Shafer Discusses Seinfeld at 25
11 July 2014 Shafer Discusses Seinfeld at 25
Assistant Professor of Media and Society Leah Shafer was recently interviewed for a segment on HuffPost Live about the 25th anniversary of the premiere of NBCs Seinfeld. Hosted by Josh Zepps, the segment looked at the legacy of the show. Other guests included James Poniewozik, TIME columnist, and Todd VanDerWerff, the culture editor for Vox. The full discussion can be seen online.
Zepps noted the show about nothing was particularly relevant to the 90s point of view, when the economy was boomingand everything was fine.
Shafer points out One of the things it really says about the90s is, it reflects the kind of transition that television is making in the era from being a broadcast and cable sort of programming thing to going onto the internet, as well as by establishing some of the kinds of things that television shows do now.
Among the ways it did so, she says, was By having situations that led to the kind of catchphrases like The maestro, or Get out. These are pre-memes.
Shafer and Zepps also reviewed some iconic clips of the show, credited with raising new topics for television.
Seinfeld Set new standards for the kinds of things that you could talk about on television, and the way it does this effectively is that it framed them as really effective jokes, says Shafer. So its something that people can talk about, they can repeat and that way it creates a conversation thats more than the classic water cooler conversation.
In comparing Seinfelds edgy style to todays television shows, Shafer says she believes the new paradigm is for shows that are a little wild or innovating to start on the internet and then move to television. Theyll start on YouTube, or Vimeo somewhere where people will share them and theyll go viral, she explains.
A member of the HWS faculty since 2008, Shafer received her A.B. and M.A. from Cornell University. She earned a Ph.D. from the department of theatre, film and dance at Cornell, with her dissertation Brand Name Vision: Comedy and Props in the Films of John Hughes.