The Seinfeld Paradox

The Phoenix in Newman

“The Greater the contrast, the greater the potential.

Great energy comes from correspondingly great tension of opposites” Carl Jung

And what a massively hilarious tension had Jerry & Newman right? You surely remember our beloved characters from the 90’s sitcom “Seinfeld”; which for many people -me included- was the most impeccable display of comedy ever produced in television.

As it happens -right before the pandemic- I attended Jerry Seinfeld’s latest stand-up show in New York with some friends, happening just a few blocks away from the streets that inspired his sitcom. The venue was absolutely electrified, his delivery that evening must be categorized as pure perfection. It is rare to witness such a surgical approach to stand-up comedy. Every joke, the tempo, the natural pauses and the full action vs. non-action symphony gave me the impression that, if there were omni-powerful Gods of comedy, they had all unanimously agreed to elevate Seinfeld to the archetype of a flawless comedy vector.

A vector so mathematically perfect that it mimicked the organic flow of nature itself, a lethal arroy crossijg comedy’s singularity point.

To become a comedian of that stature -much like Roger Federer is in tennis or Michael Schumacher is in car racing- I guess one must enter and make peace with this ethereal oxymoron of full detachment and laser focus, a true and complete immersion into comedy itself. And perhaps the answers to my questions could be found in -or at least explained by- this enlightened state; so terribly difficult to understand by an outsider like me.

So much detachment. So much distance. Makes me wonder if I’d be willing to pay the price of becoming such a vehicle, all the sacrifices. It leaves a strange taste in the mouth, right? Nevertheless, I can now go back with a different perspective. A quick 25+ years time travel.

Back to November 2nd -1995- the Thursday evening when the 6th episode of the 7th season aired. At the peak of “Seinfeld”, it came to us “The Soup Nazi”, easily one of the most remembered ones. And for me it is the quintessential episode, the reason why I’m writing this piece. In those 22 minutes the contrast between Jerry & Newman, like a sun eclipse, became blatantly evident and we had a glimpse of the true hero of the show:

Newman!!!

 How come?

Newman was Jerry’s laughable nemesis. An obese mailman living in Jerry’s building; Newman had no first name. Even Kramer got one eventually but no… not Newman, he was meant to symbolize anonymous abjection. A miserable life, crappy apartment, crappy job, no girlfriend… Newman was sequestered by the upmost trivialities of life. He was a soulless man living a meaningless life. Truly devious, a rabid prisoner of his basic instincts and his own shortcomings, he was darkness itself.

And the contrasting light was bestowed on Jerry, living in the same building but a completely different person. A successful and exciting career, great car, great apartment, shinny white sneakers and many many lovers.

A beacon of triumph, Jerry was for me however, awfully distant. No real girlfriend, no children, no commitment and all across the show we actually witness a serial contempt for true connections, a mockery of family; whether is those laughable couples with children or his very own parents. Seinfeld celebrated -and gave birth- to our current paradigm; the cult, the incarnation, of sarcasm as a way of life.

If we can take a bit of perspective, we can see that today, we all aspire to and breathe Jerry’s mindset. We often use irony to qualify other people and their pursuits, we arm ourselves with contempt to avoid actual engagement, and so sarcasm has become our ultimate response, one coming with a meaningful caveat; the subtle negation of the principle of community, the one we had relied upon for millenia, on behalf of the lone voyage of the Ego.

We are all Jerry today. We choose to withdraw and mock; it would be costly to commit. Why do so, why not instead live in the purgatory of autonomy.

In the Soup Nazi, Jerry chose soup over his girlfriend at her dismay, and we laughed hard, sedimenting our own island, our own paradise of free will and free action, a place were our whims will always supersede everything else but again, at the terrible cost of loneliness. He proved to us that a magnificent but superfluous soup could mean -at the snap of a finger- the end of a relationship.

Aren’t you, my dear reader, at the end nothing but a disposable prop in the pursuit of my own volition?

Jerry’s true nature is darker, way darker and more insidious than Newman’s. You see, Newman the vile, the one without light managed to show us hope however; and here is when the contrast between them reached their highest point. Here is when we finally see the truth escaping through the cracks.

For years and years Newman’s punchline in this episode was my all-time favorite, but only as of late, I understood why.

Towards the end of the show, when hell broke loose and the Soup Nazi -thanks to Elaine, one of Jerry’s captains in disdain- chose to close his restaurant, appalled by the utter treason of Jerry’s clan, who menaced him to make his recipes public all for one old freaking armoire, we saw the deep contrast between Newman the simpleton and Jerry the beacon.

In all his littleness, and facing the life-changing fact that there will not be more Nazi soup, instead of angering, Newman chose to embrace his reality and intuitively went to the restaurant to get as much as soup as he could get, savor what he could, while he could.

Newman to me, chose life, regardless of whatever everyone else said or thought. And the epiphany came that all through the Seinfeld series Newman had always done that; against his terrible self, against his dire circumstances and against Jerry’s taunting.

When Newman got his hands on the prized possession, when the streets were going soup-manic, he stopped for a fraction of a second, deeply sniffed the soup and proceeded to utter my favorite punchline with theost genuine smile.

Newman said to himself in the most sensual and personal way:  

Ummm… Jambalaya.

You see, Newman the dark angel, in this moment, chose to connect. Newman chose life above contempt. I can only hope the writers of the show wished to grant him one divine moment, but most likely it was just another opportunity to mock him.

The thing is that words have a way about them, if you listen carefully enough, they will always spell truth in-between lines. And I know it is just a TV show, but for all the love of the Gods of comedy, Newman was the one who was granted a true smile, and a true one can only come with a genuine commitment to something other than ourselves, to the depth of the moment.

Newman rose-up from his own darkness into the light of sincere commitment. Newman made the great leap.

Newman the nameless, Newman the loser, but after all… Newman the Phoenix!

The Phoenix Light Sculpture celebrates the sunrise in a particular way. The Sunrise with capital “S”.

The latent chance within all of us to stop the course of time, to stop a flawed trajectory and truly stand up.

An inflection point, an epiphany, a fantastic soup… a conscious decision to come to life.

Get to know The Phoenix and many more materialized dreams here, at our Sculptures page.