Canners are upset over work
conditions, long recognized as the worst in the entertainment
industry.
LONG BEACH —— The silence is deafening. On a
typical day, this warehouse along the bay churns out the stuff
sit-coms are made of: laughs. And lots of them. But with a
strike by Laughter Canning Local No. 839 looming over the
holiday season, and an intentional slowdown currently in effect,
this holiday season has more the makings of a really bad joke.
Canners are upset over work conditions, long recognized
as the worst in the entertainment industry. The Long Beach
facility alone provides a third of the laughter output for
the major T.V. networks. Other local canneries, in Santa Ana,
Burbank and Encino, are expected to join the strik
"It's a sad-but-true fact. A few years
back, the networks commissioned a joint study that revealed
how, without the canned laughter, 3 out of 5 Americans couldn't
recognize a good joke."
——Jay Goulding,
Network Executive
"For positions which symbolize humor within the biz,"
says canning production manager Dina Martinez, "it's
just appalling. It's dark and dank on the production line…
my people are overworked… some get hurt… no
one smiles –— it's no wonder they're at the end
of their collective bargaining rope."
CRUDE LAUGHS: No barrels
of laughs are
in store for the studios until labor disputes are settled.
If the strike moves forward, the effect on the networks could
be even more devastating than during the legendary 1986 canning
strikes, when it was not uncommon to see sit-coms entirely
devoid of laugh tracks. These are still generally referred
to in the biz as "the Dark Days of Sit-com," when
ratings plummeted and heads rolled. Among avid sit-com viewers
nationwide, there was a noticeable spike in reported cases
of depression.
"People who watch a lot of T.V. don't know how to really
laugh," admits NBC network executive, Jay Goulding, "it's
a sad-but-true fact. A few years back, the networks commissioned
a joint study that revealed how, without the canned laughter,
3 out of 5 Americans couldn't recognize a good joke. So it's
not like the networks don't realize the importance of the
canners' jobs. But I'm hopeful it can be worked out."
In a normal production process, laughter begins on the studio
lots, where audiences are shipped in and, prodded by comedians,
the audience learns to laugh repeatedly at the same jokes
and gags. The actors run the scenes until the director and
producers are satisfied. The laugh track is then skimmed from
the visuals and farmed out to the canning facilities. The
laughs are manipulated, categorized into different types of
humor, canned, and sent back to the studios to re-insert into
their shows.
Sociologist, Cindy Pettengail, wrote To Laugh or Not to Laugh
and coined the term "laughter inhibition" to describe
what she sees as a larger trend in America. "I believe
that what we're seeing isn't a mere coincidence. I think it's
the zeitgeist, a case of real synchronicity, but I also think
it goes way back. Maybe it's a lingering Puritan thing. What
we're seeing is a very real loss of humor among the American
populace. It's true, we live in heavy times and many people
find it hard to be light-hearted in our current world predicament
of terrorism, war, famine, political corruption and general
abuse of power. It's definitely different. Years ago, if a
person was walking down the street and slipped on a banana,
people would laugh; now they sue."