(a thought on Seinfeld)

Carol Stabile cstabile+ at pitt.edu
Fri May 22 05:33:18 PDT 1998


Granted that Seinfeld was well-written. Personally, I despised the show (felt that it was deeply misogynistic, among other things), but then again I dislike most sitcoms. I think the more important point, though, is not defending what we like -- I watch a lot of TV that people would describe as "crap" -- but thinking about what kinds of meanings TV programs establish (and not just for us). And I have to tell you that Moore's _TV Nation_ was one of the most exciting programs to appear for a long, long time, even though from the beginning it seemed like the networks were sabotaging it. For example, except for a brief moment on NBC, it never had an established time slot, which made it difficult for it to establish an audience in the terms the industry sets forth.

But the program offered a vision of a society you just couldn't see anywhere else on TV or cable. Maybe all of the segments weren't perfect or were inconsistent, but it seems to me that that's splitting hairs. For a moment, the program opened up a tiny space on network TV in which class and class antagonisms (not to mention the police state) were visible.

carol



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