“We’re not gay — not that there’s anything wrong with that!”
Seinfeld has come to Netflix. The hugely popular comedy show was on the tube for nine seasons throughout the nineties — yes, your tv had a tube back then. I discovered the eponymous show about nothing with the four New York friends Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer only after the fact on DVD (it wasn’t that huge in the Netherlands). The twenty-minute episodes are great to start your day on the rowing machine, because they’re still as funny as ever.
Netflix doesn’t offer all the special features that made the DVDs so illuminating. Most episodes are introduced by the actors, writers, and directors. Despite there being no swearing or nudity on American network tv, Seinfeld regularly broke taboos. Twenty years on, the present-day onslaught of sex, swearing and slaughter on popular subscriber channels makes you forget what those taboos were.
Here’s one. The script for the episode The Outing (season 4, 1993) went a little too far for NBC. The story revolved around an interviewer getting a mistaken notion, leading to a sympathetic human-interest article about Jerry and George living together as a couple. The two go to embarrassing lengths to debunk the story, which only makes it more awkward. We’re not gay. Not that there’s anything wrong with that!
That phrase by writer Larry Charles proved to be the lucky charm that made NBC relent. What the characters really meant to say was that it is awful to be gay, according to Jerry Seinfeld. But that wouldn’t be at all funny. Better to ridicule their hypocrisy. Their defence is as silly as saying I’ve got loads of gay friends. But I’m not gay myself.
If you think it necessary to stress the fact that you’re not gay, I think you’re afraid that I would incorrectly assume your sexual orientation — as if that were any of my business in the first place. You instantly undermine your own open-mindedness for fear of judgement. Fear is the operative word here and central to the word homophobia.
Cutting-edge humour is not for the faint of heart. The creators of Seinfeld took a gamble that the audience wouldn’t take kindly to the joke. But happily, they did. The gay community went crazy. They weren’t offended at all. In fact, it wound up winning a GLAAD award (actor Jason Alexander, who played George Costanza). Re-watching entertainment made a generation or longer ago often begs the question if you could get away with it today. Obviously not with Sean Connery’s Bond girls, which is a good thing. But satire is under attack. It relies on the audience’s generosity to trust that the makers were in good faith, that they were not mocking gay people, but ridiculing homophobia.
We must cherish popular satire, if only for its ability to educate. But our powers of perspective have grown thin and the atmosphere on social media has become one of constant and disingenuous indignation. The bigger the interests, the bigger the incentive to give the humourless pedants their pound of flesh. Big Media has grown weak in the knees and keeps a safe distance from the edge. The Outing would probably have had its sharp edges removed. Safe humour that desperately tries to offend no one isn’t funny anymore.
We can laugh about Jerry and George’s narrow-minded antics, but the everyday face of homophobia is much more frightening. It feeds on people parroting noxious prejudices in a culture of fear, shame, and loathing. Taking the step to violence is all too easy. There was a time in the Netherlands when two men could walk the street hand in hand without care. Those were the Seinfeld years. Our much-lauded tolerance has rapidly gone downhill. It’s awful to be gay. This is not only the state of mind of people who hate gays. It’s the sad reality for all gays in the ten countries where being true to their sexuality is a capital offence. Is it cowardice for a man to behave as hetero as you can to avoid being harassed? I think not; not if it’s out of sheer self-defence. Most people are not heroes.
