My First Taste of Unbridled Nerd Wrath

I used to enjoy be just like a lot of anonymous internet denizens, just flaunting my opinion willingly on any and all topics.  I would freely throw out my ideas on the Star Wars prequels (I don't consider them canon), episodes of Pink Lady & Jeff (totally jumped the shark in the later episodes), and remaking Saturday morning cartoons into movies (unconscionable).  I could also be unreasonably angry at inconsequential things in life.  Good times they were.  Then I went and contributed something to a place where people could easily comment on my own folly.  Big mistake that. 

What happened is that I had become obsessed with laugh tracks; In particular as to how they manipulate a sitcom audience.  Not to the point of laughter, but how they provide a false sense of company even when you're watching bad Airwolf reruns by yourself in a run-down motel off the interstate.  In the bathroom. Naked.  I could never remember if I actually liked the shows I watched or could even remember them properly, but they were always warm and inviting.  My curiosity was piqued.  A couple of wikipedia rabbit holes later and I was mired in fascination as to how manipulative the sound of canned laughter could be.  One specious rumor had it that, before laugh tracks, audience members were unwilling to laugh at people being abused and debased for the sake of physical and emotional comedy.   Viewers just needed a little prodding to say, "It's okay. That person didn't actually permanently injure themselves in an unnecessary pratfall.  We just think that you should laugh and belittle them".  It was like schadenfreude and the capitalist system all came together in one box to sell some soap flakes and make people think, "Chachi's up to his old tricks again".

So I invested some time in a simple editing experiment — to remove the laugh track from an episode of Full House I found on the internet.  Would it reveal the true theater of the empty stage at work buried amongst the dick and fart laughter (more like innocuous family-friendly innuendo for that show)?  Or possibly the emotional turmoil amongst the actors that sat unbridled under a sea of noise? 

Kind of neither.  The show wasn't funny without the laugh track.  Or really not funny.  It kind of just...was.  In a way it was wholly more satisfying just because it was no longer demanding or guilting you into joining their comedy. I was relatively happy with the results.

It was nowhere near a perfect experiment as I was manually editing out the sound from the final blended soundtrack.  Without separate tracks to work with, I had no idea how to separate overlapping laughter and dialogue.  I spent a couple hours editing, which at the time seemed like an eternity for something I wasn't sure anybody would care about, yet it was miniscule for a proper editing job.  Either way, I posted it on Youtube with a description of a "simple editing experiment" just to see if anybody thought anything of it.  

this editor dude sucks donkey azz at editing

I can't say this editing was very good either. It doesn't feel like the show without a studio audience; instead, it feels like the show with the entire clip muted whenever a laugh track is played

I'm still not sure what they were expecting.  It's quite possible that a lot of people post videos online to show off their editing prowess, and those same people were expecting this to be another example of editing finesse, which it really was not.  I'm not troubled by the onslaught of harsh comments as I've gotten a fair share in other places, (some people seemed to rightly appreciate the posting, which was nice), but I'm still mystified by the effort involved here.  Who goes out of their way for vitriol at this low a level of publishing?  The gentle balance of critic and artist is certainly a complex symbiotic relationship, and some vitriol is to be expected.  I'm just scared that I might accidentally post pictures of a family vacation to Niagara Falls and getting underneath:

These picz are totally ghey.  You suck at life.  FAIL

 

 

—March 22nd, 2010

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