Content-Type: text/html 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. References Bourdieu, Pierre. (1977). Outline of a Theory of Practice. Trans. Richard Nice. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Bruce, Donald. (1974). Topics of Restoration Comedy. 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