Every once in a while I talk comedy in other places, so this week’s edition is based on a recent piece I wrote for LINK. The original is in Italian, but given the relevance I am adapting it for you folks. Basically I’ve been wathing various versions of Amazon’s LOL: Last One Laughing and writing down some thoughts on humor and globalizing TV formats. More below this .png here.
If you’ve been on a streaming platform in the past few months (and let’s be honest, you have) you should be familiar with this logo. LOL is a reality comedy competition that was launched by Amazon Mexico a couple years ago, but has since been wreaking havok more or less simultaneously in Australia and European countries like Italy, Germany, and France. This fast globalizing format was originally invented by Japanese comedian Hitoshi Matsumoto (with the more obscure title Documental) and is based on a very simple idea: a bunch of comedians are locked in a moderately-sized space, where they have to avoid laughing at each other’s gags at all costs. People who do as much as crack a smile get eliminated, the last standing wins a cash prize. To make things trickier, the studio is stashed with stock props and unpredictable gadgets the contestants bring from home; in the next room, the host comedian and the already eliminated laugh freely and keep an eye on the situation.
While it’s hard to judge a country’s sense of humor without understanding the language <insert big fat “DUH!” here>, the format’s success lies in its essential architecture: you may enjoy the jokes and gags or not, but the show is more about the competition and watching people’s faces collapse. It also makes an important statement about a type of universal humor, a minimum common denominator of sorts that is best expressed in Matsumoto’s own words: “I spent so many years trying to be the funniest, and yet the least funny person in the room is funnier than me.” By deflating the social, empathic element of comedy, the game creates an echo chamber of cringe silences that makes the falling flat of jokes even funnier to the audience at home. In terms of the type of humor this comedic void creates, it quickly becomes clear that those who can endure absurdist impersonations or impromptu sketches win over the more cerebral wit of stand-up comedians, who shine the least compared to the aggressive physicality of clowns or the versatility of YouTubers.
That doesn’t mean cultural differences do not come through. The Japanese version is the most unique, if anything because it is much more hardcore than its Western counterparts. With an all-male cast, Documental descends in fact into locker room dynamics pretty quickly: borderline bullying behavior, lots of frontal (if pixelated) nudity, an impressive amount of anal play, some casual racism towards the end of the first season. The Mexican, Australian, and European versions are more homogenous — same title, same rules, mostly the same graphics, several overlaps in the stock props area (where the Mona Lisa and sumo fighter suits are staples) — but differences do emerge in terms of comedic sensibility. The Australians are quite explicit: bodily fluids are abundant (albeit simulated), nudity and sexual references are frequent, but there is a slightly more politically correct approach (the cast is much more diverse compared to the Japanese version). The Mexican edition is more aggressive, especially in terms of sexism, and also touches some remarkably disgusting peaks (at some point a cake shaped like a shitting anus makes a triumphant appearance). Against all national stereotypes, I had the feeling German participants were the ones laughing most sincerely when eliminated, while it took me a couple viewings to fully empathize with the Italian competition. I must have paid more attention to the latter, for obvious reasons, but it did feel less spontaneous to me: safer gags (in a later podcast, one of the hosts said a simulated blowjob was cut in editing), a much bigger studio that allowed passive players to avoid confrontation, more call-ins from the hosts’ “war room”. The Italian edition also underplayed the money angle of the competition quite a bit — while the others often made a big deal of contestants chipping in together like at a Texas Hold’Em game, sometimes even showing little skits about it in the opening episode, in Italy the winner got to chose a charity where the lump sum would be donated. Definitely classier, but perhaps not the most competitive premise.
One reason why LOL works is it is a silly game you could potentially play with your friends, even on a Zoom call during the pandemic. Another reason it does is that, not unlike the pandemic, it is a global experience — one that was launched on a platform that, by virtue of its recommendation algorithms, actively encourages you to cross over into foreign editions of the same program, syncing your feeling with other laughing audiences. As a TV format LOL may not be ground-breaking (a successful precedent could be the Australian Thank God You’re Here!, or the short-lived Kings of Comedy in the UK), but the aforementioned global ambition might be more innovative than the competition itself. In this respect, it makes more sense to compare Amazon’s globalization of Matsumoto’s creation to Netflix’s acquisition of The Circle, originally launched by Channel4 and then snatched by the streaming giant for global distribution. As TV expert Axel Fiacco told me here, there is no telling what the emergence of these global formats will bring to the industry in economic terms, but importing and being up to speed with innovative TV from all over the world can only benefit countries like Italy, which often lag behind due to their traditional attitude.
If anything, LOL is an interesting experiment: not only a chance to spend a few hours in a (slightly) different way, but also an opportunity to visit other cultures of laughter and get closer to that universal comedy punch I mentioned earlier. During a pandemic, when flying is still restricted, sharing things this way can be a welcome experience.