Too bad you are not a bit older. If you were, you would have grown up watching Hogan’s Heroes, which had the best TV Nazi’s of all.
3
So you are what you post?
2
Can people just for once relax and enjoy a comedy or show at face value. My god this author is a buzz kill. It’s a sitcom. Get a grip.
5
You're no Joan Didion.
2
The text of the article belies its headline. The author makes glancing reference to the Charlotttesville rioters, whose chant "Jews will not replace us" does indeed echo the anti-Semtism of Nazi propaganda.. But we need a further analysis of the current administration's parallels with the era of Hitler and Mussolini.
1
Indeed we have fallen! There are few Americans living now who remember the incredible evils of National Socialism (Nazis). Most American High School students are not taught about them or the Holocaust and some, mostly Trump supporters, still endorse this ultimate evil.
When we hear that Trump's acts and Tweets resemble much of Hitler's rise to power, it horrifies too few. The similarities are striking: suppression of truth, demonization of independent media, use of lies and fake propaganda, hate- and fear-mongering, demonization of minorities (in Trump's case, "brown people" with undoubtedly Jews to follow,low), endorsement of violent hate groups and acts of terror, invalidation of intelligence and law enforcement and finally a take-over of an independent and impartial judicial system.
Look at this and compare Trump's actions to Hitler's. Soon Trump will activator his own version of the Brown Shirts, especially if he loses or is losing the next election. Using his toady Barr, he will criminalize our justice system and probably involve us in a war so he can declare another "emergency" and further circumvent our Constitution.
If he and his former Republicans are not stopped, we will become that which we hate most - a Fascist, Nazi nation under the control of a narcissistic madman.
7
This is criminal. I love Seinfeld. It's about nothing. Imbuing "nothing" with this pseudo-intellectual pabulum is the worst kind of scholarly nonsense.
Halfway through I started muttering "yadda, yadda, yadda" to myself.
5
Skin heads, and Prozac were around.
As Sgt. Hulka said in Stripes: "Lighten up, Francis."
5
Jibber-jabber about yadda-yadda. lol
2
Yadda, yadda, yadda, pretentious.
"I'm out!"
4
A key element of Coupland’s Generation X is that the ironic positions result from the fatalism of spending your childhood believing you’d die in a nuclear holocaust anyway, so nothing really mattered. It’s not really a post-Cold War ethic.
2
"I can’t help thinking that there is a place for irony in our cultural discourse,..."
Yes, there is a place--The "comments" in the New York Times
5
There were actual Nazis in Seinfeld. See The Limo (Season 3, Episode 19). It's hilarious.
5
I feel like the author wrote this piece with a heavy dose of irony.
1
Oh, there's a tremendous amount of irony among trolls (and some government officials) on the political right, if you're paying attention. "That was a joke! You're too serious." Or you suffer from some derangement syndrome, or are a conspiracy theorist. (wink, wink) It turns out it serves the objectives of gaslighting and dog-whistling well.
1
Irony is alive, if not well - ref. Pepe the Frog. The nudge-nudge wink-wink solipsism that undergirds Trumpism is little removed from the casual certainty that gave rise to the Nazis of yore. Those who object to the author's conflating fascists past and present would do well to consider what might have been had sufficient folks been aware of where Nitzschean navel-gauzing was likely to lead.
What he said.
Real nazis now? No political angst in the 90’s? Remember the Montana Militia and that whole movement? Ruby Ridge? Oklahoma City? This stuff isn’t new, the author just wasn’t paying attention.
6
Article about Gen X and irony? Whatever.
15
The show was funny-funny.
But "The Honeymooners" was way more NYC than the white-bread fantasy world of "Seinfeld," where there weren't any freaks, cranks, crackies, fire engines and ambulances going by or more than just a black dude here and there, a latino waiter whom George accidentally got fired or a single visible gay person. One of the things Manhattan forces you to do is to mix with others completely unlike yourself at the park, at the store, on the subway and on the street.
It's still funny. It's just more like, say, Tarrytown or White Plains than NYC.
2
Isn’t that why David Foster Wallace wrote Infinite Jest?
2
Good article. It is in fact our lack of conviction (coupled with our lack of ethics) that got us into this mess. That and the abandonment of justice. No society can withstand for long, the ceaseless march of evil men, if its citizens lack conviction, ethics, and a passion to hand out justice to those evil men.
2
I suppose I'm about the same age as the author. 1989 was the year Nazis overran the punk rock scene where I'm from, and I still have scars from fighting them. There was nothing to do for money in those days; young people were doing crimes and drugs and going to jail and getting assaulted and worse in there. (The author seems to forget that our youth was the peak of both violent crime and the War on Drugs.) We were still expecting a nuclear war. The irony came from hopelessness, not privilege. The apocalypse has been a much slower burn than I ever expected but it ain't NOT here.
2
As well intentioned as the deconstructionists and post-modernists were, they had a hand in the current state of what passes as civic discourse and truth. As an X-er, the only thing I ever saw as “bogus” was Bush I Administration’s politicizing and denying of climate change.
1
Things are definitely a lot worse now than they were in the Nineties. That's the point of this article - although I'm not sure if the author realises it. The author seems genuinely trapped in his personal perspective. As other comments have pointed out, the world was just as serious a place during Seinfeld as it is now, but it wasn't so bad, so we all enjoyed Jerry's selfish disengagement.
Sure, like me, you could be laughing at Seinfeld while working in your free time to try to stop George H. W. Bush from killing a generation of young Iraqi conscripts with B-52 strikes in order to "liberate" a medieval dictatorship from Saddam Hussein in order to restore that medieval dictatorship (nobody tried to impose "democracy" on the King of Kuwait after Bush won his war).
But what we are talking about here is how the great majority of people were not engaged in the world in the same way that Seinfeld was not engaged. You can't export the job of standup comedian, but Elaine was certainly working for a globalist in the fashion industry - about the only glimmer of the real world we ever saw in Seinfeld. Too many people were just watching TV while their future was being exported to China for a $3-per-hour workforce.
The Nineties will go down in history as the decade where we could have reversed global warming, but things were too cosy for most people to bother... Isn't that ironic? We got the real nazis because most people thought politics was all "yadda, yadda, yadda". They still do.
2
It looks like Randy is getting slammed by some readers, but as a child of the passionate sixties (a generation before) I found the nineties aversion to engaged world views disorienting and (yes this is my judgement) wrong headed and arrogant-
1
tl:dr summary: Even though every generation throws the previous generation under the bus, this time it's different!
2
63 years old here. I recall the horror of the Kennedy assassination. The horror of the mindless Vietnam War and the schism it created - as well as the horrors of what was going on the south with regard to Civil Rights (or lack thereof). The horror of Nixon and the relief of his getting caught and resigning. The horror of Newt. The horror of Ronald Reagan (oh, how I drank the night he became elected - somehow it felt as if it were the beginning of something really bad, with Trump as a direct descendant). And on and on....and now we have the horror of Trump (which of course wasn't too far from the horror of Dubya).
What's strange is how many of those horrors had right wing/republican/conservative perps. And look at our horrors today? The world is burning up, there is unstoppable gun violence everywhere, and hope is hard to find with our spineless republican congress getting steamrolled by an orange faced idiot.
TV is to make us laugh. History during my lifetime so far has so many instances that make me cry.
2
I mean, I went door to door for the Democrats on 92, when I was a mere slip of a girl. I marched in the big pro-choice march on washington the same year. I had, yes, passionate! back and forths in bars with my peers over Pat Buchanon's "we will take back our country street by street" nazi speech at the republican convention. The 90's were a very involved, and politically passionate time for me. Kicked off by the Hill hearings, which were my feminist awakening.
This article honestly sounds very male. Having old men grab me at work just prior to Anita Hill, didn't give me your luxuries. I guess old man hands get you woke, fast.
3
"The characters in “Seinfeld” occupy a sheltered, privileged outpost at the end of history. Jerry’s apartment, and the wider expanse of Manhattan that he and his friends inhabit, is a kind of satellite reality where all of the suffering and pain and tragedy of human history has been definitively put to rest — either by virtue of having been resolved, rendered irrelevant, forgotten, deemed too boring to worry about or, most typically, sublimated into performative anxieties that are essentially comic."
Save us from academics pontificating on TV comedy. Seinfeld is about "nothing". "Nothing" is and was many people's lives whether in the Upper West Side or any place else.
And the real Nazis, Prof. Laist, lived in Germany and fought against the Baby Boomers parents who thankfully defeated them.
Whatever there is now, they are not "real" Nazis or real Nazis.
5
You do realise that the book was written in 1985, right?
I am not sure if annoying, overblown pomposity is what the other was going for. But he nailed it. Especially, this passage supposedly describing Seinfeld and the Simpsons:
"All of these texts express in one way or another the ontological situation of existing in what Jean Baudrillard called a “hyperreal” register, a style of being in which the connection to a foundational reality has been definitively severed, or demonstrated never to have existed in the first place, leaving the postmodern subjects adrift in a free-floating cloud of arbitrary, interchangeable symbols."
I'm sure Bart and Jerry would agree. But seriously, if this guy thinks that the internet killed irony, then he hasn't spent much time online. Most people are sharing ironic memes and jokes, not moping about how Trump is literally Hitler.
Randy is clearly watching way too much Handmaid's Tale and reading way too many NYT editorials.
2
Mr. Laist nails it and although I love Larry David and much of what underscored the more worthwhile hilarity of the era, I dare say, with a deep resonance to the irony, #metoo! But let's not stop there. Honestly, who doesn't understand the pattern? You don't have to be a rocket scientist to see the thread between Weinstein, Church Pedophilia Coverups, the entirety of the 2008 Great Financial Crises, and what we're facing. Newsflash! Bad guys prey on weakness. Dystopia is weakness!
1
No mention of our President's always 'joking?'
“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” Yeats
More emblematic of our time is Mencken!
“As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
The plain folks of the land have indeed found their voice and it's not ironic -It's tragic!
1
Well, we never found out about the real Nazis, just something like them on TV. And we cherry-picked the shows. Why not "The Handmaid's Tale" vs. "Twin Peaks?" Why not "Seinfeld" vs. "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel?"
Yes, the 90s were different from now. We were awash in the promise of technology. The Berlin Wall had just fallen. We won the Gulf War. 9/11 hadn't happened. The Great Recession hadn't happened. Those were the days, my friend. We thought they'd never end. This was the future we'd put on shades for. Party like it's 1999!
And out of all of this change, what we're supposed to focus on is the irony THEN?
That, truly, is ironic. It's like 10,000 nuances when all you want is the truth. Dontcha think?
3
From the title, How We Went From ‘Soup Nazis’ to Real Nazis, I expected an essay on how we went from laughing at someone exhibiting Nazi control of soup on Seinfeld, to someone in similar control but flaunting our country's Constitution and the Rule of Law - not so funny.
1
I think? what the author is trying to say, in far more words, is that the cushier our existence the more trivial it tends to become.
4
Can't believe you didn't mention The Bizarro Jerry episode. It's a Bizarro world we currently live in.
The ironic detachment of Gen X was in response to the over-passionate intensity of the Boomer Generation. The world, we had been told, was a disaster, over-grown, falling apart with the threat of nuclear war hanging over our heads.
Turned out, it really wasn't that bad. We were being manipulated on the left and the right.
Sad to see us returning to a state where the manipulation of anxieties are seen as positive and a detached, objective understanding of a world full of both good and evil is presented as wrong.
Millennials will become disillusioned like the Boomers before them because they set their expectations of humanity too high. They will consume themselves in the same nihilism and lack of faith in institutions that give us Trump's America.
4
A detached objective understanding of a world full of good and evil is exactly the Weimar-Republic indifference that led the world to catastrophe. Never assume that you can’t make choices and support the good guys.
2
Ah, The Truman Show: one of the precursors to the current fad of "reality" TV. How ironic that the continuous 24/7 attention paid to Truman is exactly what trump aspires to and that he, trump, was elected only because of his reality TV fame.
3
This op-ed should be required reading for all boomer-hating millennials.
Many of us boomers NEVER gave up our principles, idealism, social and environmental conscience and political involvement, but could find about ZERO traction with "ironic" Gen X-ers. There was no way to get Gen X involved when they had convinced themselves it was "cool" to be detached, apathetic and apolitical. Gen X-ers dropped the ball, delaying and compounding the problems we face today.
As a boomer, I saw this unfold in real time - deplored it then, and find it oh-so-ironic to be blamed for it now.
27
@gw
At last, a comment with merit. (I think this esoteric, academic op-ed confused and lost most readers; it went over their heads, so they, in turn, just went off on their probably retreaded, irrelevant tangents.)
8
@Jim Muncy
Sounds like a worthwhile effort.
I’m impressed with the quality of the rsvps and retorts.
1
@gw
Jerry Seinfeld is a boomer. As is Donald Trump, Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, etc.
4
Many Gen-Xers witnessed the generation before them code-switch and sell out to the Conservative revolution in the 1980s and took a swan dive into cold consumerism, after years of proclaiming to be the liberated generation from the 1960s and 1970s. That was a profound and stark turn around. Also, Gen-Xers witnessed how those folks that didn't conform to the Conservative revolution were ridiculed so severely for being such an anachronism.
Therefore, Gen-Xers perceived that holding on to strong convictions seemed like a fool's errand, and they also witnessed an American national government in the 1980s normalizing corruption without penalty (Iran-Contra). The moneyed class in America have been the leaders in moral relativism to fabricate their destructive lust for extreme wealth and power into a necessary salve for American prosperity. How ironic is that?
93
How We Went From ‘Soup Nazis’ to Real Nazis is answered in two simple words: Donald Trump. Donald Trump normalized the idea that "Real Nazis" were fine people to walk with. In fact the GOP was always been a White Supremest party and all Donald Trump did was take off the hoods. This is why the GOP has largely not condemned him.
18
You came to the wrong conclusion. Progressives must employ "passionate intensity." Yadda, yada, yada intensity will be crushed by AR-15s.
6
Randy
The current state of America is what happens when we pay more attention to overgrown men bashing each other on a field (football) and less to the quality of our policies let alone our literature. When was the last time you looked up the voting record of your two senators : Chris Murphy and Richard Bloomenthal ? Now tell me, how many TDs did Yabadaba Doo throw in his last game against The Yahoos.
14
@Plato Oh sure, bash sports lovers in particular. Who can be ontologically serious all the time? What do you do when you give yourself a break? Personally I'd knock the reality tv and superhero movie watchers. You're not one of them are you?
2
@Plato We are trying to escape the SJW hypocrisy and enjoy the last vestiges of masculinity in the US.
Plus you can see by all the empty seats last weekend that fans are leaving the NFL in droves. For what I have no clue.
This is merely a comment on contemporary morés.
2
Well done
Yada, yada, yada!
12
This article gave me a bit of a headache. So I will ignore it and simply note why I love Seinfeld: it was supposedly a show about nothing but actually brilliantly satirizes a million and one facets of human behavior. George in particular seems to embody all the deadly sins. Gluttony (eating and having sex at the same time), lust (masturbating with a Vogue magazine), pride (pretending to be first an architect and then a marine biologist), sloth (pretending to be handicapped so he can ride a scooter rather than walking), envy (wanting his own private bathroom just like a CEO), wrath ("George is getting upset!"), and greed (wanting to be paid $800,000 an episode like Ted Dansen). He lies so much that a character who wants to beat a lie detector test is asked sarcastically "who do you think you are George Costanza?!" He is so self-destructive and neurotic that he abandons a woman who likes him for one who despises him becasue "a woman who hates you this much only comes around once in a lifetime." Basically Seinfeld was about everything---everything it means to be human and wildly imperfect. It was completely unflinching and uncompromising (after the first few seasons). It characters weren't "woke" but that was sorta the point.
65
Bah humbug. Can we not overthink this and turn a sitcom about nothing (actually it’s just about being human) into an academic exercise? Just like Jackie Gleason, I Love Lucy, Dick Van Dyke, the Simpsons, All in the Family, Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, As You Like It, Midsummer Night’s Dream....we laugh because we’re laughing at ourselves, our own foibles and idiosyncrasies. Good comedies set in time aren’t about the time; they’re about the stuff we do, or don’t do, that make us human. We relate to these characters. We don’t watch Buster Keaton and analyze his era and become filled with opinions. At least I hope not because if so, we’ve missed the point entirely. Let’s accept these commentaries as the timeless pieces they are. They’re lasting because just being human can be tragic AND hilarious. Thank God for humor to keep our wheels turning.
29
I miss the 90s.
23
Funny how Seinfeld has become the icon for a simpler time. The internet hadn't taken us by storm as yet and there was far more competent leadership in the White House. Indeed, you could ignore the news for a few days and be reasonably certain that things would not be disintegrating. Clinton was the archetype perpetual adolescent, just like Jerry - so the show was spot on about what that time was all about.
It is amazing that there are any comedians now. The PC blanket smothers everything - nothing is funny anymore and there are these ponderous horrors that never let up (trump, climate change, inequality)
I want to go back there.
22
When I was young the right wing stiffled intelligent conversation by accusing people of being a communist. For instance, I was a communist because I managed a food co-op. My sister was a communist because she was my sister. So then you had to explain that you weren't actually advocating a violent revolution by forming a private business owned by the consumers. Now the same thing is done on the left by calling people racist or sexist and other labels. The most effective one is "white privilege," which is a classic stereotype Some people think they are doing a good thing by not allowing the freedom of speech. I think the sad reason for these developments is that the 99% movement really shook up the establlishment, so corporate leaders had to find a way shift the focus and divide the working class. From Fox TV on the Right to NPR on the "left" we see increasing attention on issues that divide the working class along race and gender. Trump is a sympton, not the cause. If this were happening in another country like India, Ireland, or the former Yugoslavia, we could look at it with some objectivity, but it is hard to see the forest for the trees in your own neighborhood. The upper class has always stayed in power by dividing those below. There is nothing new here. It is a proven strategy that has worked throughout history here and elsewhere
6
I'm not really sure how to take this article. I escaped the '60s with a strong sense of what was right and wrong and my own honor, untouched by the stains of drug use so common in many of my peers. My oldest son was born in the spring of '70 while I was in my second year in the Navy, his brothers in '71 and '73. As I said at my wedding 10 years ago, two (my second son was flying a chopper in Afghanistan) were my best men at my wedding because they are the three best men I have ever known. That's not just a father's pride talking - it's a fact. They shared my disgust with the television of the '90s and later. When they turned on the TV, it was to watch the Discovery Channel or old Star Trek shows and the like. They were as disgusted as I was by the stink emanating from the Clinton White House and are as disgusted by the current worse stink there now. The short of what I'm saying is the young adults of the '90s should not be lumped together with the characters and cartoons of '90s TV. My wife does blame the '90s for the problems and attitudes of my three stepchildren, the oldest born in '85, the youngest in '89. Their formative years were filled with The Simpsons, Spongebob Squarepants, and Southpark. Although they are good adults, one raising two beautiful children very well, their childhood - teen years were very troubled with frequent crises. Their moral compasses do not always point True-North. Perhaps, '90s TV can be blamed for warping a generation, just not the right one.
3
A good essay, but your undergraduate students
perhaps aren’t Seinfeld aware enough, though
reruns begin streaming soon or already I read in that NYT subway tabloid wannabe section.
I am more of the Pleistocene era, the 1950s and 60s.
The nation has degenerated and I suppose is now uber de-moralized, but perhaps Vietnam was similarly so.
I love the internet as a life long introverted
information junkie, including early 1950s radio
programs that devolved into television.
The Life of Reilly presented by Pabst Blue Ribbon
and Ozzie and Harriet presented by Hotpoint
Appliances are lasting impressions, but tv did take away imagination, I perceive cliches as d true enough.
1
We have a record. One can just view either of David Letterman’s shows.
Also, a bit of romanticism in this piece, perhaps, for the Millineals? This age cohort worships and can quote any episode of Friends.
Trump just referred to himself yesterday in a tweet as "unmatched in wisdom". I think we have more than returned to irony.
6
God, I'm glad I never watched an episode of 'Seinfeld'.
1
The age of postmodernism, a trend that became a fad that characterized colleges and fenced out objectivity, was a simplistic caesura between two more grounded and serious eras.
Yes, we are now threatened by the "real nazis" and maybe we will rediscover our souls through real struggles.
Maybe that is good and will contribute to a renewal of our unique American civilization.
1
I see no connection between Seinfeld & Pulp Fiction. Tarantino films are full of characters facing serious moral challenges & questions, seeking -or in cases of moral defect or weakness, fleeing- meaningful connection to others & community & love. Usually every character must overcome life-determining threats of a physical or spiritual nature, with staggering consequences in the balance, with themes of transgression, penance, forgiveness & reconciliation (or its failure, often leading to death) running through all his films. Pulp Fiction, Django Unchained, Inglourious Basterds, & Kill Bill are the opposite of nihilistic: they presume moral absolutes that each character is challenged to adhere to. Among the core principles upheld are strong respect for women & compulsory mutual affection (not "tolerance," but something way beyond that: love) between races. His films are feminist & passionate affirmations of the creed espoused by Martin Luther King, Jr., a celebration of what our democracy ought to be. Whether race relations or proper tipping of underpaid service workers, & equitable sharing of burdens (both topics engaged in Reservoir Dogs, as in many other films more obviously), or the majesty of women's reproductive powers and maternal love (Kill Bill), or the virtue of hating (yes, hating) fascism and Nazis, marital fidelity (Pulp Fiction) Tarantino movies espouse & affirm clear moral principles, & attack nihilism. Seinfeld espoused 90's materialistic, hedonistic nihilism.
3
Born in 1926 I have no idea what gen fits me, but in this current world where the bulk of the national finance is devoted to manufacturing instruments of death and sending the military out to huge numbers of expensive military bases, where the blood and guts of the economy are firmly entrenched in fossil fuels, poisonous insecticides, destructive chemical fertilizers, and totally whacked out home security and federal bureaucracies that permit internal and external terrorists to regularly commit mass murder, the nation is energetically targeted pretty totally towards all forms of death rather than life and the final success on that score is undeniable and rather difficult to characterize as fun
5
I love both of these shows. Unfortunately, I had to stop reading this essay once you RUINED season 3 of Handmaid's Tale for me. Just stop, please!
1
I was between 5 and 15 in the 1990's, so I saw them through the lens of a child and a young teenager.
I have vague memories of the government shutdown, and political antics from the 90's from my CSPAN and CNN watching parents. And what strikes me is that while we were enjoying yadda, yadda, yadda, the party of Newt Gingrich was not laughing, they were seething and plotting. Fox News got its start in the 90's, and we had issues with militias and hate crimes against LGBT people being dragged through the Wyoming desert.
The other side has not changed, they just finally got the clown they wanted into office (Bush was a different kind of clown) , and now we have woke to the threat that they pose to us even in our coastal redoubts, and realize that yadda yadda yadda won't cut it anymore.
The nihilism in the modern era (which is what the author - though he seems not to be aware of it - is talking about) was definitely established when Galileo declared that which could be measured to be the primary reality.
There is a direct line from that idea to the declaration of Nobel Prize winning physicist, Steven Weinberg, that the more we learn about the universe, the more pointless and meaningless it is.
One of the greatest physicists of the 20th century, Werner Heisenberg, warned us not to take the discoveries of science as being necessarily about the "real" world. If we did, he warned, we would be left with the very pointlessness and meaninglessness that Weinberg nihilistically (and unscientifically) sees.
Heisenberg wrote, "It is not nature itself we are studying, but nature's responses to our questions."
And if the only questions that scientists ask begin with the exclusion of consciousness, intelligence, sensory experience, emotions, intuition, imagination, beauty, meaning and purpose, then it is absolutely inevitable that the answers will be nihilistic to the point that the universe seems meaningless and pointless.
If anybody comments on this, they will inform me that science doesn't deal with philosophy, it deals with "fact."
It's the confusion of nihilistic philosophy with fact that may lead to the end of human civilization.
Wake up.
What is it that is looking through your eyes, but your eyes don't see? (Kena Upanishad)
www.remember-to-breathe.org
3
To paraphrase Ruth Gordon, after she sat through an art history lecture by an esteemed conossieur using twenty-five dollar words and walked up front to meet him -- I didn't understand a word you said but I think it's just wonderful that you know so much.
7
The US has found its true identity.
I don't know where this fellow went to school but he should ask for a refund. The writing is almost unintelligible.
I think the point he is trying to make was beautifully illustrated in an essay by C. S. Lewis titled "The Poison of Subjectivism". It was probably written before the boomers came into being; so, we can dispense with all of the generational identifiers.
You can find a wonderfully illustrated "doodle" on You Tube by searching for the title plus the word doodle. I encourage anyone who wants to get a clear picture of what, I believe, this writer is trying, unsuccessfully, to elucidate.
This article appears so esoteric as to be only directed at a similar set of NY Times readers, whose comments also are esoteric.
As a doddering old senior citizen, even with my long ago liberal arts education, the point of this article escaped me. I am tired of all the re-runs of Seinfeld, and I hated that Handmaids Tale Show.
Was the point to show that this terrible series is emblematic of our current political situation and a warning for an authoritarian future to come if our democracy doesn't find a way to deal with its divisions?
Yes, it appears that this article was too esoteric for me to understand.
The trendy apathy of the 90s was stifling and counterproductive. Good riddance.
2
Actually, David Foster Wallace -- a Gen-Xer -- was making the critique of nihilistic, dead-end irony even in the 90s.
1
The ability to see both sides or inability to pick a side was probably exemplified in Seinfeld very well by 'The Parking Space' episode https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Parking_Space
And perhaps this is the also the deadlock now because what the rules are have become unclear. Ultimately, it ends with a knockout and time runs out.
A muddled essay at best, as most other commenters have noted.
However, if there's a point to be extracted about the nature of morality in the fictional 1990s world of Seinfeld and our own all-too-real Trumpocalypse, it may be this:
Seinfeld's ethos was deliberately amoral: It's uncool, dorky, to care too passionately about anything.
Our era's problem is that our morality lacks any notion of scale.
There's seemingly little difference in outrage generated between an Ivy League professor inadvertently using an un-"woke" phrasing and actual armed, marching Nazis murdering a young woman in Virginia. Between a Democratic candidate misspeaking and a "President" threatening "civil war" against anyone who dares to suggest holding him legally accountable for crimes.
If everything is an outrage, then nothing is really an outrage, so maybe we are back to the world of Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer.
7
Comments are interesting...I thought this a dense and clever piece. It wasn’t definitive, it’s ironic (get it?)...seems like it went over a lot of people’s heads.
2
Weak tea, weak tea. This is what happens when you take irony too seriously, with, dare I say it, not enough irony to snap you back into a claim or principle for which you are willing to stand and fight. It is the occupational hazard of the Hyper Reader. The man could use a Zen master, someone to whack him on the shoulders with a stick of good old fashioned reality.
words can clarify, but also muddle, thoughts. This essay's content falls mainly in the latter.
David Foster Wallace, a Gen-Xer, was already making this critique of sterile irony in the 90s.
This is what happens when you let guys whose sensibilities are essentially conservative get ahold of a little Baudrillard.
The author conflates entertainment with reality. There must be a D.S.M. category for that.
He is also apparently oblivious to the many, many current "soup nazis", such exemplified by the tendency to equate accusations from certain categories with guilt.
Laist's world seems small. If he doesn't want to make a few trips across America at ground level (ideally hitching), he might at least start listening to country music.
1
Thanks for giving away the ending to Handmaid's Tale with zero spoiler warning.
2
A good deal of the pomo existential dadaism of the era of Gen-X was the realization that we really did not have any political power, pinned down as we were by the supernumerous baby boomers whose collective narcissism, greed and selfishness is still a big part of our now desperately collapsing political landscape. All we could do was comment on how stupid it was while dodging the same scolding name-calling nonsense that they are now hurling at Millennials. Milennials, however, are ascendant and more numerous than the rapacious boomers die out. They have a lot more power than we did.
1
There are a lot of criticisms that could be made of "Seinfeld"; this one makes no sense to me. I didn't like the show because it featured exactly one female character and she was unpleasant. In fact most of the characters were unrelatable. I believe the success of "Seinfeld" and similar shows is that it appealed to the audiences' unconscious envy. The characters were kind of pathetic and the audience could say to themselves, "I'm superior to them." The next decade saw the rise of humiliation-based reality tv, which was the next step down in this descent.
10
"where any committed political or ideological point of view was correspondingly irrelevant, tone-deaf or simply uncool. "
Haha. You know what was uncool? Jerry Seinfeld's character with his shirt completely buttoned up to his neck, wearing pale dad-jeans belted above his navel, and his blindingly white sneakers. Who looked to Jerry for cool? As a young gay Xer in NYC in my 20s with some interest in style, (shallow of me!) he seemed like the opposite of cool.
Also uncool back then: staying home to watch network sitcoms (or watching TV at all) when you should have been out living your life. You're only young once!
13
The author conflates entertainment with reality. There must be a D.S.M. category for that.
He is also apparently oblivious to the many, many current "soup nazis", exemplified by the tendency to equate accusations from certain categories with guilt.
Laist's world seems small. If he doesn't want to make a few trips across America at ground level (ideally hitching), he might at least start listening to country music.
Sorry Randy, not sorry. I'm just a few years older than you, and my young years were defined my parents (ex-WWII GI, jobless scholar as woman were seldom hired) and their cousins and few living older relatives (all the rest mostly murdered by "the Germans"-we didn't differentiate between Nazis and non-Nazis, they were all complicit.) The wonderfulness of Seinfeld came from its total artificiality which afforded as escape from reality. You are confusing the
Although I never watched Seinfeld, nor did I find him funny in other situations, I was aware of the soup Nazi. I always wondered how that could ever have been funny. It was using the word Nazi in a frivolous way like people throw around the word Gestapo when they don't like police tactics. It demeans the horror that the word Nazi embodies. It wasn't funny then and I think people will be disappointed to find the show is not as funny as they remember.
2
“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night
2
Dude —your watching way too much TV. Go surf casting (bring a six pack), go to a ball game, take a hike in the woods, TV is not real. There is a world out there, go introduce yourself to it. Good luck.
2
This kind of academic naval gazing is far more "solipsistic" than Jerry's apartment.
5
I'm a GenXer who was thought weird for marching for divestment, attending Take Back the Night and supporting gay rights Thanks for figuring out what I've known for over 30 years - most of my peers are shallow jerks.
2
Welp, this piece didn't go over so well.
But I liked it and I thought it brought a lot of familiarity to what I've seen. I had a friend, Terry, who worked in the hardware store. My baseball-talk buddy. He hated Seinfeld, but never quite put his finger on what this author has done a good job with, I think.
Terry never denied Seinfeld was funny, just that it was the most strangely selfish program he ever saw....and of course it was meant to be. They all get thrown in jail for that.
I think Terry just didn't like laughing when he felt like maybe he shouldn't be laughing.
13
As a GenXer I have to say I had a completely different experience than the author in the 90's. It was a time when the two lofty aspirations of the Baby Boomer generation, the 60's and then the Reagan Era, merged into one hangover. A lot was accomplished during those times, but not all of it was good. There was an individualism that could sometimes have a mean and selfish edge to it. The only relief presented to us was to worship and depend on consumerism to solve any problems. Nirvana was screaming about a very dark and empty world, and for myself and my friends that world was real and the tragedies were playing out right before our eyes. There was nothing ironic about it.
Seinfeld was a reboot and modernization of good old Jewish/Yiddish humor. It was a great escape and a good laugh for me, but as soon as the credits rolled it was back to reality.
7
Here's what I find true and relevant from this essay:
"Our public discourse, increasingly taking place on the internet, also stifles comic irony. When we speak on the internet, we become existentially wedded to the things we say. In face-to-face conversation, there are many ways that I can indicate that I am only playing a role of a person saying these things, that I am just 'trying on' an idea in an ironic mode. I can play the popular Gen-X game, 'let’s converse as if I believed something I don’t really believe.' In the digital world, however, when I post something, it becomes a part of my 'profile.' The posted content becomes an aspect of how I exist in the world, and there is a self-reinforcing effect: I become invested in the self I express through the content I post. I am incentivized to align myself with those words, to close the gap between what I say and who I am, and this closure is fatal to irony, which depends on the self-conscious presence of such a gap." True and useful to remember.
3
The column has an interesting premise but certainly doesn’t warrant the be-all-end-all attention he gives it. As someone about the same age as the author, I think perhaps he had shallow friends and spent too much time in front of a television in his 20s. I like Seinfeld as much as the next guy, but it hardly typifies the zeitgeist of the time. As a society we’ve been forced by current events in to a more politically engaged stance, but there was plenty of substance and earnest reflection to be found back then if one was interested. The big difference is that it was avoidable if one wanted to avoid it. Sounds like he did.
4
This column feels very much like cherry picking to make the point the author wants to make. The author chooses Seinfeld because of its immense popularity; but why is the far-less popular Handmaid's Tale the equivalent?
How about Big Bang Theory, the massively popular show that is every ounce as apolitical and aloof as Seinfeld? (It has finished its run, but there is now a very popular spinoff). It seems that this kind of entertainment is as popular as it ever was.
Handmaid's Tale was a book written in the 1980s which almost immediately became a staple of college lit courses, certainly remaining so throughout the 1990s. Why is it not a product of that time?
10
I remember reading a review in the 1990s that complained that the work under consideration was "devoid of irony", as if that was a requirement. Maybe it was because the author had something serious to say?
The nineties pop culture presented through Jerry and George, Ellen and Kramer was only the East and West coast phenomena, the vast middle America was not there. This vast Middle America now in the new century are the driving force of pop culture and we are seeing their display in the Trump campaign meetings and Charlottesville. These are two different worlds - Sainefield and Hillbilly’s. All these time we thought the other cultural force was not there and we took the society to a direction where “Winners take all” and “Meritocracy Trap” gradually grow as a powerful Banyan Tree and we are now challenged to get ride of it. It is not any more a joke or momentary passion - it is a real life tipping point of our culture. Either the institutional and deep culture will endure this shift or we will face the similar situation like the Middle Ages in Europe.
What about Roseanne?
1
By now Baudrillard is just part of the ahistorical movement of the last quarter of the last century—one of those movements that equates thinking with becoming tired of thinking. The pomo mantra might accurately be described as “gosh, I never would have seen that if I hadn’t believed it.”
Trump’s asking his followers to do the same thing.
Sadly, irony never brought about change. The (out)rage of the previous generation - my generation - ended the Vietnam War and brought about greater civil rights. And now, YOUR kids are going to bring us back to sanity and away from what Alan Greenspan called "infectious greed." Sorry your generation has been so cool.
2
The article itself is an example of what the author is arguing we should reintroduce to the culture. The harsh comments, which tag the professor with his words without considering that he may be writing ironically, are predictable based on the article itself. Nicely done, professor!
4
Yeah, for the record, some of us spent the 1990's borderline-homeless and working for minimum wage as fundraisers for environmental groups, trying to get action on global heating. Sometimes we would mix up the routine by getting ourselves teargassed and pepper-sprayed at protests against nightmarish global corporate trade deals like the Multilateral Agreement on Investment. (You know, the kinds of trade deals the Trumpkins are now so mad about, though they had nothing but contempt for us at the time.)
You can tell who we are because we don't own houses, having spent that golden interregnum between Cold War and Hot Real Estate Market trying to deal with real problems instead of gathering venture capital for our online-lobster-sales startups. (Or doing Ph.d's in the study of our mother tongue, for that matter.)
18
You've completely misread Yeats. His point that the best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity is that this is the condition in which the world falls apart. The saving condition is when the best are full of passionate intensity and the worst lack all conviction. As a Boomer, I saw in the 1990s that the danger of irony and post-structural theory was precisely that it would lead to the current condition.
Most generations think the world was better when they were in their 20s. The '90s were better than the Teens, but that period's "sublimation" of irony set the stage for today's ills. Rather than pine for Seinfeld's privileged, convictionless irony, I pine for the passionate intensity of ACTUP, Karen Finley, and Spike Lee.
9
Lotsa fancy-schmanzy locutions in this piece to show that the writer has professorial pretensions. Maybe I'm dense, but as good as the show was, I don't see how you can reasonably connect "Seinfeld" to contemporary politics. It was a comedy show, very good in its way, but irrelevant to the current impeachment morass, the Democrats have placed us in. And the Handmaids Tale, not so funny. What's the point, prof?
11
@heyomania
True that TV is entertainment and not a validation of anything but consumption. True also that trump has betrayed our trust and has placed us in this current impeachment morass.
2
@hey-oh-mania
"the current impeachment morass, the Democrats have placed us in."
Now that is rich, while none other than the corrupt maniac in the Oval Office has publicly - even in front of cameras and in tweets - impeached himself.
His newest act of corruption is not letting the incompetent hotelier and ambassador to the EU, Sondland, the one who bought that position for a check of $1 million to Herr Trump's inauguration committee, to testify in behind closed doors to the co-equal branch of the government.
2
Laist has written an interesting essay, but it ends by leaving me frustrated: what is the reason for the strange dystopian world in which we live? Surely it is pathological, but pathology begs for corrective action, and such action must be informed by understanding. Missing in his essay is any hint of informed corrective action.
While a postmodernist disconnect from any ideational foundation strikes me as peculiarly Western, it seems related to a much wider disconnect from any social foundation. What could be the reason for this? It may be that in our late capitalist world people are being reduced to a commodity, merely a social force of production available in the labor market. This disconnects the person from any foundation on which to assess truth, value, human dignity. Disconnected from any social location, people are mobilized in a desperate search for biological reproduction, with a loss of social and of species being. The empty hedonism of the isolated individual brings no pleasure.
What might be a corrective action? Such a situation begs for it. I believe social being can only be reconstructed through a joint struggle to develop social needs at an immediate level. Because such struggle is impossible in the face of the class contradiction, it can only be carried out by the global working class. The struggle implies real democracy, although this has seldom been tried but on a small scale.
2
This is an inaccurate and horribly thought-through piece. First and foremost: literally every show the author mentions -- Seinfeld and the rest -- were created by Baby Boomers (as was the Handmaids Tale). Gen-X'ers, as he noted, were in their 20's or early 30's, too young to have an impact.
Second, and most importantly, the internet is barely mentioned, even then, the most important part omitted. Despite that the author is streaming The Handmaid's Tale, he neither mentions nor discusses how streaming has vastly increased the amount and quality of media available.
He discusses "first world problems" while entirely omitting that there was no world wide web to connect to the rest of the world. Let's repeat that: Mosaic, the first web browser, was released in 1993 but usable only by the geekiest. There effectively was no web.
The change in popular culture, and the dark turn the world has taken, is an interesting topic. However, this essay entirely misses the mark.
6
He's not suggesting Seinfeld was made by Gen Xers (although I bet some were involved). He discusses the effect it had on Gen Xers' world view, which is not the same thing.
1
"... created by Baby Boomers (as was the Handmaids Tale)."
Nope. Margaret Atwood was born in 1939.
"There effectively was no web."
What an incredibly crippled view of the history of communication by technological means.
Books, magazines, telegraphy, telephones, movies, radio, and television predate the "web". As do pre-recorded movies -- VHS was released in 1977.
See, for example:
* "The Victorian Internet : the remarkable story of the telegraph and the nineteenth century's on-line pioneers" by Tom Standage.
* "Marconi : the man who networked the world" by Marc Raboy.
1
There are two differences between then and now. Speech on social media - accessible and semi-permanent is the first. Mix that with increasing intolerance for any deviation from perfection and you get our sociopolitical landscape.
Of course most people don't really care about either. A few unlucky souls get caught up in this mess, but the rest go on with their daily lives focusing on mundane issues like work and making sure the kids have breakfast before school etc.
The kinds of ruminations in this opinion piece are only relevant to the chattering classes. Most of the proles, including myself, don't care. We have real work and living to get on with.
2
Reintroduce irony? Defined as the use of words to convey a meaning that is opposite of its literal meaning. This presumes "irony" exists in some kind of vacuum. Without a substantive foundation of truth from which to engage, this notion of irony is empty.
9
The Handmaid’s tale was a film in the 90s
10
@Jennifer I'm pretty sure it came out in 1989, maybe early 1990.
irony ?
I've read that was a distinguishing feature of cross-Atlantic mis-communications.
English as all-irony - US as no irony to be found.
But hey I didn't grow up watching Seinfeld - so maybe I missed it there.
4
@Frank That British trope "Americans don't do irony" is a tired stale cliché usually coming from people who don't know what they're talking about.
I love Seinfeld, and it's perfect Manhattan attitude.
For me a Boomer, I miss Norman Lear. Lear wrote shows reflecting the social and political upheaval of the 1970's. His shows had casts reflecting perhaps the first rainbow coalition in television (All in the Family, Maude, The Jeffersons, and Sanford and Son) that were funny, full of social purpose, and inhabited by characters that were fully human, both imperfect and capable of love and change. There was what seemed, a desire to create empathy over irony in these shows. A passion to understand, to grow, and develop compassion for others from the struggle we all find at our doorstep.
28
@Luke , Trumpists see no irony in Archie Bunker, just themselves.
As Steve Bannon is supposed to have said, Trump IS Archie Bunker...god help us, with the world at his beck and call.
2
Larry David is 72, Jerry Seinfeld is 65, and his co-stars on that show range between 58 and 70. How on earth does that qualify as Gen X? It’s solidly, squarely Me Generation Baby Boomer irony, in reaction to parents who’d lived through WWII and the Depression.
51
I'm a late baby boomer, on the verge of Gen X. I do not know what you are talking about. Gen Xers were at the forefront of the anti-globalization movement (e.g. "The Battle in Seattle"). They were at the forefront of the animal rights movement and took environmental activism to a new level, from the books and organic farms and recycling activities of Boomers to direct non-violent and violent confrontation. They reignited the Palestine Solidarity Movement in the US. The Millenials, on the other hand were more interested in charity and being nice. Ironic humor is one thing, but no one can accuse Gen X of apathy.
20
@Anne I'm a 'pre-Baby Boomer, now 80 years old, and I agree with Anne. As I read this piece, I kept thinking how much this author still has to learn! I do think, however, that he was probably simply enjoying his afternoon of writing. There's no deep thinking here, but maybe I was the same half a life ago -
5
The author fails at the start with the undefended premise that Seinfeld (Jerry Seinfeld was a Boomer) was a Gen X show. I knew Xers who found it funny. I didn't know even one who identified with it as a their generational representation.
The frequent methodological problem with media interpretations from the English lit discipline is that they tend to come from the author's feelings without any regard to sociological data, media industry understanding, or historical underpinnings.
71
@Stary very interesting, and this really answers something I've been wondering about. Friends lasted for me, I still like it. And so do the millenials in my family, in fact they love it! No one talks about Seinfeld anymore, around me anyway. If you look at Seinfeld as actually a Boomer show, and recognize Friends as a Gen X show, then that really starts explaining some things.
5
@Catherine
Exactly. I identified with Seinfeld as a boomer, specifically a New York City boomer. I also enjoyed Friends, but the characters on that show were not my generational cohort. Their experiences and cultural constructs were different. By the time Friends rolled around, Seinfeld episodes like 'Bubble Boy' were already becoming a bit non-PC.
I do know twenty-somethings who feed on both Seinfeld and Friends, so I guess there's something multi-generational about the appeal of both shows.
1
Yes, Stary, some also call this method "bullying the 'text' " (though, truth told, there's not a practitioner of hermeneutics in any discipline who doesn't do so).
2
Well, my goodness. In an attempt to bring some kind of illumination, the author has darkened an entire page and part of my mind with a meaningless spew of barely related words and sentences. How - ironic. Whatever is going on in the author's mind it seems to lead to things like "Cinema of Simulation: Hyperreal Hollywood in the Long 1990s", an essay whose title alone gives one pause - a long pause.
69
Television is simply a reflection of society's norms and values at any given point in time. Nothing more, nothing less.
Trying to explain multigenerational TV through a multilingual word salad is hopeless. Reading this article brought on my first, and hopefully last, migraine.
What was that all about? And why?
Grab yourself a brew, throw yourself on the Barcalounger and just chill. The rest is just noise.
31
Being a Gen-Xer myself I must object to your generational characterization. I was always socially and politically active, as were my friends. Unless you can site actual studies (I assume you can’t because you are a professor and yet you didn’t) your observations are anecdotal, just like mine, and are therefore equally worthless.
Note the irony.
:-)
42
so self absorbed. that's seinfeld. and this author. in this era about which he rhapsodizes, billions of creatures lost their genetic hold to places on earth, the oceans filled up with plastic, and everyone did everything without thought of what, in fact, they were doing. same as it ever was.
24
hmmm I'm always taken aback when people fall into the belief that somehow we cared less in the 90s or were more self-involved. My people, the PNWs, have been fighting the climate change fight, the pollution fight, the garbage in the sea fight, the spotted owl, orca whale, salmon wars- for decades.
We've never stopped. We have cared even as that caring has torn our hearts asunder watching what we love wither under the weight of humanity. Seinfeld et al were ironic essentially because we knew they were luxurious worlds of frivolity that never existed in our time and that we could relate with them so fully because they could so precisely capture that neurotic dissonance between reality and desire for a dream world that we never really wanted anyway. They were escapes from the very real battles that were wearing us down, not some cathartic mirror into our deepest souls or desires.
36
@Bellingham Yes! Perfectly said!
Well said.
There are many "bubbles" of what constitutes the world. Some may be local and personal, some global. I happen to find that there is a Seinfeldism for virtually everything that happens to me personally. The Handmaid's Tale doesn't speak to me directly, but does on a more distant level.
And, be honest, the selfish end of the Seinfeld series holds a smidgen of truth for most of us, as uncomfortable as that may be. Not everything you encounter on a daily basis equates to world justice. but the little interactions matter.
7
@tealeigh
The great Samuel Johnson would agree. As he said: “If every man got what he deserved, none would escape a whipping.”
Seinfeld came along in that period between the end of the cold war and 9/11, which some thought marked "the end of history." What fewer recognized at the time was that the end of east-west conflict was really the end of the post WWII "time out" from history, bringing to the surface many things that had long been merely repressed and dormant.
9
We all should worry about the constant attack on humor, we need it in theses time, we need irony to see the craziness of the current state of affairs that we are living in. I love the show Seinfeld it’s smart , clever and makes fun of our imperfections , we’re selfish, cruel mean, ridiculous , clueless selves. I also love The Handmaids Tale, brilliant , engaging and spot on take on a possible dystopian future if the religious nutjobs had their way. But we need to laugh at our human foibles , that’s what’s makes us fully formed people, without that we’re doomed.Lets not miss the irony of this article, both shows are commercial products, that show on Hulu, which you pay for, it’s not free professor. Actors on both shows affected the culture, actors on both shows won emmys for writing and acting and we both watched and shared our experience after viewing. That’s what culture is sharing our experience by either laughing or crying . Not that’s there’s anything wrong with that.
11
My sister lives in England, where Seinfeld was not popular. They didn't see the humour.
16
@kevin sullivan
Interesting....I enjoy British crime dramas, but their humor escapes me. Except Monty Python. That, somehow, I get.
To really appreciate Seinfeld you have to be not only American, you have to be a New York American. A lot of Americans, particularly heartland Americans who like to wear this surface veneer of niceness, never got Seinfeld either. There's no artificial veneer of niceness anywhere in Seinfeld, and I always found that refreshing.
5
@kevin sullivan
Is this true? I suppose Australia and NZ should be checked a well. Fascinating.
1
@kevin sullivan Not true - Londoner here who loves Seinfeld! Unfortunately it was relegated to a late night slot and moved around in the schedules most weeks so stood no chance of catching on :(
1
"... back in the early 1990s ..."
Dystopian movies were produced in the 1990s and before, so Laist is setting himself up to be rebutted with further examples. Here are two:
"Blade Runner" (1982)
"The Terminator" (1984)
And Laist must have missed "The Crucible" (1996).
"Because irony holds opposing views in a relationship of nonjudgmental suspension, ..."
The term "irony" is highly ambiguous, but there are well-established definitions, so why is Laist inventing his own? And Laist confuses readers by asserting that irony can "hold" "views". Irony is a mode of expression that may more or may not represent the "views" of anyone.
Further, there is no reason why those "views" need to be rigorously in opposition. They could be complementary.
For an excellent discussion of irony, see the essay in "A glossary of literary terms", 7th ed., by M. H. Abrams (1999).
"When we speak on the internet, ... In face-to-face conversation, ..."
Evidently Laist hasn't noticed the dialogues that can occur on the internet in competing Youtube videos. Youtubers will rebut each other or public figures. And they may employ irony and humor. See Paul Joseph Watson videos, for example.
And Laist can find Youtube videos featuring recordings of public events in which there is "face-to-face conversation". See videos of Ben Shapiro and of Milo Yiannopoulos.
6
An excellent article the likes of which we hardly come by in today's journalistic endeavours. That is, of course, not a particular fault that one can ascribe to the synchronous march, in today's journalism, across publications and platforms, towards the completion of their self-declared 'fact'-finding missions (which substantiates and attests to the importance of this article's central premise.) I am, however, unsure of the extent to which your citation of the verse “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity” can be applied to the current discursive atmosphere. Not to put too fine a point on it, but it seems to me that it is the self-serving and exceptionally relativistic arguments on behalf of, by, and in favour of this administration that are characteristically conviction-free...
4
I'm not sure that irony is as dead today as Professor Laist is claiming, though it is presented and consumed differently--as is everything else--via the internet.
Isn't our ever-proliferating meme culture largely predicated on irony? Isn't a successful and immediately graspable meme a matter of setting up an ironic juxtaposition between images and images or images and text?
Surely millennials and Zs are quite fluent in this form of irony. That its hilarity or insightfulness is sometimes lost on oldsters only underscores the point.
10
“...existing in what Jean Baudrillard called a ‘hyperreal’ register, a style of being in which the connection to a foundational reality has been definitively severed, or demonstrated never to have existed in the first place...”
The Precession of Simulacra has long been upon us, we’ve just been too distracted by the pursuit of money to ever bother to question what ‘reality’ might even be.
The tragic irony of our societal tempest, as it were, is the degree to which it has developed by deliberate design. All it took was liberation from choice, and we were delivered the greatest freedom of all.
Obey Freely.
3
This makes me think of another Yeats line: Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.
26
Too bad the dry humor of the title didn’t carry over to the content. I agree this is a serious subject and I agree with Mr. Laist, but I think that a clever title deserves a clever essay.
19
Despite its seriousness and high stakes, our current era is strangely dismissive of history. Of course it doesn't make any sense to approach questions of world-changing gravity armed only with shallow impressions crowd-tested over, at most, the past few years. But plenty of people and organizations are doing just that.
The irony of the nineties depended on a world that felt it had seen everything. The topicality of today relies on people not noticing how the present is connected to and shaped by a dynamic and meaningful past.
5
Once a statement is labeled as ironic it becomes apparent. Once apparent irony loses its ambiguity, therefore irony or ironic thought must never be spelled out.
As explained by singularly brilliant Lit. professor.
2
Oh please. We are not the real nazis. This is the problem. If we don't know when we are actually down the path of becoming real nazis, and when we aren't, and keep crying wolf, it WILL happen.
Yep, it's hard, very hard to tell when we should rise up in protest and when we should let our civil society function normally. Clearly this article is not up for that challenge.
13
This might be the most useless piece in all of New York Times history.
120
@Erik well i can think of other times i have thought that.but it's close.
11
@Erik
Totally agree. Yet we wasted our time reading it.
The massive protests at WTO and World Bank meetings in Seattle, DC, and Genoa were full of passionate 90's kids and young adults. Just didn't quite make the news, except for a few anarchist window-breakers. The Gen Y's that I teach have never heard of the WTO protests. The story was buried. The 90's were about transnational corporate consolidation in retail, industry and entertainment. A homogenization of culture. Naomi Klein's No Logo was our argument against this world. Amy Goodman's Democracy Now! was born as an alternative to the mainstream news in the '96 election.
11
Dr. Laist,
I enjoyed and learned from your thoughtful, but complex op-ed. I want to re-read it until I can get all the meat off its many relevant allusions, socio-political analyses, and valid conclusions.
It's not for speed readers who hit and run, specifically, most readers today.
Now, back to the frontline for a second look at this uncommon creation, such a one rarely found in the NYTimes.
6
@Jim Muncy wrote this steeped in irony.
Jerry is conventional, Jerry is extraordinarily funny.
We exist to erect walls against the past.
Eh, why not blame the Baby Boomers for our current world? Aren't they usually the biggest voting demographic in every election? Yeah, it's all their fault. My being a Gen Xer is just a coincidence.
My wife really dislikes both Seinfeld and I Love Lucy for the same reason - she can’t stand any of the main characters as people. I could never look at either of those shows the same way after she said that because, now that she’d mentioned it, I couldn’t really disagree. I couldn’t warm up to Curb Your Enthusiasm for the same reason.
But I was visiting out of town friends a few years ago who loved Curb Your Enthusiasm. They had the show on DVD and put on the Palestinian Chicken episode. I’d recommend that episode to anyone who finds themselves sliding into Puritanism or anti-semitism, while also taking themselves too seriously, if they’re not yet too far gone to save themselves. I think I slid off the end of the couch laughing right near the end.
3
Cynicism is the downside of cultural comic irony. The cultural acceptance of universal impotence has allowed crooks and oligarchs to hijack mainstream discourse. The main difference between the 90's and today is that we hadn't yet imagined the consequences of the cynicism of our leaders and the brazeness of the enemies of liberal democracy. There isn't room for comic irony when Russia and others are poisoning the conversation. Loud and broad based conviction and action, with the occasional satire, are the weapons of the day.
3
Nothing is more responsible for the good old days than a bad memory.
8
There really isn’t any need to look at philosophy or posh
Literature for answers to what got the country to this point. Chutzpah. It explains Yates poem. Chutzpah.
It’s not that “The best lack all conviction,”..... they have the conviction, but expect that common decency will guide and inform all of our actions. On the other hand, “the “worst” publicly cover themselves with piety or the veneer of intellectualism as “meritocrats” , but act criminally. Sen.Chuck Schumer D-NY support Trump’s move of the US Embassy to Jerusalem and give away of the Golan Heights and occasionally mutters a weak whiff of Trump criticism. Chutzpah. While many thought “Seinfeld” was very funny, it really wasn’t. They were and understood mean and meanness . So today, it’s characters are probably billionaires - thanks to Clinton’s elimination of banking laws- collecting commoditized junk as “art”, donating to Trump's re-election and supporting the southern border wall (Steven Miller) and attacking Iran. The culture was hijacked and is trying very hard to dismember it.
There is a satirical magazine in the UK called Private Eye that has a section called “Pseuds corner”.
This article reminds me of it.
6
The psychological analysis of Seinfeld here is spot-on. But I don't think it's a failing that Seinfeld doesn't inspire social justice, anymore than it's a failing that chocolate cake doesn't inspire weight loss.
10
Interesting argument but what about genre? A network sitcom is aiming at a mass market and risks alienating large parts of that with overt political stances or content they viewers see as inappropriate to the traditional form. In the 1950s sitcoms there’s not a lot about imminent nuclear apocalypse. Success with a mass network tv audience requires politics to be occluded but this doesn’t mean the populace (or a generation) is politically disengaged. There are now so many other makers of tv (beyond networks) that many alternative perspectives are visible, including those with politics that may alienate some viewers (Handmaid’s Tale).
4
After 9/11 we entered a new world: a modern dystopia where horrific attacks could happen on our shores. It's also an era where mass shootings are almost weekly occurrences, seemingly random and in places that in the 1990s would have been assumed to be safe. Add to that the anger of the decline in middle-class life (could the comic played by Seinfeld still afford that Manhattan apartment in 2019? Would the shops he joked about still exist in an era of exorbitant commercial rents?) When you combine fear and anger, with the power of social media, you get the tribalism we endure today.
26
I guess it was the "end of history," though I didn't know it at the time. The Soviet Union was gone. The economy was great. Computers became a thing you could have in your house. Peace seemed to be our inevitable future. And even when things did go wrong, as they did in the Balkans, we fixed it.
In the 90s, "caring about things" was an activity for people without more important things to worry about, like obscure punk bands or where to get the best Thai food. We were perfectly innocent. Being continually ironic was a luxury, a luxury we were ironic enough to acknowledge but never outwardly enjoy. We were ironic about our irony.
24
@Revelwoodie Amen. And now, we pick up the pieces of what is left of history?
While Seinfeld may have lacked sufficient earnestness for some, there is much more truth in it about the surprise and fecundity of the human condition than in the relentless and tiresome moral posturing and hectoring of Handmaid's Tale--it echos with my third grade teacher's smug and didactic, "So what have we learned today, children?"
37
Yes, when you say something online, it goes down on your permanent record — but usually not for long if it's Snapchat or another service which celebrates transience.
We don't always have to use network services that make every interaction forever findable by strangers, ready for us to be evaluated without context. Irony and verbal play live on, just not on Facebook.
1
As a Gen-X English prof myself... this argument evaporated before it began. More irony? Irony is all we have left.
12
@Mike Duncan for Nobel Prize.
Thank you! And a yet greater loss from an historical perspective may be accuracy of reporting and nuance, as for example in your example. I don’t hear POTUS referring to the demonstrations directly, but rather to the issue of removing the statues. I have impeccable civil rights credentials and consider myself a good person and I oppose tearing down confederate statues. Where is the room with folks like you for conversations we desperately need to have? This issue,the end of respectful political conversation among equal citizens, is the threat to our democracy, not foreign powers. But thanks..humor is right up there...
1
Very interesting essay. I love the author's trashing of "Generation X," which I found to be no more than a juvenile slap at Daddy's generation.
I do wish the author had more precisely pinned down "Handmaid's Tale." Does the Tale use ironic detachment, or does it swim in the opposite, it's own earnest politics and dogma? To me, it's the latter. The image of women in Puritan cloaks and animalistic servitude is a crude political cliché, and I don't see any ironic detachment from cliché.
One other point. Baudrillard, if memory serves, was most intently concerned with "mediated authority," memory, and the "integrity of text." Fine, but it's not the "personal profile" on Facebook that dovetails to any of the above or drives the typist's fingers. It's the fact that the surfer can post a fictional bio picture, skim bits of emphatic digitalia, avoid printed books, and get directed to bias-confirming sites by a robot every few seconds. Also, the fact that identity is obliterated and there's "no such thing as truth."
2
Gen X may have absorbed the value free irony of Seinfeld, but it was the Reaganite turn to business and personal prosperity as the cultural goal that begat Seinfeld. MBAs became the Machiavellian princelings and making money for money’s sake, hostile take overs, prosperity ministries, and employers hostile to their own employees became the cultural norm.
Christian values were mostly for sermons and family values for stump speeches. The WWII generation left us boomers a dog eat daily world that did not resemble the golden era if the post war fifties for which they longed.
11
Speak for your own disengaged self. Plenty of Gen-Xers were engaged in politics: ACT-UP and similar organizations fighting the AIDS epidemic; marching against the Iraq war; working on Democratic campaigns; campaigning against welfare reform; marching on Washington to preserve abortion rights multiple times (yeah, I can see how well that's worked out)...
Sure, you'll look at my location and say, Well, you live in Berkeley, that's what we'd expect. But I didn't live in Berkeley when I did these things. I lived in Ohio, NYC, Arizona, and North Carolina. I didn't come from a family of activists; I got there on my own.
Coupland's book resonated with me at the time, but Handmaid's Tale, which I read for multiple classes as an undergrad, was far more motivating.
49
I didn't realize that Yeats could predict how our Congress would devolve: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
17
@Lawrence Zajac
If so, he was wrong.
1
@Lawrence Zajac Never underestimate the effect of gerrymandering. It was passionately advanced by those with an agenda. They got what they wanted. The Congress is now impotent. Now, the "Justice System" is not to be trusted and the courts are just another tool of oppression by the zealots.
1
One simple definition of what separates humans from beasts is the fact that a human is a self-reflecting being. He or she evaluates both the what and the why of each activity.
The solipsistic narrowness of the Seinfeld foursome probably has its opposite in empiricism. The difference is in the answer to the ‘why?’ question. Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer see a situation in the context of whether it amuses them or bores them, sensing that the problems of the outside world may only be an illusion and, therefore, not worth worrying about. The careful logic and earnest involvement of empiricists in trying to solve problems would be ridiculed by the Seinfeld cast.
When you think about it, Jerry Seinfeld and his friends are narcissists. It is entirely possible that Donald Trump would seek out their company, presumably as the leader. An empiricist would quickly argue to Seinfeld that there is absolutely nothing funny about Trump’s malignant narcissism.
Jerry would look puzzled for a moment and then say, “Oh, you mean the lying, stealing, cruelty stuff. Right.”
11
@sdw
Nailed it! Too bad your comment got buried in the middle of the pack.
1
Our ironic sensibilities are why Trump is president. It's time we stop making statements and ironic jokes and start taking our role as humans and citizens of a nuclear powered state seriously.
12
Seinfeld as political discourse; the TV-Handmaid's Tale as opposed to the Atwood Book version; Yeats' stunningly banal The Second Coming.
We need better and smarter cultural touchstones in the 'actual' NYT-Stone.
6
Several post-World War II generations were able to enjoy peace and prosperity thanks to the generation that had to fight in that terrible war.
And despite all of the problems and wars that followed WWII, President Kennedy and other leaders who were served in WWII managed, somehow, to save us from being annihilated in World War III.
Meanwhile, too many of us Americans -- Boomers, Gen-Xers, post-ironic X-boxers, or whoever we were, cruised through the post-war decades, largely oblivious to the dangers and suffering that surrounded us.
Eventually, shocking events woke some of us up. Events like the Vietnam War, massive riots, Watergate, 9/11, and genocide.
But some people did not wake up. They still thought it was okay to be oblivious. And other people decided to leave reality behind and dwell instead in a fever swamp of ridiculous conspiracy theories, stunningly stupid ideologies, and hatreds.
Those of us who are awake enough to know the difference yearn for real leaders, people with the integrity and skill and compassion and vision to move us forward to a better future.
And those of us who are still asleep, or who live in the swamp, apparently prefer a heartless, moronic dictator like Trump.
I don't know whether we need a healthy dose of irony, but we do need to remember that ignorance is not bliss -- not even here in the good old USA. Ignorance breeds dictatorship.
62
Thank you so much for this intriguing discussion. I am in the early boomer generation and my children are GenX. It is so refreshing to read both your examination of the 90's and the intelligent comments it received (agree or disagree alike). I don't usually read comments due to the usual negative and inflammatory rhetoric. Today I am heartened by what I read.
6
@BarbG GenX was a little smaller than the Boomers. Hard to lead the nation with a 1/3 of the people of the earlier generation who were in its prime.
@Steph
Gen X was 11% SMALLER than the Boomers. 7,000,000 people
Far too much jargon-dense gum-flapping here, far too little genuine, useful thought. Neither irony nor sincerity, and absolutely no amount of 'cultural criticism', will extract us from the existential environmental fix we've manoevered ourselves into. Spend less time on Netflix and more tome out-of-doors.
12
@richard
Richard, "out of doors" indeed; without one's cell also.
May I offer a thought or two about Professor Laist's citation of Yeats?
"All this makes me think of Yeats’s line from his poem 'The Second Coming,' presaging the end of the world: 'The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.'”
First, this is, of course, NOT "a line"; it is TWO lines of verse and should be recognized and quoted as such. To see it as a single line suggests an indifference to the fact, or lack of awareness, that Yeats wrote poetry, not prose, which explains the power of these words. Second, Yeats subscribed to a cyclical vision of history (see his book "A Vision"), not the linear, apocalyptic scenario of "Revelations." The approach of Yeats's "rough beast" signals not "the end of the world" but the end of a cycle that will, like all cycles, repeat endlessly. Like irony.
21
The author might be over reaching in comparing his ilk to "the best" - that they now hold convictions like those espoused in this article is in no way indicative of whether positive morality truly inflects meaningful action in our modern society. This academic article is far more vapid than seinfeld.
2
Weird column. Weirdly written. Weird theory. Weird. I don't think we have any more nazi's today then in 1990. So what's the headline mean, soup nazi to real nazi. Someone start some local nazi clubs? And you might remember that The Handmaiden's Tale was written in 1985. Same era as Seinfeld.
Ah, the life of an English professor. Developing inept social theories that should probably be kept private.
88
@Ralphie not the same era as Seinfeld, which started in 1989 and ran to 1998. The nineties were different from the 80's.
1
@Ralphie - Um, yes, many "local nazi clubs" have been started (or become more public) as of late. Since you're commenting in the NYT, you obviously have internet access. Are you not aware of the ever-expanding network of alt-right groups and resources out there? Did you catch the events in Charlottesville? The imbecilic "Proud Boys"? The mouth-breather who murdered a young lady and maimed many others with his ridiculous re-issue muscle car?
I'm not sure the title is really all that enigmatic. "Soup Nazi" used to seem like an ironic joke, but now *real* (neo-)Nazi is a thing. Some of those folks march in formation with torches shouting "Jews will not replace us" while affirming their commitment to the old racist, slave-holding Confederacy. Oh, the hilarity!
Understanding why these cultural shifts and new normalizations are happening just now seems like a valid concern to me. English professors analyze texts, and place them in social contexts (= "social theories). This is also not all that mysterious.
Perhaps you could respond to some actual element of the argument? "Weird" doesn't have a whole lot of explanatory power as it turns out.
Finally, print texts and serialized TV/streaming shows are not precisely the same thing--even if the former provides the source material for the latter. The show is an update and a recontextualization, and thus may have some resonance with current events for some viewers. I suspect that Professor Laist knows when the book was written.
4
Please don't throw around the term "Nazi" with such abandon. The Nazis murdered 6,000,000 people in an attempt to wipe an entire race from the face of the planet. We have problems today, political problems. Yes, our president is a disgrace. But calling people Nazis shows a profound lack of understanding and does nothing to elevate our national dialogue. It makes you sound like him.
24
It was pretty clear to any thinking gen x’er by then that we were hell bent on destroying the planet on a once in a million year fossil fuel binge - with self satisfied baby boomers more than happy to stick future generations with the bill. Watching an unsustainable consumer capitalism take a victory lap to declare the end of history was just deeply ironic.
6
@Carc - why did you "watch"? Why didn't you get involved? I'm a boomer who spent a great deal of my time in the 90's doing all I could to raise awareness of corporate capitalism's takeover of American values, especially environmental issues. Where was Gen X? Wrapped in self-centered, apathetic solipsism. I'm sorry, but I saw this first-hand and refuse to take the fall for Gen X. Instead of blaming boomers, how about getting involved NOW.
2
@Carc Could it be that Baby Boomers were preoccupied protesting the Vietnam War, segregation, lack of women's rights, the nuclear arms race?
Uhm, Seinfield was just a show. A really funny sitcom. The 90s were, well the nineties. Social unrest was still present, so I guess if the author didn't see it, it must not have existed on her radar, it did on mine. Blame generation X, for what? Just a reminder, it's perfectly fine to enjoy the cultural artifacts of an era and still be nimble and willing and woke enough to fight the power, which many of us still did. But, it was also ok to like Seinfield, and Friends, and Living Single. End scene.
14
It was a masterful show most likely never to be matched. Political correctness will not allow.
11
Perhaps the most weirdly unironic show of the post 1990s was Celebrity Apprentice: you just want the edifice to crack somewhere, and for someone to scream that it is the biggest fattest joke, an embarrassment, but not even Joan Rivers rose to the occasion of that. It would stand out to me for its freakishness, even without the resultant tragedy of its real life sequels.
Before 2000, our problems were our problems. I can't really remember ever excluding anyone because of their politics, the people I knew were artists, an their politics were in the work. I chose my friends because they were smart or accomplished, and good conversationalists. Now everything is a manifesto: even on hook up apps "likes sports and works out" is a life statement, excluding everyone who doesn't.
How I love the places where we avoid that frame of mind, my conversations on the bus, at the store, in the line at the post office, where people are friendly, sympathetic, and laugh about ordinary stuff. Where, for example, a troubled, loud, homeless person can come on the scene with all the problems they might present, and nobody feels the need to have a position about it, but enjoy the frustration together of not knowing exactly what to say or do, and figuring it out together.
7
I came about from the tail end of the "baby boom". I've always tried to comprehend or empathize with the viewpoint of succeeding generations. It's difficult to do sometimes. But, I think it is vital that everyone tries to transcend labels determined by their date of birth.
I still am fascinated by the irony angle. When I think I have it figured out, I realize, again, that i really don't.
4
Reality, as translated into sociologish. Or (even worse) into anthropologish. This article brings to mind a passage from the song "Industrial disease" by Dire Straits, on how various actors responded to the industrial crisis: "Sociologists invent words that mean 'Industrial Disease'".
5
"... The posted content becomes an aspect of how I exist in the world, and there is a self-reinforcing effect: I become invested in the self I express through the content I post. I am incentivized to align myself with those words, to close the gap between what I say and who I am, and this closure is fatal to irony, which depends on the self-conscious presence of such a gap...."
I see my posted content more as an exercise in developing writing skill(s), akin to completing homework assignments. Read an article, any article, pick out themes, thesis, claims, support or lack of for claims made, et cetera. I discovered at a late age that I never really knew how to do this, and likely still don't. To me it is all about practice, practice, … The feedback being the recommend hits, and the replies. Maybe somewhere down the road I might spot some pattern in my content that I could "align myself" with, but I kind of doubt it. Sagan's Blue Dot comments come as close to a worldview for me:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. […] Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.
3
Ethnologists won’t be needed to record the testimonials of gen-xers . It’s all there in the ether if anyone ever needs to access it.
As to the soup nazi or springtime for Hitler, those tried to denature the evil in the word.
We’ll see if that turns out to be not such a great idea. Seemed innocent enough at the time.
2
Dear Randy (been wanting to type that for some time!)
Thank you so much for writing about the necessity of Irony.
Your statement that :"Because irony holds opposing views in a relationship of nonjudgmental suspension, it can have a depolarizing effect. The ironic imagination can foster understanding of why different people might gravitate toward different views, but it can also provide a first step toward synthesizing and transcending them" is one of the best descriptions of why such an approach is a necessary contrast to mental hubris. It is not moral relativism but mental multi-dimensional thinking that is most often required to understand difficult topics, while bland assertions of personal morality fail to engage in the real complexity of the world.
My only criticism of your essay would be that Irony was invented long before Seinfeld and is an essential component of any civilized culture.
10
@Michael >multi-dimensional thinking
Conceptual disintegration is not a method of simplifying the complexity of the world. Its the road to moral impotence and schizophrenia. Man must rationally generalize or he dies.
I think you nailed it. I am a baby boomer and we rode on the coattails of our parents generation and their sacrifice. Gen X'ers lived life as a sitcom. Now Millennials can either shape the void or fall into the abyss. The irony is that Millennials are poised to make a major cultural and economic shift if they pay attention not to Seinfeld, Homer Simpson, Friends or Mark Zuckerberg but to the rising leaders among us like Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren. Millennials can make the biggest difference in this election and ensuing ones. Choose wisely, do better than the previous two generations. It wouldn't be hard to improve upon trump.
9
@Steve >It wouldn't be hard to improve upon trump.
Then why have Dems advocated more govt?
Trump is about selfish narrow interests ; certainly his own and the political and economic institutions that support him . Government ? It had best become the means by which American polity decides how we create a fair and just society based on moral principles eternally espoused . And Seinfeld , like all comedic narratives , was about small human truths and how small and fragile we all are in the face of the greater Truths that each generation must confront .
3
I read the book when it came out. It was great but depressing. Saw the movie when it came out. It was pretty good but depressing. Haven't watched the TV show. I assume its depressing.
Seinfeld makes me laugh and I watch reruns all the time.
36
To use the lines: "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." Further, if you want to wallow in the negative, "It was a dark and stormy night." It always will be, somewhere. In one sense it is all absurd because it's all impermanent. The comic irony is that we have the audacity to think otherwise. Of the legions of humanity who have gone before us, how many, really, are remembered for any long duration? A relative handful. The vast majority are just ordinary people in ordinary lives trying to make an existence, hopefully find a bit of meaning along the way before the inexorable force of time carries them offstage.
If yesterday's ideas and views are seen as today's follies, perhaps because they created an escapist illusion that never really existed, I wouldn't worry about it nor take it too seriously. all we have is the present moment. Give it another twenty years or so, and our "now" may become just as open to criticism and analysis, whether real or imagined, as anything we find fault with now from our recent past.
17
@Flotsam
I don't know if the Seinfeld characters were "truly terrible." I would say they were average. George was a schlemiel. They often acted in their self-interest. But Seinfeld and his friends were average people in some silly situations of their own making.
Yes, the program had an irony that might be uncool now. But that was before 9/11, the Iraq War, and Trump.
What issue did you want them to take a stand on?
The 1990s were a time before the effects of deindustrialization and terrorism truly took hold of American society. There was a tech boom. Things were good in the main, and "Seinfeld" reflected that.
Cosmo Kramer had conviction. In a way, Kramer was the anti-consumerist. He didn't work. Kramer refused to be defined by business, corporations, and the system of production. He was not a working stiff or an empty suit. Kramer enjoyed life. Being your own person while not harming others is laudable. Would Kramer have been a better person if he had gotten a job with a hedge fund and moved to the Hamptons?
Kramer dealt in used clothing. Jerry made a deal for a used suit before eBay. When Kenny Bania would utter the words, "the best Jerry, the best," Jerry Seinfeld would cringe.
This column reminds me of the time Newman informed Jerry's parents about him making out during a theater showing of "Schindler's List:"
"Yes! A more offensive spectacle I cannot recall. "
Very big deal. They were trying to make people laugh.
33
@Wordsworth from Wadsworth >Kramer was the anti-consumerist. He didn't work.
Leftist nihilism led to Trump.
1
@Abe Nosh No it didn't. Center Right voters with minimal ethics and African American and Latino male voters not voting because they didn't like Hillary led to Trump.
1
@Abe Nosh
No, centrist neoliberals who had contempt for the working class led to Trump.
How is Kramer a leftist nihilist? "He is not a Nazi. He's a great soup artisan."
Nosh on that.
1
Sign me up for your Gen-X WPA oral history program. However, I wouldn't be as hard on our generation - we came of age when America was atop a false pinnacle. We were too young to have actually created the hedonistic American anti-society you are reminiscing about. We had to rely on our sense of irony to cope with the incongruities of an increasingly selfish world.
I think we do have a contribution to make to the younger folks. We can remember a time before say 1985, when money was really not everything and the echoes of the world wars still enforced some kind of sense of national unity. Divided we were but not like today.
Generation X needs to step up and help build a better version of our grandparents world - where Americans stood somewhat united in the face of adversity, defeated Nazism, and built a more egalitarian society than they were born into. If we fragment we are lost, if we stand together we can restore the opportunity for a better world we felt in the 90s.
50
@Atticus
Well said! Thank you.
5
Well, we had a good economy, no wars, Clinton’s impeachment, unlike this one, was a joke, and the country could afford to be both neurotic and carefree. Also, I really wish everybody would stop quoting “The Second Coming” in reference to everything. I think Elaine would agree.
37
@Michael Judge I love that poem!
1
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a masterpiece. But I’d like also to see a little of “Among School Children” or “Byzantium” peppering our OpEds.
5
Why Seinfeld vs. The Handmaid's Tale??
It's a lazy grad school trope to arbitrarily pick two entities, compare them, then insist the "difference" that you've teased out using a smattering of pop zeitgeist theories says something Big about the times. Such theses generally fall into the C+ to B- grade tranche.
For the next assignment I like for the writer to compare Ren and Stimpy with today's rise of radical right activism. There's probably a C+ in that topic, too.
161
@RR - The comparison isn't an arbitrary one. Advertisements for Seinfeld reruns appeared during episodes of The Handmaid's Tale, thereby presenting an odd juxtaposition. The author pursued this as a comparative analysis, and you could have said something about the substance of his actual argument.
By the way, it's a lazy undergrad trope to think you've smacked down the teacher when really you've just revealed your own lack of discernment and/or willingness to undertake intellectual work.
32
@RR I think he picked them out from seeing Seinfeld commercials during showings of The Handmaid's Tale. The juxtaposition would give most people pause. Or did you not even read the first paragraph before you had to comment?
13
“We were good people,”
Were you? What is the evidence of that? Too many people seem to have the criteria for “good” as “someone I know personally who doesn’t appear to be a monster.” It’s how you hear “they’re a good person” about the latest sexual predator, anti-choice politician or killer cop in the news.
Raise your standards. Being ironically detached but not inflicting active damage isn’t good enough to be “good”.
18
@sedanchair Judge your fellow an much?
3
@sedanchair
You really should read the article again so that you can understand what it is about.
3
@ejones Yes, constantly. It’s a wonderful feeling, try it out.
Oh give your victimization and cancel culture a break.
Seinfeld was a comedy. A great comedy and an exaggeration of characters, places and time.
How about crying about I Love Lucy? She couldn’t work, didn’t have her own money, was spanked by her husband and worst of all she SMOKED!
Don’t like a commercial or show, don’t watch it.
48
What's at the heart of this article is a search for meaning.
Prior to the atomization of society, most people found meaning in their social relations with the people actually around them -- rather than pseudo familiarity with television characters or remote individuals never to be met in person.
The truism that it's hard to have contempt for people you've never met is true. Hillary Clinton's use of the deeply hurtful term of contempt, the "deplorables," was one of the great political and social errors of this century.
Here's a rule for a society in which entertainment and politics have fused (a fusion that Neil Postman warned us of in the early 80s):
Never humiliate anyone, no matter how much you object to their behavior or their beliefs. If you insist on humiliating a group, you'd better be prepared to kill them all, because humiliation is never forgotten and is the gift that keeps on giving.
22
@Eben
No, "one of the great political and social errors of this century" - the greatest, in fact - was the installation of Trump as POTUS by the "deplorables" and the Republican Party.
6
@Sam Your comment, unfortunately, makes my point. The "deplorable" label drove a lot of people to the polls who voted against Clinton.
1
For instance: I’m guessing that Obama’s glee at the humiliation of DJT at that correspondents’ dinner has long since faded.
1
I must be the only reader who's never watched "The Handmaid's Tale". Lucky me.
59
@porcupine pal - I heard the book is better. But then, I'm a boomer ... y'know, before cell phones, laptops, GMOs, unleaded gas ...
4
Me too. I read the book. Atwood is excellent but depressing. I don’t need to watch the tv series. The news is all the downer I can take in a day.
9
Your words reminded me a lot of a quote I usually think of when worrying about the next election. But it’s relevant to a lot more these days.
“For by superior energies; more strict affiance in each other; faith more firm in their unhallowed principles, the bad have fairly earned a victory over the weak, the vacillating, inconsistent good.” William Wordsworth"
3
@Ben Hartley One is a sitcom, the other distopian drama.
Compare like to like (and to be honest I cannot remember the dramas I watched then!)
Especially since we’re talking cable shows to network.
8
in the 90's, after the fall of the ussr, there was a strange sense of peace, that america had won, and now everything would be normal, whatever that meant. all we had to do was keep on doing. computers. internet. make money.
9/11 blew that out of the tub, didn't it
76
@slightlycrazy 9/11 and the financial crisis, which cemented for me, at least, that institutions really couldn't be trusted anymore and the "smartest guys in the room" were never in the room in the first place.
19
@slightlycrazy
What "blew everything out of the tub" is the martial over-reaction of the Bush administration- and their military interventionist enablers in Congress- to one suicide attack by a terror squad.
Yes, it was bad. But ask present-day residents of Baghdad about what resulted from the US swinging the wrecking ball on their country with an unjustifiable aggressive invasion and occupation.
And yes, the long-term rebound effect on this country is one of the factors that got Donald Trump elected.
24
You want some irony? Steve Bannon of breitbart fame got rich off the Seinfeld broadcast rights.
235
Maybe the author should watch less television. This article sounds more like the author has had too much wine and has decided to aimlessly wax poetic.
182
@KW
Thank you.
9
@KW "too much wine and has decided to aimlessly wax poetic."- I know the feeling.
@KW, How very Gen X.
It's silly to compare a network sitcom to a prestige drama on a streamer. It's apples and bicycles.
You could easily make the opposite argument if you compared, say, The Big Bang Theory to the Sopranos.
54
@Sparky Seinfeld > Handmaids Tale
5
@Sparky Yeah, but part of the point is that sitcoms are not nearly the cultural force they were in the 90s--the zeitgeist has, indeed, changed. The whole model of the prestige show kind of started with the Sopranos, didn't it? And now that model influences a lot of new shows on streaming services like Hulu, Netflix, etc.
2
i.e. - from soup to nuts...
16
Speak for yourself, Randy.
14
"Jerry himself was aware, however indifferently, of his own self-satisfied, masturbatory, antisocial value structure, and the series itself ends by convicting the entire cast of being selfish jerks."
Yeah... but he was funny.
And perhaps people were less serious in those days so they could actually laugh at the absurdity of life.
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@Questioner
I never thought so, he was boring.
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@Jennie he was boring on his own. He admitted that. What made the show were the three others that surrounded him. He also admitted that.
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@Mary
Eh, I never thought the group around him made it any funnier. But good for him admitting that is wasn't all about him.
Huh?
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@A B Bernard I'm glad I'm not the only one.
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In the late sixties and early seventies, when I came of age, ironic sensibility and passionate belief coexisted. Having passionate beliefs was cool, not uncool, but it didn’t stop many of us from trying on another persona in the ironic mode. Perhaps it is the loss of passion in Gen-X, making room for pervasive irony, that’s the problem. Besides, the Gen-X’ers may have grown up without passionate beliefs, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us lost them.
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What difference 30 years makes. Lots of middle class jobs gone. Wages stagnated. CO2 much higher. A college education worth a lot less (but much more expensive). 80 million more Americans, in the same space. So less open space. much of the country looks and acts completely foreign to 1990. Health care costs and the deficits have increased...how many times? I can't count that high. We agree on almost nothing while half the country wants us to do another 30 years like the last 30 and the other half wants to go back 30 years.
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@AT Huh? More than half the country wants to move forward progressively. The other half, many of whom come from states like yours, want to take us back 60 years, not 30 (or maybe even 160).
3
Reality does have a way of kicking you in the teeth.
But seriously folks, while you were in the ironic/post-ironic world, the real world was still spinning and the 90's were a time of great loss for so many Americans. The 1990's were when it began to dawn on people that things were not going so great and we were heading for trouble (and not the penthouse). Reality always wins.
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@sjs - Yes, and it's worth pointing out that the early 90s recession now looks to have been a preview of the Great Recession of 2008. It was around 1991-92 that we were told to lower our expectations, that we'd be the first generation worse off than our parents, that our (cripplingly expensive) educations wouldn't be worth as much, that good jobs would be scarce, home ownership less likely, dignified retirement a fantasy, etc. All of this has come roaring back in the aftermath of 2008 with a vengeance.
Also, still waiting for the "market to correct itself" for all of the people who were not already financially secure in 2008. Based on where the political energy is building right now, I'm guessing that I'm not alone.
7
"the kind of false parallelism that Donald Trump epitomized when he speculated that there were good people on both sides of the demonstrations in Charlottesville." But there were good people, and good faith arguments, on both sides of the debate about whether to take down the statues. And Trump specifically condemned the white supremacists. So, there's nothing "false" about Trump's "parallelism." At least the author does not make the false claim that Trump called the Nazis "very fine people", as many in the mainstream media have inaccurately claimed.
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@R.P. : He said there 'were very fine people on both sides'. I've heard the clip many times. What do you think he said?
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@R.P. - No, the reporter questioning Trump specifically asked if the "neo Nazis" had started the conflict (by protesting statue removal) and had invited aggression from the Antifa counter-protestors.
That is, Trump *knew* the reporter was referring to neo-Nazis, and yet his very next statement was "you also had people who were very fine people, on both sides."
One "side" was neo-Nazis, as that side had just been explicitly named.
The transcript (and video) is widely available. You should read it more closely.
Who needs "false parallelisms" when Trump's decades of proudly racist statements are out in the open?
Professor Laist makes some good points about the impossibility of irony online. That said, as a "Late Baby Boomer," I would make two observations.
1. There was plenty of irony before and after the 1990s. It is true that in the 1980s we still had the Cold War and in the 2000s we had the "War on Terror", but I wouldn't overgeneralize.
2. Even today, situation comedy is not dead---see "The Big Bang Theory," "Modern Family," or even "The Connors." (The last onee is pretty pointed, though.)
Generalizations about generations always irritate me. Just make your points about the environment and leave off the notion that anyone of a given age is precisely the same as the rest of their cohort.
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@Andrew Winton - I also have many quibbles with pop sociology re: generations, but do you not agree that when a mass of people experience the same epochal, paradigm-shifting events this does shape a group identity that can be productively analyzed?
Is it a coincidence that millennials and "generation Z" have both broadly turned politically leftward in the lingering aftermath of the recession? Why haven't they "outgrown" leftism as their allegedly wiser predecessors did when they voted for Reagan and the Bushes?
Do you really not think the recession was generationally formative in a quite real way?
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@Scottb
I wonder if they haven't "outgrown" what you call leftism, formerly known as liberalism, because they are still young? I hope not, but we shall see.
1
This piece reminded me that there's one good thing about our current descent into fascism: the 1990s are over, and so no one is trying to convince me that history has ended, that technology will save us, or that postmodernism is a viable philosophy.
Oh, wait, I just noticed the title of Prof. Laist's last book. Well, two out of three ain't bad.
12
Dude, I'm almost 50 (so, a fellow 'doddering' Gen Exer) and I just want to say that this take is completely off.
As someone who was in their 20s in the '90s, life was STRESSFUL. Our childhood was dominated by Reagan and Bush, by punk (nihilism), grunge (nihilism redux) and the message that the great political movements of the 60s had failed and that there was nothing we could do to change it. Until the tech boom, nobody could find work. Irony happens when you have nothing left to believe in, when big dreams have been rendered futile. Friends and Seinfeld (and of course, The Office, an aughts comedy with a ton of Gen X sensibility) were popular then for the same reason they are blowing up with teens now - escape.
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@B Berman
Good rebuttal.
To which I might add that yes, people turn inward and navel gaze, and bathe in irony, when they get the impression that their attempts at influencing their own destinies are energy wasting and ultimately futile.
And if you want a group of people to get to that point, so that they both feel and act ineffectual, one of the first things to do is take away their political voice unless they have a ton of money (which of course almost all of us don't). Then, the grand majority of people, frustrated, will look for other outlets (electronic media) and won't interfere with the machinations of the oligarchs as they consolidate their holds on the world--and in fact, the grand majority probably won't even notice those machinations.
23
I’m 46. I distinctly remember feeling all those things.
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@B Berman
We also grew up with the very real possibility that the entire world would be destroyed at any moment in a nuclear war. I remember watching the made for TV movie The Day After a time around twelve years old. Perhaps the good professor could compare that show to The Handmaids Tale rather than a tv sitcom?
1
First, I was glad to see a generation other than my fellow Boomers get blamed for stuff. But I wonder: is my lot gettng so old and irrelevant that we can't even get blamed anymore? (And yes, I know that self-centered concern supposedly epitomizes the boomers. So what?)
22
@David A. Well, given that boomers, have held the reigns of powers for over a generation, and show no signs of relinquishing, the short answer is no, yours is not too old to still get the blame.
In a very Gen X side note, theirs may be the only generation never to have an elected POTUS. In all likelihood we'll go from a Boomer POTUS in 2020 to a Millenial POTUS in 2024.
5
Interesting take, though one major problem is that while some members of Seinfeld's audience were Gen Xers, Jerry and most of the cast were late Boomers, and Larry David, his co-writer, was an early Boomer.
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@JF Many, if not most, of the writers of Seinfeld and the Simpsons were graduates of Harvard. Most of the producers and writers in Hollywood are the sons and daughters of the upper-middle class and the wealthy.
Maybe something to do with the phenomenon you describe.
Meanwhile in the real world, the rules were gamed to allocate increases in productive to the financial classes (most internet things are really just arbitrage plays). Combine with population growth, and here we are.
7
@Eben
Wow, that is some stretch. If you've ever listened to Jerry Seinfeld's or Larry David's routines, you'd know that they don't have 'Harvard' written all over them.
Whoever wrote for them may have gone to Harvard, but they were probably New Yorkers because that was a show only New Yorkers ever really got.
But, I agree, they didn't reflect the 'real world' which was being shaped by globalism and zero sum winner-take-all attitudes promulgated at Harvard Business School.
8
@Eben Alec Berg went to Harvard. I don't know of any other "Seinfeld" writers that went there. I know that neither Larry David, Larry Charles, Spike Feresten nor Peter Mehlman went there.
I really found this piece to be enlightening. Imagine being able to use a piece of light entertainment to advance one's point about the disaster that is happening to our "civil"ization. Whatever power (or joy) may come from being funny, we have all but lost it.
2
The only value Gen X holds is that we're the last pre-digital generation. That is we can help newer generations trouble shoot digital problems with old-school analog solutions, i.e this is the way things used to work. Beyond that, we have zero credibility and we're less useful than a tape recorder.
15
@deano Speak for yourself.
10
Outstanding. Sounds like we're in the same generation. I always enjoyed Seinfeld, and understood that underneath the comedy, the characters understood that they were truly terrible people. In a way, that was a satirical reflection back on the cynicism of the culture you describe.
It's essential to laugh at oneself. It's also essential to work towards a greater good if we care in the least about the suffering inherent to the human condition. We need to laugh as well as believe in our causes. These things are not mutually exclusive, and it is the combination of the two that leads to humility - a trait we could use a lot more of.
33
@Flotsam I do think the author doesn't realize (or doesn't point out) just how much Seinfeld the show and Seinfeld's characters knew how awful they were. Full stop. It was funny to watch and it hit home because it connected with our own innate impulses to be awful and selfish, but Seinfeld was never anything other than a bunch of terrible people acting in their own best interests and that was the point.
7
Their voting percentages in recent elections support Mr. Laist's assertion that "our millennial co-workers are correct to fault Generation X with fetishizing a worldview that is politically impotent, that represents a dead-end philosophically and aesthetically, and that is steeped in white, male, upper-class privilege."
Here in San Francisco, X-techs know most everything about pop culture, style, and music and the protocols of bro culture, but most don't care much about politics. Given what's going on in this nation, therefore, you have to wonder if indeed they're "the best" among us, insofar as what Yeats had in mind.
5
@Mhmllr Tech in the Bay Area is seen by most of the rest of the country as "progressive," when, in fact, its gooey core is a selfish libertarianism within a thin veneer of liberal rhetoric.
Go to a coffee shop and listen to every other young person, imagining a Zuckerbergian future, go on about their startups, unaware that unless they make it out of the peasantry into the management class, they will be discarded in their mid-30s.
The VCs, understanding the probabilities, manage their portfolios, hedging their risks.
In the meantime, there's no time for contemplation here for what's really happening.
5
@ Eben
You are spot on. If writers spent any time beyond trying to get an superficial view of the valley, they would see this too.
2
@Mhmllr I recently moved to the Bay area and I wouldn't judge the rest of the country by it. I have never lived anywhere as politically apathetic, self-involved and narcissistic as this place.
The problem here is that instead of listening to people in rural towns (see the other article about how a dispute over a library illuminated the divide in the country) we're listening to academics in the liberal arts and those with a book to push.
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@Daedalus What is it that the bogeyman of "academic liberals" should be listening to from rural towns? Is it the litany of racist stereotypes? The unfounded fears of "Muslims?" The whining about how their $70k/year jobs don't allow them to run the A/C 24/7 in their 2,000sqft Yuma, AZ McMansion?
27
@Randall That doesn't seem fair. I think it has become very clear that there is a divide in this country between the haves and have-nots, the coasts and "flyover country," the upper middle class "dream hoarders" with their private schools and gaming of the college admissions system, etc., etc., and those without such means.
Yes, there are bigots in this country -- there's also a crisis in public education. I don't think those two things are unrelated.
Finally, what is "rural" about a McMansion in Yuma?
13
@Daedalus,
I think the problem is overly focusing on the differences between rural and urban as a perfect dichotomy. And the idea that all rural areas are the same and all cities are the same. There are also Republicans in cities and Democrats in small towns. It sets up this false dichotomy where apparently people like R above feel comfortable about calling out racist stereotypes about small towns but not realizing it's an odd claim coming from a person in Portland, Oregon. (Do you now the history of Portland and the PNW?) The idea that cities are innocent of America's Original Sin is as wrong as thinking that people in rural areas are the only true representatives of real America.
3
Randy, it’s a sitcom.
(Also the handmaid’s tale was published in 1985)
240
While the comments on the uncertain nature of passionate intensity are apt, the "Second Coming" does not portend the end of the world, but an ironic Second Coming, "for what rough beast slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?" It expresses an anxiety about what a future messiah might amount to, I believe.
2
@TR What is culture and the public consciousness if not the sum of their components, media, sitcoms, news, and all else?
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@Ben Hartley
" What is culture and the public consciousness if not the sum of their components, media, sitcoms, news, and all else?"
Where is this monolithic "culture and public consciousness" of which you speak? Modern American society is constructed from many more influences than you imagine, including a heavy quotient of individual decisions and choices. Which is not to be confused with facile generational stereotypes, or notions about people being passively programmed and processed by media influences (including sitcoms and news journalism), "components", and "all else."
10