Section:GDN 1J PaGe:5 Edition Date:190724 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 23/7/2019 18:59 cYanmaGentaYellowbla
Wednesday 24 July 2019 The Guardian •
5
Now we know:
even dad jokes
can be funny
Place and even the delightfully silly Schitt’s Creek all
leave you to do the work yourself. If it’s funny, you may
crack up. But they aren’t about to tell you where and
when to do it.
Yet a new study has revealed that the addition of a
laugh track does make jokes seem funnier. Sophie Scott ,
a professor of cognitive neuroscience , led a research
team at University College London. They put 40 “dad
jokes” – the best bad jokes, at least fi ve steps up from
a Christmas cracker joke – to volunteers , and found
that every one was considered funnier when it was
accompanied by the sound of another person laughing.
Fake laughter did the trick. And real, spontaneous
laughter worked even better. “What this study shows
is that adding laughter to a joke increases the humour
value, no matter how funny or unfunny the joke is,” said
Scott. A less scientifi c conclusion would be this: Miranda
knew what was up.
It’s no surprise that the comedies that most often win
critical acclaim are the gorgeous, subtle ones that dance
around the edges of jokes – as if coming too close to
funny might burn them. I usually love these comedies.
But many of the big, successful beasts of the genre, the
ones that either broke ratings records or have endured
far beyond their original lives, have been accompanied
by a laugh track.
Seinfeld, Friends, Father Ted, The Big Bang Theory,
Will & Grace, Mrs Brown’s Boys and Absolutely Fabulous,
to name just a few, all brought their laughs along with
them , usually via a live studio audience.
The internet has had a fi eld day with both adding
laugh tracks, and taking them away. There is a YouTube
rabbit hole to be explored in clips from shows like
Friends and The Big Bang Theory , with the studio
reactions edited out.
They turn seemingly gentle set-ups into either
conversations with arthouse levels of banality or, in
Rebecca
Nicholson
writes on culture
for the Guardian
and Observerthe case of Ross from Friends, make him look like
a bona fi de psychopath. Then there’s the opposite:
adding a laugh track to a horror movie – The Shining
with Seinfeld slap-bass and laughter – is particularly
discombobulating. Search “inappropriate laugh track”
and watch your day disappear into “funny” versions of
Breaking Bad, or Carrie, or Titanic.
Laugh tracks are eff ective. We are more easily
manipulated than we like to think, more sheep-like,
and more pliable. But Scott’s study also suggests that
laughing is better as a communal experience. Of course
it is, because it’s contagious. This is why Facebook
compilation videos of babies laughing are as addictive
as E- numbers and essentially irresistible.
It’s why laughter yoga, which allows a fake laugh to
develop into a real one in order to release stress, works.
It’s why I spend more time than I should watching
sitcom blooper reels, and often secretly think that
seeing other people collapse into fi ts of laughter when
they have fl uff ed a line might be more enjoyable than
the sitcoms themselves. It’s why someone falling
over and laughing about it on You’ve Been Framed is
funnier than someone falling over and crying because
it hurt so much.
Laughing alone is fi ne, and it is becoming the norm,
at least when it comes to entertainment, because
watching television together is increasingly rare. With
such an array of choice, and with most of us having our
own screens in our hands or on our laps, we can watch
what we want, when we want to – individually, without
having to compromise. Laughing along with someone
else, though, is better.
I am happy to settle in for the commitment of a
13-hour foreign-language drama about mountains
entirely alone. But I’d much rather watch a comedy in
company, in a state of silly communal hysteria, even if
it’s been brought on by dad jokes.Rebecca
Nicholson
T
here are few things more likely to
raise the hackles of a comedy snob
than the notion of “canned laughter”.
A sitcom with a laugh track – not
so much canned, these days, as a
recorded live audience reaction –
implies that it will be an old-fashioned
sort of comedy. We are living in an era
that rewards a more naturalistic approach.
Gag-soaked sitcoms such as 30 Rock and
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt , which barely give you
time to honk before moving on to the next one-liner, do
not feel the need to guide you to the punchline.
Not a single one of the nominees for this year’s
outstanding comedy series award at the Emmys comes
pre-loaded with laughter. Fleabag, Barry, The GoodРЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS