Laugh tracks

For obvious reasons, the most enjoyable of our reading assignments in class was by Chuck Klosterman. I believe that it’s because the topic he brings up and criticizes is accessible to me and any other people I can think of. I can fairly safely assume that everyone I know and everyone they know has seen a television show with laugh tracks. Some of my favorite shows, including Friends, uses laugh tracks, and I’ve gotten so used to it, I barely notice the anonymous people laughing along to the show. It does, bother me, however, that there is laughter put in the show to tell me when to laugh. In most cases, too, the laughter I hear does not match the response I would expect from the joke in the script. It is overly loud and rambunctious and not how I would respond. Even when these obnoxious laughs are heard, if I don’t find a joke funny, I don’t laugh at it. Klosterman brings up the point that many shows that don’t use laugh tracks are praised for its absence. Several of these shows are also on my list of things to watch, and even with the absence of strangers laughing in the background, I find myself still laughing when I want to.