“In terms of form, we can equally discover differences in laughter, depending on how the comic and ridiculous reveal themselves to us: Are they offered immediately, gradually, or in an ongoing way? We have heard that for Prütting the form of laughter mimics, so to speak, what we laugh about: The livedbodily tensions typical of laughter are the felt equivalents of the unthreatening ambivalences and contradictions of the film. Prütting therefore distinguishes between the comic that teleologically builds up toward a revelation of a punchline or Pointe (think of a joke or a prank), the comic that relies on an episodic recurrence of gags, and the comic without punchline whose temporal-dynamic gestalt is funny (think of the eccentric walk of a penguin). Correspondingly, our laughing response – the mimetic correlate – takes on the form of an explosive laughter, recurrent outbursts, or an ongoing commentary-like laughter.” (Hanich, 195)
Reading this passage made me think about Studio C’s skit, “Prop Switch,” in which the cast members demonstrate part of the skit-writing process by making a skit and then redoing the same skit with a different prop. “Prop Switch” seems to emulate a few of Hanich’s forms of laughter/comedy. The skit in itself is a bit metaphysical in the sense that the viewer isn’t aware of what the cast is doing until there’s a fourth wall break, subsequently bringing us to the first example of one of Hanich’s forms: “the revelation of a punchline.” The punchline happens during the fourth wall break, where, Whitney, a cast member explains that they’ll be switcthing the prop from a pastry to a baby, and here reassigning the meaning of the entire skit. Once the second round of the skit starts, we see the second of Hanich’s forms: the “episodic recurrance of gags.” Not only is the script of the skit the exact same, making it recurring, but the viewer is repeaetedly hit with the same gag– the object of discussion being a baby. The script doesn’t change but all the lines are now funny for the same reason every time. Hanich’s last form, a funny “temporal-dynamic gestalt,” is harder to pin down, though I would argue that it is seen in Matt and Mallory’s movements, like Matt’s partial spit-take, and the pastry/baby toss between the two. The other interesting thing about this skit in relation to Hanich’s chapter is that you can literally hear the different types of laughter in action at the designated parts. Studio C does a large part of their filming (including this skit) in front of a live audience, so the laughter heard is not a laugh track which makes it quite easy to identify the types of laughter that Hanich discusses. On a wider scale, I find it interesting that this skit is able to show all three in such a short period of time, when from what I’ve seen and the way Hanich describes it, the different types of laughter/comedy are argubly more individual and spread out, rather than immediate and all in the same bit.