Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer all ride the subway.
Written by: Larry Charles
Directed by: Tom Cherones
Every now and again, the world sets me up to have a little fun. Sometimes a comedy throws you a line that’s not only funny, it’s an explanation for why the world is the way it is; The Simpsons has “To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems.”, The Big Lebwoski has “You’re not wrong, Walter, you’re just an asshole,”, and Seinfeld has “You know, we’re living in a society!”, but it also has “I’m not ashamed of my body.” / “Exactly. That’s the problem. You should be.”.
Now, shame has a context in which its purpose is perfectly, unambiguously clear: when you’re living in a hunter-gatherer society of no more than a hundred and fifty people and your very survival depends on a tight-knit community passing down traditions (like how to build a spear) and rhythms (like hunting boar) that very much keep you alive. Indeed, there is evidence of severely disabled people who clearly died long after their disability developed; people who were so well loved that their inability to contribute practically to the survival of the tribe meant nothing compared to the emotions they brought.
(Both Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari and The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow contain stories of remains found along those lines)
For the Seinfeld characters living in New York in 1992, it’s a little less practical and necessary. Both technology and infrastructure have reached the point that none of the things George has done to himself have interfered with his basic biological imperative of staying alive (you could argue that he’s failed at the other biological imperative of reproducing, though I think it’s more helpful to think of it as ‘maintaining the species as a whole’, which he isn’t threatening in any meaningful way either).
Seinfeld shows a worldview in which these instincts towards shame are bouncing around with nowhere to go. Jerry, George, and Elaine have all their basic needs taken care of, but they still have these unexamined instincts towards shame and fear; no problem seems to exist, so they have to exaggerate the mild inconveniences (like getting stuck on a subway) or even flagrantly making some up and concocting these absurd social rules just to occupy that part of their brain.
This is the reason Seinfeld still holds up today. It’s not that we don’t have any problems – the world is on fire and the cost of living is outrageous – but we still have time and energy to catastrophise and exaggerate; to use a very very very contemporary example, as of this writing there are people absolutely tearing into each other over the fact that Taylor Swift released a double album, convinced not only does liking or not liking her music constitute a character flaw, but that throwing a temper tantrum over it either way is reflective of a person’s whole humanity.
Seinfeld is about people who do this – people who take it for granted that we have an imperative to shame and be ashamed – and ironically, it’s totally non-judgemental about it. It might be about people who respond to every perceived slight and humiliation, but it isn’t actually interested in humiliating or degrading anyone – it’s just saying this is funny. I can react with outrage at someone escalating a conflict about a pop star, or I can take it in stride as a Seinfeldian part of life. I can beat myself up about every stupid tantrum or mistake I made, or I could admit that it was pretty funny that I acted like George Costanza for a moment. Seinfeld can be part of the process of forgiveness.
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- To be clear, this is also a pretty fucking funny half hour of television. My favourite part is Elaine being stuck in a stopped train, because that’s also fairly relatable; I used to bus across the state to visit my family, and I was especially having an internal Elaine-like howl of despair when they stopped using a warm, comfortable bus terminal with vending machines in favour of a, uh, street.
- This has the first instance of Jerry calling George ‘Biff’, after the character in Death Of A Salesman.
- The characters all walking away without saying goodbye really sums them up. They’re only themselves (apathetic) around each other.
- George lying his way into getting conned is similar to a plot in Michael Moorcock’s Colonel Pyat Quartet, except the joke there is that the title character never realises he was conned and ruining his conmen.
- I enjoy that Jerry pretty quickly goes from disgusted by the naked guy to becoming friends with him. I feel like Jerry’s reputation as the least interesting member of the cast comes largely from him being tapped into the morality of the show best – if you look at him in a larger context and compare him to other sitcom characters, he’s a very odd guy.
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Next Week: “The Pez Dispenser”