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A Show About Nothing?:
Social Manners, Seinfeld and the Dense Web of American Civility
Abstract
This paper examines how the popular TV series, Seinfeld reveals a deeply-held
cultural ambivalence towards the changing social codes and manners of
contemporary American society. Drawing on the works of Bourdieu, Bakhtin, and
Elias, the paper argues that all societies have placed a great emphasis on
social manners and customs. This paper also illustrates the benefits of
analyzing popular cultural forms as interpretive sites for charting the evolving
social manners that comprise American civility.
A Show About Nothing?:
Social Manners, Seinfeld and the Dense Web of American Civility
David P. Pierson
Qualitative Studies Division
David Pierson
Ph.D. Graduate Student
College of Communications
Rm. 302A, James Bldg.
Pennsylvania State University
University Park, PA 16802
Home Phone: 814/235-9909
E-Mail: [log in to unmask]
A Show About Nothing?:
Social Manners, Seinfeld and the Dense Web of American Civility
Elayne Rapping, in her article, "The Seinfeld Syndrome," laments that the
highly popular TV series, Seinfeld along with its clones (Mad About You, Ellen,
Friends) fills its storylines with the endless "trivia of everyday life." Show
topics have included what is the funny smell in the back of Seinfeld's car? Or
how do you get a table at your favorite Chinese restaurant or the last loaf of
marble rye? She argues that the actual characters and relationships around
which all these trivial pursuits revolve depart even more radically from the
days of I Love Lucy and Family Ties. Unlike even the wacky Ricardos or the
Bundys of Married With Children, these people seldom worry about deadlines and
never have disciplinary problems, except with their pets, perhaps. None of
these characters has anyone who depends upon them to come home. She also finds
in these sitcoms about young Manhattanites with no real family or work
responsibilities and nothing to do except hang out and talk about it, a
disturbing message about the end of work and family life but without offering
much in the way of replacement except celebrating the trivial. Ultimately, she
contends that these new programs serve as a sort of dystopian promotional
message on behalf of the new economic system in which the majority of people
will have little paid work to perform and the traditional family relations that
used to bind them together, at least as economic members dependent on the wage
of a breadwinner have become completely untendable (Rapping, 1995).
Rapping readily admits that the domestic situation comedy TV genre, with its
rigid work and gender patterns, was implicitly sponsoring a new post-war
corporate-driven economic order that effectively gathered middle class Americans
into suburban bedroom communities to watch
Social Manners, Seinfeld and the Dense Web of American Civility
the classic sitcoms (The Donna Reed Show, Father Knows Best) and commercials to
find out how to adapt to their new suburban lifestyle. But she berates the new
friends-oriented sitcoms (Seinfeld) for neglecting to relate to such central
arenas as work, parenting, and long-term human relationships (Rapping, 1995).
Perhaps as Frank McConnell has suggested, Seinfeld can best be 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 Oscar Wilde and Noel Coward.
However, as McConnell aptly points out, 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. He also argues that 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 artificial social game of witty dialogue, false appearances, and
desires. Unlike the characters of the standard sitcom genre, they continuously
watch themselves play out these absurd situations even as they realize they can
not elude the comic "pull of the absurd." Within the world of Seinfeld, the
absurd exists in the little things, not the well-planned pratfall, but rather in
the social blunders that comprise the spectrum of social manners in the nineties
(McConnell, 1996; Hirst, 1979).
While some critics like Rapping have criticized Seinfeld for focusing on the
trivial manners of everyday life, Pierre Bourdieu has stressed that societies
place great emphasis on the "seemingly most insignificant details of dress,
bearing, physical and verbal manners" because
they entrust to the body "the fundamental principles of the arbitrary content of
the culture" (Bourdieu, 1977, p. 87). In fact, he relates that within these
emerging societies, manners and habits were initially a form of social class
distinction. Bourdieu outlines that within these societies, the refined manners
of the upper classes are gradually, although incompletely, disseminated downward
through the social hierarchy and finally to other countries whose lack of
"civilization" demands colonial-style etiquette lessons. Invariably, these new
standards of social refinement and civility become the very essence of the
formation of a bourgeois subjectivity. He also relates that since manners,
habits, and distinctions of taste are intimately related to a societies' social
hierarchy they are by nature highly politicized. Bourdieu further adds that
concessions to politeness always involve "political concessions." (Bourdieu,
1977). Ultimately, if social manners and habits are integral in maintaining the
existing social hierarchy of a society and even promoting the rise of new
distinct social classes (the noveau riche) within the social structure, at the
same time, they also serve to exclude certain marginalized social groups (racial
& ethnic minorities, gay & lesbians).
Similarly, John Murray Cuddihy, in The Ordeal of Civility: Freud, Marx,
Levi-Strauss, and the Jewish Struggle with Modernity, shows how the "great
expectations" of emancipated Jews into Europe in the nineteenth century came up
against the stoic, bourgeois Christian norm of "civility" and this disheartening
experience gradually evolved into "the Jewish problem." He theorized that one
central reason for the failure of the Jewish immersion into Western culture
comes down to a failure in civility. In this regard, Cuddihy employs Berger and
Luckmann's phenomenological definition of "civility" as the implied ritual
exchange of cultural gifts that
occurs between strangers in the West in a typical face-to-face social encounter.
Primarily, Cuddihy argues that the initial encounter between the Jew and the
Gentile never remained near enough to the surface to achieve a ritual
tranference of civilities. Thus, the all-important ratification of Jewish
emancipation through social emancipation, in face-to-face social contact with
the Gentile, never occurred. He also illustrates how three main social
intellectuals created distinct emancipatory (and egalitarian) social theories
exclusively designed to "unmask" the seemingly impenetrable veneer of Western
civility. Significantly, each of these modern thinkers implicitly sought the
hidden essence of human nature beneath the mask of modern civility. For Freud
this essence became the unconscious "id," for Marx, "economic man," and for the
anthropologist Levi-Strauss, the comparative, intercultural, "mythic man"
(Cuddihy, 1974). Moreover, 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. Such disparate comedians as Lenny
Bruce, Shelley Berman, Woody Allen, and Howard Stern have satirized and
lampooned a wide range of prevailing American manners (sexual habits, family
relations, racial attitudes, etc.) 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 its characters and
topics are clearly accessible across a wide social spectrum of American society
(Johnson, 1994). Perhaps one of the underlying factors for the series'
popularity is that it implicitly reveals a deeply-held cultural ambivalence
towards 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 maintain and negotiate a multiplicity of
mutating manners from new culturally inscribed dating rituals to the tenets of
political correctness in order to navigate through the hyperreality of everyday
social life in late twentieth century America (Kincheloe, 1995). In other
words, Seinfeld, through its satirical, absurdist humor, perfectly captures
the complex cultural pleasures and anxieties associated with the continued
maintenance and practices of contemporary American manners. In order to more
fully investigate the complex relationship between the TV series, Seinfeld and
American manners, this paper will be organized in the following manner: first,
it will examine Norbert Elias's historical-sociological study of the development
of civility in Western cultures and its relationship to more "permissive"
contemporary Western cultures; and finally, it will use several themes from the
theatrical "comedy of manners" tradition along with Bakhtin's notion of the
carnivalesque to highlight some of the inherent contradictions of American
civility featured in select episodes of Seinfeld.
Norbert Elias and The History of Manners
Norbert Elias, in The Civilizing Process, begins his book by studying the vast
amount of evaluative meanings attached to the notion of "civilization." After
reviewing the diverse range of connotations affixed to this term, he postulated
that it has one central function:
"This concept expresses the self-consciousness of the West. . .
It sums up everything in which Western society of the last two or
three centuries believes itself superior to earlier societies or
'more primitive' contemporary ones. By this term Western society
seeks to describe what constitutes its special character and what it
is proud of: the level of its technology, the nature of its manners,
the development of its scientific knowledge or view of the world, and
much more" (Elias, 1978, pp. 3-4).
Elias further relates that by the nineteenth century, the specific contexts in
which people used the term "civilization" showed that they had clearly forgotten
that it is an ongoing process. In other words, civilization was seen as an
already completed process and thus, it was largely taken for granted. At this
time, strongly confident of their own moral superiority as a great civilization,
these western cultures not only sought to "civilize" the natives of lands they
were colonizing, but also the lower classes of their own societies (Elias,
1978).
In conducting his historical-sociological study of changes in manners since the
Middle Ages, Elias draws from a number of varied sources including literature,
paintings as well as other historical documents in order to illustrate the ways
in which people were said to have behaved. His primary sources for the study
were the so-called "manner books" of France, Germany, England and Italy which,
from the thirteenth to the nineteenth century, established the standards of
socially acceptable behavior by people in society. It is important to note that
these texts were not "etiquette" books concerned with the small formalities of
polite society, but
rather, especially the earlier ones, addressed the more basic concerns such as
with "outwardly bodily appearances" areas which would later become too
embarrassing to even mention in public. These texts instructed readers in such
areas as how to handle food and conduct themselves at tables; how, when and
where to burp, spit or blow their noses; how to behave when sharing a bedroom or
a bed with other people at an inn, and so on. Although discussion of these
matters now causes some embarrassment, in earlier centuries, they were spoken
about in an open and frank manner, without shame. From the Renaissance onwards,
there emerged a
long-term trend towards greater self-control and more differentiated codes of
behavior, while at this same time, socially-sanctioned levels of shame and
embarrassment were advanced (Elias, 1978).
Through a close analysis of the manner books and other historical evidence,
Elias was able to detect a common pattern underlying various aspects of the
history of manners. Beginning with the medieval manner books, Elias determined
that the period's standards of behavior, in comparison with later times, could
well be described as simple, unsophisticated and basically undifferentiated.
These early social commands were bluntly direct (Don't slurp your food; Don't
urinate in public) with few evident psychological nuances and complexities
underlying the common standard. Even though his study begins in the Middle
Ages, he is quick to point out that "the civilizing process is really a process
without a beginning" (Mennell, 1989; Elias, 1978). During the time period of
the Renaissance, Elias began to detect certain changes taking place, "Now, with
the structural transformation of society, with the new pattern of human
relationships, a change slowly comes about: the compulsion to check one's
behavior increases.
In conjunction with this the standard of behavior is set in motion."(Elias,
1978, p. 82). Significantly, this small self-conscious drift towards inspecting
one's own behavior signaled the slow, gradual transition away from only external
social controls to more "self-controls." For example, although the social code
of not eating with one's hands was at first not absolute or even consistent,
only gradually did it become more "internalized" as a habit and a form of
self-control (Mennell, 1989).
According to Elias, one of the most telling matters about the succession of
manner books was not which social rules they included, but rather the ones they
chose to exclude. Over time, such basic social concerns like when and where to
spit in public were eventually supplanted with more refined requirements.
Invariably, this shift away from certain activities no longer being spoken about
in public, ran in conjunction with a movement towards pushing many of these
same activities behind "the scenes of social life." This is most obvious in the
case of urination and defecation being relegated to certain private places along
with increasing the privacy of the bedroom. The hiding behind the scenes of
what has become distasteful is one of the most characteristic features of the
civilizing process in Europe (Elias, 1978).
Overall, Stephen Mennell, in his analysis of Elias's work, relates that Elias
is not just describing changes in individual mannerisms, but also psychological
and affective changes. In other words, Elias argues that, in the Middle Ages,
people who ate or shared a bedroom together in the customary way, had a
different kind of relationship with each other than modern people have, and this
difference involved a distinct affective variation in the character and
structure of their emotional life (Mennell, 1989).
The manner books showed that the more demanding standards of control over
impulses were initially imposed from the upper social classes or people of
higher positions on to their social inferiors or, at most, their equals. He
argues that from the Renaissance onwards, "feelings and affects were first
transformed in the upper class, and the structure of society as a whole
permitted this changed affect standard to spread slowly throughout society."
This was in marked contrast to the medieval period, when "the social structure
was far less conducive to the permeation of models developed in a specific
social centre through the society as a whole." (Elias, 1978, p. 117).
One of the central arguments deployed by critics of Elias's The Civilizing
Process is that while they may accept his depiction of the civilizing of manners
in Europe from the Middle Ages to the early twentieth century, nevertheless they
also point to the advent of the more socially "permissive society" in the late
1960s and 1970s. Within this apparent relaxation of social controls and a
pervasive "informalization" of social behaviors, these critics argued that the
civilizing process has been reversed and therefore, this nullifies at least some
of the aspects of Elias's theory (Mennell, 1989).
In response to his critics, Elias has pointed out that other periods of
informalization have occurred besides the 1960s and 1970s. While he wrote The
Civilizing Process in the 1930s, he was well aware of the "loosening of morals,"
and the social informalities associated with the "Roaring Twenties." In this
regard, he stresses that the civilizing process is not a linear one, but rather
fluctuates and changes across historical periods. He also pointed out that some
of the characteristics of an apparent relaxation of the constraints imposed on
the individual by social
life actually took place within the framework of very high social standards of
self-constraint, standards possibly higher even than formerly. One of Elias's
examples was of the changes of bathing suits and the relatively greater exposure
of the body (especially the female body) in leisure sports. Although Elias's
writings preceded the bikinis and topless bathing of the decades after the
Second World War, he argued in 1939, that this type of development could only
take place, "in a society in which a high degree of restraint is taken for
granted, and in which women
are, like men, absolutely sure that each individual is curbed by self-control
and a strict code of etiquette." (Mennell, 1989; Elias, 1978, p. 187).
Furthermore, Mennell relates that the first organized research into Elias's
informalization processes was Brinkgreve and Korzec's study of the changing
contents of the advice columns in the leading Dutch women's magazine Margriet
between 1938 and 1978. One of the changes noted was a shift from "moralizing"
to "psychologizing." This contextual change of advice relied less on judging
matters based on socially accepted role models and standards, but rather more of
analyzing a given situation from a number of distinct perspectives. While
Brinkgreve and Korzec were first inclined to interpret informalization as a
reversal of the civilizing process, Wouters, one of Elias's former students,
sternly disagreed contending that the process represented, "a still further
shift of the balance from constraint by others towards self-constraints, and
therefore a continuation of the main thrust of the civilizing process."
(Mennell, 1989, p. 243).
In another study, Wouters inventoried the extend of the informalization
processes from a decreasing insistence upon titles to less formality in written
and spoken languages, clothing,
hairstyles and most forms of music and dance. These trends also included major
changes in such central areas as marriage, divorce and sexual relationships, and
included the liberation
movements which flourished in the 1960s and 1970s. He also determined that
while there was a marked decline in the publication of modern etiquette books,
serving as successors to Elias's "manners" books, between 1966 and 1979; their
place was taken by a glut of what he calls books about "liberation and
self-realization," which put the emphasis on the individual's right and duty to
fulfill his or her own personality rather than conforming to social standards
(Mennell, 1989,
p. 244).
Despite the apparent freedom accompanying this new found self-styled
liberation, Brinkgreve skeptically adds that the "commandments of the new
freedom" are actually quite demanding. For example, in the case of new style
"open marriages," he argues that they make very high emotional demands and was
skeptical about whether many people are capable of taking a happy, open and
encouraging interest in their other partner's relations with third parties.
Invariably, Brinkgreve contends that in these more socially-liberated
arrangements, the level of "mutually expected self-restraint" has dramatically
risen (Mennell, 1989, p. 244).
Similarly, Wouters relies on Elias's ideas to make his argument about the
psychological side of social informalization processes. These processes create
not only different patterns of self-constraints, but also controls that occur at
higher, more self-conscious levels. For instance, Wouters points to evidence
from private diaries from many young, middle-class girls in the nineteenth
century, which shows that they generally repressed most thoughts about sex,
except within the unguarded domain of dreams. In contrast, current young people
learn to express their
sexuality in a more controlled and socially acceptable fashion, not completely
without inhibitions, but within more permissive and diverse social standards.
In this regard, Wouters argues that young people's self-control in relations to
sexuality has increased to a level in which they are able to both think about
expressing and repressing sexual urges or emotions. This heightened sphere of
consciousness enables them more than their grandparents or even parents to be
able to both express and restrain their own impulses and emotions according to a
given situation (Mennell, 1989). Undoubtedly, in order for individuals to
achieve this higher level of consciousness within a permissive society they must
enact a greater internalization of self-constraints along with negotiating a
much more socially and morally complex cultural environment.
Despite USA Today's declaration of the casualness of American civility, Elias's
ideas suggest that these social informalities are the effects of a complex
process of internalized self-constraints and controls (Kreyche, 1988). While
Elias's work on informalization processes neglects to highlight the immense
personal pleasures and social choices associated with the relaxation of social
constraints, it does seem to suggest that the achievement of a higher sphere of
consciousness (and self-constraints) produces a greater threshold of anxiety.
In many ways, Seinfeld, with its focus on social codes and manners, expresses
the cultural ambivalence attending to these informalization processes and
American civility. In this regard, the main .characters on Seinfeld must not
only understand and negotiate the prevailing social manners, they must also be
attuned to each others personal mannerisms. For instance, 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 fianc 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.
Seinfeld and the Comedy of Manners
According to Donald Bruce, 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, "to mask passion and appetite with
decorum" (Bruce, 1974, p. 89). In Seinfeld, the main characters inherent drives
and desires (sex, money, friendship) must also be disguised while often being
comically frustrated and complicated by the impending social requirements of
civility.
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 one episode, Jerry finds that he is unable to find a quiet place
to have intimate relations with his girlfriend Rachel because she still lives at
home with her parents and his own parents are staying with him enroute to a
vacation trip to Paris. The only semi-private place they find for intimacy is
at a movie theater showing Schindler's List. Unfortunately, Jerry's nosey
neighbor Newman 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 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 another episode, 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 enables him to make a good income by comically
highlighting the contradictions embedded within our rich, diverse system of
language. However, in this episode, Jerry's relationship with his girlfriend is
severely handicapped due to his inability to recall her name. In effect, the
only clue 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. Although language played an
integral role in regulating Jerry's impulses and desires, his most evident
social blunder was not remembering his girlfriend's name and thus, providing the
social impression that her identity is not really very important to him.
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. However, the woman
quickly spots the red dot and now insulted, informs George's boss (Mr. Lippmann)
about his lascivious activities. Consequently, Mr. Lippmann bluntly fires
George for his social improprieties. In response, George's only defense is to
feign ignorance of office etiquette in numbly asking Lippmann, "Was that wrong?"
In many ways, 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." Freud's psychoanalytic
theory of humor argues that humor is essentially masked aggression (often of a
sexual nature) which gives us the gratification we desperately crave. As Freud
relates in Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious: "and here at last we can
understand what it is that jokes achieve in the service of their purpose. They
make possible the satisfaction of an instinct (whether lustful or hostile) in
the face of an obstacle that stands in its way" (Freud, 1976, p. 101). However,
if George is the unconscious id run amuck invariably his aggressive behavior
must also be punished by the authoritarian "superego" which in this case is
represented by Mr. Lippmann.
Similarly, in another episode, George, resigned to live at home with his
parents, secures a date with a woman working at a Queens' antique shop largely
by convincing her that he is a local homeowner in the neighborhood. After
George's parents return home from a brief trip they are shocked to discover that
he used their bedroom to have sex as evidenced by finding a discarded condom
wrapper. Later, in the episode, his parents visit the same antique shop, meet
the woman and demolish her impression of George as a homeowner. As with his
brief affair with the cleaning woman, George is again punished for his id-driven
social behavior this time by
the most authoritarian of superegos, his own parents. As a final insult, George
faces the humiliation of being a grown man in his thirties literally "grounded"
by his parents for wrongful social behavior.
While George's human impulses are readily regulated and punished through
external authorities and social codes, Elaine's specific character problems
usually stem from her own strictly, self-regulated, "internalized" social
standards. In many respects, Elaine represents Elias's conception of
internalized self-controls and social constrictions taken to an extreme level
(Elias, 1978). The episode, "The Stakeout," begins in a coffee shop with Elaine
gloating over Jake Jarmel, her new boyfriend, a recently signed author with
Pendant Publishing. After partly listening to Elaine's remarks, George 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.
Consequently, 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."
In a later episode, "The Opposite," Elaine and Jake who somehow have salvaged
their relationship, find it once again on shaky grounds when Elaine stops to buy
a box of Juju fruits candy. One of the episode's central narratives is that
Elaine, while waiting for Jake in the lobby of a movie theater, receives news
that he has been seriously injured in a car accident. Before departing for the
hospital to see him, she pauses to purchase a box of Juju fruits at the
theater's concession stand. Later, at the hospital, a bed-ridden, but still
alert Jake demands to know
exactly when she bought the box of Juju fruit. Reluctantly, she admits that she
purchased them after hearing the news of his accident. Following Elaine's
painful confession, Jake demands an end to their relationship and angrily orders
her to leave his hospital room at once. As with Jerry's embarrassing admission
that he could not remember his girlfriend's name, Elaine's main social blunder
is that her act fosters the social appearance that she was not really upset by
the news of Jake's accident and in fact, she took the time to service her own
personal appetites. One of the underlying themes that cuts across the comedy
of manners genre and Seinfeld is an overwhelming concern with maintaining social
appearances. David Hirst, in Comedy of Manners, relates that the final line of
Joe Orton's Loot: "People would talk; we must keep up appearances," reflects not
only a belief basic to his plays but to the genre as a whole. The characters
are fully aware they are playing a game, where the stakes invariably involve the
satisfaction of a range of desires (monetary, sexual, ambition); and a game,
moreover, in which they must stay within the social rules of 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" (Hirst, 1979, pp. 2-3).
Likewise, the main characters (Jerry, George, Elaine) of Seinfeld are just as
concerned with the intricate social manners and details that comprises 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 one episode, after Kramer insults his local green
grocer, and is banned from store, he is forced to rely on George and Jerry to
buy his fresh fruits and produce since he refuses to shop at a supermarket. A
main part of the humor of this episode is the sheer depths of Kramer's addiction
to "fresh" produce, and how emotionally distraught 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. For instance, 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, 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 accidently 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." As 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 one of Kramer's hypnotic computerized art
prints (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 since he now appears only competent in forming the "wrong"
social appearance with them.
One related aspect of Seinfeld's comic narrative construction are its
interweaving narrative situations. Within most Seinfeld episodes are separate
narratives involving one or more of the characters which inevitably either
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 causes irrefutable comic damage across a diverse range of
interweaving narrative situations. For instance, in the episode, "The Gymnast,"
various narrative actions including Elaine tossing an open ink pen into her
purse based on one of Mr. Pitt's (her boss) commands and Kramer's act of showing
her boss an example of computerized artwork interact together to create the
final absurd image of the mesmerized Mr. Pitt wearing an ink stained Hitler-like
mustache addressing a board meeting about taking over the "Poland Creek" bottled
water company. Also, within this same episode, Kramer's computerized artwork
effectively works to help mesmerize George into forgetting to put his shirt back
on, after leaving his girlfriend's mothers bathroom. 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. Seinfeld illustrates
Elias's contention that greater individual freedoms
and the relaxation of external social controls within the contemporary
"permissive society," can only exist within a complex web of social
interdependency.
Bakhtin's Carnivalesque and Seinfeld
Robert Stam argues that Mikhail Bakhtin first sketched out his visionary ideas
concerning the notion of the "carnivalesque" in Problems of Dostoevsky's
Poetics, but it was in Rabelais and His World that gave these concepts their
fullest fruition. Stam further relates that for Bakhtin, Rabelais was "the
least understood and appreciated" of all European writers because most scholars
failed to comprehend the works link with popular culture and popular festivities
such as carnival, and did not discern the literary modes associated with
carnival - "that is, parody and grotesque realism." (Stam, 1989, pp. 85-87).
According to Stam, Bakhtin's "carnival," refers to the distinct type of revelry
whose origins can be traced back to the Dionysian festivities of the Greeks, but
which reached its apogee of both observance and symbolic meaning in the High
Middle Ages. In that period, Bakhtin points out, carnival played a central
symbolic role in the life of the community. Significantly, carnival meant more
than a temporary break from productive labor, it chiefly represented an
alternative universe characterized by the ludic undermining of all norms. Stam
relates that, "the carnivalesque principle abolishes hierarchies, levels social
classes, and creates another life free from conventional rules and
restrictions." During carnival, all that is socially marginalized and excluded
including "the mad, the scandalous, the aleatory," assumes center-stage in a
liberatory celebration of otherness. Bakhtin's "body principle" related to the
material body includes such bodily functions as hunger, thirst, defecation, and
copulation literally
becomes a corrosive force, and festive laughter enjoys a symbolic victory over
death and all that oppresses or restricts (Stam, 1989, pp. 85-88).
Similarly, Fiske relates that if Bakhtin's carnival was characterized by
festive laughter, excessiveness (particularly of the body and the bodily
functions), offensiveness, and bad taste, television is frequently criticized
for these same vices or virtues. He also contends that this carnivalesque-style
was initially caused by the collision of two languages, the high and the folk,
and that a similar tension exists in television between its official,
ideological language (represented by news, public affairs programming), and the
vernacular, low language (tabloid news, wrestling, comedies) it also carries and
contains, and that may collide repeatedly with its official voice (Fiske, 1987).
Seinfeld, with its absurdist perspective, represents Bakhtin's carnivalesque by
taking the small, common matters of everyday social life and raises them into
the arena of televisual discourse. Seinfeld also 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 further
relates, commercial television is limited in that it can only refer to certain
activities through carefully chosen words rather than aurally or visually as in
what William Paul terms the so-called "gross-out" Hollywood comedies (Animal
House, Porky's) and horror films (The Exorcist, Carrie) (Fiske, 1987; Paul,
1994). Despite these inherent limitations, previous 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 a beautiful fashion model is abruptly
terminated when she
unintentionally sees him "appear" to pick his nose during a traffic stop.
Despite Jerry's relentless pleading that he was merely scratching his nose, the
model 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
The Elephant Man's (John Merrick) dramatic declaration that he is not an animal
but a human being. While the stage play of Merrick's life and this Seinfeld
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.
Similarly, in another episode, George is seen urinating in the gym shower room
by a fellow member who threatens to inform the management and oust him from the
athletic club. While Jerry and Elaine are openly disgusted with George's story
of how the member overreacted to his innocent, bodily function, George bluntly
exclaims to them that, "it all goes down the same drain hole." In order to
salvage his club membership George persuades Elaine (who is attracted to the
member who saw George's social impropriety) to convince the member to not report
him to the club management. But when Elaine discovers that the member is
actually attracted to another woman, she threatens to report him for not wiping
his sweat from the exercise equipment if he goes ahead and turns in George for
his indiscretion. While this episode features the timeless moral issues of
jealousy, love, and betrayal, it also relates such material concerns as one
bodily function literally canceling out another.
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 himself
from the contest paying off his gambling debt. The winner of this competition
will be declared either the "Master" or "Queen"of their domain. In effect, true
to the inversive nature of the carnivalesque, the contest not only elevates
sexual functions or the "lower body stratum" to a higher discursive level, but
also parodies existing social hierarchies by making the declared winner a royal
member. This episode's (as well as others) recurring discourse concerning the
individual importance of self-control over human impulses, relates to Elias's
ideas that a socially permissive society requires even further measures of
"internalized" self-controls in its social members.
As previously mentioned, Kramer is a character whose innate appetites and
impulses frequently override the tenets of accepted social manners. On a
physical level, Kramer, with his exaggerated facial expressions, frizzled hair
style, out-of-date fashion wear, and spastic body movements, appropriates
Bakhtin's conception of the non-classical "grotesque" (or simply, the material
body) body form. The classical body is a refined, orifice-less, laminated
surfaced form, and is related to the same discursive forms of official high
culture which legitimate their authority by referencing the inherent values
found within the classical body form. Bakhtin relates that the creation of the
classical body and the formation of a new bodily canon have their inception in
the sixteenth century rise of individualism and the combined formation of
bourgeois subjectivity and political hegemony which set up the representational
struggle of the classical and grotesque concepts. Invariably, the formation of
Bakhtin's classical body parallels Elias's
social and affective transformation of the individual psyche towards greater
levels of sensitivity and refinement (Kipnis, 1992).
In Seinfeld, Kramer's physical body is often represented as an unpredictable,
uncontrollable, erupting force that threatens to invade the surfaces of social
decorum. For example, for over two episodes, Kramer's contentious bout with
constipation compels him to undertake practically every known medical remedy to
relieve his discomfort. Kramer's physical condition forces him to constantly
intervene into the episodes' central narrative of Jerry and George selling their
TV pilot concept to NBC-TV executives. When Kramer's intense bodily condition
is finally relieved, his joyful cry is so forceful it can be heard over the
bustle of the city, stirring even the pigeons in Central Park.
Likewise, in "The Gymnast," Kramer's painful kidney stone attacks literally
sends him convulsing throughout most of the episode. Kramer, at the precise
moment his kidney stone is passing, lets out a blood-curdingly scream that not
only interrupts a crowd enjoying the circus, but causes a high-wire male
performer to fall from his balanced position. As a result, the female gymnast's
dire concern for the fallen performer (initiated by Kramer's actions), leads to
her confession to Jerry that she was disappointed in his carnal performance as a
"comedian." As with other Seinfeld episodes, Kramer's spasmodic physicality
serves as a carnivalesque reminder that human materiality can not be completely
repressed by the prevailing dictates of American civility.
Overall, beyond examining the discursive relationship between the influential
TV series, Seinfeld and contemporary American civility, this paper has
implicitly sought to demonstrate the
Social Manners, Seinfeld and the Dense Web of American Civility
social significance of exploring the social relations of popular cultural texts
and American society. While this study has primarily focused on Seinfeld and
the nature of existing social manners, the program should also be critically
investigated for its representations of gender, race, ethnicity, social class
and the overriding dynamics of power. Ultimately, this study has attempted to
illustrate that even within the flexible, postmodern state of American civility,
individuals like Jerry and his friends must still contend with keeping up
appearances.
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