Yet More Evidence that Laugh Tracks are Bad

We've spoken a few times about the problems with laugh tracks. There have been some new developments, so I think it's high-time we revisit this issue. Let's begin by witnessing what would have happened if David Simon had decided that creating the greatest American work of art of the '00s wasn't sufficient and had, instead, opted to try to broaden the appeal of The Wire. (There's some profanity in the following clip.)



More interesting, perhaps, is the effect of Gawker TV's video edit of a great scene from Arrested Development. The edits were similar: they added a laugh track. It's amazing how the addition of a laugh track makes this scene decidedly unfunny. The result is not embeddable, so you should definitely click over and check it out.

Shows without laugh tracks are still in the minority today. So let's take a look at what happens when one of those standard sitcoms has it's laugh-crutch taken away. Without further ado, here's CBS' Big Bang Theory with the laugh track stripped away:



So we've learned that laugh tracks:

1. Ruin good dramas;
2. make funny shows unfunny;
3. and, lastly, mask the unfunniness of unfunny shows.

And I think that makes a pretty appropriate 200th post in The Daily Snowman's history.

Taste the Happy, Michael

Via Kottke, here's the trailer for a soon-to-be-released documentary about Arrested Development.



Judging from the trailer, it seems the documentarians aim to uncover why America didn't love this show as much it should have.

Two Notes on TV

1. The Office is at its very best when Michael and Dwight are not in the office. This allows everyone else to be normal.
2. 30 Rock tonight approached the level set by Arrested Development.
   

Are Sitcoms Going Postmodern?

A New York Times Magazine article comparing such stalwart televisual programs as The Simpsons, 30 Rock, and Arrested Development with the metafiction techniques of Postmodern literature of the 1960's and 1970's?

Yes, please.

Shows like “Arrested Development,” “Scrubs,” “Family Guy” and “30 Rock” have taken the experiment a step further, reconfiguring the methods with which comedy tells stories. Instead of using the typical sitcom narrative (six characters in the same four rooms enduring a humdrum, linear story line), these shows explore their situations through collage and a restless stream of consciousness.

And:

Metafiction emerged from a group of self-aware writers who analyzed their own work like critics; and in the same way, today’s digressive sitcoms come from a generation of comedy writers (and viewers) who understand the ins and outs of the most popular format of 30-minute storytelling. Avant-garde literature gave America its first tradition of subverting narrative, but what was once a wild experiment in language has become an accepted counterpart to our Internet culture, where digressive Googling and link-clicking are a way of life. The dusty sitcom has caught up to the modern mind.

Art Controls Your Brain

Oscar Wilde's wonderful essay "The Decay of Lying" takes a really interesting look at the importance and functions of art. It's a short piece, and certainly well worth reading. Wilde understands that art, in its truest sense, occurs in the theater of the mind. My favorite line, oft-selected as my google-message for the world to see, goes a little something like this:

Things are because we see them, and what we see, and how we see it, depends on the Arts that have influenced us.

There are a bunch of different ways to think about this sentence but probably my favorite is the direction Wilde takes later in the essay, as he explains that, sure, the clouds over the Thames in London existed well before the painters started depicting this cloud/river scheme. But this landscape was perceived by people (and remember, Things are because we see them) in a very different way after it was painted. The scene itself had maybe little to do with the paintings, but what people thought about after seeing the paintings was changed possibly forever.

I don't think this is an isolated example. Just today for instance, I was cruising around town with a few Publishing School classmates and someone mentioned that the song playing on the radio (which I can't for the life of me remember what it was) always reminded her of Animal House. Perhaps even more poignantly, a few minutes later some song called Windy started playing. I had never heard this song before but I immediately recognized it as the basis for Schlock Rock's Rashi song. Schlock Rock's version of the song is so ingrained in my brain that I am unable to hear any other rendition without thinking of Rashi.

There are tons more instances I can think of: I never liked sweet potatoes until I read The Power of One, in which the main character goes into these like long discourses about the delicious steam of a hot sweet potato rising off the plate on a cold day. Infinite Jest is set in this tripartite schematic, one portion of which occurs in junior tennis academy. I'm awful at tennis, but that doesn't keep me from desperately wanting to play every time I walk by the tennis courts on the way to publishing class. There's this car-stereo star near my house called Illusions. Every time I drive by that place I deepen my voice, say the name of the store and add a ", Michael. A trick is something a whore does for money."

These may seem like pretty insubstantial examples, but controlling what I think is pretty damn powerful.

What art has influenced the way you think? (The comments would be an excellent place for this discussion.)

A Tribute

This kinda happened by accident, but I noticed that that in two out of three papers for my 19th C. European Intellectual History class I have managed to incorporate some variation of the locution which doubles as the title of the greatest television program this side of 1998 : Arrested Development.

(Those crazy German Romantics really like writing about the development of man and also things which arrest that development. See, it's easy!)

Here are the two examples:

• Each believes that a deeper societal concern at once dehumanizes man and arrests his development.
• Novalis may concede that the reliance on clergymen arrests the mental development of the ordinary man, but that seems to be a concession readily granted...

I think this is a fitting tribute to a fantastic TV show. If we all work together--all three people who have read this blog more than once--and make sure that we utilize some variation of the phrase "Arrested Development" in every paper, blog post, email, google-chat, etc. we can simultaneously confuse our professors/email recipients but also, and more importantly, memorialize a show which deserves our respect.