Our group had "Many Episodes." For me it began with "The Watching of the Seinfeld Shows." Specifically, all of season one, two, three, five, six, some of season seven, eight, and nine and some comments from various special features at the end of the shows. Our group focused on "The Deal", "The Contest", "The Blood","The Maid","The Abstinence","The Mango", "The Beard", "The Invitations", "The Puerto Rican", and some of the finale. As a group we met several times, as well as several of us contacting one another through emails, and analyzed all the Seinfeld material and how it corresponded to the material of the class and then related the information to the functions of our society and more notably to radical romance and popular culture. I reread all the articles by Saussure, Derrida, Foucault, Baudrillard, Rivkin and Ryan, Butler, Beauvoir, assigned in class, as well as corresponding details relating to the articles by Saussure and Derrida in our book "Cultural Studies" by Chris Barker book from pages 15 through 86. I then carefully aligned the episodes to the readings and drew a comparison and substantial summary for myself on the ideologies we covered in class as well as some outside resources. I formulated this summary into an outline for the rest of the group. This gave me a more intense enlightenment of language and how it related to our topic. I also reread parts of chapters 9 and 10 in our book "Cultural Studies" by Chris Barker and felt it was very important to focus on the accessibility of television and its global expansion and how we should talk about the media, television, in which Seinfeld is exposed in, and how it is exposed to us and who else it is exposed to. I felt we should not ignore this representation and also the inception of Seinfeld and ultimately the background and response of the market money and viewing audience. Also, I tried to categorize Seinfield and after careful discussions with the group we felt it didn't fall into any of the normal assumptions and as a sitcom the closest we could relate it to was a soap opera. I felt that Seinfeld had an immediacy in its presentation and we all agreed that in most Seinfeld episodes there is an indication that the characters are looking for immediate gratification and that the show builds upon itself. The group then came up with many questions that we each needed to think about and answer. Some questions I came up with as I formulated my opinions about the show were: Does Seinfeld relate to our consumer world?, Does what gets on television is as a result of what someone else deems important and who is that someone?, Is Seinfeld realism or melodrama?, What are the personalities of the characters?(George cheap, Kramer elusive, Elaine struggling for identity, Jerry condescending, judgmental and doesn't like himself as stated in "The Invitations"), Do any of us actually ever think about some of the things the characters talk about but would never say these things out loud?, Is the show about stream of consciousness without a filter? Are these believable social problems?, Does the show push current issues in our face, try to deal with them, and discover that society and life can't really change easily? Are these characters the norm or the other?, Is Seinfeld modern or post modern? Are the nature of the characters something our society readily accepts and is it O.K. to say the things the characters say? (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)
We then decided that there was so much information that we should break down into sub groups. Rachelle and I decided to tackle the idea of language and radical romance together. We met for several hours and Rachelle broke down the extensive outline, that Jackie had put together and emailed for the benefit of the group, and Rachelle redefined the outline. Rachelle minimized and condensed our group discussions and out of that we created an elaborate outline for our language and radical romance discussion which included Anna's segment on homosexuality. Bre also redefined the outline and condensed and reformed our ideas into an understandable spectrum. Rachelle incorporated information from the McDonald book about sexual desire and pleasure, Jeff made the information cohesive with his stand up routine, and Jackie spent many hours detailing the segments she would show of the show itself so the class would have some basic understanding of our discussion. Patriccia, Jackie, Lanisa, Jeff and Bre spent time deciding weather Seinfeld is modern and post modern. Patriccia, Jackie, Jeff and I met the morning of the class with Rachelle's notes and several ideas from Lanisha and Anna and ya da ya da ya da... a new perspective was born and the rest is Seinfeld history. Not that there's anything wrong with that!!!!!
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