“Not That There’s Anything Wrong with That”: Seinfeld and Queer Culture
Many sitcoms of the 1990s incorporated queer culture and presented it in a variety of ways, with both positive and negative outcomes. Seinfeld on NBC was one of the more successful sitcoms in terms of longevity, viewership, and cultural impact, and it was regarded as such for its fearless strides in comedy and social commentary. First aired February 11, 1993, “The Outing” explores same-sex relationships and the variety of ways in which people react to them. Two of the show’s central characters, Jerry Seinfeld and George Costanza, are caught up in a misunderstanding about their relationship and sexual orientation(s). As a result of these accusations, they do everything possible to prove everyone wrong and defend their heterosexuality while also subverting socio-cultural norms and offering pragmatic representations of homosexuality to encourage audiences to achieve a different perspective on queer culture and identity.
The episode begins with Jerry, a successful stand-up comedian in New York City, waiting in a coffee shop to meet a young journalist from New York University for an interview. He waits with George and their mutual friend Elaine, and the journalist enters the coffee shop without Jerry noticing. She sits in the booth in front of the group and explicitly begins to eavesdrop on their conversation; Elaine takes advantage of the situation and starts joking loudly to Jerry and George about them being gay and how they should be open about their relationship. The joke turns into a socio-cultural conflict, however, when Jerry reschedules the interview to take place at his apartment when George is there.
The banter between Jerry and George during the interview is delivered as though they are an actual couple; the interviewer even compares the way Jerry speaks to George and the way her boyfriend speaks to her ("The Outing"). She asks questions that become increasingly personal as she suddenly becomes fascinated by the possibility of Jerry, a celebrity, being a part of a homosexual relationship. When it finally becomes clear what the interviewer must think after having overheard Elaine joking about the men’s relationship in the coffee shop in conjunction with the comments made during the interview, Jerry and George feel the need to defend their heterosexuality in any way possible, including hastily offering to have sex with the interviewer.
Regardless of their many attempts to stop it, the assumptions that arose before and during the interview make it to print. Jerry and George experience a variety of reactions from their families and friends, including an encounter from another primary character on the show, Cosmo Kramer, who simply states, “I thought we were friends,” while gesturing to the article with an expression and tone of hurt disbelief (“The Outing”). Surrounding characters have mixed reactions; some, like Jerry’s parents, are disappointed, while George’s mother acts like she had suspected Jerry to be gay for years. These aspects of the episode support cultural norms of addressing queerness because they play off of stereotypes about the male homosexual community, particularly how they dress, groom themselves, and how they were raised.
Seinfeld challenged many cultural boundaries during its nine years on the air, and its portrayals of the queer community had consistently been better than most. Thomas Peele describes a consistent phenomenon within film and television that puts queer characters in a negative light, particularly in situations of “unhappiness, murder, despair, freakishness, and invisibility, a cultural space long-familiar to queers” (6). In this episode, the “gay” couple is put in a more pragmatic context, where the partners are of lower-to-middle social class, living together, having arguments about everyday things like clothing as any couple would, and, in George’s case, of a body type and appearance not often given to a gay character (balding and overweight with glasses). However, this portrayal is problematic considering that Jerry and George are not a real gay couple; this episode does place homosexuality in a more normative context than most, but the shame surrounding the assumptions by other characters as well as the lack of real representation does little to improve the portrayal of the queer community in popular culture.
Furthermore, an overlying theme of this episode is Jerry and George’s desperate attempt to each prove their heterosexuality when it is threatened. Gust A. Yep deeply analyzes this common cultural phenomenon in his work, “The Violence of Heteronormativity in Communication Studies: Notes on Injury, Healing, and Queer World-Making.” According to Yep, heterosexuality must be constantly confirmed and defended in order to remain legitimate (13). Although Jerry and George, in the eyes of others, transition easily into a homosexual relationship, their reaffirmation of their heterosexuality is not put into question despite the aggressive moves they make to prove themselves (like offering to have sex with the interviewer or with other women). Yep also explains the foundation of heterosexuality in our society and what practices keep it as an expected, unquestionably normalized lifestyle. When Jerry’s parents read the article and the journalist’s accusations of the relationship, Jerry’s mother apologizes for accidentally buying him female clothing as a child, as though something had to have gone wrong in Jerry’s life for him to become gay. Jerry reassures his mother that it was nothing she did, even if he were actually a homosexual; this statement put forth by the main character on the show questions common beliefs that homosexuality in men arises from an effeminate upbringing.
This particular episode of Seinfeld accomplished something which not many shows during its time managed: bringing queerness to the forefront of the narrative without casting the participants in a stereotypical or over-dramatized light. Giovanni Porfido, author of “Queer as Folk and the Spectacularization of Gay Identity,” examines the typical phenomenon on a very focused scale. According to Porfido: “Equally re-presentation, representativeness, representing have to do with how others see members of a group and their place and rights, others who have the power to affect that place and those rights” (61). By casting homosexuality and same-sex relationships in a domestic light, “The Outing” normalizes them and questions the state of a society that treats homosexuality as abnormal or inferior to heterosexuality. The episode directs attention to homophobia and puts it in a comically distorted context, but it essentially places homosexuality in a way that best serves the heterosexual characters in the narrative.
Language employed by the characters in this episode shows a lot about the attitudes concerning politics and the gay community during the time of its production. This episode’s recurring line among several characters (including Jerry, Jerry’s mother, and George’s mother), “Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” suggests a consciousness within the show that pertains to the gay community on television and how they are typically portrayed. This phrase is typically stated in the midst of defending heterosexuality, thus simultaneously acknowledging the conscious comparison of heterosexuality to homosexuality and treating the variances between the two with respect.
Seinfeld brought a lot of unexpected positive representation of the queer community during its time on the air, but no other episode challenged the heteronormative structure of society quite like “The Outing.” The episode features a variety of queer representations and reactions by non-queer characters and actively embodies and subverts the norms surrounding those sexual identities. Unfortunately, while Seinfeld challenged the norms of how homosexuality and other aspects of queer culture are represented, the lack of any real representation by the queer community makes these more positive portrayals just as problematic by tailoring them to the already privileged heterosexual community. However, the episode's repeated line, “Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” encourages audiences to rethink normative perceptions of queerness in relation to heterosexuality and challenge the socio-cultural divide between the two.
