Sitcoms, especially those from the ’80s and ’90s, are a strange animal. Elaine isn’t a woman clawing her way up to win the affection of a man, she’s a beautiful woman sinking to subterranean depths. But if she is, as she appears to be, stunning, then her pursuit of Fred, an aggressively below-average man, is much funnier. If Elaine is an average-looking woman, the kind who shouldn’t make George Costanza (Jason Alexander) pull the remains of his hair out just to be in the same room as her, then her forgettability is one thing. Is Elaine herself canonically hot? If she is, why is she hanging out with these dorks? Is she a hot woman doing dorky things? Or is she a dorky woman who happens to be extremely hot? Are hotness and dorkiness mutually exclusive properties?Īfter an episode (season seven’s “The Secret Code,” more commonly known as the “Bosco” episode) in which she pursues a man who can’t seem to remember her, I realized that how attractive one finds Elaine is crucial to the text. Is Seinfeld’s best character hot? Obviously Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who played Elaine Benes for nine seasons, is a certifiably gorgeous woman, but that’s not the question. Which is how, in a roundabout way, I’ve found myself thinking about Elaine Benes. I’m now roughly the age of Seinfeld’s leads, and it’s been a humbling experience to slowly relate to and giggle at the characters that I once dismissed as middle-aged dweebs. For one reason ( Netflix) or another (Netflix), I found myself re-watching Seinfeld over the last couple of weeks, revisiting a show that I first encountered as a kid.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |