An Essay About Nothing: Seinfeld As Filtered By Christianity

Transcription

1 An Essay About Nothing: Seinfeld As Filtered By Christianity Elaine: Well I guess a certain someone changed their mind about whether a certain someone is qualified to babysit. Jerry: Is this about me? Elaine: No. Jerry: Well then I ve pretty much lost interest. HAPPY BIRTHDAY? NO SUCH THING. Today the Seinfeld series finale is old enough to vote! 18 years ago on May 14th the New York Four stood on trial for not being good Samaritans and, in the words of the judge, for callous indifference and utter disregard for everything that is good and decent in society. So what better way to celebrate than talking about that callous indifference! To be upfront, this is not an essay about how great a show Seinfeld is or how it impacted my life or why it is my favorite show ever. If you are interested in that, you can go here or here. Instead, I want to dissect it in a way that I am certain Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David never envisioned and probably would rather I not. But I m doing it. While probably unintentional, Seinfeld was very philosophical. You cannot truly have a show about nothing. In trying to make a show about the most inane parts of life[1. the excruciating minutia of every single daily event, like the look a teller may give you at the bank drive thru] you are essentially saying that life is about nothing. Intentional or not, that is philosophy. Even if it is guised heavily by the funniest dialogue and greatest character development in TV sitcom history.

2 When I watched Seinfeld during its original run (and it s still surreal to me that I can remember the commercial previews for episodes like when Kramer s first name is revealed when they were brand new) I watched it because it was funny. And I m sure millions still see it as a funny show. Nothing more, nothing less. But as I moved on to Bible College the semester after the show went off the air, I began to notice that a lot of what I studied from Nietzsche to Ecclesiastes reminded me of Seinfeld. AND YOU AND I KILLED HIM I do not think I m reading too much into the show to say that to the characters, God was dead. At least in the sense that they lived like He had nothing to do with their lives and especially their morality. God was irrelevant. At times, he was a punchline[2. When George thinks he is going to die after getting on with NBC, he tells his therapist I knew God would never let me be successful. She says, I thought you didn t believe in God and George replies I do when it comes to the bad stuff.]. As a result, an anti-christian worldview was implicit and explicit in the show. The characters were completely selfish, completely self-consumed. Nothing mattered other than getting what they wanted. It was utterly perpendicular to loving your neighbor as yourself. Like Paul wrote, citing Isaiah, if the resurrection isn t true then let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die'[3. 1 Corinthians 15:32; Isaiah 22:13]. Seinfeld was the quintessential eat and drink for tomorrow we die show. It s like the characters listened to Paul, just that they went the opposite way that Paul desired. The characters were completely selfish, completely selfconsumed. Nothing mattered other than getting what they wanted. It was utterly perpendicular to loving your neighbor as yourself. Like Paul wrote, citing Isaiah, if the resurrection isn t true then let us eat and drink for

3 tomorrow we die Seinfeld was the quintessential eat and drink for tomorrow we die show. Believe it or not, this makes me appreciate the show on a different level. The reason is because it took that philosophy to its logical end. While it portrayed an anti- Christian worldview, it did not glorify it. It certainly didn t preach. You had four main characters, mostly unattractive[4. I suppose Julia Louis-Dreyfus can be considered attractive but not like Jennifer Aniston or Courtney Cox, in my opinion.], mostly with moderate amounts of success at their careers. They all lose relationships because they are selfish. They all lose jobs or gigs because they are selfish. They all (spoiler!) go to jail in the finale for being selfish[5. This isn t the place to defend the finale but I know it gets bashed a lot and maybe one day I will defend it. But sending them to jail was genius. It was perfect. It was absolutely the best way to end it to me. And in light of what I m writing right now, the fact it was The Good Samaritan Law that got them in trouble in the first place, is the cherry on the sundae.]. There was no cheesy music and lesson learned at the end of each episode. It blew up the TGIF sitcom formula and changed TV in ways that is still producing fruit in 2016[6. One of which is having antiheroes as sitcom leads. Some of the most popular sitcoms of this century (The Office, Two and a Half Men, Big Bang Theory, etc.) feature central characters that are not people of integrity, at least most of the time. Michael Scott is a far cry from Michael Seaver.]. A DEEP, DARK CHASM Beyond how much their selfishness messed up their lives, I now appreciate the honesty in how they confess their lives are unfulfilled as a result: We re all unhappy, do we have to be fat, too? (Elaine,

4 complaining about too many cake celebrations at work) My world suddenly has meaning! (Kramer, finding out Pam liked him) So you began to ask yourself if maybe there is more to life? Let me tell you something: There isn t. (Kramer, explaining to Jerry why marriage is a bad idea) Something s missin. There s a void, Jerry, there s a void. (George, on not finding a woman) As a Christian I think this is how it should be. That is the message of Ecclesiastes. But the huge difference between Seinfeld and Solomon is that Seinfeld, because it is fiction, aims to make it funny instead of depressing. Make no mistake, this is all played for laughs. Unlike a show like Friends, there are no serious moments, especially in romantic relationships. No sappy break ups or wedding proposals, no Emmy votes for best kiss, no audience cheering because she got off the plane. Only Jerry going out with a woman several times without remembering her name, Kramer getting thrown in the Hudson river (in a sack!) at the end of a date, and George dating his cousin because his parents (whom he dislikes) are ignoring him. there are no serious moments, especially in romantic relationships. No sappy break ups or wedding proposals, no Emmy votes for best kiss, no audience cheering because she got off the plane. Only Jerry going out with a woman several times without remembering her name, Kramer getting thrown in the Hudson river (in a sack!) at the end of a date, and George dating his cousin because his parents (whom he dislikes) are ignoring him. EVERYTHING WITH YOU HAS TO BE SO JOKEY. I M A COMEDIAN. And of course, this extended to all areas. Everything was

5 funny: racism, cancer, Hell. Nothing was off limits. This is what happens when God is dead and becomes an irrelevant punchline. But what fascinates me is how this contrasts to and intersects with real life. Over Thanksgiving weekend in 2006, Michael Richards (Kramer) became the center of an ugly controversy when he hurled ethnic slurs at two guys heckling him at a comedy club in LA. It was a terrible news story. A few days after this happened, Jerry was on David Letterman and he asked Dave if he could beam Richards into the show via satellite so that Richards could apologize. It was too soon after the event in my opinion. And it did not go over well. Mainly for one reason that I will remember til the day I die: When Richards appeared on the big screen with the saddest look on his face and began to try to explain how sorry he was, the studio audience began to laugh. Why? I m not positive, but maybe because this was Kramer they were seeing. They could not look at him and not find him funny. He wasn t a real man with a real problem; he was entertainment. That wasn t all. When the audience laughed, Jerry commented It isn t funny. That struck me like a lightening bolt. Here was a man who for nine years, over 180 episodes of sitcom gold, gave us permission to laugh. At everything. And now in real life, the laughter didn t stop. THE BAD BOYS OF POSTMODERN TV (DR. HOLLEY WOULD BE PROUD) Other shows like the Simpsons, Family Guy and Southpark, took the God is irrelevant and therefore a joke and so everything is funny to new levels. And I have to wonder if that doesn t effect culture in a potent way. I remember working with a group of middle schoolers in inner city Chicago a few years ago and they often talked about these shows as their favorites. One time we took the kids to see a play about Anne Frank. In the play they very appropriately but still very realistically tried to portray what happened to her. And one of the students in our group, as Anne Frank was about to be abused, shouted out a vulgarity and many of the students in

6 our group started laughing. The teachers I was with were horrified. Sometimes I wonder if this didn t happen because they were reacting as if it were an episode of Family Guy. I m sure apologists for Seinfeld or any of these shows would say, It s just TV. But the examples of both Richards and these middle school students proves that life not only imitates art, the lines are easily blurred when philosophy is involved. I want to laugh at Jerry s If this isn t about me, I ve pretty much lost interest because it s so absurdly honest. But I don t want to live it. As far as Seinfeld, this doesn t make me want to quit watching the show. It just makes me want to filter it correctly. Several years ago I was watching an episode where George says he thought his life was worse because his parents stayed together. And of course the audience laughs. And a friend of mine whose parents did divorce was sitting right there and said, You have no idea how not funny that is. That s kind of the takeaway I ve come to on this topic. I still would go crazy if I ever met Jerry or Jason Alexander or JLD or Michael Richards. My wife and I will still go through the whole series this summer (3rd time for her, too many to count for me). But there will be about four episodes we don t watch because they are too crass. And we won t find all of it funny. We will read and study the Bible daily and live God s will (imperfectly) when not watching TV so that it serves a good purpose. I realize this has been heavier than a typical Seinfeld article, so I vow that the next one will be on something like the greatness of George Constanza and a lot funnier. But this does matter to me. I want to laugh at Jerry s If this isn t about me, I ve pretty much lost interest because it s so absurdly honest. But I don t want to live it. Life is very

7 much about something. Something important and bigger than myself. Jesus is alive and God is relevant. And so I live in an opposite way as the New York Four. And as a result I have kept jobs, have a good, non-prison marriage and it s very unlikely I ll ever be going to trial for breaking any laws based on the Bible. :)