Seinfield: was there anything wrong with that?

[Namehere]

I fail to see the point of this thread. Four words, one show: ?All In The Family.? If you feel like being offended there's a lovely place to start. Really, check it out. If there's a lack of entries in TV Tropes for the show, it's probably because they were original in their offensiveness and nobody's tried doing anything like it since. This is a show whose catch phrase was a flushing toilet. Check it out. What, it's just twenty years older then Seinfeld, surely still worthy of attention if Seinfeld is, and full of ammunition for you? Let's not forget, this show ran right along side shows like M*A*S*H. Of course that show was pretty evil as well, I mean the black doctor in the first few episodes was nicknamed 'Spear Chucker Jones.' I wonder if that hit TV Tropes or if it too was the original outrage?

I wonder... Have you ever, in all your life, heard a black person verbally assaulted as 'Spear Chucker?' I haven't. Not once. It is a racially pejorative term though, and was used on television. Hmm... Wonder why it died off?

Again, what was the point of this thread? I'm really at a loss.

Consider that the original Star Trek came out before any of the shows we're talking about? Think about it... Now consider that maybe popular culture isn't all you'd like to think it is. Remember, Captain Kirk was necking with a black woman... years before Archie was flushing for the crowds. This is not a valid measuring stick, least of all when one considers that Seinfeld was 'trying' to be a tongue in cheek comedy.

So again I ask; thread, point, was? Still quite out to sea on this one...

Oh wait! Wait! It's a thread about nothing, right? Right? I get it... I get it! God, this thread's as funny as Seinfeld was.

 

[happyninja42]

So I get the mindset of why a disclaimer of "not that there's anything wrong with that" would be needed in the American culture, as I've seen it in action.

Still wasn't funny with Seinfeld, because that show sucked.

Excuse the upcoming rant, but finally I found someone else who didn't care for Seinfeld. Yes. This is what was wrong with that. To me, it was just stupid. People always say the show was remarkably clever and witty (or at least remarkably on point) to have these sort of jokes in what was otherwise, as someone else here described it, "a show about nothing". I don't. The show was so bare in its focus on the mundane routine of everyday life through the lens of such self absorbed people. I might sound pretentious, but it's not like I think something needs to be overly intellectual or overly insightful or overly complex to be good. I got what it was going for and I just find no merit in such things. To be honest, I just don't care for the format of a majority of sitcoms. The things I always find most funny tend to come out of everything BUT that genre interestingly.

Yeah pretty much my feelings as well. I never found the show funny, but then I've never found most sitcoms funny. They don't actually make me laugh, at all. A few have over the 30+ years I've been watching tv sure, but I could probably count them on one hand. The rest were just...not my type of humor, that's probably the most polite way to put it.

 

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

I think you guys are missing the point. The joke was a double jab at both political correctness and homophobia.

It took a shot at the PC world of the nineties because literally every time George and Jerry expressed their concern about being mistaken for a gay couple, they followed it up with "not that there's anything wrong with that." It suggests that you can't express a potentially controversial opinion without some kind of safety net.

At the same time, it mocked homophobia since George and Jerry are effectively saying "hey, there's nothing wrong with it...as long as it's not applied to me."

For a "show about nothing", it was actually pretty clever in that way.

Nailed it.

"Not that there's anything wrong with that" is a reflexive mantra that you still hear often.

 

[klaynexas3]

If you are that concerned that someone might think you are gay then surely there is "something wrong with that"

That depends on what kind of "wrong" you're asking about. Morally so, no, you are capable of not wanting to be associated with something while still seeing nothing morally wrong with it. Now, you might not like it yourself, find it odd or weird or something, and in that regard, you could say they see it as "wrong," but I think that's a total stretch. That's just a personal taste kind of thing. You can find something weird and alien without seeing it as wrong.

 

[happyninja42]

If you are that concerned that someone might think you are gay then surely there is "something wrong with that"

Not really. Its more concern about social consequences of it. There's very real reasons to be concerned about being perceived as gay even if you aren't, as you may be the victim of misdirected hate by idiots. For example, I know a guy who is straight and does drag occassionally. He's been on the receiving end of physical violence because he's presumed to be gay even though he's not. Then there's other practical matters that aren't so severe, such as the assumption leading to a less likely chance to find a partner.

Not to mention that in the episode a journalist was writing about Jerry as being gay. I can kind of see why a straight man would object to being publicly outed as gay. Especially a man as shallow as Jerry who would indeed be afraid of it hurting his chances of getting laid. He also is a celebrity, that's the sae season he appears on the Tonight Show and gets a TV deal. a public figure, being publicly outed falsely? I think most people might take issue with that.

It's not homophobic. The entire point of it is they're afraid of people thinking they're gay and they're afraid people will think they're bigotted. Jerry and George's vanity made them afraid of being seen as closed minded. The entire point was to make fun of homophobia and political correctness. I mean the episode did win a GLAAD Media Award.

I dunno, I don't see why he would be afraid of the publicity he would get from the article, accurate or not. He would get tons of exposure, and probably even more when he tries to set the record straight. And as someone who was mistaken for being gay by a group of people in my social circle at that time (highschool), I didn't have any issue with women. It was quite easy to say "nope, I am in fact, quite straight. I am a fan of vaginas, let me show you." Which defused the discussion pretty easily.

 

[freaper]

I've been watching tons of "Whose Line Is It Anyway?", an improv show that started in the late 90's, and there are a lot of those jokes flying around.

"The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there."
-L.P. Hartley