Word: seinfeldisms
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Look to the cookie!" If only Michael Richards had remembered the advice of Jerry Seinfeld, rhapsodizing on his sitcom about the racial-harmony message of the black-and-white cookie. When Richards (Seinfeld's Kramer) called African-American hecklers in a comedy club "niggers" and joked about lynching them, it capped a season of celebrity lunacy. Mel Gibson had his anti-Jewish tirade during a drunk-driving arrest; actor Isaiah Washington reportedly called a fellow Grey's Anatomy cast member a "faggot" during an argument on set. News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch, meanwhile, apologized last week not for bigotry...
...Apocalypto. We didn't look so hard at how his bile reflected on the millions who loved The Passion of the Christ, with its hook-nosed, despicable Jews. About Richards, we asked, Did he seem sad enough on Letterman? What do p.r. experts advise? How will the incident affect Seinfeld reruns and DVDs...
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...
...civilizations” by going to see the new movie “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.” Starring Sacha Baron Cohen and directed by Larry Charles, best known for his work as a writer on “Seinfeld,” “Borat” resonates so much with audiences because of the West’s unease about Muslim cultural attitudes...