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On April 8, Charles R. Douglass, the inventor of [[canned laughter]] — the artificial jollity that accompanies comical moments on [[TV]] shows — died at 93 in Templeton, California. In the early ’50s, he developed the [[idea ]] to enhance or [[substitute ]] live audience reaction on [[television]]. This idea was realized in the guise of a keyboard [[machine]]; by pressing on different keys, it was possible to produce different kinds of laughter. First used for episodes of <i>The Jack Benny Show</i> and <i>I [[Love ]] Lucy,</i> today its modernized version is present everywhere.

The overwhelming [[presence ]] of [[canned laughter]] makes us blind to its core [[paradox]], even as it undermines our natural presuppositions [[about ]] the [[state ]] of our innermost [[emotion]]s. [[Canned laughter]] marks a [[true ]] “[[return of the repressed]],” an attitude we usually attribute to “[[primitives]].” [[Recall]], in traditional societies, the weird phenomenon of “weepers,” [[women ]] hired to cry at funerals. A rich man can hire [[them ]] to cry and mourn on his behalf while he attends to a more lucrative business (like negotiating for the fortune of the deceased). This [[role ]] can be played not only by [[another ]] [[human being]], but by a machine, as in the [[case ]] of [[Tibet]]an [[prayer wheel]]s: I put a written prayer into a wheel and mechanically turn it (or, even better, link the wheel to a mill that turns it). It prays for me — or, more precisely, I “[[objective]]ly” pray through it, while my [[mind ]] can be occupied with the dirtiest of [[sexual]] [[thoughts]].

Douglass’ invention proved that the same “[[primitive]]” [[mechanism]] works also in highly developed societies. When I come home in the evening too exhausted to engage in meaningful [[activity]], I just tune in to a [[TV]] sitcom; even if I do not laugh, but simply stare at the [[screen]], tired after a hard day’s [[work]], I nonetheless feel relieved after the show. It is as if the TV were literally laughing in my [[place]], instead of me.

Yet before one gets used to [[canned laughter]], there is nonetheless usually a brief period of uneasiness. The first reaction is of mild shock, since it is difficult to accept that the machine out there can “laugh for me.” Even if the program was “taped in front of a live studio audience,” this audience manifestly did not include me, and now [[exists ]] only in mediated [[form ]] as part of the TV show itself. However, with [[time]], one grows accustomed to this disembodied laughter, and the phenomenon is experienced as “[[natural]].” This is what is so unsettling about [[canned laughter]]: My most [[intimate]] [[feelings ]] can be radically externalized. I can literally laugh and cry through another.

This [[logic ]] holds not only for [[emotion]]s, but also for [[belief]]s. According to a well-known [[anthropological]] anecdote, the “[[primitives]]” to whom one attributes certain “[[superstitious]] [[beliefs]],” that they descend from a fish or from a bird, for example, when directly asked about these [[belief]]s, answer, “Of course not — we’re not that stupid! But I was told that our ancestors did believe that.” In short, they transfer their [[belief]] onto another. Are we not doing the same with our [[children]]? We go through the [[ritual ]] of [[Santa Claus]], since our children (are supposed to) believe in it, and we do not [[want ]] to disappoint them; they pretend to believe not to disappoint us and our belief in their naiveté (and to get the presents, of course).

In an [[uncanny]] way, some [[belief]]s always seem to function “at a [[distance]].” For the [[belief]] to function, there has to be some ultimate [[guarantor]] of it, yet this guarantor is always [[deferred]], [[displaced]], never [[present]] in person. The [[subject]] who <i>directly</i> believes [[need ]] not [[exist ]] for the [[belief]] to be operative: It is enough merely to presuppose its [[existence ]] in the guise of, say, a [[mythological]] [[founding figure]] who is not part of our [[reality]].

Against this background, one is tempted to [[supplement]] the fashionable [[notion ]] of “[[interactivity]]” with its shadowy and much more [[uncanny]] [[double]], “[[interpassivity]]” (a term invented by [[Robert Pfaller]]). Today, it is a commonplace to emphasize how, with new electronic media, the passive consumption of a [[text ]] or a work of [[art]] is over: I no longer merely stare at the [[screen]], I increasingly interact with it, entering into a dialogic [[relationship ]] with it, from choosing the programs, through participating in debates in a [[virtual]] [[community]], to directly determining the outcome of the plot in so-called “interactive narratives.”

Those who praise the [[democratic]] potential of such new [[media]] generally focus on precisely these features. But there is another side of my “[[interaction]],” which the [[object]] of interaction itself deprives me of: my own [[passive]] reaction of [[satisfaction]] (or [[mourning]] or [[laughter]]). The [[object]] itself “enjoys “[[enjoys]] the show” instead of me, relieving me of the need to [[enjoy ]] myself. Do we not [[witness]] “[[interpassivity]]” in a great [[number ]] of today’s [[public]]ity spots or posters that, as it were, passively enjoy the product instead of us? [[Coca-Cola]] cans bearing the inscription, “Ooh! Ooh! What taste!” emulate in advance the [[ideal ]] customer’s reaction.

When a man tells a tasteless bad [[joke]] and then, when nobody around him laughs, he bursts out into a noisy, nervous laughter, he has found himself obliged to act out the expected reaction of the [[public]] for them. This supplied laughter is similar to the [[canned laughter]] of the [[TV]] set, but in this example, the [[agent ]] that laughs instead of us (i.e., through which we, the bored and embarrassed [[public]], laugh) is not an anonymous audio track claiming to laugh for an invisible [[public]] — the “[[Big Other]]” — but the narrator of the joke himself. He does this in order to ensure the inscription of his act into the “[[Big Other]],” the [[symbolic]] [[order]] of all those around him. His [[compulsive]] laughter is much like how we feel obliged to utter “Oops!” when we stumble or do something stupid. If we do not say “Oops!” — if we do not inscribe our acknowledgement of the error onto the [[public]] [[order]] — it is as if, by allowing an [[imaginary]] dialogue between ourselves and the “[[Big Other]]” to remain incomplete, we commit ourselves to [[symbolic]] oblivion.

VCR aficionados who [[compulsively]] record hundreds of movies (myself among them) are well aware that the immediate effect of owning a VCR is that one effectively watches less [[film]]s than in the [[good ]] old days of a simple [[TV]] set without a VCR. One never has time for TV, so, instead of losing a precious evening, one simply tapes the [[film]] and stores it for a [[future ]] viewing (for which, of course, there is almost never time). So, although I do not actually watch [[films]], the very [[awareness ]] that the films I love are stored in my video [[library ]] gives me a profound [[satisfaction]] and, occasionally, enables me to simply relax and indulge in the exquisite art of doing [[nothing ]] — as if the VCR is, in a way, watching and enjoying them for me, in my place.

One should therefore turn around one of the commonplaces of [[conservative]] [[cultural criticism]]: In contrast to the notion that new [[media]] turn us into [[passive]] [[consumer]]s who just stare numbly at the [[screen]], the [[real ]] [[threat]] of new [[media]] is that they deprive us of our [[passivity]], of our authentic passive [[experience]], and thus prepare us for mindless frenetic activity — for endless work.

So then, would it not be a proper funeral for Charles R. Douglass if a set of sound-machines were to accompany his coffin, generating whispered laments, while his [[beloved ]] surviving relatives enjoyed a hearty meal, or perhaps got some work done elsewhere? Far from finding it offensive, I [[think ]] perhaps he would appreciate the [[recognition ]] of such a burial.

* [[Will You Laugh for Me, Please?]] ''In These [[Times]]''. July 18, 2003. <http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/88/>