Dissecting the Laugh:
Examining the Significance of Laugh Tracks as a Cultural Phenomenon
The article “Laughing Machines”, by Jacob Smith (published in 2004), talks primarily about the use of laugh tracks in comical television, also known as the sitcom. The main point of the article is the claim that television audiences find the use of laugh tracks in the shows they watch to be “unsettling”, but Smith’s viewpoint feels very outdated and causes many questions to arise. What purpose do laugh tracks serve? Why are laugh tracks continually used in modern day television if they truly “unsettle” the audience? Does the claim that they unsettle the audience still apply? Answers to these questions go unaddressed by the author and thus need to…show more content… Well … that is a highly controversial subject. Let’s skip it (37).” This shows that even in its formative years, individuals saw a need for laugh tracks but did not explicitly know why. Rather than taking Daniels advice to just “skip it,” it might prove more helpful to examine laugh tracks from an outside perspective to try and determine their usefulness. To examine the relevance of laugh tracks, it is important to note the significance of laughter in a broader social context. A 2004 study conducted by Robert R. Provine showed that laughter developed even before sophisticated language, as a way for humans to show each other what they enjoyed. He explains that “the necessary stimulus for laughter is not a joke, but another person” and that there is “evidence that laughter is a social vocalization (215).” Within humans, laughter serves more as a social cue that a something is enjoyable. It demarcates what we like; humor usually falls under this umbrella. With this information in tow, it becomes much easier to examine the reasoning behind television’s use of laugh…show more content… While laugh tracks, technically, fall under this definition (since they artificially produce human-generated sounds), the idea that this “unsettles” the audience seems antiquated at best. Time’s “Can the Laughter” vilifies laugh tracks, claiming that they “ring too often like hollow mockery…”. It also compares laugh tracks to the Roman emperor Nero, who “packed his houses with as many as 5,000 soldiers under strict orders to appreciate him (Time 40).” These negative sentiments were common when laugh tracks first came on the scene, but more recent reviews of them seem to place their animosity towards them in a different
