I am ashamed to admit that when I was in elementary and middle school, I watched many hours of Disney channel and Nickelodeon. After watching many an episode of shows like Suite Life of Zack and Cody and Wizards of Waverly place, I noticed that the fake laugh track is filled with the laughter of children. After thinking about those shows, I looked at shows like Full House and The Cosby Show that used to appeal both younger and older audiences. The laughter from the live audiences in these shows is a blend of children and adults, exactly the types of people who watched these shows on TV. Finally, I looked at more adult sitcoms like Friends and The Big Bang Theory. These laugh tracks were all adult.
I find it very interesting and appropriate that the laugh tracks in sitcoms match the ages of the overall viewers of these TV. It could be seen as subliminal messaging telling television audiences at home that certain shows are made for certain age groups. An adult is less likely to watch a show that has only children laughing in the background. And a parent may unconsciously notice that a show only has adults laughing and choose to not watch it with their child.
I actually had to do some research on this in the past, and the thing that a lot of shows use actually allows them to customize different laughs with different compositions. They can actually add different amounts of different laughs like the nervous chuckle, the guy who really loves a joke, or the person who didn't get it but is laughing anyway. They put a lot of thought into what seems like a pretty inconsequential thing.
ReplyDeleteThis would be a great paper topic. Picking apart the different laughing structures and how it coincides with the purpose of the show would be very interesting.
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