The laugh track—the “HA HA HA” and “CLAP CLAP CLAP” that run along the bottom of panels in the chapters telling Danny’s story—symbolizes American pop culture and sitcoms, and specifically, the racist attitudes expressed in pop culture. Danny’s chapters take the form of a sitcom called Everyone Ruvs Chin-Kee. Sitcom television shows tell viewers what (and who) to laugh at when the laugh track plays, and in American Born Chinese, this is most often Danny’s Chinese cousin, Chin-Kee. Chin-Kee’s stereotypically Chinese antics and Danny’s embarrassed reaction to whatever Chin-Kee is doing are portrayed in an exaggeratedly humorous manner. By framing Danny and Chin-Kee’s chapters in this way, the reader has to confront the fact that the Chinese stereotypes embodied by Chin-Kee are common punch lines, even if the stereotypes themselves are racist, misguided, and not actually funny at all. In this sense, even if a laugh track is typically supposed to signal what’s humorous, the laugh track in the novel isn’t actually meant to be funny—instead, it symbolizes a culture that casts Chinese characters not as people, but as objects to laugh at due to their appearances, customs, and speech.
The Laugh Track Symbol Timeline in American Born Chinese
