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Jul. 9th, 2010 12:44 amHerzog should make Cage his new Kinski, and Larry David and Seinfeld need to appear in everything together. (Two recent proofs that gold-making still happens.)
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The Seinfeld/David sparks were particularly fun because they had nothing to do with the customary, and still-present virtues of the show - the part of his personality Larry David is most obviously, necessarily eliding in the character he plays is his delight in making and finding comedy. He and Seinfeld are very amused by each other and can't hide it onscreen. Metanarrative games tend to suck, but this one flies because it seems indeliberate and because seeing people delighted is delightful.
But you'd need to get David away from Seinfeld for the other, more established glory of the show to turn back on. We have to take Larry David's problems seriously, or at least take seriously that he's taking them seriously, though the comic music and whatnot are needed to remind us no one will lose an eye in each episode's escalating conflicts. Something minor has to go nuclear while staying minor. The show dallies with just-desserts-for misbehaving-Larry and book of Job sequences now and then, but I think it's strongest when Larry is a) in the right on the whole but b) failing in some incidental coloring of his argument, e.g. not communicating it in a timely or polite fashion. He is, in fact, almost always right, and that outraged righteousness is just as delightful as delight. But his enemies have to have a point, or at least sometimes, perhaps so that we never see the show as supporting him. He's right in a world that could plausibly see him as wrong, and that's how we see ourselves on our missions. Our enemies must be convertible for it to even make sense to have these noble Should-stances; they must be mistaken, not evil, or if evil then by another mistake. In our minds we're the hero that can't win but hasn't yet lost - or vice-versa. The ambiguity of whether we're fighting for something worth it is pretty close to the heart of comedy, I guess: laughter sometimes seems the acknowledgement that something strong is in process that may be entirely right but may be wrong, or both but all tangled. It's a tolerance of something partly intolerable, or maybe a circling for further study later. But it's also delight that someone, or everyone, or the Normal/Representative person's like us even in ways we'd prefer not to be like ourselves (maybe thus, to our great relief, letting us tolerate or even like being like ourselves). But I'm lost in the labyrinth of the obvious again.
I don't like when Larry's wrong because I like this other kind of episode so much; though even when he is the show tends to adopt the narrative "pernicious casuistry" Shelley finds in Milton re. his character Satan, where one wrong is forgiven in the presence of worse ones. In narratives who we forgive we love, I guess. Or whatever that is we do with lead characters.
*
The Seinfeld/David sparks were particularly fun because they had nothing to do with the customary, and still-present virtues of the show - the part of his personality Larry David is most obviously, necessarily eliding in the character he plays is his delight in making and finding comedy. He and Seinfeld are very amused by each other and can't hide it onscreen. Metanarrative games tend to suck, but this one flies because it seems indeliberate and because seeing people delighted is delightful.
But you'd need to get David away from Seinfeld for the other, more established glory of the show to turn back on. We have to take Larry David's problems seriously, or at least take seriously that he's taking them seriously, though the comic music and whatnot are needed to remind us no one will lose an eye in each episode's escalating conflicts. Something minor has to go nuclear while staying minor. The show dallies with just-desserts-for misbehaving-Larry and book of Job sequences now and then, but I think it's strongest when Larry is a) in the right on the whole but b) failing in some incidental coloring of his argument, e.g. not communicating it in a timely or polite fashion. He is, in fact, almost always right, and that outraged righteousness is just as delightful as delight. But his enemies have to have a point, or at least sometimes, perhaps so that we never see the show as supporting him. He's right in a world that could plausibly see him as wrong, and that's how we see ourselves on our missions. Our enemies must be convertible for it to even make sense to have these noble Should-stances; they must be mistaken, not evil, or if evil then by another mistake. In our minds we're the hero that can't win but hasn't yet lost - or vice-versa. The ambiguity of whether we're fighting for something worth it is pretty close to the heart of comedy, I guess: laughter sometimes seems the acknowledgement that something strong is in process that may be entirely right but may be wrong, or both but all tangled. It's a tolerance of something partly intolerable, or maybe a circling for further study later. But it's also delight that someone, or everyone, or the Normal/Representative person's like us even in ways we'd prefer not to be like ourselves (maybe thus, to our great relief, letting us tolerate or even like being like ourselves). But I'm lost in the labyrinth of the obvious again.
I don't like when Larry's wrong because I like this other kind of episode so much; though even when he is the show tends to adopt the narrative "pernicious casuistry" Shelley finds in Milton re. his character Satan, where one wrong is forgiven in the presence of worse ones. In narratives who we forgive we love, I guess. Or whatever that is we do with lead characters.
