I’m rewatching some older sitcoms and the laugh track is so odd to me. I remember thinking nothing of it growing up, but now that I’ve been watching sitcoms without it, it feels completely pointless. Who thought it was a good idea and why?
In: 21
Consider how stories were told for nearly the entirety of human existence. You sat around a campfire or whatever, and someone told a story, and the audience responded. If it was funny, they laughed. Eventually, as societies settled down and got bigger people started putting on more organized plays, and you’d go sit and watch the actors. You and the people around you would respond. If they did something funny, everyone would laugh. After the invention of movies, they’d film the actors and play the movie to a room packed full of people and again, the audience would react to the action on screen.
Now consider television. It’s being beamed out to millions of people sitting in their living rooms, often by themselves. Unlike basically the entirety of human experience, listening to a story being told is no longer a social activity, it’s being done in isolation. It’s no wonder that studies filmed shows in front of a live audience, and later on just added artificial audience responses.
They aren’t trying to tell people when to laugh, they are trying to fill the gap left by the missing audience around you.
Latest Answers