Nicolae Ceausescu, Truman Capote, ABSCAM, NORAD, Luciano Pavarotti, Jose Carreras, John Hausman, Fidel Castro, George Steinbrenner, Joe Pepitone, Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Marissa Tome, Plato, Loni Anderson, Rich Little, John Cougar Mellencamp, Lenny Bruce, Geraldo Rivera, Hizballah, Patrick Ewing, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Superman, Batman, The Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Frank Sinatra, Herman Mellville, Tony Bennett, Robert Schumann, Abbott and Costello, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Three Stooges, John F. Kennedy, Dan Quayle, Lloyd Benson, Rudy Giuliani, Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, Peter, Paul and Mary, Trini Lopez, Ethel Kennedy, Winston Churchill, John Cheever, Shirley Booth, Fred Mertz, Jack Kavorkian, James 
Bond, Dante, the Civil War, Jay Leno, David Letterman, the Capulets and the Montagues, Johnny Yuma, Nelson Rockefeller, Bazooka Joe, William Butler Yeats, Spiderman, Keith Hernandez, Rasputin, Danny Tartabull, Killer Kowalski, Ruhollah Khomeini, Maria Shriver, Andrei Sakharov, J. Edgar Hoover, John F. Kennedy Jr., Barry Bonds, Jim Leyritz, Bernie Williams, Ken Phelps, Ken Griffey Jr., Elle McPherson, Zelda Fitzgerald, Raymond Massey, Henry Miller, John Dewey, Calvin Klein, Christopher Columbus, Susan B. Anthony, Abbie Hoffman, Buddy Hackett, L. Ron Hubbard, Batman, Eva Braun, George Washington Carver, Mia Farrow, Clarence Thomas, Dick Gregory, Doc Gooden, Bobby Bonilla, Vince Coleman, John Franco, Eddie Murray, Sunny von Bulow, Adam and Eve, Jimmy Olson, David Duke, Anthony Quinn, Kirk Douglas, Mary Hart, John Tesh, Abraham Lincoln, Mary Todd, Neil Simon, Woody Allen, Candace Bergen, Mickey Rooney, Diana Ross, Fred Savage, Corbin Bersen, George Wendt, Clara Barton, Florence Nightengale, Olympia Dukakis, Sally Field, Al Jolson, Ann Landers, Neville Chamberlain, Yo Yo Ma, Ted Danson, Jackie Gleason, Marlon Brando, Teddy Roosevelt, Benny Goodman, Ralph Fiennes, Charles Atlas, Neil Armstrong, Neil Diamond, John Cheever, Jay Buhner, Willie McGee, Drabek, Fred McGriff, Johnny Carson, Salman Rushdie, Ava Martone, Patrick Swayze, Joseph Cotton, Sergio Mendes, Duke Ellington, Mohatma Ghandi, David Dinkins, Sadam Hussein, Monica Sellas, Tom Hanks, Ponce de Leon, Moose Skowron, Hank Bauer, Clete Boyer, Glen Close, Meryl Streep, Harrison Ford, Richard Nixon, Dustin Hoffman, Sammy Davis Jr., Don Mattingly, Ed Asner, Elijah Muhammed, Leonid Brezhnev, Charles de Gaulle, Golda Meir, Bette Midler, John Wilkes Booth, John Ritter, Kim Novak, Jane Mansfield, Russ Meyer, Burt Lancaster…to name a few.
A Show for the Erudite
What do all of these people, groups, and events have in common? Not a whole lot other than the fact that they are all mentioned in various episodes of Seinfeld. The only other sources that rival this list is the encyclopedia and maybe that song by Billy Joel, “We Didn’t Start the Fire.”
Not a bad list for a show that heralds itself as a show about nothing. When someone references such a wide swath of society, they are no longer commenting on one aspect of society but are offering a grand view of all of life — religion, economics, politics, family, love…the works. Seinfeld is more than a sitcom; it’s a worldview. It offers up commentary on cultural controversies discussed by no show in the nineties and discussed by a bold few today: everything from female masturbation, to abortion, to down-lo homosexuality, to bulemmia.
Make no mistake, Seinfeld is the thinking man’s comedy. In fact, I like to think of it as a gauge of intelligence, a personal method of identifying the clerisy. When I hear, “I don’t get why people like Seinfeld,” I become a little suspect of that person’s intelligence.
I’m sure there’s at least one person in the above list that you couldn’t identify. I know it’s true in my case…or at least it used to be. I’ve made more trips to Wikipedia in a trivial pursuit of someone mentioned on Seinfeld than any other reason. The result is a distention of my knowledge base.
On what other show would you hear words like: implore, pedantic, prolific, melifluous, pretentious, abeyance, indigent, litigious, laconic, impugn, accosted, svengolly, and festidious?
Start reading classic literature because some of the jokes you’ll get only if you’re well-read, such as when Elaine shows J. Peterman a picture of the “urban sombrero” and he gasps: “The horror! The horror!” Unless you’re at home with Joseph Conrad’s short story “A Heart of Darkness” you’ll likely be discovered giving one of those laughs that demonstrates that you obviously didn’t get the joke but that you’re eager to keep up.
Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice makes an appearance, but the reference is subtle. Unless you know your Shakespeare you’re sure to miss it. After being caught in an apparent nose-pick by his girlfriend at a traffic light, Jerry insists that it was an external scratch of the nose and that from her angle she was in no position to make the call. His final Shakespearian defense to her insists that even if it was a pick he’s still worthy of respect: “Are we not human?! If we pick, do we not bleed?!”
The bard’s Richard III also figures in an episode in which George encourages his schnozz-adorned girlfriend to get a nosejob. When the surgery is botched, he tries to break up with her. Out of curiosity Kramer accompanies her to her successful reconstructive surgery. She’s a post-surgery beauty and George regrets his decision to which Jerry comments: “My nose, my nose, my kingdom for a nose.”
Yada, Yada, Yada
But let’s face it. No one is watching Seinfeld to for the intelligence factor. No, intelligence functions more as a prerequisite for watching the show rather than a by-product of it. Those who watch it, do so simply because it’s funny. And it’s funny because we identify with the themes of the show. We all find humor in the everyday, mundane and irksome details of life. We find ourselves pondering odd questions that have little significance, such as when Jerry wonders what the handicapped parking situation is like at the Special Olympics. Or when George wonders what they did for toilet paper in the Middle Ages.
Even the most tempered among us know what’s it’s like to be annoyed by someone who overuses a idiosyncratic phrase like “Happy, Pappy?!” And just like George we would never call them out on it because we’re “much more comfortable criticizing people behind there backs.”
Seinfeld invites us to play in this world of oddities and senselessness. It turns the little questions into the big questions and mocks the attempt to get a bigger perspective. Seinfeld preaches this message in powerful and appealing ways. Ways that epitomize many themes of postmodernism. Lots of shows of course are postmodern, that it is, contemporary with the postmodern era and fashioned in much of the style of the era, but Seinfeld is different: it expresses often subtly and less often overtly the philosophy of postmodernism.
I find it a delectible piece of irony that so many Christians who claim to detest postmodernism, at the same time embrace the show and even connect to the experience of the characters. This suggests at least two things:
1. We pick up postmodern ideas through cultural absorbtion and not through direct indoctrination (this is not really any different than how we come to embrace any other worldview).
2. Even those who openly denounce the claims of postmodernism — whether aware or unaware — nevertheless can relate to many postmodern ideas.
We all live and play in this world of oddities and senselessness. It’s part of the madness, folly and vanity of life spoken of by the Preacher in Ecclesiastes. God has subjected his creation to futility (Rom 8:20) and we’re all forced to cope with it. But how do we cope with it? How does Seinfeld suggest we cope?
Do we seek to find meaning and purpose for our existence? No, in fact, at several points the show mocks the very idea of seeking meaning. Jerry and George sitting in the cafe one day begin to reflect on how shallow their lives are. In a seeming moment of self-realization Jerry says:
What in god’s name are we doing?…. What kind of lives are these? We’re like children. We’re not men.
GEORGE: No, we’re not. We’re not men.
JERRY: We come up with all these stupid reasons to break up with these women.
GEORGE: I know. I know. That’s what I do. That’s what I do.
JERRY: Are we going to be sitting here when we’re sixty like two idiots?
GEORGE: We should be having dinner with our sons when we’re sixty.
JERRY: We’re pathetic… you know that?
GEORGE: Yeah, Like I don’t know that I’m pathetic.
JERRY: Why can’t I be normal?
GEORGE: Yes. Me, too. I wanna be normal. Normal.
JERRY: It would be nice to care about someone.
GEORGE: Yes. Yes. Care.
JERRY: Well, this is it. I’m really gonna do something about my life, you know? George, I am really gonna make some changes.
GEORGE: Yes. Changes. (Click here for sound bite)
Back at the apartment Jerry tells Kramer about their revelation and commitment to change. Kramer responds,
So, then you asked yourselves, “Isn’t there something more to life?”
JERRY: Yes. We did.
KRAMER: Yeah, well, let me clue you in on something. There isn’t.
JERRY: There isn’t?
KRAMER: Absolutely not. I mean, what are you thinking about, Jerry:? Marriage? Family?
JERRY: Well…
KRAMER: They’re prisons. Man made prisons. You’re doing time. You get up in the morning. She’s there. You go to sleep at night. She’s there. It’s like you gotta ask permission to use the bathroom. Is it all right if I use the bathroom now?
JERRY: Really?
KRAMER: Yeah, and you can forget about watching TV while you’re eating.
JERRY: I can?
KRAMER: Oh, yeah. You know why? Because it’s dinner time. And you know what you do at dinner?
JERRY: What?
KRAMER: You talk about your day. How was your day today? Did you have a good day today or a bad day today? Well, what kind of day was it? Well, I don’t know. How about you? How was your day?
JERRY: Boy.
KRAMER: It’s sad , Jerry. It’s a sad state of affairs.
JERRY: I’m glad we had this talk.
KRAMER: Oh, you have no idea. (Click here for sound bite).
George, not having been a part of this conversation with Kramer, becomes engaged to his ex-girlfriend while Jerry returns to his previous approach to life and relationships. The rest of the season, George is portrayed as a dupe for having given up his freedom, while Jerry is free to enjoy the merits of bachelorhood. George is relieved when his fiance dies from licking toxic glue on wedding envelopes that he picked out. Kramer was right: there was nothing more to discover about life or wisdom to be gained. George’s big mistake came from thinking that there was, or so the show would have us believe.
But if there’s nothing to learn, are we to despair and sink into depression? Seinfeld mocks those who might take this approach, too. When George meets a woman who finds him funny, he fears that she might be more impressed with Jerry’s humor when she meets him. To prevent her attraction to Jerry, George talks Jerry into hiding his humor. While at dinner they begin to discuss birthdays. In an artificial melancholic tone, Jerry replies:
Well, birthdays are merely symbolic of how another year has gone by and how little we’ve grown. No matter how desperate we are that someday a better self will emerge, with each flicker of the candles on the cake, we know it’s not to be, that for the rest of our sad, wretched pathetic lives, this is who we are to the bitter end. Inevitably, irrevocably; happy birthday? No such thing.
There’s no indication in the show that we should be depressed about the meaninglessness of life. Rather, meaninglessness is all there is and we should have fun with it. This is the fundamental message of the show.
As further proof of my claim, when it came to the scripts, the producers (Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David) had a “no hugging, no learning” rule for the characters. The characters were to give no sincere hugs (a rule they broke at least once) and were not to learn something about life through the course of their experience (a rule that they kept judiciously). At one point in the dialogue the characters even state it plainly.
KRAMER: Well, you know the important thing is that you learned something.
JERRY: No I didn’t.
The final episode demonstrates that the characters have come full circle, or, more accurately, that they never went anywhere. Throughout all of their experiences, throughout all of their relationships, they never learned anything. After the four main characters are arrested for violating the “Good Samaritan” law of a small, Massachusetts town, they are put on trial. Ultimately, the trial centers on their history of shameless disregard for the welfare of others. During the trial we revisit many of the supporting characters from all nine seasons of the show. Finally, they are convicted and sentenced to one year in prison. Watching them as they sit in their cells something happens that makes it unequivocally clear that after nine years the characters have made no progression. Jerry looks at George’s prison shirt and says:
See now, to me, that button is in the worst possible spot.
GEORGE: Really?
JERRY: Oh yeah. The second button is the key button. It literally makes or breaks the shirt. Look at it, it’s too high, it’s in no-man’s land.
GEORGE: Haven’t we had this conversation before?
JERRY: You think?
GEORGE: I think we have.
JERRY: Yeah, maybe we have.
Well, they have discussed it before. It’s the opening line of the first episode as Jerry and George sit in the coffee shop. The show ends where it began and so do the characters.
So what was the point of Seinfeld’s nine-year run? To laugh about the fact that there is no point. And in this way, Seinfeld invites us where we cannot go. Yes, there is a futility to much of life, but there is not ultimate futility. God’s divine plan guarantees that while we may not know the meaning of each event; he does, and thus there are lessons to be learned. But we are not meant to learn the secret of understanding it all, of unlocking those mysteries which God has hidden. The lessons we learn, however, are to take confidence that God’s purpose stands even when we are unable to make sense of it, to not elevate our finite reasoning above the knowledge of God, and to acknowledge that divine revelation is the only way we make any sense of life’s mystery. Seinfeld has something to say to those who are optimistic that we can search out the meaning of all events, those who refuse to acknowledge the senselessness that there is to much of life from our perspective. What Seinfeld should have included however is a good dose of the creator-creature distinction. There’s an arrogance of perspective that the show displays. It insists that pointlessness is all there is and that once we accept this and move on we have nothing else to learn. What if Jerry changed? What if he did learn something? Would the show have still been funny? Sure, and it would have had the added benefit of being more true to life. Most of us find no satisfaction or identification with Seinfeld’s ultimate message: enjoy the meaninglessness, it’s all we’ve got.
Fraiser, great post! I have always loved Seinfeld for this very reason (and hated it for the same). Very thought provoking post. God bless.
Wonderful. I own the DVDs. Why? No reason. Keep up the good work.
John,
I’m a bit surprised with how much of this material I’m familiar with, considering that I have never been a regular viewer of the show.
This is sort of obvious, but a glaring problem with Seinfeld’s “celebrate the absurdity of it all” approach is that they don’t really believe it. If everything is really a mass of absurdity, then there is no basis or need for morality of any sort. But, there is a morality in the show. I remember thinking that the ending of one episode (in which Jerry decides to reimburse a laundromat owner for the damage he intentionally did to a washing machine) was rather oddly misplaced because, if they really were just celebrating the absurdity of it all, they could have no motivation toward justice and responsibility for one’s actions.
So are you going to develop this into a set of class lectures? I bet a lot of kids would sign up for a class about Seinfeld.
KWR
Sounds like Ecclesiastes to me!
Frazier,
How apropos for our times indeed! Dare I or any Christian confess that we have watched Seinfeld and even (gulp) like it? Just like Chris Gates above comment that he “loves and hates” the show, I too, share the same ambivalence.
On the one hand, having been the blessed recipient of God’s grace and thereby shown the “plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things,” (although my understanding of that mystery is but an inkling of what it some day will be), I have the propensity to take life much too seriously. As Spurgeon said, “One can be so heavenly minded that he is of no earthly good.” Laughter can be a good medicine for the soul at times. And often we laugh at the absurdity of ourselves and the culture around us when we watch Seinfeld, don’t you think?
Yet, on the other end of the spectrum, one can become so disillusioned with life, that they come to the conclusion that it is indeed pointless. Shakespeare’s character Macbeth concluded that “Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Such could be the finally epitaph inscribed for Seinfeld. Even as Kenneth comments above “Sounds like Ecclesiastes to me.” Over and over Solomon seems to conclude that “life is vanity.”
Solomon finally saw that life without God is indeed vanity. Without God, there is no point to loving one’s neighbor, or living justly in any respect. Pointlessness, striving after wind, futility, all describe the godless society in which we live. Solomon does not conclude with hopelessness, however.
“The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God, and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man. for God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.” Centuries old advice, but relevant for us today.
Darlene
is that the capulets or not because i need to know because i am dointg a powerpoint on romeo and juliet and i need a picture of the capulets and montagues before monday’s lesson