Culture Complex: The Kramer in All of Us

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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 senseless war and bloodlust, but it also seems to revel in them, and it raises the question of when purity of belief can shade into intolerance. Borat is the funniest movie of the year, but it's reasonable to ask whether our culture has become so anti-p.c. that a racist comic can defend his rant, as Richards did, as "go[ing] into character."

There is the risk, of course, that we let the racist off the hook by asking what his words say about ourselves. 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 to yourself too.