No more canned laughter

With the recent success of “How I Met Your Mother” and “The Big Bang Theory,” it has come to my attention that canned laughter still exists.

This came as a surprise to me not because I’ve been oblivious for the past decade, but because I honestly thought with the success of shows like “The Office,” “Arrested Development,” “Scrubs” and others that deliver an innovative use of perspective, canned laughter would become obsolete.

It didn’t.

Why do we need someone to laugh with us? Shouldn’t the show itself be enough to make us laugh?

It should be enough, but it’s not.

Shows using canned laughter rely on a sense of familiarity to weasel their way into your living room.

When examining shows that contain canned laughter, you can break them down into two categories:

1. The family sitcom — usually a working-class family living in the suburbs.

2. The single friends sitcom — usually a group of five to six young attractives living in the city.

The combination of the two categories spans a lifetime from childhood to young, single adulthood to older, family-oriented adulthood, creating a time with which everyone can relate.

The categories also repeat a number of characters, such as the dumb and/or emotionally incompetent father, the mother desperately trying not to be like her mother, the ditzy boy- or status-obsessed sister, the ladies’ man and the dweeb of a younger brother.

These societal memes allow the viewer to become instantly familiar with the show’s entire structure without watching a prior episode.

The canned laughter also clues the viewer into the rhythm of when to laugh so they are instantly familiarized with their place within sitcom as an audience member.

The illusion of an audience seems to create a sense of belonging to a defined group.
This group skews the viewer’s perception of what is funny, favoring what is suggested to be funny.

In effect, the viewers of these shows laugh at things that are not funny but are accepted as funny under the circumstances.

It’s a trick.

We’re tricked into wasting 30 minutes on the same repetition of jokes used since the first season of “Married with Children,” and we are still being made fools of today.
The next time you hear canned laughter, remember someone is paid to laugh that way while you sit on a couch alone.

Remember they’re not laughing with you, which means they must be laughing at you.
Watch “How I Met Your Mother,” and remember you’re alone.

­— ktgragg@indiana.edu