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The
Laugh Track:
Directing Emotions Since 1950 by
Byron Browne | |
The
joke wasn’t that funny. I don’t recall what it was however, I do remember that
I saw it coming down the street well before the laugh track indicated that it
had arrived. But that’s frequently the way with television sitcoms. The jokes,
stale, predictable and well traveled, are often punctuated not with another joke
or some sort of vaudevillian pratfall but announced or even identified by the
familiar pairing of unconscious, canned laughter. However, we have all become
conditioned to expect and accept this accompaniment. Laugh tracks have, after
all, been a component of television programming since the 1950s, becoming, in
a sense, another character of the show. Likewise, for movies particularly, theme
music offers the same sort of guidance and direction for our emotions and attitudes
about a scene’s action. But there was something about this particular television
episode, something about that particular moment that just didn’t sit well with
me and after a moment it hit me. I didn’t like the idea of someone telling me
what was funny; or, in this case, supposed to be.
The man behind the laugh
track is Charley Douglass. It was his idea, way back in the 1950’s, in television’s
infancy, that particular shows needed punching up. So, following through with
radio’s notion and need of a fabricated audience, Douglass brought the technology
to television. In fact, the Hank McCune Show, circa 1950, was the first
to employ the technique that would become standard industry practice.
We’re
all familiar with it. The sudden sweep of laughter following even the most callow
of jokes, oftentimes sounding as if it has traveled down a long, metallic tube
(which, of course, it has) and ceasing with sudden, mechanical precision. The
“laff box” as Douglass’s peers nicknamed it, was, and is, capable of producing
any sort of snort, guffaw, peal or snicker you can imagine. Whatever the degree
of the joke, the laff box stands ready to illustrate for us just how, exactly,
we are to respond to the situation. The instrument is able to create laughter
that is male or female dominated, soft, tickled rib giggling, undulating, sustained
hilarity or uproarious, thunderous claps of amusement. The device and its effects
have become such a factor in television’s presentation that actor’s cues have
even been directed not so much by the people on the set but rather by the length
of the laughter inserted in the editing room. Just rent and watch some old Flintstones
cartoons or M.A.S.H episodes with the laugh tracks removed (read the back
covers to find if that is an option on the DVD) and witness the awkward pauses
of Alan Alda as he waits for the chuckles to fade away or the now not so funny
antics of Barney Rubble. |
| Some shows, Barney
Miller and anything Bob Newhart come to mind, are hilarious with or without a
laugh track. Jack Benny will elicit a smile from just about anyone even if he
is simply staring at the camera. On the other hand, some fall short even with
the assistance of emotive direction. One story, from the early days of television
and the laff box in particular, tells of Milton Berle while in the post-production
room watching as editors cut and spliced segments from one of his show’s episodes.
A joke he had told falls flat, no one from the audience had letting loose of so
much as a chuckle. The editor then adds the laugh track to the sequence and Berle
quips “See! I told you it was funny!”
In the 1960s and 70s television
executives, artists and directors began having the philosophical discussions about
just this sort of thing, i.e. the intrusion into a show’s artistic integrity by
the heavy-handed, forced directive of the laugh track. By way of compromise, many
shows, All in the Family for one, began staging their shows in front of
a “Live Studio Audience.” However, not thrilled with straight, honest audience
responses, editors still augmented the reactions with post-production laughter.
(Notice also how many groups’ “Live” albums have been over-dubbed in the studio
after the performances; wrong notes corrected, pitch raised or lowered, etc.)
Producers still wanted authority over the intrusion of the fabricated hilarity
and many shows suffered cancellations after refusing to incorporate the laugh
track. Indeed, M.A.S.H.‘s creators insisted on no canned laughter during
the operating room scenes regardless of whether a joke was part of the dialogue
or not.
Recently, programs such as The Office and its offspring
have begun eliminating the laugh track all together, relying instead on camera
angles and close-ups to punctuate and draw attention to particular jokes. In fact,
a good drinking game could be made of the show Parks and Recreation with
its reliance on the close-up as a form of response manipulation. However, these
swooping camera shots are not used sparingly, you’d be good and couched by the
first set of commercials; keep the water handy. |
The
laugh track, however, is not the sole agent involved with managing an audience’s
responses. Accompanying musical soundtracks are also a prime motivator for editors
and directors. This instrument is less intrusive than the laugh track and often
only amplifies the experience rather than intruding upon it. In many cases the
music accompanying a show is meant to flow along with the action. Not ordinarily
is its intention to sway opinion but, rather, to enhance the existing sentiment.
Other times, of course, a musical score foreshadows events or illustrates the
terminal point of some sequence of plot. Nevertheless, its intent is frequently
to dictate the appropriate emotion-at least that of the show’s producers.
Not
too long ago my wife and I saw the film No Country for Old Men at a local
Austin theatre. Produced by the Coen
brothers, themselves no slaves to traditional filmmaking techniques, the movie
offered no accompanying soundtrack for the majority of the film. When, at the
final segment, one of the lead characters is involved in a disastrous car crash
and simply walks away as the scene, and movie, ends, one audience member was moved
to jump to his feet and announce to us all, “I don’t get it!” Poor sop, there
was no music dictating how to react to such a violently strange scene. Where were
the cops? Where was the voice-over narrative relating the rest of the story? Where
was the scrolling text telling us what happens over the course of the next few
months or years? Sadly absent was any sort of clarifying detail. We were left
only to our own thoughts and summations which, at times, can be as lacking as
a good joke. There was only the image of a broken villain, a long stretch of sidewalk
and a brutal story that was left, seemingly, unfinished. Somewhere,
in between that sitcom’s attempted manipulation of my emotions and a decent Coen
brother’s movie purposefully ignoring them, lies the truth. Somewhere in there
lies a degree of separation that we can all live with. Someday it will show itself
and I’ll applaud it when it does. Until then, excuse me. I’m going to the kitchen
and get my bottle of scotch and a jug of water. Parks and Recreation is
on soon.
© Byron Browne
Notes
From Over Here March
1, 2010 Column
Byron Browne can be reached at Byron.Browne@gmail.com |
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