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1. A show about nothing: Seinfeld and the modern comedy of manners......................................................... 1

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Documento 1 de 1

A show about nothing: Seinfeld and the modern comedy of manners

Autor: Pierson, David P.
Informacin de publicacin: Journal of Popular Culture 34. 1 (Summer 2000): 49-64.
Enlace de documentos de ProQuest
Resumen: Pierson explores the highly popular TV series "Seinfeld" as a comedy of manners. As a modern
comedy of manners, "Seinfeld" invariably shares several narrative and thematic concerns with the dramatic
genre, but unlike the English Restoration comedies or the traditional comedy of manners, "Seinfeld" is
extremely egalitarian in its satirical thrust.
Texto completo: In one of the episodes from the highly popular TV series Seinfeld, George (Jason Alexander)
and Jerry (Jerry Seinfeld) are both struggling to come up with an idea for a TV situation comedy. After much
deliberation, George has the brainstorm idea that they could simply do a "show about nothing."1 In fact, Elayne
Rapping has lamented that Seinfeld along with its friends-oriented clones (Mad about You, Ellen, Friends) fills
its storylines with the endless "trivia of everyday life." After all, show topics have included such matters as: how
do you get that funny smell out of the back of Jerry's car? or how do you get a table at your favorite Chinese
restaurant? or the last loaf of marble rye? She finds in these sitcoms about young urbanites with no apparent
family or career responsibilities and with plenty of time to just hang out and talk, a disturbing message about the
end of work and family life, but without offering much in the way of compensation except celebrating the trivial
(Rapping 37). Frank McConnell has suggested that Seinfeld may be best described as a "modern comedy of
manners," rather than a traditional domestic TV sitcom. At first glance, it may seem absurd to suggest that
Seinfeld has anything in common with the witty, refined, upper-class dramas of Moliere and Goldsmith.
However, the characters of Seinfeld are just as obsessed and frustrated with following and often circumventing
the prevailing social codes (of an American middle-class civility) as the English Restoration comedies of
Congreve and Sheridan. One of the central differences between Seinfeld and more traditionally oriented TV
sitcoms like Coach is that the main characters "know" they are involved in an elaborate, largely contrived social
game of witty dialogue, false deceptions, and desires. Unlike the characters of the standard sitcom genre, they
continuously watch themselves play out these absurd situations even as they realize they cannot avoid the
comic "pull of the absurd." Within the world of Seinfeld, the absurd does not exist in well-conceived comic gags
or wisecracks, but rather in the small social blunders which comprise the spectrum of social manners in the
nineties (McConnell 19-20). John Bryant has suggested that the American TV situation comedy genre does, in
fact, create its own distinct version of the English comedy of manners literary genre. He maintains that the
central thematic of the traditional comedy of manners is the dramatic tension best exemplified by a newcomer
attempting to assimilate into upper-class society (Jane Austen's Emma). But in the American TV sitcom (I Love
Lucy, Mary Tyler Moore), the sitcom group (family, co-workers, friends) functions like an egalitarian social class
that both forces its members to conform as well as providing them with their social identities. The social mobility
present within the TV sitcom is "not movement between classes but within and out of the group" (Bryant 249).
Bryant argues that the sitcom, while not directly addressing the anxieties of upward social mobility, does
express the inherent hopes and fears of a young, democratic American society still apprehensive about its own
social growth (249). While Seinfeld features a typical, stable sitcom group (Jerry Seinfeld, George Costanza,
Elaine Benes, Cosmo Kramer) which does not change from one episode to the next, its characters do not
appear to be consistently consumed with either personal growth or advancing themselves out of their own social
status or social group. Instead, the main characters are continuously preoccupied with discerning, following, and
sometimes evading, the complexity of social manners that exists both within and outside their own social
group.2 Since Seinfeld's characters do not easily fit into the social climbing world of the literary manners genre,
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the popular TV sitcom can best be associated with the modern comedy of manners dramatic genre. David Hirst
argues that the genre's main subject is the complex ways in which people behave and the social manners they
employ within a distinct social context. The central concerns of the genre's characters are sex and money, and
thus, the form addresses the main topics of "marriage, adultery and divorce" (Hirst 1). These dramas are
distinguished by their emphasis on a strong sense of style, deportment, and a witty repartee that is used to
conceal the raw emotions which lie just beneath the surfaces of the dramatic lives of its characters. The genre's
emphasis on style is not merely a form of superficial expression but rather the means by which its central
characters triumph over the repressive, social structures of a society. Alexis Greene points out that the comedy
of manners is "the dramatic form of choice for playwrights who intend to depict the assumptions and values of
closed societies" (79). These closed societies are chiefly defined by their own set of self-inscribed rules which
determine the range of accepted behaviors for its members. These social rules also serve to regulate the
innermost desires of its members. As a dramatic genre, the comedy of manners is intimately related to the
social conditions of the time. The Restoration comedy of manners focuses on the self-enclosed, leisured world
of the courtiers in late-seventeenth-century England. Oscar Wilde's comedies examine the narrow-minded, selfcentered perspective of the British upper-class societies in late-nineteenthcentury Victorian England. The
American playwright S. N. Behrmann explores the intricate social manners and moralities of a group of
"wealthy, high cultured" social elites residing in New York City in the 1920s and 1930s. Greene further relates
that since the mid-1980s, several American playwrights, including John Guare, Richard Greenberg, and
Terence McNally, have selected the comedy of manners form to dramatize and examine various closed social
groups of "self-interest" which were closely associated with the materialistic, "style-mongering" elites of the
Reagan-Bush era (79). The dramatic universe of the comedy of manners is a place comprised of a multiplicity of
complex rules: rules for engaging in romantic and sexual relationships, rules for marriage, rules for friendships,
rules for conducting business, rules for telling (or more aptly, not telling) the truth, rules for living in the city or
the countryside, rules for conducting a dinner party, and so on. These rules are essential to the members of
these societies primarily because a person's comprehension of these rules dictates whether he or she is
socially accepted within this society (Greene 80). The characters rely on these rules or social manners to play
an elaborate social game where the stakes involve the satisfaction of certain centralized desires (sexual,
financial, ambition), and a game in which their actions are circumscribed within the social rules of a given
society. As Hirst relates, "these rules are society's unwritten laws regulating behaviour, the dictates of propriety
which, though they may differ in detail from age to age and class to class, are always basic to the conduct of the
characters in the comedy of manners" (2-3). The winners of this game are the characters who are the most
adept at discerning and manipulating these rules to their own advantage. Since the comedy of manners
involves the critical exploration of the social manners and mores of a particular society, it also serves as a
suitable vehicle for social satire. In the Restoration comedies, there is usually at least one free-styled, hedonistic
character who openly defies the social taboos of marriage and lifestyle, and thereby, mocks the moral rigidity of
the seventeenth-century English upper-class societies. Beyond social satire, these plays allow playwrights to
highlight and expose the social hypocrisies of these closed societies. For example, Gilbert and Wilde employ
the dramatic form to invert conventional Victorian values and use their comedies to reveal and attack social
hypocrisy (Hirst 4957). The dramatic act of exposing the social hypocrisies of a closed society serves as a type
of social-leveling device to bring the upper-class societies down to the egalitarian stratum of the rest of the
wider society. In many ways, there is an emancipatory tendency lying beneath the surface of the manners
drama, an inclination to reveal and release the larger society from the social dominance of social codes and
rules derived largely from closed societies. This emancipatory impulse to unmask or at least demystify the
underlying hypocrisies of modern Western civility can be found within the American-Jewish comic tradition
(Berger 84). Such disparate comedians as Lenny Bruce, Shelley Berman, Woody Allen, and Howard Stem have
satirized and lampooned a wide range of prevailing American manners (sexual habits, family relations, racial
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attitudes) of both Jewish and Gentile cultures. In many ways, Jerry Seinfeld with his keen observational humor
and successful TV series Seinfeld is part of this continuing American-Jewish comic tradition with its central
interest in exposing the paradoxical nature of manners comprising Western civility. While a few scholars like
Carla Johnson have focused critical attention on the complex interrelationships between the series' main
characters and the classic Yiddish-Jewish folkloric humor tradition, it is important to acknowledge that a major
facet of Seinfeld's phenomenal popularity is that both its characters and topics are clearly accessible across a
wide social spectrum of American society (117). Of course, the main difficulty with associating Seinfeld with the
comedy of manners genre is that its characters clearly inhabit a middleclass lifestyle rather than the genre's
usual stylish, drawing-room world of societal elites. But Hirst points out that the manners genre is not simply
relegated to an exclusively, upper-class universe. The English playwrights Joe Orton, Harold Pinter, and John
Osborne have each chosen this dramatic form to collectively explore the conflicting social moralities and
manners of working class, middle-class, and uppermiddle-class English societies. Hirst argues that the comedy
of manners is a form thematically flexible enough to dramatize and examine the moralities and manners of any
social class in Western society (116). One of the underlying assumptions of these dramas is that people
primarily act out of self-interest and as such, they have few commitments to anybody or anything but
themselves. The primary function of this self-interest is the pursuit of intellectual and sensual pleasures, along
with the more direct concerns of acquiring and maintaining material goods and services. These goals are just as
true and applicable in the Restoration comedies as the Reagan-Bush manners dramas. The characters of
Seinfeld are just as self-interested and self-absorbed as the characters which inhabit the comedies of Congreve
and Wilde. In many of the episodes, Jerry and his friends satirize the highly discriminating and noncommittal
ethos of the '90s single adult dating scene. In the TV series, Jerry has dumped his suitors for a wide range of
peculiar character traits, including not laughing at his jokes and laughing too strangely (Jerry remarks that
Naomi's laugh sounds like "Elmer Fudd sittin' on a juicer").3 In the episode "The Phone Message," Jerry's offhand comments to George and Kramer that his girlfriend likes the almost product-- less Dockers' jeans
commercials becomes the fertile grounds for their eventual breakup. The series' characters demonstrate a high
degree of creativity in finding new ways of getting into and out of romantic and sexual engagements. In this
regard, Rapping does make an apt point about the characters' apparent lack of commitment to either family or
career (37). But, because these characters are not firmly bound by any long-term relationship or career
responsibilities, their self-identities become intimately linked to the idiosyncratic nature of changing social
manners in contemporary American society. The characters combined status as thirtyish, middle-class,
unattached adults, with plenty of unfettered time on their hands, places them in an opportune position to
experience and satirize many of the social manners that comprise a postmodern American civility.4 Perhaps
one of the underlying factors for the series' popularity is that it implicitly acknowledges a deeply held cultural
ambivalence toward the constantly changing social codes, attitudes, and manners of a rapidly evolving
American society. On the one hand, the show's characters strongly rely on these manners and social codes to
structure their own individual identities while also receiving great pleasures from the social context richness of
postmodern American cultural life. On the other hand, these same characters must continuously keep up with,
and repeatedly negotiate a revolving multiplicity of manners from new dating rituals to the tenets of political
correctness, in order to navigate through the hyperreality of everyday social life in late-twentieth-century
America. In other words, Seinfeld, through its satirical and often absurdist humor, perfectly captures both the
complex cultural pleasures and anxieties associated with the continued maintenance and practices of
contemporary American manners. Seinfeld, as a highly successful TV series with impressive ratings and critical
acclaim, takes as its main interest the social codes and manners of an urban, middle-class American lifestyle,
and comically elevates them into highly absurd situations (McInerney 15). In the episode "The Dinner Party," for
example, Jerry, George, Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), and Kramer's (Michael Richards) quest for the requisite
bottle of wine and a chocolate babka to bring to a house party turns into a long nightmare of misfortunes that
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ends with them abruptly presenting the gifts to the hostess and not attending the party. In "The Sponge,"
Kramer's refusal to wear a red-ribboned AIDS awareness pin on an AIDS charity walk results in him literally
being cornered and confronted by an angry mob of red-ribboned pin wearers. In "The Implant," George's habit
of "double-dipping" his potato chips causes a huge disturbance at the funeral of his girlfriend's aunt. Seinfeld,
through its comical concern with social manners and customs, seems to assert not the decline of civility but
rather its preponderance in American society. The main characters on Seinfeld must not only understand and
negotiate the prevailing social manners, they must also be attuned to each other's personal mannerisms. For
example, in the episode "The Pool Guy," Jerry and Elaine's apparent ignorance of George's idiosyncrasy of
separating his worlds into two spheres-one with his fiance, Susan, and the other with his close friends (Jerry,
Elaine, Kramer)-creates havoc as the intensely neurotic George witnesses the collision of these two worlds. As
a modern comedy of manners, Seinfeld invariably shares several narrative and thematic concerns with the
dramatic genre. Donald Bruce relates that one of the central comic themes of the English Restoration comedies
or comedy of manners is that basic human impulses and inclinations must be disguised in reason in order to
"mask passion and appetite with decorum" (89). Essentially, the comedy of manners acknowledges that all
human social behavior is socially structured through societal social manners and customs. In Seinfeld, the main
characters' inherent drives and desires (sex, money, friendship) must be disguised while often being comically
frustrated and complicated by the impending requirements of a range of social manners. In many of the
episodes, Jerry's libidinal desires are frequently hindered or sidetracked by the dictates and demands of
established contemporary social manners. In the episode "The Raincoats," Jerry is unable to find a quiet place
to have intimate relations with his girlfriend Rachel (Melanie Smith) because she still lives at home with her
parents and his own parents are staying at his apartment. The only semi-private place they find for intimacy is at
a movie theater showing Schindler's List. Unfortunately, Jerry's nosey neighbor Newman (Wayne Knight) spots
them necking during the movie and subsequently informs Jerry's parents. Following a chastisement by his
parents, Jerry goes to visit Rachel only to discover that Newman has already told her parents. At the front door,
Rachel's father angrily forbids Jerry from further seeing his daughter. While couples necking at a movie theater
is a common enough American cultural experience (particularly among adolescents), Jerry violates social
decorum in doing it during a film portraying such a grim subject matter as the Holocaust. In "The Junior Mint,"
language, an integral part of the social formation of social manners and civility, frustrates Jerry's best efforts to
salvage his relationship with his new girlfriend. For Jerry, language and a keen interest in "words" is not only a
special pleasure that binds his friendships with George, Elaine, and Kramer (as evidenced by their endless
debates over the exact meanings of words), but also enables him to make a good middle-class income by
comically highlighting the contradictions embedded within our rich, diverse system of language. However, in this
episode, Jerry's emerging relationship with his girlfriend is severely disadvantaged due to his inability to recall
her name. The only clue that he has is that her name supposedly rhymes with a distinct part of the female
anatomy. On their final date together, Jerry fashions several interesting name attempts, including the word
"mulva," only to have his girlfriend angrily storm out of his apartment. While Jerry consistently finds his own
libidinal desires thwarted by social conventions, George has the tendency of first acting on his impulses only to
later suffer from the social consequences of his actions. In the episode "The Red Dot," George, recently hired
as a reader for Elaine's company Pendant Publishing, succumbs to a late-night temptation and has sex in the
office with a cleaning woman. Later, in an attempt to placate her incessant demands for a steady relationship,
he gives her the same damaged (it has a small red dot on it) white cashmere sweater that he earlier tried to give
to Elaine as a Christmas gift. But the woman quickly spots the red dot and now insulted, informs George's boss,
Mr. Lippman (Richard Fancy), about his lascivious activities. Consequently, Mr. Lippman bluntly fires George for
his social improprieties. George, with his strong impulsive desires for sex (he earlier confessed to Jerry of his
long-term infatuation with cleaning women), is very much like Freud's conception of the unconscious "id."
Following Freud's familiar scheme, George's unconscious id, along with its aggressive behavior, must be
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punished by the authoritarian super-ego which in this case is represented by Mr. Lippman. While George's
human impulses are readily regulated and punished through external authorities and social codes, Elaine's
specific character issues occasionally stem from her own strictly self-regulated, internalized social standards.
The episode "Sniffing Accountant" begins in a coffee shop with Elaine gloating over her new boyfriend Jake
Jarmel (Marty Rackham), a recently signed author with Pendant Publishing. After partly listening to Elaine's
remarks, George irritatingly intrudes by insisting that she will invariably find something wrong with him. Later in
the episode, Elaine fulfills George's prediction by taking Jake to task for not using an exclamation point in
recording a note about her friend having a baby. As a result, Jake storms out of her apartment but not before he
gestures back to her a final emphatic exclamation point. Later at Jerry's apartment, Jerry openly chides Elaine
for amazingly discovering yet another reason for breaking up with someone-"Punctuation." Another underlying
theme that cuts across the comedy of manners genre and Seinfeld is an overwhelming concern with
maintaining social appearances. Hirst relates that the final line of Joe Orton's modern comedy of manners play,
Loot-"People would talk; we must keep up appearances"-reflects "a belief basic not only to his plays but to the
genre as a whole" (2). Because the characters in these plays are caught in an intricate social game in which all
of their actions are circumscribed by social rules, presenting an acceptable social image is the most important
social rule they must follow. Undoubtedly, the most serious social blunder a character may commit is to fail to
maintain one's proper social image and thus reveal to others one's concealed intentions and desires. Likewise,
the main characters (Jerry, George, Elaine) of Seinfeld are just as concerned and obsessed with the intricate
social manners and details that comprise their own social appearances. Although Kramer is definitely
concerned with his social image, he consistently follows his own innate impulses and inclinations, often
oblivious of any resulting social consequences. In Seinfeld, Kramer is portrayed as an individual with almost
uncontrollable impulses and appetites. For instance, in "The Mango," Kramer is banned from his local
greengrocer, and is forced to rely on George and Jerry to buy his produce. A central part of the humor of this
episode is the sheer depths of Kramer's addiction to "fresh" produce and how emotionally distressed he
becomes when he realizes his produce connection might be cut off. The thematic of maintaining social
appearances is central to the comic narrative structure of Seinfeld episodes in which small social blunders
always seem to escalate into highly absurd comic situations. The episode "The Gymnast" begins with George
boasting to Jerry about how adept he is in handling his girlfriends' mothers. At a house party with his girlfriend
and her mother (Lois Nettleton), George's pristine appearance is shattered when the mother sees him grabbing
for a discarded eclair in the kitchen garbage container. Later, the mother spots George cleaning the windshield
of a parked car, a situation brought about when he accidentally spilled a cup of coffee on the car, and attempts
to clean the windshield for the driver. Of course, to the mother, the sight of George cleaning the windshield
reinforces her impression of him as a street panhandler and a bum. In a final attempt to change the mother's
misguided impression of him, George attends another house party. Unfortunately, George's penchant of
loosening his clothing when in the bathroom takes a disastrous turn when he is temporarily mesmerized by a
hypnotic art print (hanging in the bathroom) and inadvertently returns to the party not wearing any shirt.
Ultimately, George's proficient tact with his girlfriend's mother backfires because he is now only capable of
forming the wrong social appearance with her. One central aspect of Seinfeld's comic narrative construction is
its interweaving narrative situations.' Within most of its episodes are separate narratives involving one or more
of the characters which inevitably intersect or at least interrelate to each other throughout the narrative course
of the program. As a contemporary comedy of manners, Seinfeld satirically and painstakingly shows the
inescapable interdependency underlying American civility. In many of the episodes, one person's unintentional
acts or social blunders usually cause irrefutable comic damage across a diverse range of interweaving narrative
situations. Such is the case in the episode "The Gymnast," where several narrative actions including Elaine's
tossing of an open ink pen into her purse and Kramer's act of showing her boss, Mr. Pitt (Ian Abercrombie), an
example of computerized artwork interact to create the final absurd image of the mesmerized Mr. Pitt wearing
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an ink-stained Hitler-like mustache addressing a board meeting about taking over the "Poland Creek" bottled
water company. While these intersecting comic narratives frequently lead to the humorous creation of
identifiable absurdist moments, they also serve to satirize the intense interdependence and the related
complexities associated with contemporary American civility. Despite the seemingly indomitable individualism
attached to postmodern American civility, Seinfeld comically argues that even small, unrelated acts do matter
and thus have undeniable social effects for others. Another distinct characteristic of the comedy of manners is
that each play usually has a character who is the "Truewit" of the drama. The Truewit is the play's certified
pragmatic philosopher who produces much of the drama's verbal humor, and who always speaks the truth, no
matter how impolite it may be. This person is usually the most contented character in the play, primarily
because he acts instinctively and freely on his own impulses. The Truewit is also the type of person who truly
"knows" and accepts his own nature, and as such, does not make any pretentious to "moral goodness" (Greene
81). At first it may seem apparent that Jerry, with his witty, sarcastic repartee, and ironic posturing, is the show's
Truewit. But while Jerry is surely the show's quickest wit, he frequently neglects to tell the truth in his romantic
and family relationships. In the episode "The Sponge," Jerry deliberately conceals the fact that he got a
woman's phone number off an AIDS Walk list. He is also secretly concerned that she may be "too good" to be
his girlfriend. But when he discovers that she may not be as angelic as he initially assumed, she competely
rejects him because he lied about the fact that he relabels his jeans from a 32" to a 31" waist. This
representative episode exemplifies Jerry's self-centered and duplicitous nature. In effect, Jerry's human traits of
maintaining impossibly high standards for his suitors, along with being relatively dishonest about his flaws,
make him an unfit contender for Truewit status. Although it may seem peculiar, Seinfeld's actual Truewit is
Kramer. While Jerry, George, and Elaine spend most of their time and energies on following and circumventing
social rules, Kramer, for the most part, simply and instinctively acts on his own desires. In the episode "The
Nose Job," George, with the help of Jerry, is painfully striving, in a very coy manner, to convince his girlfriend
Audrey (Susan Diol) to get a "nose job." When Kramer is first introduced to Audrey, he bluntly remarks that she
could be stunning-all she needs is a nose job. But, when Audrey's first operation is botched, George decides to
break up with her. It appears that Audrey's only true friend is Kramer, who helps her find a new plastic surgeon.
By the end of the episode, George is distraught to discover that Audrey has become a radiant beauty and that
Kramer is her new boyfriend. Also, in the episode "The Bris," Jerry and Elaine are both chosen as godparents
and are given vital roles in the Jewish ritual. But they both botch their duties. While Elaine unwittingly hires an
intensely neurotic, cranky mohel, Jerry gets into a furious fight with the mohel. At the end of the episode,
Kramer, who had earlier tried to rescue the baby from what he referred to as a "barbaric act," is compensated
for his genuine concern when the couple names him the sole godparent to their newborn. In these
representative episodes, Kramer's impulsive and blatantly honest behavior wins out over the other characters'
scheming (George) and self-satisfied, moral pretensions of goodness (Jerry, Elaine). Seinfeld, through Kramer's
Truewit character, affirms the proposition that those who follow, evade, or gain ego-satisfaction from a society's
social manners will invariably become casualties of its (society's) social rules. In many episodes, Kramer's
recurrent, chance achievements (romantic, financial) are not the consequences of a conniving schemer like
George, but rather the unintentional outcomes of a person (Kramer) who does not always adhere to the social
dictates of American civility. Perhaps the most explicit trait of the comedy of manners is that it is frequently used
by playwrights to satirize the social manners and mores of a given society. While there have been some noted
exceptions,6 the vast majority of comedies tend to satirize the upper-class members of Western societies. In
this respect, Seinfeld does direct a part of its comedic force to satirize the strange eccentricities of a few upperclass characters in modern American society. One of the series' recurring eccentrics is the lordly Mr. Pitt
(Elaine's former employer), who was once a close personal friend of Jacqueline Onassis. As his personal
assistant, Elaine must endure a bewildering array of Mr. Pitt's eccentricities, from his obsession of purchasing
socks with the proper elasticity, to his fondness for eating Snickers candy bars with a knife and fork. In fact, this
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latter eccentricity is cleverly used to illustrate the ways in which certain social manners are traditionally
disseminated "top-down" throughout society. The episode concludes with a frustrated Elaine enraged to find
that all the patrons of Monk's Cafe have appropriated this strange dining habit.7 Another eccentric featured in
the series is Sue Ellen Mischke (Brenda Strong), Elaine's life-long social nemesis, and the O'Henry candy bar
heiress. In one episode, Sue Ellen's eccentric behavioral quirk of wearing a bra instead of a blouse while
walking down a city street inadvertently wreaks havoc for Elaine and her friends.8 However, unlike the English
Restoration comedies or traditional comedy of manners, Seinfeld is extremely egalitarian in its satirical thrust.
The series asserts that personal idiosyncrasies and eccentricities are not the sole properties of the socially elite.
In fact, the show comically maintains that people from all social walks of life are primarily defined by their pet
peeves, social habits, and concerns. From a dentist who converts to Judaism in order to tell Jewish jokes, to a
dry cleaner with a penchant for wearing his customers' clothes, the sitcom satirically illustrates the complexity of
social manners, which comprises a contemporary postmodern American civility. In many ways, one of the most
perplexing ironies of the post-1960s cultural expansion of social group diversity and individualism, with their
inherent social demands, is that the majority of Americans must keep up with, and contend with an increasingly
dense web of social manners. Seinfeld, as a comedy of manners, constructs its comic narratives to satirize and
lampoon a plethora of social manners in the 1990s. But because these satirical topics are too numerous to
address, this essay will focus on only two central satirical topics-political correctness and human materiality.
According to Todd Gitlin, the heretofore academically confined issue of "political correctness" came into the
public limelight when journalists, sensing a "moral alarm" over the issue, published a number of emotionally
charged stories in the fall and winter of 1990-1991.9 Since this time the issue of political correctness has settled
into a more reasoned but still emotionally volatile debate both within and outside U.S. academia. As with
multiculturalism, Gitlin laments the fact that the attacks against political correctness primarily rest on the
presumption that there are only two sides to the issue-for or against (486-87). At its most basic level, political
correctness involves being socially sensitive in language or manner, in order to express tolerance of all people
regardless of race, gender, social class, ethnicity, nationality, religious belief, and sexual orientation. Despite its
social attributes, some people have severely criticized and accused the practice of political correctness of being
too mechanical, misunderstood, and too restrictive of the open expression of speech and thought. Seinfeld
interjects itself into this debate by comically asserting that political correctness (regardless of its virtues) is just
another social obstacle for its characters to contend with in their daily lives. For instance, in the episode "The
Cigar Store Indian," Jerry's gift of a wooden Indian to Elaine inadvertently insults the Native American Winona
(Kimberly Norris). As Jerry pursues Winona, he finds himself trapped in a minefield of political incorrectness.
Common expressions like "ticket scalper" and "making a reservation" become linguistic obstacles in his
amorous pursuit. Jerry's tenuous relationship with Winona is permanently severed when he is unable to take
back his indirect comment that her request for him to return her copy of TV Guide implicitly makes her an
"Indian-giver." Another predominant topic satirized in the sitcom involves the ways in which human materiality,
or more specifically, the human body along with its bodily functions, is socially repressed by the social dictates
of Western civility in general. The thematic relations between human materiality and a society's hierarchial
social structure is best exemplified by Mikhail Bakhtin's notion of the "carnivalesque." According to Robert Stam,
the carnivalesque directs attention to public festivities such as the carnival, which represented an inversive
universe characterized by the ludic subversion of all social norms. Bakhtin's carnivalesque also involves his
"body principle" which is directly related to the material human body, and includes such bodily functions as
hunger, thirst, elimination, and copulation. During the carnival, the body principle literally becomes a powerful,
vexing force that joins with festive laughter to form a symbolic conquest over death and all that oppresses or
constrains (Stam 86). The most implicit assumption of the carnivalesque principle is that one of the central goals
of a modern society's social structure is to control and discipline the expression of the human body and its
functions. John Fiske argues that because television is often accused of vulgarity, bodily excessiveness, and
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general offensiveness, it shares many attributes with Bakhtin's carnivalesque principle (241). Seinfeld, with its
inherent absurdity, represents the carnivalesque by taking the small common matters of everyday social life and
raising them into the arena of televisual discourse. As with Bakhtin's carnivalesque, the popular sitcom asserts
that small social details like finding a restroom in a mall parking garage do matter, and that such material
concerns will never be completely repressed by the discursive dictates of an official high culture within the
American social structure. While some sitcoms may aspire to address such socially relevant topics as drug
addiction, abortion, or teen suicide, Seinfeld chooses to examine such dilemmas as: how do you find out if your
date is refunding the dinner you just bought her? or how do you successfully break up with your girlfriend in
order to date her roommate? The sitcom embodies Bakhtin's body principle by elevating the low materiality of
the human body (along with bodily functions) into the forefront of its own narratives. But, as Fiske points out,
commercial television is limited in that it can only refer to certain activities through carefully chosen words or
references (241). Despite these inherent limitations, Seinfeld episodes have featured such taboo or rarely
addressed material concerns as constipation, vomiting, urination, masturbation, and exhibitionism. In the
episode "The Pick," Jerry's budding relationship with the beautiful fashion model Tia (Jennifer Campbell) is
abruptly terminated when she sees him "appear" to pick his nose during a traffic stop. Despite Jerry's relentless
pleading that he was merely scratching his nose, Tia remains thoroughly disgusted with his social impropriety
and no longer wants to see him. Jerry, comically portraying the oppressive nature of the material to the social,
defiantly yells out to her and the world a variation of John Merrick's (The Elephant Man) dramatic declaration
that he is not an animal but a human being. While the stage play of Merrick's life and this episode clearly rest on
opposing dramatic poles (the tragic and the comic), nevertheless they both interrelate to the discursive collision
of the material body and the social world. In "The Contest," Seinfeld's most audacious episode, Jerry, George,
Elaine, and Kramer enter into an unusual wager to determine who can refrain from practicing masturbation for
the longest period of time. Almost from the outset, Kramer, unable to control his own innate impulses for even a
brief period of time, quickly withdraws from the contest and pays off his gambling debt. The winner of this
competition will be declared either the "Master" or "Queen" of his or her domain. True to the inversive nature of
the carnivalesque, the contest not only elevates sexual functions of the lower body stratum to a higher
discursive level, but also parodies existing social hierarchies by making the declared winner a royal member.
Seinfeld, by placing contemporary social manners at the forefront of its narratives, comically expresses the
complex ways that civility both enriches and constrains all human social actions. Regardless of the enduring
social debates over the decline or demise of American civility, Jerry and his friends continue to remind us that
civility is actually an ongoing daily process involving such seemingly trivial matters as the cultural value of
holding onto a prime parking space. In showing us a stable group of characters continuously dealing with the
everyday minutiae of social manners, Seinfeld effectively illustrates the sheer density of social standards and
customs which comprise the spectrum of civility in the nineties. Ultimately, the popular sitcom illustrates that
even within the flexible, postmodern state of American civility, Jerry and his friends must continuously contend
with keeping up appearances. Footnote Notes Footnote 'The one-hour episode in which George and Jerry pitch
their sitcom idea is called "The Pitch/The Ticket" and was originally broadcast on September 16, 1992. ZIn the
series, George and Elaine have both changed their job positions. While George has advanced from
unemployment to a lower-level management position with the N.Y. Yankees, Elaine's job shifts have included
being a manuscript reader at Pendant Publishing, personal assistant to Mr. Pitt, and copywriter at J. Peterman's
catalog company. Interestingly, these job changes have occurred not because of any personal initiatives on
their part but rather due to chance encounters. For instance, Elaine's job offer from Mr. Pitt primarily arises
because of her supposedly uncanny resemblance to the late Jacqueline Onassis. Footnote 'The episode in
which Jerry makes this remark is "The Watch," which was originally broadcast on September 30, 1992. 'I'm
using the term "postmodern" to describe the current unstable, rapidly changing state of American civility. In
many ways, the perpetual "introduction" of new social manners and customs (fashion, food, politics) into
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mainstream American culture may be related to the further expansion of media into practically every facet of
culture, along with the "speeding up" processes of the emergent post-Fordist style of capitalist production. PostFordism involves not only the acceleration of the production process, but also the marketing and consumption of
new products and services. For a further analysis of the interrelations between postmodernity and post-Fordism,
please consult David Harvey's The Conditions of Postmodernity (1989). 'The sitcom's complex, comic narrative
construction is probably best Footnote explained by Jerry Palmer's "theory of the absurd." Palmer argues that
most film and TV comedies establish their own contradictory absurd logics which are intimately tied to specific
comic characters. In Seinfeld, Jerry's usual acceptance of George's advice invariably leads to an absurdly
disastrous situation for him. In effect, viewers receive immense comic pleasures from either the show's
adherence or deviations from its own absurd, comic narrative logic. 6Hirst argues that since Noel Coward's
comedic examinations of the English middle class (Hay Fever, Design for Living) in the 1920s and 1930s, the
"middle-class milieu" has dominated the plays of later playwrights such as Pinter and Orton (116). Footnote
7The episode featuring Mr. Pitt's candy bar quirk is "The Pledge Drive," originally broadcast on October 6, 1994.
BThe episode involving Sue Ellen Mischke is "The Caddy," originally broadcast on January 25, 1996. 'In his
essay, Gitlin asserts that this so-called "moral panic" could be detected in cover stories in Newsweek ("Thought
Police"), New York ("Are You Politically Correct?"), the New Republic, and the Atlantic. This early frenzy of
media interest in political correctness probably culminated in President Bush's University of Michigan
commencement speech on May 4, 1991, in which he warned about "the new intolerance" sweeping the nation's
universities and condemned "the boring politics of division and derision" (Gitlin 487). References Works Cited
References Adler, Jerry, et al. "Thought Police: Taking Offense." Newsweek 116.26 (24 Dec. 1990): 48-54.
Berger, Arthur Asa. The Genius of the Jewish Joke. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1997. Bruce, Donald. Topics
of Restoration Comedy. New York: St. Martin's, 1974. Bryant, John. "Emma, Lucy and the American Situation
Comedy of Manners." Journal of Popular Culture 13:2 (Fall 1979): 248-56. Fiske, John. Television Culture. New
York: Methuen, 1987. Gitlin, Todd. "The Demonization of Political Correctness." Dissent 42:4 (Fall 1995): 48697. Greene, Alexis. "The New Comedy of Manners." Theater 23:3 (Summer 1992): 79-83. Harvey, David. The
Conditions of Postmodernity. Oxford: Blackwell, 1989. Hirst, David L. Comedy of Manners. New York: Methuen,
1979. Johnson, Carla. "Luckless in New York: The Schlemiel and the Schlimazl in Seinfeld." Journal of Popular
Film and Television 22.3 (Fall 1994): 11624. References McConnell, Frank. "How Seinfeld Was Born: Jane
Austen Meets Woody Allen." Commonweal 123:3 (9 Feb. 1996): 19-20. McInerney, Jay. "Is Seinfeld the Best
Comedy Ever?" TV Guide 44.22 (1996): 14-22. Palmer, Jerry. The Logic of the Absurd: On Film and Television
Comedy. London: British Film Institute, 1987. Rapping, Elayne. "The Seinfeld Syndrome." The Progressive 59.9
(Sept. 1995): 37-38. References Seinfeld episodes cited (original broadcast airdates): "The Bris" (14 Oct. 1993)
"The Caddy" (25 Jan. 1996) "The Cigar Store Indian" (9 Dec. 1993) "The Contest" (18 Nov. 1992) "The Dinner
Party" (3 Feb. 1994) "The Gymnast" (3 Nov. 1994) "The Implant" (25 Feb. 1993) "The Junior Mint" (18 March
1993) "The Mango" (16 Sept. 1993) "The Nose Job" (20 Nov. 1991) "The Phone Message" (13 Feb. 1991) "The
Pick" (16 Dec. 1992) "The Pitch/The Ticket" (16 Sept. 1992) "The Pledge Drive" (6 Oct. 1994) "The Pool Guy"
(16 Nov. 1995) "The Raincoats" (28 April 1994) "The Red Dot" (11 Dec. 1991) "The Sniffing Accountant" (7
Sept. 1993) "The Sponge" (17 Dec. 1995) "The Watch" (30 Sept. 1992) References Stam, Robert. Subversive
Pleasures: Bakhtin, Cultural Criticism, and Film. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1989. Taylor, John. "Are You
Politically Correct?" New York 24.3 (21 Jan. 1991): 3240. AuthorAffiliation David P. Pierson is a Lecturer of
Communications and a Ph.D. candidate at The Pennsylvania State University.
Materia: Television programs; Drama; Literary criticism
Ttulo: A show about nothing: Seinfeld and the modern comedy of manners
Autor: Pierson, David P

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Ttulo de publicacin: Journal of Popular Culture

Tomo: 34
Nmero: 1
Pginas: 49-64
Nmero de pginas: 16
Ao de publicacin: 2000
Fecha de publicacin: Summer 2000
Ao: 2000
Editorial: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Lugar de publicacin: Bowling Green
Pas de publicacin: United Kingdom
Publication subject: Literature, Music, Sociology
ISSN: 00223840
CODEN: JPOCBB
Tipo de fuente: Scholarly Journals
Idioma de la publicacin: English
Tipo de documento: Feature
ID del documentos de ProQuest: 195362722
URL del documento: http://search.proquest.com/docview/195362722?accountid=28391
Copyright: Copyright Popular Culture Association Summer 2000
ltima actualizacin: 2011-10-24
Base de datos: ProQuest Central

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