" the art of the laugh track "

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there's something really subversive about a sitcom laughtrack. it's so apparent that it is done in post editing programming, and we all know that there is no live studio, so why the hell is it there again?

it's so blatant that over the years of watching literally dozens and dozens of come-and-gone situational dramedies and the like, we have become null to the annoyance that is the modern laugh track.

can you just imagine the person (or team of people) who sit around with the editors and sound supervisors in their digi-suites thinking up just the perfect moment and length to insert the laugh track. it needs the right amount of audio-virtual crowd size, volume, cadence, and the right balance of male to female voices and pitches.

here in thailand, there are beg\inning to emerge a very odd and ill-placed version of the laugh track. this is no doubt because of the use of the laugh track in american programming(and we all know just how sickeningly america infiltrates the rest of the known modern world with its wares, cultural isms, and other misc. product campaigns-and yet we do nothing about it, because it gives us something funny to look at when we're traveling- a display of the warped inputs that ads in different target markets and languages do).

i say, lets let the rest of the world have some semblance of an original thought, right people? can we do that? no? okay. i know i know, it's just too late. the beast of industry and advertising has already been unleashed for quite some time, so why bother?

i still think its important to separate the differences between real life and a manufactures reality; sometimes these borderlines are not so clear or map-able, but it's nice to be able to recognize them when they appear.

tonight, (force) yourself to watch a horrible new sitcom on fox, then listen for the mind-numbing audio-death of young and older minds alike that is the sweet (non)subtlety that is the laugh-track.

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