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