Seinfeld facing backlash for jokes described as ‘offensive’
Hopefully most people can agree that comedy, even ‘edgy’ comedy, doesn’t need to alienate marginalised groups in order to make people laugh, though.
LOS ANGELES: Critics are slamming the popular sitcom Seinfeld as offensive, calling many of its jokes tone-deaf and distasteful.
However, several show fans are hitting right back, arguing that today’s culture is overly politically correct and times have changed since the show aired from 1989 to 1998.
Some points of controversy include using offensive slurs like Nazi and Indian Giver or racist jokes against people who can’t speak English and poking fun at homosexuals.
The controversy follows attacks on other long-running shows like “Friends” and “All In The Family”.
One joke from 1995 calls a chef a ‘Soup Nazi’, which is considered offensive for using the term that refers to WWII and the suppression of Jews
In one episode Jerry Seinfeld buys Elaine a Native American statue and calls a Native American girl an ‘Indian Giver’, which is an offensive phrase
A second controversial episode cracks several jokes at Native American culture. In the episode, a woman is called an Indian Giver — a very offensive stereotype that would certainly cause shock waves on TV today.
A third episode displays Cosmo Kramer accidentally setting the Puerto Rican flag on fire then furiously stomping on it to snuff out the flames.
Another episode pokes fun at Japanese culture and has a Japanese businessman visiting Kramer sleep in the drawer of his dresser when there isn’t any other space for him to crash.
In yet another episode, Jerry says he ‘loves Chinese women’.
Writer from Bustle
When Elaine asks him ‘isn’t that a little racist’, Jerry replies ‘If I like their race, how can that be racist?’
In Season 4 of the show, protagonists Jerry Seinfeld and George Constanza make fun of same sex relationships after a journalist mistakes them for being a couple.
Critics also complained about the duo Cedric and Bob who appear in three Seinfeld episodes and portray overly stereotypical gay and Latin personalities from Puerto Rico and are not given more complex characters.
The show also males fun of a mentally ill patient dubbing him the ‘pig man’ because he suffers a mental illness and is overweight.
Seinfeld also said what critics claim to be testy statements about women.
“Hopefully most people can agree that comedy, even ‘edgy’ comedy, doesn’t need to alienate marginalised groups in order to make people laugh, though,” a writer from Bustle said on the show’s crude jokes.
However, comedian and author Tim Young slammed the criticism, calling it a ‘ridiculous attack’, according to Fox.
He says that people are simply desperate to be offended.
He added that while some argue that the Puerto Rican gay couple Cedric and Bob were slighted on the show, at the time they aired on TV they were revolutionary.
“(Seinfeld) won a GLAAD award for its positive outlook on gay and lesbian relationships in the media as the script and interactions of the cast never mocked being gay,” Young said.
“Rather, they took extra precaution in creating the line “not that there’s anything wrong with that” to show that it’s ok and normal to have a same-sex relationship, just that “it wasn’t them,”’ he added.