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IS THE LAUGH TRACK REALLY THAT FUNNY? (p. 2 of 2)

1 | 2 | APR

A television staple for more than half a century, the machine made its debut in 1950 on the long forgotten The Hank McCune Show. In reviewing the program, Variety noted the appearance of canned laughs and included this prescient comment: "The practice may have unlimited possibilities if it’s spread to include canned peals of hilarity, thunderous ovations and gasps of sympathy." The show was a disaster – thanks in no small part to the laugh track that inspired waves of protest – and was soon taken off the air. The evil creation it spawned, of course, has continued to irritate audiences ever since.

And ever since, sitcoms have fallen into a nefarious rhythm. Aaron Sorkin, creator of Sports Night and The West Wing, once called it the "three-quarter-march time rhythm: joke, laugh, joke, laugh." We are turned into Pavlovian dogs every time the laugh track is unleashed. This is an extremely cynical approach to entertainment, and it is time for it to stop.

Of course, we haven’t always had to put up with this slavish reliance on the laugh track. There was a time when shows like All in the Family proudly announced they were "filmed before a live studio audience," although even shows of that calibre were "sweetened" with canned laughs when the audience’s reaction was deemed insufficient.

Like Sorkin with Sports Night, the creators of M*A*S*H didn’t want to use a laugh track at all, but the network prevailed. The show was given canned yuks – apparently, we weren’t supposed to notice anything odd about there being an audience in the middle of the Korean War – although the laugh track was turned off during scenes set in the operating room. The new M*A*S*H Collector’s Edition DVDs have a feature that allows people to turn off the laugh track and watch the show as it was originally intended. If only regular television allowed such an option.

I won’t even watch programs with laugh tracks anymore. As soon as I hear one blast of that cackling device, I automatically reach for the remote. I don’t want to support the entertainment industry’s theory that television viewers are mindless automatons who can be goaded into laughing by the relentless attack of the laugh track. Popular and successful shows like Malcolm in the Middle, The Simpsons, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Scrubs and Arrested Development prove that sitcoms can be funny without relying on canned laughs.

Yes, that means I missed out on the phenomenon that was Seinfeld. But such is the price of conviction. [ ]

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1 | 2 | APR