Laughter on American television has taken the place of the chorus in Greek tragedy. In other countries, the business of laughing is left to the viewers. Here, their laughter is put on the screen, integrated into the show. It is the screen that is laughing and having a good time. You are simply left alone with your consternation.
Interpretation
Baudrillard critiques how laughter is manufactured in American television, contrasting it with a more authentic viewer experience elsewhere.
In this quote, Jean Baudrillard reflects on the role of laughter in American television, suggesting that it serves as a substitute for the chorus in Greek tragedy, providing an emotional backdrop that shapes viewers' reactions. He contrasts this with other cultures where laughter is a spontaneous response from the audience, emphasizing that in America, laughter is almost scripted and integrated into the media, leaving viewers feeling isolated in their true reactions, as the joy and amusement are predetermined by the show itself, rather than arising organically from the audience's engagement.
In practice
In a discussion about the impact of reality TV on emotional responses.
The war was won on both sides: by the Vietnamese on the ground, by the Americans in the electronic mental space. And if the one side won an ideological and political victory, the other made Apocalypse Now and that has gone right around the world.
Television knows no night. It is perpetual day. TV embodies our fear of the dark, of night, of the other side of things.
This false distance is present everywhere: in spy films, in Godard, in modern advertising, which uses it continually as a cultural allusion. It is not really clear in the end whether this 'cool' smile is the smile of humour or that of commercial complicity. This is also the case with pop, and its smile ultimately encapsulates all its ambiguity: it is not the smile of critical distance, but the smile of collusion
There is nothing funny about Halloween. This sarcastic festival reflects, rather, an infernal demand for revenge by children on the adult world.
the neighborhood is nothing but a protective zone- remodeling, disinfection, a snobbish and hygenic design- but above all in a figurative sense: it is a machine for making emptiness.
The very definition of the real becomes: that of which it is possible to give an equivalent reproduction. The real is not only what can be reproduced, but that which is always already reproduced. The hyper real.
There are moments when troubles enter our lives and we can do nothing to avoid them. But they are there for a reason. Only when we have overcome them will we understand why they were there.
It is the vice of a vulgar mind to be thrilled by bigness, to think that a thousand square miles are a thousand times more wonderful than one square mile, and that a million square miles are almost the same as heaven.
My revenge is fraternity! No more frontiers! The Rhine for everyone! Let us be the same Republic, let us be the United States of Europe, let us be the continental federation, let us be European liberty, let us be universal peace!
They thought that it would be a disgrace to go forth as a group. Each entered the forest at a point that he himself had chosen, where it was darkest and there was no path. If there is a path it is someone else's path and you are not on the adventure.
One pretends to do something, or copy someone or some teacher, until it can be done confidently and easily in what becomes one's own style
I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.
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