In the format of a panel show, laughter is the real object of competition despite the background pretenses of playing a game show. However, it would not be true to say that these shows have a ‘fair’ competition for laughter. Parvulescu discusses how the culture industry uses laughter as a prescription, following the ideas of Adorno and Horkheimer, writing: “We laugh when we are told to laugh: ‘the product prescribes each reaction'” (Parvulescu 146). The panel show is certainly prescribing its audience to laugh. The prominence of laughter from the studio audience acts as a persistent pressure towards further laughter. Hanich explores the degree to which laughter is “cinematic laughter”, laughter “in response to other viewers”, which provides viewers other laughers to laugh with (Hanich 192).
(discussed clip begins at 1:10)
This clip from Cats Does Countdown came to mind for me not just because of the ways that the show foregrounds audience laughter, but because of the fact that it is the comedians who are the most prominent laughers. In addition to the presence of the studio audience’s laughter, the show’s editing visually emphasizes the laughter of the panelists. While shots of Joe Wilkinson’s delivery of the poem are closer and unbroken, the shot cuts or widens to include reactions from the other panelists as often as possible. The amount of time dedicated to reactions shows an awareness on the part of the producers that “even watching a film with a virtual companion, who expresses amusement on the screen, can lead to more laughter” (Hanich 190).
Further, I think that the social position of who is doing the most visible laughing is crucial. The laughter of the audience is usually faceless and distant: there is nothing special about the laugher, only the laughter. By contrast, the comedian’s laughter, both through performance and parasociality, can convey much more. Watching professional comedians “break” (though in the panel show context, there isn’t much to break from) can be enjoyed as “recognition laughter”, as we see behind the performance and recall times when we laughed when we shouldn’t have (Hanich 201). Parasocially, watching any personality we are attached to– in the panel show-verse, Sean Lock pops up in frequent appearances and is know as a “comedian’s comedian”– be captured in full-body, hysterical laughter can also act as “conversion laughter”: their specific laughter imbues the material with special comic value that other laughter would not (Hanich 197-9).
If you are an aspiring comedy producer, audience and performer laughter can prompt different laughters in viewers; though if all else fails, find a host named Jimmy and tell em to laugh ridiculously at everything.
The intersection between parasociality and Parvulescu’s ideas is so interesting! Having the camera cut back to Joe Wilkinson every time he ‘broke’ and struggled to read his own poem made it feel like the producers/editors were really prioritising his laughter to highlight that to the viewers.
This idea of parasociality is interesting to consider in relation to the way that Hanich notes laughter can briefly dissolve hierarchies and social groupings. In this context, the joint laughter of the audience alongside the panelists as they break and try to hold it together, is a socially binding force.