Word: seinfeldisms
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Richards, who played Kramer on the hit ’90s sitcom “Seinfeld,” was caught on video saying some very nasty things to two black men who supposedly interrupted his act at the Laugh Factory. (The men claim they were just ordering drinks.) Instead of using a witty line to put the hecklers in their place, Richards used a racist...
That last is actually the more interesting question, though not for business reasons. After Richards' slur, the analysis emphasized how "lovable" his character Kramer was. But Seinfeld wasn't universally loved. The most popular show among white viewers, it was a distant runner-up among blacks, and minorities criticized it for having all white stars and portraying people of color as stereotypes or buffoons (the Johnnie Cochran--like lawyer; Babu, the Pakistani restaurateur). Did the critics have a point? It's going to be hard to look the same way, say, at the episode in which Kramer inadvertently dresses...
This is not to say that Seinfeld was racist. It satirized cultural tensions and p.c. conventions, usually hilariously, often uncomfortably, sometimes insensitively-- but it did confront them, unlike most sitcoms. It is too facile, however, to simply separate the work from the artist. The work is the artist; to the extent that we respond to it, it is us too. Liking a Mel Gibson movie (or a T.S. Eliot poem) does not make you an anti-Semite. But it does require that you ask just what you do and don't identify with in it. Apocalypto shows a rage against...
...Richards seemed to be going for that onstage: "It shocks you, to see what's buried beneath you!" Yet he was not entirely wrong--there is ugliness buried in people--and it's our responsibility as culture consumers to ask where he might be right. Some people swore off Seinfeld reruns after Richards' explosion. I say watch them again, and think about how the comically ugly characters reflect him, and you. You might find that looking at Seinfeld this way--learning, if not hugging--makes the humor deeper and maybe even funnier. Look to the cookie, indeed. But look...
GLORIA ALLRED, attorney for two comedy-club patrons who endured the racist rant of actor Michael Richards (Seinfeld's Kramer) and want a face-to-face apology--and a retired judge to decide on compensation...