Hamstrung by dinner party etiquette, driven to distraction by bakery bureaucracy, poisoned by a cookie (breaking Jerry’s 14-year no-vomit streak) and blocked in by Saddam Hussein (maybe), the friends’ scream-inducing outing makes going to a dinner party seem like a living nightmare. There is a strand of Seinfeld episodes that deal exclusively in mind-bending exasperation: this is one of them. The Dinner Party (season five, episode 13) But this is Seinfeld, so instead of the usual wisecracking, we have a profound meditation on death, a throwaway subplot involving Scientology and absolutely zero consolation by the episode’s end, when Kramer car fails to start. Misplacing a car at a multistorey car park is a premise that could fuel many a sitcom. The Parking Garage (season three, episode six) As a character, the Pakistani restaurant owner Babu Bhatt is uncomfortably cartoonish, but what saves this episode (and makes it a classic) is that the joke is squarely on Jerry and his self-congratulatory interior monologue. George’s plan to fake an IQ test goes awry, while Jerry provides business advice to the owner of a failing eatery in the smuggest – and most misguided – way possible. A subplot in which Elaine calls out sexism is a rare jaunt into progressive territory. The show had more than its fair share of great guest stars, and the season eight finale sees three collide: Amanda Peet plays Jerry’s demanding new girlfriend, Molly Shannon is Elaine’s stiff-armed colleague and Raquel Welch appears as a terrifyingly aggressive version of herself. Photograph: NBC/NBCUniversal/Getty Images David Lavery and Sara Lewis Dunne (Middle Tennessee State University), Preface.Michael Richards as Cosmo Kramer and Raquel Welch as herself in The Summer of George. "Part of Popular Culture": The Legacy of Seinfeld Section 1. "Giddy-Up!": Introductions Albert Auster (Fordham University), Much Ado About Nothing: Some Final Thoughts on Seinfeld David Marc (Syracuse University), Seinfeld: A Show (Almost) About Nothing Bill Wyman, Seinfeld Reflections on Seinfeld Section 2. "Maybe the dingoes ate your baby": Genre, Humor, Intertextuality Michael Dunne (Middle Tennessee State University), Seinfeld as Intertextual Comedy Barbara Ching (University of Memphis), They Laughed Unhappily Ever After: Seinfeld, Situation Comedy, and the Encounter with Nothingness Dennis Hall (University of Louisville), Jane Austen, Meet Jerry Seinfeld Amy McWilliams (Texas A & M), Genre Expectation and Narrative Innovation in Seinfeld Section 3. "If I like their race, how can that be racist?": Gender, Generations, and Ethnicity Joanna L.
Di Mattia (Monash University), Male Anxiety and the Buddy System in Seinfeld Matthew Bond, "Are they having babies just so people will visit them?": Parents and Children on Seinfeld Jon Stratton (Curtin University of Technology), Seinfeld is a Jewish Sitcom, Isn't It: Ethnicity and Assimilation on 1990s American Television Section 4. "It is so sad, all your knowledge of high culture comes from Bugs Bunny cartoons": Cultural, Pop Cultural, and Media Matters Geoffrey O'Brien, The Republic of Seinfeld Sara Lewis Dunne (Middle Tennessee State University), Seinfood: Purity, Danger, and Food Codes on Seinfeld Eleanor Hersey (Fresno Pacific University), "It'll Always Be Burma to Me": J. Peterman on Seinfeld Elke van Cassel (Radboud University Nijmegen), Getting the Joke: Seinfeld from a European Perspective Michael M. Epstein (Southwestern University School of Law), Mark C. Reeves (Texas Tech University), From Must-See-TV to Branded Counter Programming: Seinfeld and Syndication Section 5. "Get Out!": Back Pages Betty Lee, Seinfeld Lexicon Seinfeld Episode and Situation Guide (by David Lavery) Seinfeld Intertexts and Allusions Contributors Bibliography Index Afterword David Lavery, Middle Tennessee State University, with Marc Leverette, Colorado State University, Re-Reading Seinfeld after Curb Your Enthusiasm Section 6. Readers familiar with academic cultural studies aren't likely to tingle with anticipation when our eyes fall on a scholarly article from the Centre for Women's Studies and Gender Research at Monash University in Melbourne.
We expect to be rewarded, at best, with the warm feeling of virtue that follows the performance of a duty requiring heavy lifting.But it turns out that Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer, whose program ceased production in 1998 but still circles the planet in endless reruns, provide as much fun for academics as for the rest of us.ĭi Mattia's essay, Male Anxiety and the Buddy System in Seinfeld, does nothing to lighten our mood.
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