.
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Playing with the laugh track as a trope
Nowadays, the most common way to play with laugh tracks is to parody them through the use of exaggeration, by intentionally playing the laugh track at deliberately high intensity in response to deliberately unfunny jokes. Another form of parody is "misfiring" the laugh track by having it go off when nothing funny is happening or, better yet, during a dramatic or tragic scene.
Sincere applications of the laugh track can also play with the trope in interesting ways. A show can highlight a character's exceptionally poor comedic performance by playing Chirping Crickets in place of the standard laughter. A scene in which two characters try to top each other by making increasingly outrageous jokes can supplement the comedy with a gradually intensifying laugh track, only for the laugh track to suddenly fall silent when one character makes a tasteless joke that crosses the line.
The laugh track can also be applied in a meta sense, by having characters use it as a tool during performances. A failing comedian may rely on a canned laughter machine to compensate for the poor reception of his jokes. Or, a Meddling Executive may demand that the writing staff of a comedy show adapt the pacing of the script to accommodate for the laugh track which will be added in post-production, much to the staff's dismay.
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And now, a haiku
Related tropes
- Chirping Crickets: An artificial sound clip used to emphasize unhumorous rather than humorous moments.
- Studio Audience: The use of a live audience rather than a machine to generate laughter.
- Viewers are Morons: The mindset which brought the laugh track into such ubiquity.
