an obvious and contentious instance of the “fake crowd” is canned laughter, an inescapable feature of the pre-recorded comedy. canned laughter has an undeniable influence on how we interpret a scene or a joke, and sets a distinct, relaxed, and enthusiastic mood. it is uncritical, (ideally) comforting (although often not), encouraging and often aware of itself, referenced as an incorporated element of the sitcom format, like the set or the costumes, rather than an unmediated reaction to it. laughter, to certain types of comedy, is as inherent to the impact of the visual content as the crowd noises are to football, and watching back footage without it is often unsettling and confusing. although canned laughter is often derided as being painfully obvious and over-the-top (“no person in their right mind would ever audibly laugh at that joke”), it is undeniably essential to the enjoyment of some shows, which, with varying accuracy, do actually feel funnier with the added laughs. performances with participatory audiences, such as comedy or football, are dependant on a relationship, an exchange. they do not function in the same way as a concert or a lecture (in most cases, definitely debatable), in which the audience pays for a service, the performer provides them with it, and the audience leaves with new experiences or information (variations on which they could have gain asynchronously, distanced from the performer and the performance, in an online recording or a textual restructuring). obviously there is a lot to be said about being present at a performance, but on a very immediate surface level, audiences that participate, like comedy and football crowds, are more essential to the act of performance than those of other events. this is where it gets complicated: recreating these participatory reactions when a large, conscious, present audience is an impossibility. the inclusive alternatives all come with their drawbacks: virtual presence is unrewarding and often dull, with limited option for interaction; smaller, distanced crowds almost feel more depressing than an empty theatre and the participants are more self conscious as a result, the atmosphere sterile and stilted. the active, participatory crowd has never been so fragile, so why not just get rid of it?
a still from ‘The King of Comedy’, a film which i have not seen.
those sorts of questions are the ones i was asking while investigating these new fake crowds at football matches, but i think that what i find the most interesting is what happens when the two separate audiences interact. in football this occurs with a large portion of viewers choosing to simply turn off the sound of their tv’s as they can’t bear the facile noises produced in vain by the scrambling broadcasters, whereas others swear by the effect on delivering a heightened moral to both players and fans. when the real is confronted by their digital replacement, who recoils?
in this performance from 2014, the singer/songwriter Father John Misty (Josh Tillman) plays his song ‘Bored In The USA’, which expresses sentiments of discontentment with the general gist of modern life. in the studio-recorded version of this song canned laughter and applause is digitally inserted in-between lines of the second verse, (“they gave me a useless education/And a subprime loan/On a craftsman home”). the lyrics are kind of funny, in a deprecating and defeatist way, but the canned laughter, ill-fitting and far fetched, only reinforces the mood of desperation and anger, rousing an eerie and tense effect. on the Letterman show, in front of a live audience, not necessarily familiar with his work, Tillman incorporates the canned laughter into his performance, and, as in the studio recording, laughs and claps respond to his last lines. the real audience, however, are unsure how to react, fearing that they are being contested by a second, participatory crowd who are privy to an unperceived layer of meaning. should they join in or abstain? slowly, once the performance has ended, traditional applause stutters up from the seated crowd, yet i wonder how many where moved to laugh as a result of the laugh-track? and how many were clapping out of direction rather than respect? we, as the audience at home, watching this back, who do we relate to? joining in the laughter – turning it on the unsuspecting live audience, or identifying with the confusion and dissociation they must have felt? the disembodied voices disrupt the atmosphere in an almost unresolvable way.
control over an unconscious, disconnected + digital hoard of voices creates an interesting dynamic in realms of entertainment in which the voices of the audience are omnipresent and understatedly powerful. however, when writing this i was reminded of this moment from the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, in which he exercises control over a crowd who are very much present, very much conscious, but decidedly (to him) not there:
when a performer has complete control over the instantaneous reactions of their audience, what point do the audience serve? they become a frame within a frame, packaging masquerading as reception which, in turn, affects the eventual reception itself. if the original, controlled audience are never given the choice to betray the performer, to act outside of the performer’s will, they don’t become obsolete, but act as a significant influence on the final, intended audience, who are often inclined to identify with the audience depicted in the media displayed (the fake football chants, the sitcom laugh track), directing them to a specified and outlined response. in the case of Jeb Bush, this illusion painfully falls apart. no matter how much investment a crowd may have in the image of the performer, complete control over them can never be achieved. inherently, with a live audience, we can’t have it both ways: a predictable and automated response comes at the expense of a genuine connection or exchange.
where fake crowd noise can be used to provoke an intended feeling from a real crowd if the context is congruous, it can also create a disarming effect when the content and reaction are at odds. this is apparent from the Father John Misty performance, just as it is in this youtube video entitled ‘if golf and soccer switched announcers’:
a year ago this video would have just been kinda funny, but now that audiences are a thing of the past – yet the show still goes on – there is a genuine space for these kinds of disorientations. the disappearance of the crowd has provided both a blank canvas and a new material in which all sorts of situations and combinations can be crafted. and, inversely, how could the absence of a conscious and variable crowd lead to all kinds of misdirection and manipulation?
(i can’t believe that that video is what lead me to make that point… nice)
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