The other night our channel surfing led us to a rerun of a
particularly well remembered episode of Seinfeld – The Contest (I have since
looked it up and it has been rated the best sitcom episode ever by TV Guide). We did not see it from the beginning – and,
despite three passes, I have never seen it from the beginning. The first pass – in the old days – happened
when we waited to see Seinfeld on Thursday nights. I somehow missed the week it originally aired,
but heard about the episode from many people.
A few years later, Seinfeld went into nightly reruns and there was a
second wave of watching, and the current occasional watching is the third
wave. In the last two waves, I have
caught the last two thirds or so of the episode.
When it was in its first run, NBC called the Thursday night
line-up “must see TV”, and it, along with Friends, was the most popular television
series in the US. With the proliferation
of channels and programming, no show will likely ever again match the
simultaneous audience that it commanded.
That said, not everyone was a fan.
When we recently went to my Mother-in-law’s house, and I mentioned having
seen the episode, she commented that she did not like watching the show because
she didn’t like any of the characters.
There are four central characters. Jerry Seinfeld plays a
version of himself – a snarky single comedian who finds everyone else somewhat
lacking and therefore has a kind of arch humor.
He is living in an apartment in Manhattan across the hall from Cosmo Kramer
(Michael Richards)
– a lanky, tall, scattered and apparently unemployed guy who mooches off of
Jerry – using his food, clothing, and apartment with impunity; Jerry’s best
friend from childhood, George Costanza (Jason Alexander), a perennial
loser, and one of Jerry’s many ex-girlfriends, Elaine Benes (Julia Louis-Dreyfus)
round out the weekly cast, though there are various additional recurring roles,
including George’s mother and father.
Frankly, I think one reason so many people like Seinfeld is
that the central characters are so unlikeable.
This is because I think the characters present themselves in a bad –
mostly self-interested – light. They
function in public the way that most of us experience ourselves functioning
privately. The socially inappropriate comments they make are oddly familiar –
they sound like the inaudibly articulated thoughts that we have and then
quickly squelch, edit or discard so that they don’t get expressed out loud. I
think that we fear that, if we were to express these thoughts, they would
alienate others. I think we even fear
that to hear them ourselves would make us feel uncomfortable with who it is
that we “really are”.
On Seinfeld, these thoughts that can’t be said are not just
expressed and heard, but celebrated.
Despite their closest friends knowing just how despicable they are –
knowing things that we fear that if others knew them about us they would beat a
hasty retreat from us – this band of characters is able to maintain their
social network – indeed, their casual and consistent contact is enviable. Vicariously, then, we get to join their gang
as another self-interested person who has thoughts that shouldn’t be spoken
aloud and here, as we watch and, in so far as we identify with the characters, participate
in the episodes, we are able to express our forbidden thoughts and to be
accepted in spite of that.
Now I think my mother-in-law has a valid objection. As an actual social group, the Seinfeld bunch
leaves a great deal to be desired. We
would like a group like this to rein each other in – to raise the moral
questions that they never seem to raise – or, when they do raise them, to not ignore
them as quickly as they so consistently do.
They function more like the fraternity boys that Ryan Lachte was accused
of emulating at the recent Olympics than “decent” human beings. It is not always clear, but I think the
self-conscious smirks at what they are doing (pitching a TV show to NBC about
their lives – which will be a show about nothing) indicate it to be the case
that they realize that this is morally reprehensible territory. Certainly the final episode, where they are
all thrown in jail for their manifold crimes against humanity across the course
of the many seasons indicates an awareness of this. And I think, then, that this is a representation
of a fantasy – not a representation of reality.
If we accept that this is intended to be a fantasy rather
than a representation of reality as lived (though I think we live in ways that
are consistent with the show – probably more consistently in the wake of it
because it has implicitly given us permission to do that), it is possible to
imagine that this is not just a representation a social group, but also of a
single person – with each character playing the part of an aspect of that person. If we entertain this crazy idea for just a
moment, we realize that the conglomeration is one that is less in tension with
itself – the
way that Freud posits humans are – and more in cahoots – egging itself on
to do more and more outrageous stuff.
This, I think, feels freeing.
This group somehow has figured out how to avoid the frustration of
constantly having to run into impediments to what they actually want to do –
they have approached Freud’s jaundiced view that the only happy person is the
one who can kill and get sexual gratification at will (a view that is, I think,
naïve and at odds with the reality of what brings happiness to people – an example
of carrying a theory to its logical, but clearly impossible, conclusion).
The irony, in so far as the show is suggesting that
unbridled and unchecked/unedited reacting to things is the way to go, is that
the show is so well crafted that it clearly required a great deal of effort on
the part of the writers, actors and crew to create it. This does not come about without discipline –
which tamps down desires – and creates conflict – both between the members of
the creative team and within the individuals.
George Costanza personifies this “neurotic” functioning most
clearly. He wants to do things but can’t
quite bring himself to – he is hung up on some aspect of it. He is all but bursting to do things, but also
is aware of how people will perceive him if they catch him at it, so he is
forever concocting feints about what he is doing, or lies to cover up what he
has done.
One result of their craft is that we get to see aspects of our
own tortured actual existences – as well as the idealized gratifying activities. And part of what is gratifying about the way
that the players engage in those activities is not just that the players are
doing things – but they are expressing powerful emotions as they play– they are
cathecting. In one episode, George’s
father demands, at the top of his lungs, “Serenity Now!” The actors say the things that can’t be said and
express them with such force that, at least for this Midwestern boy who was
taught to always be polite – there is a feeling of liberation. Furthermore, instead of alienating others,
they, like Donald Trump within his circle of supporters, are loved because of
the expression of their emotion.
Furthermore, the strength of the expression of their emotion is met by
similar strength of emotion coming from the other players – there is a level of
emotional attunement between them that feels balanced – even while they are
careening off on some zany pursuit.
And the craft is also gratifying on another level. Most comedy is linear. There is a story, a couple of things happen,
and then we are surprised – things go off in a novel (frequently) liberating
direction and the tension that was built up in the story is released. We experience the catharsis that these
players demonstrate in their daily living.
Ancient sitcoms generally had one story line that resolved by the end:
satisfying, but somewhat dull. M*A*S*H
was the first sitcom to have two story lines that were related – two of the
main characters would become involved in situations that were variations on a
theme – and they would each resolve – double the complexity and double the satisfactory
resolution.
Seinfeld often had four plot lines – or five or six – in a
single episode – each related to the others but separate. The best episodes took on a musical quality
with a series of melodies that nicely harmonized with each other and then would
resolve – like a final chord at the end of a symphony – sometimes with a single
note left out, and that note would be provided in the wrap up after the commercial.
In The Contest episode, the four principles are bound by
the contest that emerges out of George's behavior. George has been caught masturbating by his mother and the four agree to compete to
see who can go the longest without doing so.
Elaine has to put extra into the pot because it is assumed to be easier for
women to forego masturbation. So the
four plots are set up – and each one is tempted to masturbate by their own
personal siren.
Another layer of pleasure here is that the thing they are
not doing is never said. The word
masturbation is never uttered the entire episode. While this has been blamed on the censors –
the use of multiple euphemisms – including master of one’s own domain – simply points
out the naughtiness of the whole thing – what they are competing about is
naughty enough that they can’t talk about it directly. If they were to say masturbation, it becomes
an adult thing – the kind of thing some authority would talk about on NPR. But if we keep referring to it by nuance – we
remain kids playing at something that is forbidden.
Kramer’s siren is a woman across the street that is walking
around naked in her apartment with the shades up. He is out almost before the contest
begins. Elaine is tortured by running
into the most eligible man in the world – JFK, Jr. – at the gym and his offering
her a ride home (she lies to him about where she lives so that they can share a
cab in the same direction and he believes she lives in Jerry’s building). George is tortured by the image of a
beautiful patient in the hospital bed next to his mother’s (she fell and hurt
her hip when she discovered him masturbating) who is give a sponge bath by an
equally lovely nurse (and how glorious is it that he is gathering fantasy material
while tending to the mother he has injured by indulging in fantasy – what could
be naughtier?). Jerry is trying to bed a
virgin – Marla – but lies to her constantly about his intentions because to be
honest would scare her off.
After this set up, we see the four of them in bed at night –
Kramer sleeping soundly, but the other three in tortured agony unable to sleep –
and we sense that if they would just masturbate they would be sleeping well,
but they each (other than Kramer) wants to win more than to be at peace. This is the end of the first act, if you
will, just before the commercial. And it
is a nice moment to pause and to reflect on the relationship between fantasy
and sleep (if one is so inclined). From
a psychoanalytic perspective, Kramer is freed to sleep because he has released
enough tension, both by masturbating, but also by indulging in enough fantasy
about the woman across the street that he can sleep peacefully. None of the other three have the portal of
release that will move them to be able to incorporate fantasies into their
dreams and instead ruminate about them as a means of fending them off which
keeps them in a tortured state.
Elaine, somewhat surprisingly, falters shortly after the
commercial. She is so excited about a
date with JFK, Jr. who is going to pick her up at Jerry’s building that she can’t
contain herself. Jerry, in the process
of getting close to having sex with Marla, tells the virgin about the
contest. She is disgusted by the
behavior of he and his friends and leaves in a huff, and Jerry turns to the window
to look at the woman across the way and it is not hard to imagine what comes
next. Later George tells Elaine and
Jerry that she missed JFK arriving at the apartment, but that JFK found Marla
running out and offered her a lift instead.
After the commercial, we are rewarded with another look at the
sleepers. Kramer is now sleeping with
the exhibitionistic woman, George, Elaine, and Jerry are sleeping soundly – and
– in a final note that ties it all together, we see the JFK figure sleeping
soundly with Marla – who presumably has chosen to be deflowered by him.
All of this (and more details than I could include) has been
packed into a half hour. We have had a
feast of keeping up with each of the plot lines, each of which we have been
interested in and unsure how they would resolve – each of them has resolved –
and, as a bonus – the unresolved piece of the three extras – the exhibitionist,
Marla, and JFK, Jr., get resolved in the final moment as well. Each of
the main characters has failed to inhibit him or herself in his or her inimical
way. And, to afford the viewer further
satisfaction, all of their scheming and conniving and lying leads them to shoot
themselves in their own feet – and the people that they have schemed against
end up connecting with each other, leaving us on the moral high ground. We have been able to simultaneously revel in
their pleasures and, when they achieve their just ends, we can pull back from
that, and be reassured (and gratified) that those they have abused end up in a
good (and gratifying) place – and, hey, our heroes get to finally sleep because
they get their own form of pleasure as well.
The problem for my mother-in-law, bless her heart, is that
she is so good herself and so disturbed by the callous shenanigans of others
that she can’t wait long enough to see that this ultimately doesn’t work for
them. That this is, despite all the
trappings of being a show without morals, without boundaries, a show that appears
to have thrown off the yoke of civilization; that it is really a morality play
and the liberation that the kid-like parts of ourselves feel as we identify
with the out of control characters is not the only gratification – our parental
parts get some gratification as well when we see the failings and comeuppances visited upon the protagonists. This ends up being a feast for our own entire
internal gang – and we end up feeling satisfied on multiple levels – levels
that are usually in conflict, but here get harmonized – simultaneously and
satisfyingly. We are released from the
tensions that the show has built up and are free to sleep peacefully as we
allow various levels of fantasy free rein.
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