It's Not a Lie If You Believe It

That Elaine refers to herself as a “beard” in the episode of the same name illustrates perfectly how each of the four characters falsify a fourth of the show: as Elaine pretends to be the date of a gay man for the benefit of his boss, George wears a toupee, as though the cover-up was just turned ninety degrees, ninety more with Jerry’s rouse, and Kramer falsifying the last plane.  What lies underneath all this false hair are four simple facts: Elaine is attracted to a gay man, George is bald, Jerry watches Melrose Place, and Kramer is not a criminal.   Two are forcefully revealed, each with a ripping motion: Elaine rips off George’s toupee and throws it out the window, disgusted with the narcissistic, arrogant person it had revealed by covering up; and Jerry rips off the sensors of the lie detector that detected that he watches Melrose Place.  And so each comes to terms with who he is, and it ends with all four watching Melrose Place, with George’s scalp proudly displayed.  In the words of George, “when she threw that toupee out the window, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I feel like my old self again: totally inadequate, completely insecure, paranoid, neurotic, it's a pleasure.” 

            The truth with Kramer and Elaine is not so simple.  Kramer’s role as a beard comes with his recruitment to stand in a police line-up, to pretend to have been picked up as a suspect.   The previous ending is whimsically subverted when a homeless man spites Kramer by picking him out of the line-up, to which he responds in panic, “Me?!”  Pretending, it seems, can lead, at least for the purposes of the joke, to being.   And this is Elaine’s hope: that she can convert her pretend heterosexual date to an actual one.  This doesn’t work in the end, though a sincere effort is made by both parties.  The explanation is not that he’s gay, oddly enough—it’s that Elaine doesn’t have enough experience with “the equipment,” and that her male competitors have “access” to it all of the time and she thus has no chance at bringing him to her side.  “That’s why they lose so few players,” says Jerry. 

            But what kind of explanation is this?  In the nineties was everyone bisexual, simply choosing one side or the other?  Is the gay/straight binary an invention that has nothing to do with the deconstructed world at the end of the 20^th century?  If a man receives a massage from another man and “it moves” does that mean his heterosexuality falls to pieces?  Is it a lie if you believe it?