I mean, it is offensive. Everyone knows it (I hope).
The actor of Kramer was even caught throwing racist insults in public so you know.
An actor saying the N word and the show being offensive are not anyhow related.
The show is certainly reflective of its time. If someone is offended by it, I won’t tell them that they’re wrong, but I don’t see it as offensive.
“Reflective of its time” so of a time where being offensive and discriminatory was seen as fine or even cool. The show is more offensive than the first Star Trek that was decades earlier. Being offensive has nothing to do with the time period, if people were fine with it, it doesn’t mean that it is fine and not offensive.
And this show was mostly made of jokes targeting a minority or showing horrible behaviours as funny. Seems like enough to call it offensive.
Can I get some specific examples of the jokes from the show that you find offensive?
This is simply not true, at least for the vast majority of the show. Any jokes that might be read as punching down are generally being told by characters who are themselves the actual butt of the joke. Example: the episode where Jerry and George keep getting misinterpreted as being a gay couple. The jokes are all built around their embarrassment about the fact, and the punchline is never “lol gay people exist”.
Maybe an episode about an minor pursuing Elaine written by someone who’s ok with dating a minor when he was 35 should be raising questions. Or when they had an episode pushing Tort reform when they made fun of the woman who was burnt by scolding hot McDonalds coffee.
Seinfield, both the character and person, is just a selfish, unsympathetic person and we’re suppose to view the world though. I’m glad he’s being called out for his shallow snark. This has been a long time coming.
The whole show was people being shallow characters. That was the point.
In fairness on the coffee thing, few people have heard the whole story, even now. I think most people today still believe the story was “woman sues because coffee was hot and she got a little burned, and the jury went nuts” and don’t know or care about the actual details.
Growing up with Seinfied and it’s fans, it’s asshole power fantasy written by rich assholes. All the biggest fans that I know from back then are big Trump supporters now. If that was the writer’s intention, the watchers didn’t get it. Jerry Seinfied going anti-woke is so incredibly on brand, I wonder why it surprised anyone.
most of my millennial peers were all in on Friends and thought Seinfeld was pretty much only for old people. it had its cultural moment but it was popular because pretty much everyone older than 30 in the 90s loved the show.
Basically people who are around 50/60 now were the ones who truly enjoyed Seinfeld.
It’s not offensive, it’s just not that funny.
I didn’t realize people didn’t like Seinfeld. It’s a great show.
The show is OK. Parts of it didn’t age that well (i.e. I got older and recognized there’s a handful of racist narratives and depictions baked into it). But Jerry Seinfeld himself, holy cow is he a piece of shit in real life.
Racist narratives? Seinfeld has some episodes based on racism. The generally fall into two forms: making fun of racists and having one or more of the cast get accused of racism and hilariously try to prove they’re not.
If anything they’re making fun of the way the label of racist is impossible to get rid of once you’ve been tagged with it. It’s like being committed to a mental hospital and then trying to prove that you’re fine so they should just let you out.
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Yeah, that and the racist depictions of Babu, the Chinese postman and restaurant staff, the inexplicably Middle Eastern “Soup Nazi”…the fact that the only time black people ever appear on the show is to tokenize them and make an issue out of their identity…same with the association of Hispanic people with criminality (i.e. the two Puerto Rican guys with the armoir)…that is just off the top of my head…
