Spanish humor: a masterclass in cringe comedy

From landismo to canned laughter: why Spanish humor isn't funny anymore

Has Spanish comedy always been this bad? Anyone looking back at the history of Spanish television comedy finds little to feel nostalgic about: from mocking physical defects to canned laughter dictating when the audience should laugh.

The legacy of landismo

There is a school of thought claiming that the so-called "landismo" — a genre of 1970s Spanish sens comedies — was designed to demean and demoralize Spanish men. For decades, the "gags" relied on insulting, degrading and disrespecting people with physical defects, illnesses or unconventional sensual preferences. Mocking others was the guaranteed go-to.

Canned laughter and social engineering

Prank shows and canned laughter would not be a mere technical device but a form of social engineering: teaching audiences what they should find funny. What is being taught, according to this reading, is that other people's pain can be amusing. The image of a robot hitting a child and triggering live laughter would be the most recent symptom of that school.

Evolution in five stages

Something has changed. Five stages can be distinguished: from the context-free joke to humorless clumsiness, from absurdist humor to the monologue about everyday situations and, as the final phase, the only formula that still works: telling the truth. That pogre says more about society than about comedians; what used to be applauded now makes people cringe.

The irony of it all: the same audience that laughed at the easy joke now demands that comedy have something to say. The purveyors of fake laughter have ended up as a grotesque memory. Was Spanish humor really that bad? Perhaps the right question is whether the society that consumed it was any better.