The Laugh Track and Its Ambiguous Role

The Office differs from most comedy shows in that it employs a unique comedic style. For example, unlike other sitcoms such as Friends and Seinfeld, The Office does not feature a laugh track into its background noise. One can argue this stylistic choice is to create an increased sense of awkwardness and realism to their static office scene, but I believe just like political satire often employs ambiguity to broaden its audience, The Office is utilizing a similar technique. 

The laugh track establishes very set and stone points at which the audience is supposed to laugh. In a way, it is possible, since humor is argued not only to be strongly related to social constructs but part of our social identity, hearing a collective of people laughing encourages us to do the same. Even strong moral me finds herself laughing in Friends along with the laugh track at jokes I would typically deem a violation. Telling jokes followed by awkward pauses and complete silence allows a similar but very different reaction for the audience. Silence enables the audience more freedom of interpretation a joke just told. In The Office, the audience isn't told explicitly where they're supposed to laugh, so the audience interrupts what exactly is funny in the show. 

Audiences have similar reactions in both types of sitcoms. For example, audiences genuinely enjoy and become amused in both cases. These styles differ in that one, awkward silence and ambiguity of jokes told, may be reaching a broader audience. Deadpan political satire reaches a larger audience because of its ambiguity employed. Both conservatives and liberals are able to interrupt the hot political topics according to their own ideological preferences. Therefore, a conservative would still be able to enjoy the comedic political satire coming from a liberal if through information processing they assume their ideologies are not always being attacked but sometimes supported. Information processing in The Office allows the jokes to also reach a broader audience. Instead of being told when to laugh, we're given the autonomy to interrupt what's funny. There are many types of jokes told in The Office from the inappropriate That's what she said to crazy incongruous pranks played on Dwight. Since everyone has different preferences for humor, people do not find some jokes as funny as others. But, with no laugh track, The Office ensures no member of the audience is turned away when a "bad" joke is told. Through information processing, a person in the audience (if they don't find something funny) may not even interrupt the certain phrase as a joke in the first place.