George Costanza is literally me. Even though George is a neurotic jerk who exhibits some of the worst traits a human being can have, he makes for an oddly appealing, likeable character. More than that, I think he may well be the greatest sitcom character of all time, and a postmodern hero to boot. In this video, I discuss George Costanza, lord of the idiots, and what allows him to stay so iconic in the sitcom world more than 25 years after Seinfeld ended.
#seinfeld #georgecostanza #sitcom
Chapters:
00:00 What Makes a Sitcom Character Great?
01:03 Discussing George Costanza
05:40 Larry David & Jason Alexander
07:25 George Costanza: Postmodern Hero
08:33 George Costanza: Literally Me
09:12 Thank You
09:47 To My Old Subscribers
Barbra S. Morris’s essay on George Costanza, “Why Is George so Funny? Television Comedy, Trickster Heroism, and Cultural Studies”:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/822418
Seinfeld is an American television sitcom created by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld. It aired on NBC from July 5, 1989, to May 14, 1998, for nine seasons consisting of 180 episodes. The show's ensemble cast stars Seinfeld as a fictionalized version of himself and focuses on his personal life with three of his friends: best friend George Costanza (Jason Alexander), former girlfriend Elaine Benes (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), and neighbor from across the hall, Cosmo Kramer (Michael Richards).
Seinfeld is set mostly in an apartment building in Manhattan's Upper West Side in New York City. It has been described as "a show about nothing", often focusing on the minutiae of daily life.
Seinfeld is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential shows of all time. It has been ranked among television's best shows in publications such as Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone and TV Guide. Its most renowned episodes include "The Chinese Restaurant", "The Soup Nazi", "The Parking Garage", "The Marine Biologist", and "The Contest". In 2013, the Writers Guild of America voted it the second best-written TV series of all time (second to The Sopranos). E! named it the "Number 1 reason [why] the '90s ruled". Quotes from numerous episodes have become catchphrases in popular culture.
This video falls under Fair Use, as per the US Copyright Act. Fair use is a legal doctrine that promotes freedom of expression by permitting the unlicensed use of copyright-protected works in certain circumstances. Section 107 of the Copyright Act provides the statutory framework for determining whether something is a fair use and identifies certain types of uses—such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research—as examples of activities that may qualify as fair use.