Fans discuss laugh tracks in TV comedy, praising Seinfeld for being so genuinely funny that the audience laughter never feels intrusive or distracting.
I find laugh tracks obnoxious, distracting, and insulting to one's intelligence. I have often wondered why there are no laugh tracks in films but they are deemed essential to TV comedy shows. Do the writers and actors have so little confidence in their abilities that they dare not perform without this imaginary approbation?
For me, the acid test of the quality of the humor in a TV comedy show is whether or not I notice the laugh track. Happily, I find myself laughing so much myself during most Seinfeld shows that it seems never to intrude.
Any show that can overcome the handicap of a laugh track is truly hilarious. At this point, regrettably, there seems to be only this one.
I have had the opportunity to watch a filming of Seinfeld. You will be suprised to learn that they do not use a laugh track at all for their shows. Any scene shot outside the studio is filmed prior to the taping and then shown to the audience for the soul purpose of recording the laughter. In fact, a friend of mine went to a screening and had an entire episode that was already filmed shown so that they could record the laughter, and then the normal screening was done! On some of the less funny scenes I would imagine that they do adjust the laugh volume, however.
The reason movies don't need laugh tracks is that there are usually a whole bunch of people around you laughing at the funny parts. The laugh track is meant to simulate the "crowd laugh" atmosphere of movies.
If you were at a movie and saw something super funny, you might start laughing, but then feel weird in the back of your mind if nobody else was laughing. Conversely, you'd laugh easier if everyone around you were as well - of course what you're watching has to be funny too but group laughter adds to the humorous moment.
Laugh tracks on TV are standard for that reason. Comedies have been tried before without laugh tracks, and they bomb UNLESS the show happens to be a dramedy (like LA Law) or dramatic satire (Larry Sanders) where a laugh track is totally out of place.
Your points are well taken. But my biggest problem with laugh tracks is that canned laughter is too often injected in places that are not even remotely funny--where the dialogue or situation cannot possibly be thought of as humorous. And this is what too often makes them distracting and irritating--and insulting to the intelligence. Laugh tracks won't create humor where none exists. When they try the result is contempt for the show and its failed performers and writers and a quick click of the channel changer.
I don't need a laugh track to instruct me in what I should find funny. About 20 years ago I was watching the Mel Brooks version of Frankenstein in a foreign country. The spoken dialogue was in English, but there were subtitles in the language of the country, in this case Spanish. Understanding the English, I laughed early and alone at each joke. The audience laughed a few seconds later after they had read the sub-titles. Whether or not the audience laughed with me made no difference whatsoever to my enjoyment of the humor. I didn't feel weird at all.
As I pointed out in my original post, when the lines or actions are genuinely funny, as they so often are in the Seinfeld show, one is too busy laughing to notice the laugh track, rendering it irrelevant once again.
Can there be no private appreciation of humor? To believe that we always need a crowd around us before we can find something funny would be to eliminate all books or cartoons or comic strips, for example, as sources of humor. Mark Twain got along quite nicely without laugh tracks. But of course he had talent. Regards, Harry Gehlert
With all due respect, you knew you were among the few or only English speakers there, so any "laugh alone" discomforted would have been mitigated, and secondly, even if that played no factor, people are rarely as uninhibited as that. Believe me, laugh tracks work when done appropriately, and perceived funniness is increased if others are laughing. This has been shown in psychology. Very few have the independence of thought you claim to have. You may be among the few.
Don't forget that great shows like "Doogie Howser, MD" and "The Wonder Years", which were HUGE hits in their own right, had no laugh tracks, yet still pulled in audiences, favorable reviews, and lasted years and years and weren't cancelled in the end, but were ended on high notes...PS, how is LA Law a "dramedy"? It's just a drama, I think...