Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Šárka Tripesová The Anatomy of Humour in the Situation Comedy Seinfeld Bachelor‟s Diploma Thesis Supervisor: Mgr. Pavel Drábek, Ph.D. 2010 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. …………………………………………….. Šárka Tripesová ii Acknowledgement I would like to thank Mgr. Pavel Drábek, Ph.D. for the invaluable guidance he provided me as a supervisor. Also, my special thanks go to my boyfriend and friends for their helpful discussions and to my family for their support. iii Table of Contents 1 INTRODUCTION 1 2 SEINFELD AS A SITUATION COMEDY 3 2.1 SEINFELD SERIES: THE REALITY AND THE SHOW 3 2.2 SITUATION COMEDY 6 2.3 THE PROCESS OF CREATING A SEINFELD EPISODE 8 2.4 METATHEATRICAL APPROACH 9 2.5 THE DEPICTION OF CHARACTERS 10 3 THE TECHNIQUES OF HUMOUR DELIVERY 12 3.1 VERBAL TECHNIQUES 12 3.1.1 DIALOGUES 12 3.1.2 MONOLOGUES 17 3.2 NON-VERBAL TECHNIQUES 20 3.2.1 PHYSICAL COMEDY AND PANTOMIMIC FEATURES 20 3.2.2 MONTAGE 24 3.3 COMBINED TECHNIQUES 27 3.3.1 GAG 27 4 THE METHODS CAUSING COMICAL EFFECT 30 4.1 SEINFELD LANGUAGE 30 4.2 METAPHORICAL EXPRESSION 32 4.3 THE TWIST OF PERSPECTIVE 35 4.4 CONTRAST 40 iv 4.5 EXAGGERATION AND CARICATURE 43 4.6 STAND-UP 47 4.7 RUNNING GAG 49 4.8 RIDICULE AND SELF-RIDICULE 50 5 CONCLUSION 59 6 SUMMARY 60 7 SHRNUTÍ 61 8 PRIMARY SOURCES 62 9 REFERENCES 70 v 1 Introduction Everyone as a member of society experiences everyday routine and recurring events. As everybody has his or her place in the world and acts different kinds of social roles in life, human existence creates a chain of repetitive situations we appear in. Sooner of later these situations are considered stereotypical and automatic, and people stop noticing them. Such everyday topics have served as the main subject for the writers who created the Seinfeld series. They made a “show about nothing”1 but their aim was to draw attention to these ordinary aspects of life in an original way. They focused on unimportant details giving them high importance and thereby making them unusual and comical. This thesis deals with the structure of humour in the Seinfeld episodes, concentrating predominantly on the main characters. It will demonstrate that despite the subjectivity of humour in general (various social factors such as age, gender, knowledge, personal experience, preferences and others), it is possible to find components which are repeatedly used in the series, bound together in variations and therefore creating a structure of humour. First, the thesis provides an introduction to the Seinfeld series and situation comedy, illustrates Seinfeld’s specificity and describes the process of making and shooting a Seinfeld episode. Afterwards, it focuses on verbal, non-verbal and combined techniques of humour delivery and methods causing comical effect (used throughout all nine seasons of the show) and presents specific examples. As the corpus of analyzed material is extensive (180 episodes), not all of the episodes are quoted; instead, I quote 1 This expression is used in the fourth season of the series when Jerry (one of the main characters) gets an offer from NBC to write a pilot for his show. His friend George comes to offer his idea of a “show about nothing,” which actually mirrors what had happened in reality to Jerry and concisely summarizes the subjects on which a situation comedy is based. 1 from about fifty episodes (listed at the end of the thesis). The criterion for the choice was purposeful – to be as representative and suitable as possible in terms of the analyzed methods and techniques. The results of the analysis are summarized in conclusion. In the introduction, it is necessary to explain the division into the techniques and methods which is determined by whether the categories are form-based or content- based. A content-based category is called a method and can be defined as a group of elements and aspects of the series to deliver humour with regard to the content they express. That is to say, with methods, it is essential to keep in mind what is said, what is expressed or what is happening. On the contrary, a form-based category is called a technique and can be defined as a group of elements and aspects creating how something (an idea, a thought, a feeling etc.) is expressed. It means that we focus on how something is said, expressed or done. Every single method is then realized by one of the techniques. Moreover, sometimes there are multiple possible techniques to give shape to a thought (for instance, self-parody, as a particular realization of self-ridicule, can be delivered verbally by means of a monologue or non-verbally by means of physical comedy). 2 2 Seinfeld as a Situation Comedy 2.1 Seinfeld Series: The Reality and the Show The Seinfeld series, shot predominantly in New York, was first aired in 1989 on the American commercial network NBC and remained on television until 1998. By and large, the Seinfeld crew filmed one hundred and eighty 22-minute episodes over nine seasons. However, considering the television genre of situation comedy itself, this “half-hour comedy” created by “filming in front of a live audience and shooting with three cameras simultaneously” was introduced to the public in the early sixties (Monaco 1977: 368-71). To explain how the show itself was conceived and its relation to reality, I paraphrase the comments of the shooting crew, which are added to every DVD throughout all nine seasons of Seinfeld (in “Extras,” mostly under the “Inside Looks” or “Yada, Yada, Yada”), as they are a crucial source of information to clarify the essence of the reality of the show. 2 Young Jerry Seinfeld was doing stand-up comedy in clubs and on night shows. George Shapiro, a show-business manager, wrote to NBC about his talent.3 The network then called him to make an appointment with him (Seinfeld asked his friend Larry David, his later Seinfeld co-creator, to join him) where he was made an offer to have his own show on television.4 Seinfeld himself says that after the meeting they went to do some shopping with Larry who came up with the idea to base the show on everyday life 2 The comments in this section are all taken from the additional part called “How It Began” (season 2). Therefore, there are only the names of the speakers mentioned in the following footnotes, full information on “How It Began” is provided in the section “References” under “DVD Supplements”. 3 George Shapiro 4 Rick Ludwin 3 conventions (later in the show material explicitly uttered as the “show about nothing”).5 The show comprises Seinfeld‟s original artistic form of stand-up and “the story” of every episode. The creators wrote the pilot episode with three main characters in it: Jerry Seinfeld played by real-life Jerry Seinfeld, George Costanza (Jason Alexander) and Cosmo Kramer (Michael Richards). The pilot was aired on television on 5th July 19896 as “The Seinfeld Chronicles” and was not received very well by NBC.7 Fortunately, NBC Executive Rick Ludwin became their supporter and provided money for another four shows.8 The only requirement was to add a female protagonist9 – Julia Louis- Dreyfus was cast as Elaine Benes. The casting of these four main characters remains unchanged throughout all nine seasons of the show. Among the recurring characters, it is inevitable to mention Wayne Knight, who plays Newman (Kramer‟s friend) and who is one of the crucial side characters as he highly contributes to create the comical atmosphere (to find out more about Newman, see section 4.4). The other minor characters who appear in the episodes more frequently are Jerry‟s parents Helen and Morty Seinfeld (played by Liz Sheridan and Phil Bruns, who was soon replaced by Barney Martin), George‟s parents Frank and Estelle Costanza played by Jerry Stiller (replacing John Randolph) and Estelle Harris, and George‟s fiancée Susan Ross (Heidi Swedberg). As the show was getting more intensive, more and more writers were hired to contribute with their ideas (see section 2.3 for details). Larry David became the 5 Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld 6 Rick Ludwin 7 Warren Littlefield, Rick Ludwin and Jerry Seinfeld 8 Warren Littlefield, Rick Ludwin and Robert Wright 9 Warren Littlefield 4 executive producer10 and occupied this position for the first seven seasons of the series. He does not appear in the series as any of the regular characters; nevertheless, George‟s part is based on his own personality.11 David often writes out George‟s lines as he himself would behave and react. Moreover, Larry David acted many minor parts in the show and so appears in the series for negligible moments (such as when he occurs in the episode “The Gum” of season 7 playing a tobacconist). His voice is used on many occasions, above all as George‟s boss‟s voice. Then he decided to leave the Seinfeld crew12 and Jerry Seinfeld continued as the executive producer for the final two seasons, giving up the filming of the stand-up parts. Other people involved in the production of Seinfeld are directors Andy Ackerman, Jason Alexander, Tom Cherones, David Steinberg and producers Thomas Azzari, Fred Barron, Andrew Scheinman, George Shapiro, Howard West and others. Apart from George‟s part based on Larry David‟s personality and Jerry Seinfeld playing himself, there are many other examples of their real life influencing the show scripts.