Three years after “The Baby Shower”—the same time period that transpired between George’s date and “the Baby Shower”—George and Elaine are forced to encounter another character played by Dunford, because she works in a store which features this mannequin, bringing George to be sucked up again, this time by her flattering saleswomanship rather than by her indifference, into the eventual purchase of this 40-short suit, only to be betrayed by the same flattery given to another stocky bald man. We have a reversal here in which it is Elaine who wishes to spite the woman because of her remark that Elaine “is flattering [her]self,” by saying that the elegantly-dressed mannequin looks like her, and because she controls Elaine’s image and function—dressing and contorting the manneqin as she pleases—the way that she controlled that of George—covering him in Bosco and dictating that he carry her presents; while George wants to use her to get a good-looking suit at a good price akin to Elaine’s far-off wish of entering the world of the Kennedys.
Elaine confronts the saleswoman a second time concerning the legality of displaying one’s likeness as they please in a storefront window, with Jerry pretending to be her lawyer, because a man in the coffeeshop recognized her as Elaine-the-mannequin that is now “wearing a G-string and one of those bras with points.” This time the saleswoman leaves to get the manager, and Elaine takes the opportunity to steal the mannequin enlisting Jerry as the getaway driver. It then cuts to a classic Seinfeld 1940s-noir pastiche, itself an ironic duplication, with Jerry as the getaway driver, Elaine as the robber, and herself as the loot. Jerry’s deadpan joke then doubles as incredible comic delivery and a hard-boiled one-liner: “I don’t know about you, but I’m getting a hankering for some Doublemint gum,” in reference to the advertising campaign for the product in which twins are seen in the midst of doubled merriment, supposedly enjoying the twice-as-minty gum, making the 10 second shot double as yet another pastiche. In reverse of “the Baby Shower”’s outcome Elaine succeeds in spiting Dunford’s character, and George ultimately manages to get the suit on sale. However, the joke is ultimately on both of them because George’s suit “swishes,” and Elaine’s capture of herself, as revealed in the last scene, is less significant than it initially seemed.
This is the difference in this stage of the series: revenge and usury are “successful” as conceived by their perpetrators, but in reality nothing is gained. If George had successfully berated Leslie would he have been better off? If Elaine rose into Leslie’s circle of friends and became acquainted with the Kennedys what would she really have gained other than a perpetual state of groveling? And, on the other hand, if we consider Jerry’s situation with the idea that, “If we are not very careful, cleanliness rules can matter to us more than morality,”[1] then we have a reversal: Susan Snider is no longer the neo-nazi she was in “the Limo,” rather Jerry has taken the race out of racial hygiene, and refuses to eat a delicacy made specifically for him by his girlfriend’s father just because he did not wash his hands, even though the pizza would go into the oven, a parallel that here shall not be acknowledged. Jerry and George committed a questionable act by taking someone else’s limo: but they were not Nazis! But several seasons down the line Jerry’s judgment of Poppie’s recasts Snider and Seinfeld when it seems Jerry has gone too far. As each season passes another level of irony circles the general framework of each episode. Indeed even the passage of time outside the Seinfeld universe has informed the episode’s last scene with more irony, that the supporting cast has already appeared in previous episodes.
The episode ends with “Ricky” in a mannequin factory being told by his boss, “Ricky, we've been getting a tremendous response to your TR-6 mannequin,” to which he responds, “TR-6? I prefer to think of her as... Elaine.” This last-minute, after-thought punchline ending is a signature of the episodes that don’t finish with stand-up; and, like the best ones, its 10 seconds put the entire episode in a new perspective. The likeness is no coincidence, for coincidence does not exist in the Seinfeld universe. The viewer met Ricky two months earlier in “The Cigar Store Indian” in which he obsesses over Elaine because she reads the TV Guide on the subway, and makes her a bouquet out of it when she forgets it on the seat in her hurry to get away from him. That he is “Ricky” and obsessed with the various incarnations—multiplicities—of sitcoms in which Lucille Ball plays “Lucy” and her real life husband Desi Arnes plays “Ricky” makes, for Ricky, Elaine a reincarnation of Lucy, and the world of television a doubling of the television reality that the show already is.
The mannequin symbolizes the insanity of reproduction. The “TR-6” has a potentially infinite capacity to be reproduced, due to its “tremendous response,” and that there is no foreseeable end to the demand for mannequins in storefront windows, and thus Elaine’s existence, beyond her own control, goes on to exist and represent her in contexts that she herself could not possibly imagine nor in which she could participate, beyond the shop on the upper-west side of Manhattan, or, more accurately, the fictional Seinfeld universe. If Elaine is indeed based upon a woman in the life of Seinfeld or David, how must she feel to see her essence put into interaction with characters on television and in turn referenced by millions of Americans across the country, without any ability to speak for herself or decide what she is doing in these interactions? Or how must it feel to be Julia Louis-Dreyfus and to see herself become a caricature on television and in storefront displays used to sell products, and recognized as a bad dancer, when she herself may cut a mean rug? Such reproductions cannot be stolen with Jerry driving the getaway car. As much as we may think we are capable of wielding the meaning we put out into the world, once it is out there it can re-engender itself or be duplicated by others over and over.
[1] Dunne, Sara Lewis. “Seinfood: Purity, Danger, and Food Codes on Seinfeld.” Seinfeld, Master of its Domain. Continuum, New York: 2006. Page 158.
you really got me with that last paragraph
ReplyDeleteWhat in the hell
ReplyDelete