DOCSLIB.ORG

Laugh Track, “Media” and the Frivolous

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Laugh Track, “Media” and the Frivolous Uselessness in Reserve? An exploration of the laugh track, “media” and the frivolous Dylan Cree A Thesis In the Department of Communication Studies Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Communication Studies) at Concordia University Montreal, Quebec, Canada April 2017 © Dylan Cree, 2017 CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY School of Graduate Studies This is to certify that the thesis prepared By: Dylan Cree Entitled: Uselessness in Reserve? An exploration of the laugh track, “media” and the frivolous and submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Communication Studies) complies with the regulations of the University and meets the accepted standards with respect to originality and quality. Signed by the final examining committee: ___________________________________ Chair Dr. D. Secko ___________________________________ External Examiner Dr. A. Kroker ___________________________________ External to Program Dr. D. Wershler ___________________________________ Examiner Dr. F. McKelvey ___________________________________ Examiner Dr. B. Massumi ___________________________________ Thesis Supervisor Dr. M. Charland Approved by ________________________________________________________________ Dr. Y. Jiwani, Graduate Program Director April 24, 2017 ___________________________________________________________ Dr. A. Roy, Dean of Faculty of Arts and Science Abstract Uselessness in Reserve? An exploration of the laugh track, “media” and the frivolous Dylan Cree, PhD Concordia University, 2017 Within contemporary media studies the notion uselessness is either under-examined or given short-play as representing quantifiable loss. Registered as material waste or as mechanical deficiency measured by what is useful that which is useless gets categorically parsed and dismissed as an irrelevant by-product of a medium’s operations. However, by definition, uselessness resists being instrumentalized and assigned a knowable role. Furthermore, as the thesis argues, when considered materially, what is deemed useless to the optimal workings of a technological medium, whether wanted or not, surreptitiously impacts the reserve of procedures that delimit the workings of a media formation. Though the notion uselessness, as informed by Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction of Etienne Bonnot de Condillac’s account of the frivolous/uselessness, is paradoxical in kind and indeterminate in effect, the thesis proposes that uselessness is far more integral to media formations than contemporary discourse permit. Accordingly, media theorists need to foster other approaches that allow engaging such an aporia. For directly exploring uselessness in media, the laugh track holds promise as an instance in which a media formation makes useless its production. However, to examine the laugh track by how it may be illogically constituted – as opposed to conventional examinations of how the laugh track functions or serves broader interests – requires deployment of certain expansive methods and discursive tools. Accordingly, Siegfried Zielinski’s media anarchaeology permits iii exploring the laugh track as its own paradoxical system. His approach helps to investigate the operational attributes that re-codify the laugh track’s material registry as a redundant system of archivation, a uselessness in reserve. Ultimately, Zielinski’s anarchic approach permits drawing radical implications beyond technological and communicative-governed formulations of media. The laugh track may be explored much like how Giorgio Agamben speculates about the gesture. For Agamben the gesture may be experienced as a “pure means” or an activity liberated from content and purpose dictated by apophantic principles. Accordingly, independently of means/end instrumentalist thinking the laugh track may be encountered by how it, integral to its mediatic operations, paradoxically maintains its productivity through a gesture – of never-ending archival actions – that renders its product useless. iv Acknowledgements I would like to acknowledge my main doctoral supervisor Dr. Maurice Charland and my secondary supervisor Dr. Brian Massumi. Maurice and Brian have been extremely helpful in providing insightful commentary that has been encouraging and highly effective for keeping my project on track. Maurice only joined on as my main supervisor approximately eleven months ago. But Maurice has been great. Thankfully, Maurice along with Brian assumed the role that my previous supervisor Dr. Martin Allor held. Marty passed away late February, 2016. I will always be grateful for the support and helpful feedback that Marty provided for my doctoral studies and of course my dissertation at a number of stages. Beyond my immediate supervisors I also extend thanks to my committee members Dr. Fenwick McKelvey, Dr. Darren Wershler and Dr. Arthur Kroker. Thank you for taking on the task of being my committee members. Further, I give thanks to my defence proceedings chair Dr. David Secko. I also thank the department of Communication Studies, the Joint PhD program and my cohort for all the wonderful times I have had whilst at Concordia. I have certainly made some lasting friendships. Lastly, I would like to thank my loving and always supportive partner Melissa Dumas. What a help and bolt of energy you have been through-out. v Contents List of Figures/Illustrations / viii Preface /1 General Ideas for the Project /2 Analyzing Function /6 Project Challenges /9 Introduction /14 A Circumscribed Technicity /14 The Question of Function /19 The Laugh Track as Archive /22 Media Archaeology and Temporal Regimes /24 Techniques of Knowledge (problematic methodology for the laugh track) /27 Media Anarchaeology and the Inaccessibility of Certain Quantification /28 The Frivolous, Function and Function as Frivolous /31 Part One - Cueing the Laugh Track /35 Introduction /36 Chapter One: The “Laugh Track” Defined /38 Comedy Studies and Technology /41 “Theorizing” the “Laugh Track” /45 Chapter Two: On the Very Idea of a Function /50 Communication Studies Grounded: Instruments of Knowledge-making for the Transmission and Ritual Theorists /51 The Function of Function/55 Meaning’s Implicit Other(s) /59 Chapter Three: Materialist Shenanigans at the Limits of Human Knowledge /61 Questions of Materiality and the Non-linguistic /63 Matter exceeding the itself of Thingness /68 Success/Failure Metric Problematized (of what’s not simply stuff but lovely digital garbage) /73 Chapter Four: Objects, Storage Media and Archival Mechanisms /79 The Collected Object /80 And thus, Disco as a Reserve /85 Chapter Five: Foucault, Function and the Archive /90 Of What the (Classical) Archive May Permit /92 Archaeology of Knowledge and the “Seen” and “Said” /95 Function? Or rather, a System of its Functioning? /99 Part Two – Laughing (“Outside” the Box ...) /104 Introduction /105 Chapter Six: Mechanisms of Recycling /107 Machine-Produced Viscera/108 Psychic Apparatus/111 vi Mechanicalizing Memory/114 Chapter Seven: Contending with a Conditioned Absence /117 An Oralizing of the Laugh Track /119 A Sterne Warning to Mr. Smith /124 A Text Based Analysis of Laugh Tracks /127 Questioning Scheible’s Analysis of Laugh Tracks /131 Chapter Eight: Digging into things with Media Archaeology /134 Non-discursive Material Registries /136 A Media Archaeologist’s Approach /140 Chapter Nine: Mechanisms of Recycling /145 Broadcast Industry Terms /146 Bing Crosby and the Laugh Track /150 Serious Business and Politics of Laughter /156 Part Three – Usefulness in Reverse /162 Introduction /163 Chapter Ten: The Expansive and Expanding Category of Machines or Dealing With Impotency /165 History as Technique /166 A home/category for the Laugh Track? /170 Dunamis and Potentia /175 Chapter Eleven: An Always Hungry Counting System /181 Use-Oriented Algorithms /182 The Productive Divide /186 Chapter Twelve: Dynamism and the Abyss /192 Programmed Aporias – Easter Eggs, Glitch Areas and The Donkey Kong “Kill-Screen” /193 Exploring the abyss within and of Media Anarchaeology /200 Chapter Fourteen: The Un-category of the frivolous (dubious title) /220 What of those fantasies of Emptiness? /222 Flights of the Un-Ergonomic /225 Appendix/230 References /265 vii List of Figures/Illustrations Fig. 1. Charley Douglass’ Laff Box screen-capture, PBS’ “Antiques Roadshow” website video, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/roadshow/season/15/san-diego-ca/appraisals/1953-charlie-douglass- laff-box--201001A13/ (accessed April 8, 2016). Fig. 2. Donkey Kong image, Metopal website article “Porting the Kill Screen,” http://metopal.com/2012/03/24/porting-the-kill-screen/, (accessed January 2, 2016). Fig. 3. Loop/repeat symbol, Web Tool Hub download free icons website, http://icons.webtoolhub.com/icon-n61365-detail.aspx (accessed January 2, 2016). Fig. 4. Typewriter keys image, Shutterstock royalty-free image website, https://www.google.ca/search?q=Typewriter&espv=2&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0a hUKEwjhn8WB- aHTAhVMxoMKHa2IDRIQ_AUIBigB&biw=1366&bih=638&dpr=1#tbm=isch&q=Typewriter +keys&imgrc=55KtKVJBoIy5dM: (accessed January 2, 2016). Fig. 5. Typewriter key-face image, Shutterstock royalty-free image website, https://www.google.ca/search?q=Typewriter&espv=2&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0a hUKEwjhn8WB- aHTAhVMxoMKHa2IDRIQ_AUIBigB&biw=1366&bih=638&dpr=1#tbm=isch&q=Typewriter +keys&imgrc=55KtKVJBoIy5dM: (accessed January 2, 2016). Note: source for remainder of these types of figures (numbers, see following example) is the same. For example, Fig. 6. The
Load more

Recommended publications
  • HBO: Brand Management and Subscriber Aggregation: 1972-2007
    1 HBO: Brand Management and Subscriber Aggregation: 1972-2007 Submitted by Gareth Andrew James to the University of Exeter as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English, January 2011. This thesis is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. I certify that all material in this thesis which is not my own work has been identified and that no material has previously been submitted and approved for the award of a degree by this or any other University. ........................................ 2 Abstract The thesis offers a revised institutional history of US cable network Home Box Office that expands on its under-examined identity as a monthly subscriber service from 1972 to 1994. This is used to better explain extensive discussions of HBO‟s rebranding from 1995 to 2007 around high-quality original content and experimentation with new media platforms. The first half of the thesis particularly expands on HBO‟s origins and early identity as part of publisher Time Inc. from 1972 to 1988, before examining how this affected the network‟s programming strategies as part of global conglomerate Time Warner from 1989 to 1994. Within this, evidence of ongoing processes for aggregating subscribers, or packaging multiple entertainment attractions around stable production cycles, are identified as defining HBO‟s promotion of general monthly value over rivals. Arguing that these specific exhibition and production strategies are glossed over in existing HBO scholarship as a result of an over-valuing of post-1995 examples of „quality‟ television, their ongoing importance to the network‟s contemporary management of its brand across media platforms is mapped over distinctions from rivals to 2007.
    [Show full text]
  • Are Introverts Invisible? a Textual Analysis of How the Disney and Nickelodeon Teen Sitcoms Reflect the Extrovert Ideal
    Syracuse University SURFACE Theses - ALL January 2017 Are Introverts invisible? A Textual Analysis of how the Disney and Nickelodeon Teen Sitcoms Reflect the Extrovert Ideal YUXI ZHOU Syracuse University Follow this and additional works at: https://surface.syr.edu/thesis Part of the Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons Recommended Citation ZHOU, YUXI, "Are Introverts invisible? A Textual Analysis of how the Disney and Nickelodeon Teen Sitcoms Reflect the Extrovert Ideal" (2017). Theses - ALL. 141. https://surface.syr.edu/thesis/141 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by SURFACE. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses - ALL by an authorized administrator of SURFACE. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Abstract In 2012, Susan Cain published a nonfiction book: Quiet, The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, in which she claimed that the modern western society was dominated by the Extrovert Ideal and it led to “a colossal waste of talent, energy, and happiness” (Cain, 2012, p.12). The concept of Extrovert Idea, according to her, is the “omnipresent belief that the ideal self is gregarious, alpha and comfortable in the spotlight” (Cain, 2012, p.4). Other psychologists and cultural historians also mentioned this cultural ideal, stating that it changed how people teach, how people work, how people interact with each other, and how people perceive themselves. Cain noticed a change in the characters portrayed in teen sitcoms: they are not the “children next door” of the 1980s; instead, they are rock stars and celebrities with extremely extroverted personalities.
    [Show full text]
  • The Audiences and Fan Memories of I Love Lucy, the Dick Van Dyke Show, and All in the Family
    Viewers Like You: The Audiences and Fan Memories of I Love Lucy, The Dick Van Dyke Show, and All in the Family Mollie Galchus Department of History, Barnard College April 22, 2015 Professor Thai Jones Senior Thesis Seminar 1 Table of Contents Acknowledgements..........................................................................................................................3 Introduction......................................................................................................................................4 Chapter 1: I Love Lucy: Widespread Hysteria and the Uniform Audience...................................20 Chapter 2: The Dick Van Dyke Show: Intelligent Comedy for the Sophisticated Audience.........45 Chapter 3: All in the Family: The Season of Relevance and Targeted Audiences........................68 Conclusion: Fan Memories of the Sitcoms Since Their Original Runs.........................................85 Bibliography................................................................................................................................109 2 Acknowledgments First, I’d like to thank my thesis advisor, Thai Jones, for guiding me through the process of writing this thesis, starting with his list of suggestions, back in September, of the first few secondary sources I ended up reading for this project, and for suggesting the angle of the relationship between the audience and the sitcoms. I’d also like to thank my fellow classmates in the senior thesis seminar for their input throughout the year. Thanks also
    [Show full text]
  • NYSBA Entertainment, Arts and Sports Law Journal | Spring 2014 | Vol
    NYSBA SPRING 2014 | VOL. 25 | NO. 1 Entertainment, Arts and Sports Law Journal A publication of the Entertainment, Arts and Sports Law Section of the New York State Bar Association Concussion Litigation in the NHL; Is It Time to Pay College Athletes?; Bullying in Sports; The Anti-Flopping Policy in the NBA; and Much More WWW.NYSBA.ORG/EASL NEW YORK STATE BAR ASSOCIATION Section Members get 20% discount* with coupon code In The Arena: PUB2140N A Sports Law Handbook Co-sponsored by the New York State Bar Association and the Entertainment, Arts and Sports Law Section As the world of professional athletics has become more competitive and the issues more complex, so has the need for more reliable representation in the fi eld of sports law. Written by dozens of sports law attorneys and medical professionals, In the Arena: A Sports Law Handbook is a refl ection of the multiple issues that face athletes and the attorneys who represent them. Included in this book are chapters on representing professional athletes, NCAA enforcement, advertising, sponsorship, intellectual property rights, doping, concussion-related issues, Title IX and dozens of useful appendices. Table of Contents Intellectual Property Rights and Endorsement Agreements How Trademark Protection Intersects with the Athlete’s Right of Publicity EDITORS Collective Bargaining in the Big Three Elissa D. Hecker, Esq. Agency Law David Krell, Esq. Sports, Torts and Criminal Law PRODUCT INFO AND PRICES Role of Advertising and Sponsorship in the Business of Sports 2013 | 574 pages | softbound Doping in Sport: A Historical and Current Perspective | PN: 4002 Athlete Concussion-Related Issues Non-Members $80 Concussions—From a Neuropsychological and Medical Perspective NYSBA Members $65 In-Arena Giveaways: Sweepstakes Law Basics and Compliance Issues Order multiple titles to take advantage of our low fl at rate shipping charge of $5.95 per order, regardless Navigating the NCAA Enforcement Process of the number of items shipped.
    [Show full text]
  • Animated Television: the Narrative Cartoon” Was Originally Published in the Third Edition of Jeremy G
    “Animated Television: The Narrative Cartoon” was originally published in the third edition of Jeremy G. Butler, Television: Critical Methods and Applications (Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2007), 325-361. It was not included in subsequent editions of Television and consequently it was placed online, although not in the public domain. All © copyrights are still reserved. If citing this chapter, please use the original publication information (above). Questions? Contact Jeremy Butler at [email protected] or via TVCrit.com. ch11_8050_Butler_LEA 8/11/06 8:46 PM Page 325 CHAPTER 11 Animated Television: The Narrative Cartoon Beginnings The Aesthetics of the 1930s Sound Cartoon: Disney’s Domination UPA Abstraction: The Challenge to Disney Naturalism Television’s Arrival: Economic Realignment TV Cartooning Since the 1980s Summary edition FurtherTELEVISION Readings 3rd nimation has had a rather erratic presence on television. A A mainstay of Saturday morning children’s programming, small snippets of it appear regularly in commercials,TVCrit.com credit sequences, music videos, news and sports, but there have been long stretches when there were no prime-time cartoon shows. After The Flintstones ended its original run in 1966 there wasn’t another successful prime-time show until 23 years later, when The Simpsons debuted. Since 1989 there has been something of a Renaissance in television animation. Numerous prime-time cartoon pro- grams have appeared and at least three cable channels have arisen that fea- ture cartoons—the Cartoon Network, Nickleodeon, and Toon Disney. And, of course, cartoons continue to dominate the TV ghettos of Saturday morn- ing and weekday afternoons. Although numerous new animated programs are now being created, many of the cartoons regularly telecast today were produced fifty, sixty, or even seventy years ago.
    [Show full text]
  • A Reportof TV Programming and Advertising on Bostoncommercial Television
    DOCUMENT RESUME ED 055 461 EM 009 312 AUTHOR Barcus, F. Earle TITLE Saturday Children's Television; A Reportof TV Programming and Advertising on BostonCommercial Television. INSTITUTION Action for Children's Television, Boston, Mass. SPONS AGENCY John and Mary R. Markle Foundation, NewYork, N.Y. PUB DATE Jul 71 NOTE 112p. EDRS PRICE MF-$0.65 HC-$6158 DESCRIPTORS Cartoons; *Children; *CommercialTelevision; *Programing (Broadcast) ;*Television Commercials; *Violence ABSTRACT Saturday children's television programmingin Boston was monitored and videotaped sothat the content could be analyzed tor a study to gather data relevant tocontent and commercial practices. Some of the major findings werethat overall, about 77 percent of time is devoted to program contentand 23 percent to announcements of various kinds; thatcommercial announcements (CA's)--product and program promotion--accountfor almost 19 percent of total time; that there were morecommercials within programs than between programs; that CA's were evenlydivided among four major categories--toys, cereals, candy, and other foods;that CA's appear to have both sexual and racial biases;and that little product information is given in the CA's. Otherfindings were that noncommercial announcements were primarilyeither youth-oriented or for medical or environmental causes,and some of these did not appear to be appropriate for children.Also, when individual cartoons and other program segments were studiedin detail for subject matter, it was found that 64 percentof the dramatic programming was in some sense violent, while 67 percentof nondramatic segments dealt with science and technology, race and nationality,literature and fine arts, and nature.. However, 77 percentof total programming was drama, with only 12 percent informational.(SR) 19sic5003 " r Iv U.S.
    [Show full text]
  • The Rhetorical Function of Laugh Tracks: Examining Queer Shame in Will & Grace and Roseanne
    The Rhetorical Function of Laugh Tracks in Situation Comedies: Examining Queer Shame in Will & Grace and Roseanne Jimmie Manning Associate Professor and Communication Undergraduate Program Director Department of Communication Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Program Northern Illinois University As recent world events remind us, comedy continues to act as a subversive political force. The hacking of executive email accounts in response to The Interview1 and terrorist attacks on French magazine Charlie Hebdo over political cartoons2 are but two recent large-scale examples. Popular comedic texts have the power to instigate, inform, transform, and critique values, beliefs, and institutions.3 Indeed, comedy serves as a unique and constitutive form of allowing people to see and experience their social worlds. Although large-scale cultural events make this especially evident, it is easier to forget how everyday popular entertainment has a similar, perhaps more subtle, power to provoke. Sometimes comedy can be used as a mechanism for control—such as jokes that devalue people because of their race, gender, sexual orientation, ability, or national origin—but also as a mechanism for support, entertainment, education, self-defense, or empowerment.4 Additionally, comedy has implications for both identities and relationships, even if they might not always be realized.5 In this essay, I examine this highly-personal, world shaping, and perhaps sometimes invisible potential for comedy to construct identities and relationships. Specifically, I examine laugh track use in two highly popular television programs, Will & Grace and Roseanne, to consider how the construction of what is or is not supposed to be funny has rhetorical implications for queer identities and relationships.
    [Show full text]
  • Codebook 2014: Child Development Supplement
    2014: Child Development Supplement - Time Diary Media Codes File Codebook Number of Variables 17 Monday December 3 2018 12:12 PM 2014: Child Development Supplement - Time Diary Media Codes File TD14M01 "RELEASE NUMBER 14" NUM(1.0) Data file sequential release number. Count % Value/Range Code Value/Range Text 5,454 100.00 1 December, 2018 TD14M02 "2013 INTERVIEW NUMBER" NUM(5.0) 2013 PSID Main Family Identifier The values for this variable represent the 2013 interview number of the family in which this individual was included in CDS-2014. Count % Value/Range Code Value/Range Text 5,454 100.00 7 - 9,106 2013 family interview number TD14M03 "2013 SEQUENCE NUMBER" NUM(2.0) 2013 PSID Sequence Number This variable provides a means of identifying an individual's status with regard to the FU at the time of the 2013 interview. Count % Value/Range Code Value/Range Text 5,454 100.00 1 - 20 Sequence number of individuals in the PSID family at the time of the 2013 main family interview TD14M04 "TYPE OF DIARY 14" NUM(1.0) Weekday or Weekend Day. Count % Value/Range Code Value/Range Text 3,111 57.04 0 Weekend 2,343 42.96 1 Weekday TD14M05 "START TIME 14" NUM(5.0) What time did the activity begin? Time is stored as the number of seconds past midnight. Count % Value/Range Code Value/Range Text 5,454 100.00 0 - 86,400 Seconds past midnight - - 99,999 NA; refused TD14M06 "END TIME 14" NUM(5.0) What time did the activity end? Time is stored as the number of seconds past midnight.
    [Show full text]
  • The Hypermodern Anti-Comedy of Tim and Eric, Eric André and Million Dollar Extreme
    “The Dada of Haha”: The Hypermodern Anti-Comedy of Tim and Eric, Eric André and Million Dollar Extreme Alexandra Warrick The Department of Film Studies, Columbia University Professor Richard Pena February 1st, 2016 1 SMASHING THE LIVING ROOM: AN INTRODUCTION Potted plants, a couch. A desk, a chair. Brown curtains, columns, a tabletop globe. Picture a comedy talk show set outfitted with these staples: homey, right? Comforting? It might, for you, invoke a living room; after all, as Michael Shapiro writes, “the family-like living room of the talk-show set…functions as a theatrical stage to forge intimate connections with the friends and family of the nation.” (Shapiro 32) Think, for a moment, on the worn-in “living rooms” offered by our nation’s most beloved comedy programs: the quirky clutter of Seinfeld, the stylized skyline of the Tonight Show, the comforting glow of Saturday Night Live’s faux-Grand Central spread. We know these spaces perhaps better than we do our own living rooms; the latter mutable, the former dependable. We come upon these shared “living rooms” and we, Pavlov’s audience, know that it’s time to laugh. Comedy becomes a warm, bubbling cordial that brings us, the Shapiro-style nation-as-family, together; in indulging in our shared national sense of humor, we as a culture bond together as we settle into the cozy cosmic couch these comedy programs offer us. With this in mind, once again picture the comedy talk show set. Now picture a man bursting from the wings to violently, viciously kick it to pieces.
    [Show full text]
  • Data Mining TV Comedy: Laugh Tracks and Sitcom Production Modes Jeremy G
    Data Mining TV Comedy: Laugh Tracks and Sitcom Production Modes Jeremy G. Butler University of Alabama [email protected] Few aspects of television style attract more universal disdain than the laugh track. In Annie Hall, Woody Allen becomes physically ill when he observes his friend “sweetening” his TV show with canned laughs provided by a sound engineer named Charley. {SLIDE: ANNIE HALL CLIP} To Allen, canned laughter is inauthentic, un-earned, and “immoral.” {SLIDE: LAFF BOX vs MY FAVORITE HUSBAND STUDIO AUDIENCE} And by naming the faceless sound engineer in this clip, Charley, he makes a metadiegetic reference to Charley Douglass, who provided the canned laughter for most sitcoms of the 1950s through ‘70s. Clearly, Allen believes that canned laughs, from a “Laff Box,” qualitatively differ from laughs earned honestly by amusing a studio audience. In the 1970s, programs such as Cheers reacted against the canned laughter of many 1960s sitcom hits and boasted during their opening credits that they were “filmed in front of a live audience.” These laughs, they imply, are authentic, not fabricated. But, as Jacob Smith explores in Vocal Tracks, these claims to authenticity are often spurious as sitcoms’ studio audiences are heavily manipulated during the recording sessions—through applause signs, prompts from warm-up comedians, volume adjustments by the on-set sound mixer, and so on.1 In a TV Guide article from 1966—one of the few general-interest magazines to pull the curtain back on the laff box—the author, Dick Hobson, notes, “Audiences composed of living, breathing, sentient beings, it seems, don’t sound too good.
    [Show full text]
  • All That You Say Is Beautiful: Stories
    University of Kentucky UKnowledge Theses and Dissertations--English English 2019 ALL THAT YOU SAY IS BEAUTIFUL: STORIES Omaria Sanchez Pratt University of Kentucky, [email protected] Digital Object Identifier: https://doi.org/10.13023/etd.2019.167 Right click to open a feedback form in a new tab to let us know how this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation Pratt, Omaria Sanchez, "ALL THAT YOU SAY IS BEAUTIFUL: STORIES" (2019). Theses and Dissertations-- English. 92. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/english_etds/92 This Master's Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the English at UKnowledge. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations--English by an authorized administrator of UKnowledge. For more information, please contact [email protected]. STUDENT AGREEMENT: I represent that my thesis or dissertation and abstract are my original work. Proper attribution has been given to all outside sources. I understand that I am solely responsible for obtaining any needed copyright permissions. I have obtained needed written permission statement(s) from the owner(s) of each third-party copyrighted matter to be included in my work, allowing electronic distribution (if such use is not permitted by the fair use doctrine) which will be submitted to UKnowledge as Additional File. I hereby grant to The University of Kentucky and its agents the irrevocable, non-exclusive, and royalty-free license to archive and make accessible my work in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I agree that the document mentioned above may be made available immediately for worldwide access unless an embargo applies.
    [Show full text]
  • {DOWNLOAD} Sitcom: a History in 24 Episodes from I Love Lucy to Community Kindle
    SITCOM: A HISTORY IN 24 EPISODES FROM I LOVE LUCY TO COMMUNITY PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Saul Austerlitz | 406 pages | 01 Mar 2014 | Chicago Review Press | 9781613743843 | English | United States I Love Lucy (TV Series –) - IMDb Episodes Seasons. Won 4 Primetime Emmys. Edit Cast Complete series cast summary: Lucille Ball Lucy Ricardo episodes, Desi Arnaz Ricky Ricardo episodes, Vivian Vance Ethel Mertz episodes, William Frawley Edit Did You Know? Trivia William Frawley , aka "Fred Mertz", had a well known and longtime issue with alcoholism. He was advised in the beginning of the series to stay sober, or be terminated. So, if you look closely, a majority of his scenes display his character having his hands deep in his pockets. This would therefore not show his hands trembling, due to his alcoholic withdrawals. Goofs The Ricardos are said to live in an apartment at East 68th Street, which in real life would be located in the East River. This is not actually a 'goof' because it was done deliberately to avoid legal issues with an actual address. Quotes Lucy Ricardo : How much do you want to bet? Fred Mertz : Ten dollars. Ethel Mertz : Well what's the matter with twenty dollars? Ricky Ricardo : What's the matter with thirty dollars? Lucy Ricardo : What's the matter with fifty dollars? Fred Mertz : What was the matter with ten dollars? Crazy Credits In some of the episodes, the guest-star's name s are voiced over, by conductor, Wilbur Hatch , in the Opening Credits or Closing Credits. Alternate Versions The famous opening credit sequence, where the names appear over a heart, was not a part of the original series run.
    [Show full text]