YouTube has definitely taken notes 🤓 on my hatred for Jerry. I’ve been a longtime hater of him, but then again, who hasn’t? Him and his wife’s pro-genocide bullshit has just been a tank load of fuel on a simmering resentment.
Anyway, Uncle Sam at The Majority Report had on a person who read an excerpt from an old 1993 Seinfeld book called… goddamnit. Called “SeinLanguage”
Alright so moving on from that.
It has some rather disturbing descriptions of apparently how Jerry’s mind works. I don’t want to overly spoil it because the shock of hearing what he wrote and chose to publish for the world is… well, it’s pretty gross. Also wholly expected from him.
Also, I can only assume this is what he means by now days people are too “woke.” “Oh you can’t be a pedo anymore! So woke!” And “Wow, Michael Richards can’t even yell the n word on stage at black people! So woke!”
It’s funny how it’s never the bad/evil behaviors themselves that are the problem, like funding fascist thugs to beat student protesters. It’s saying “Jerry Seinfeld is an unfunny, privileged, stuck up, asshole that funds fascists”… which is the problem.
I think I just realized why his comedy sucks.
It’s the opposite of self deprecating.
Instead of a joke (look, I’m no comedian…) like “You know how we’re all just lazy now? Like we go to the theater, sit on our ass for 2 hours, drink 2000 calories of sugar water, eat 2000 calories of oily hot corn, and then the film is over, we rub our eyes with our salty, greasy fingers, stand up, look down at the spilt bag of popcorn on the ground and we feel really bad. Who’s gonna clean that up! “Oh, I paid $5. It’s fine!” We’re all disgusting gremlins!”
I dunno. Something like that.
But Jerry’s observations are just him shitting on people but not in an obviously joking way which could be funny, and I’m sure he has a few good ones from time to time. It’s just “why are we all eating meals on airplanes? Are we starving? No. So why?” Or whatever.
I’m just rambling now, but basically his vibes are “everything and everyone else is the problem. But not me. I’m not part of that, I just notice it.” Which again can be funny and it does work in the show Seinfeld because well 1) Larry David wrote most of it, let’s not kid ourselves but also 2) a show about assholes being assholes is funny. “It’s always sunny in Philadelphia” is sort of the next step in that sequence. Even shittier people being even more self absorbed at the detriment of themselves and everyone else. But with Jerry his “comedy” is just his real, actual feelings on a lot of things. He thinks people are gross or stupid. And whatever comedy might be there to mine out is lost when you realize this fact that he isn’t doing a bit on stage. He’s just listing his grievances with society publicly.
Great analysis. I think in many ways he is the perfects neoliberal comedian. Or end of history. Breeds a lot of anti-humanism and ridicules people being people. Individualism and a kind of written in meanness too.