Curb's finale

Seinfeld began a few months before the fall of the Berlin Wall. By the time it ended, the US was the undisputed global hegemon.  'Curb your Enthusiasm' began about a year before 9/11. The US should have curbed its enthusiasm for killing Muslims in far-away places while pretending it could do 'regime change'. By the time 'Curb' ended, not only had the War against Terror been lost, a powerful Eurasian power-bloc including Russia, China and Iran, had emerged. Like the State of Israel, which was briefly perceived as heroic after the Hamas attack, Larry David begins his last series as a hero who helps African Americans seeking to cast their vote. By the end, like in the Seinfeld finale, he is sentenced to jail because of his various past misdeeds. Similarly, Israel had gone from being the hero to the villain with Biden threatening to cut off aid. American Jews had once again become polarized on the issue of Israel. What about the 'Mussar' or ethical turn in Jewish-American comedy which I date back to Woody Allen's 'Broadway Danny Rose'? What has flagged is the enthusiasm for finding an alterity and supporting the 'material demands' of that underdog as part and parcel of one's own spiritual and moral needs. In the same way that a well-meaning Soros's attempts to promote what appear to him to be democratic values back-fired, so too may the Jewish intellectual or artist end up annoying the fuck out of everybody else in a counter-productive manner. As Arthur Koestler- a Hungarian Jew like Soros- pointed out, comedy is fundamentally aggressive though it dissipates its own nervous energy through laughter because it is not safe to complete the underlying action. The safer course is to quit being a comedian and become a contemplative Yogi unless obviously you can kill off all resistance as a kick-ass Commissar. 

Seinfeld intervenes, at the end of 'Curb', to get Larry out of Jail because a juror had broken sequester. In Judaism, Jurors must judge cases in an impersonal manner. This is the meaning of the Biblical phrase 'ye are as Gods'.  Judge not, if you can't judge matters in this manner. But this does mean judging in a protocol bound fashion and,  over the course of 'Curb', Larry does become more of a synagogue going. if not exactly orthodox, Jew. But this makes him more not less vulnerable to excoriation. Can the African Americans come to Larry's rescue? No. They have their own concerns. 

Where does this leave Jewish American comedy? I think, the heterosexual male wise-cracker- around whom the universe revolves- has gone for good. Women will continue to ventriloquize their vaginas. The rest will turn back to their childhoods to mine for raucous, comedy gold. Still, sooner or later, we may be bullied in to boycotting them because of Israel or Biden or Trump or whatever.