Comedy is contagious yet it’s a very serious business. Making people laugh can mean big bucks for those who do it best. But, there is a dark side to commercial comedy the great unwashed public, don’t get to see. Nor do we want to see it.
Critics abound in the comedy world. You know even I can be one.
I, along with millions of other viewers, love to watch The Big Bang Theory sitcoms. The premise alone makes me laugh and the show has legs, it’s been around for a while and isn’t stale yet. What it does suffer from though, is one of the worst laugh tracks in the business. For beginners, comedy sitcoms that have any redeeming value, don’t require laugh tracks and why the producers/directors of Big Bang insist on inserting phony audience howls, is beyond me. I don’t need to be told when to laugh when I hear or see something funny.
So I was wondering dear diary, do you find yourself laughing out loud at a clever editorial cartoon or a comic strip? I know I do on occasion.
I’m not a regular reader of the New Yorker magazine, but when I get to scan it, I can be guaranteed at least four genuine chuckles as I wander through their one-panel cartoons.
Years ago the Mercury used to receive a magazine published in Poland. It was written in English, but was definitely Polish in its style, including a batch of totally clever cartoons that evoked laughter more often than not. Some of them didn’t even need the usual cutlines or joke lines under them. They were purely visual.
And speaking of visual, slapstick comedy is pretty well visual laughwork isn’t it?
Pratfalls and drink spitting or clumsy goofiness always drags a chuckle out of most of us, whether it be the old style Peter Sellers Pink Panther movies or a Duck Dynasty road trip on so-called reality TV.
There are so many genres of comedy it’s no wonder stand-up comedians can end up in a dark corner sobbing and blubbering.
In a recent interview, Canada’s Martin Short said he figured that Canadian comedians, and there were many of them based on a per capita measurement, enjoyed more success than almost any other breed. He attributed that to the fact we had the advantage of sopping up a lot of traditional English ways and means and comedy, along with our own brand as well as the American influences. The hybrid Canadian comedians end up excelling because they are able to use borrowed and learned situational comedy and bend it to be self-deprecating, farcical (like the Brits do so well) or observational and satirical (like the American funny people do) or we use our natural ability to use hyperbole or ridicule to get our comedic points across. The Brits use a lot of droll humour to make us laugh. Canadians can combine that with a lot of anecdotal or deadpan words and movements. Mix that all up and you have crazy Canuck comedians who deliver a special brand of funny.
There is dark comedy too and even comic relief in otherwise gloom and doom serious movies.
There are tonnes of cleverly talented people engaged in the laughter business these days and that’s why we really don’t need laugh tracks.
We know the drill. When something funny hits us, we have a tendency to laugh. It’s pretty natural. We shouldn’t require coaxing or coaching should we?
