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.
Don't overestimate the decency of the human race.
A fraudulent intent, however carefully concealed at the outset, will generally, in the end, betray itself.
Never was a government that was not composed of liars, malefactors and thieves.
Nothing can have as its destination anything other than its origin. The contrary idea, the idea of progress, is poison.
If people would forget about utopia! When rationalism destroyed heaven and decided to set it up here on earth, that most terrible of all goals entered human ambition. It was clear there'd be no end to what people would be made to suffer for it.
Perhaps that is part of the animals' role among us, to awaken humility, to turn our minds back to the mystery of things, and open our hearts to that most impractical of hopes in which all creation speaks as one.
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