The scene also makes clear the extent to which the very idea of manhood is not intrinsic to men, but rather something to be sought, won , and preserved. George is playing chess with an unnamed woman who defeats him after he tells her that "the Queen is old-fashioned.
Likes to stay home, cook, take care of a man, make sure he feels good. He later tells Jerry that he has a problem sleeping with a woman who beats him at chess. With one word— checkmate —she has emasculated George, and the only way to immediately reassert his manhood is to remove this assertive and victorious woman from his life. His manhood requires the absence of this model of femininity.
The next scene sees Jerry exhibiting his frustration at this routine and wondering if there is anything better out there. He wonders what they are doing with their lives? Jerry unknowingly critiques their homosocial bond when he berates George for always seeking his approval.
They agree that they are not men but immature children incapable of forming adult relationships. George's speech about the Queen is indicative of his own s idealization of womanhood. These are the qualities he seeks, and neither he, nor Jerry, is willing to compromise these pre-feminist ideals for the reality of the s woman.
Momentarily recognizing their ineptitude in contemporary relationships, they enter into a pact to become "new" men. This coffee shop pact sees the two men shake hands and vow to make some changes with their lives, to do what they believe will prove they are adults, although neither of them can say what that is to the other.
George, however, is the only one who takes the pact seriously. A homosocial system of rejection and approval is being enacted here between Jerry and George. George wants Jerry to think he is a man, to see that if he asks him to, he will change.
Kramer, on the other hand, is outside the immediate affirmation of masculine values. His character challenges what is presented as the right thing to do. When Jerry tells him about his talk with George, Kramer informs him that change is useless, and that there is nothing more to life. His philosophy argues that the institutions of marriage and family are restrictive and deathly to the American man's freedom.
They are, in effect, prisons in which a man does time. Kramer fears the disruption a wife would cause to his established routine and to his buddy system. She will want to talk to him and therefore end his fantasy life of eternal dinners in front of the television. In a typical satirical mode we are presented with another extreme position in Kramer's view.
It is the possibility of this entry of a restraining feminine presence into his homosocial domain that convinces Jerry the coffee shop pact is not for him.
George, on the other hand takes it seriously, and wants to take a blind leap into manhood and away from his life as Jerry's shadow. Equating manhood and adulthood with marriage, he runs off through a flock of seagulls—a motif of change recurring throughout the series—to ask former girlfriend Susan Ross, an NBC executive, to marry him. George eagerly wants to share with Jerry the news of his engagement.
After all, he has only done this to prove to Jerry that he is man enough , believing that Jerry was doing the same. When he enters the homosocial space of Jerry's apartment and announces his distorted view of masculinity, the equation is clear: "I'm a man, Jerry. I'm a man! George spent two hours convincing Susan to marry him. He does not love her or want to spend the rest of his life with her. Susan is an object in the competition between men to prove their manhood to each other.
George has seized the most extreme dramatization of masculinity for the benefit of other men, and Susan's eventual death in a later episode, shows us the dangerous nature of his foolish behavior. Immediately, George's world begins to change. Susan's presence disrupts the comfort and predictability of the homosocial order. The bond between Jerry and George can sustain girlfriends, but not future wives. By entering his life in the latter, incompatible role, Susan is asking George to remodel the homosocial order to encompass her, and what are presented as her very female needs.
Susan believes in communicating with her partner, but George believes some things are better not shared. This is evident in "The Secret Code" when he refuses to disclose his ATM number to his future wife because he fears he will lose his individuality. This folly gets George into more trouble than he bargained for when he ends up having dinner with Elaine's boss Mr.
Peterman, and accompanying him to the death-bed of his dying mother. In "The Engagement" a further example illustrates the extent to which the feminine threatens the familiar stability of the masculine world. Jerry asks George to see the latest blockbuster film, Firestorm , the kind of film all men are supposed to love.
Susan, however, wants to see the latest Meryl Streep tear-jerker, The Muted Heart , the kind of film all women are supposed to love. George goes to the movies with Susan and sees Jerry having a great time with someone else.
As "The Engagement" closes with strains of the Mad About You theme song, Susan is content, blissful; George looks as of he has made the biggest mistake of his life. The irony, of course, is that George has selected and invited her to do this through his own mistake. He does not see that Susan is a real person, not simply a vehicle through which he can achieve manhood. Worlds collide, and Susan's presence throughout the duration of their engagement calls into question both George's idea of independent manhood and the sanctity of the homosocial environment at Jerry's.
George feels the freedom of single-life slipping away from him. The homosocial order has been established so that the opposing worlds of friendship and love cannot coexist—worlds presented as masculine and feminine respectively, and requiring separation from one another in order to exist. In this episode Elaine feels momentarily restricted by her male friends, and worries that she has no female friends left. When she invites Susan out and they begin spending time together, Kramer foresees that this will lead to the demise of George's sanctuary at Jerry's.
George is split in two between the worlds of homosocial friendship and imminent marriage, and he will do anything humanly possible to keep them separate. The stability of his known identity requires it. In a telling line to thepool guy, Jerry tells Ramone, who is attempting to insinuate himself into his world, "I actually only have three friends.
I can't handle any more. Both he and George have established a routine with which they are quite happy to continue. Later, in "The Pool Guy," George witnesses Susan sitting at his coffee shop, with his friends, and realizes just what he has lost by getting engaged. Symbolically, there is no room for him in the booth, and he goes across the street to sit alone at an alternate restaurant, "Reggie's. There are two George's, "Relationship George" and "Independent George," and the former is killing the latter.
As he most dramatically exclaims: "A George divided against itself cannot stand! Susan has trespassed into a space never designed to sustain her presence, revealing it to be an inflexible entity. Seinfeld presents the perfect "marriage" in Jerry and George. Relationships do work on this show if they are between men. George discovers that he can never have with Susan what he has with Jerry. She only serves to heighten his masculine anxiety because she requires things to change.
With Jerry, everything is already in place. To serve their own needs they have established the rules and boundaries of their friendship.
In doing this, the homosocial bond between them ultimately prevents them from committing to, and maintaining, relationships with a women. Most interesting is how Seinfeld exposes this bond as supporting adolescent and limited ideas about contemporary women.
That Jerry and George see women as disposable is made evident by the presence of a new woman in nearly every episode. It is easier to find petty faults with these women and to get rid of them, than it is to look at their own shortcomings.
Women are also presented as a means for personal gain. In "The Boyfriend," George dates his unemployment benefits officer's daughter to ensure the benefits keep coming. The very structure of the homosocial bond requires Jerry and George to view women as a disruptive force in their lives. Jerry, George, and Elaine are at the coffee shop. Jerry gets up to make a phone call to Sharon Leonard, a student reporter from NYU who is late for a scheduled interview with him.
He returns to the booth and Elaine points out to both he and George that the woman sitting behind them is listening to their conversation about who the ugliest world leader is. So Elaine decides to really give the woman something to listen to: "You know, just because you two are homosexuals, so what?
I mean you should just come out of the closet and be openly gay already. This is too close to home for him. People often think he is gay, because he has three of the allegedly obvious signs: he is single, thin and neat. Unknown to Jerry, the eavesdropper is Sharon; unknown to Sharon, one of these newly "outed" men is Jerry Seinfeld.
She gets up and leaves Jerry a message, saying she got to the diner late and believes that she missed him and maybe they could catch up later. Jerry and Sharon arrange another interview in the afternoon at his apartment. It is here that she realizes Jerry is the man whose conversation she overheard earlier and that he and George, who is staying for the interview, are a "couple. George becomes sensitive over Jerry's dislike of his new shirt.
They argue over fruit. The connotations of this familiarity are magnified by a series of misunderstandings occurring while Sharon is present. George tells Sharon, for example, that he and Jerry met in a gym locker room, but fails to tell her that it was actually in high school. After Jerry and George realize that Sharon was the woman from the coffee shop and that she thinks they are gay— "not that there's anything wrong with that!
I thought we were going to take a steam! The joke continues when Jerry receives two birthday presents connoting gay culture—a ticket to see Guys and Dolls , "a lavish Broadway musical," and The Collected Works of Bette Midler.
Meanwhile, Sharon is unconvinced of Jerry's heterosexuality and has played up that angle in her article. Worse still, her article is picked up by The New York Post , announcing to the world that "within the confines of his fastidious bachelor pad, Seinfeld and Costanza bicker over the cleanliness of a piece of fruit like an old married couple.
In all the episodes of Seinfeld we never see Jerry and George behaving as intimately and unselfconsciously with a woman as they do when together. For them, this provocative interaction seems normal because it is the behavior they have approved for each other within the order. When an outsider enters and witnesses it, as Sharon does here, it becomes something else, measured outside the rules of homosociality. The insularity of the codes of their friendship is derided here to show the extent to which they have forgotten the signification of such behavior in the "real" world.
Jerry's and George's inseparability is a manifestation of the comfort zone surrounding them in the absence of more complicated entanglements with women.
It also illustrates their unwillingness to adapt to anything unknown. The narcissistic love promoted by the homosocial order frees them from the needs of the "new" woman and from ever having to relate to anyone not like themselves. This is further evident in "The Boyfriend," when Jerry becomes involved in an ambiguous attachment with real-life baseball legend Keith Hernandez. There is a homoerotic tone to this friendship apparent when Jerry starts to think possessively of Keith as his "boyfriend"— he feels the same disappointment and confusion he would if Keith were a woman.
What is this? The man is in the car, the woman walks by the front of the car, he honks. E-eeehh, eehhh, eehhh! This man is out of ideas. How does it…? Men, I mean, men are with women. You see men with women.
How are men getting women, many people wonder. Let me tell you a little bit about our organization. Wherever women are, we have a man working on the situation right now. Now, he may not be our best man, okay, we have a lot of areas to cover, but someone from our staff is on the scene. That's why, I think, men get frustrated, when we see women reading articles, like "Where to meet men? How do we get them? Oh, we don't know about that, we don't know.
These are the best ideas we've had so far! Jerry : Laundry day is the only exciting day in the life of clothes. It is. No, think about it. The washing machine is the nightclub of clothes. You know, it's dark, there's bubbles happening, they're all kind of dancing around in there. Shirt grabs the underwear: "C'mon, babe, let's go! Jerry : Socks are the most amazing article of clothing. They hate their lives.
They're in the shoes with stinky feet, the boring drawers. The dryer is their only chance to escape and they all know it. They do escape from the dryer. They plan it the night before. The dryer. I'm going.
You wait here. Jerry : He hopes you don't see him, and he goes down the road, da da da, da da da da. Jerry : They get buttons sewn on their face, join the puppet show! Jerry : Let's face it, a date is a job interview that lasts all night! The only difference between a date and a job interview is that not many job interviews is there a chance you'll end up naked at the end of it. Claire : Mr. George : [covering his cup before Claire can refill it] A Marlene is dating a guy named George Costanza because she's at that point in her life where she's like, "Maybe instead of dating a series of hot assholes, I will date one man who is kind to me.
Then Marlene dates George's lightly-wracked-with-guilt but primarily horny friend, Jerry, for a while, until she sees Jerry do standup. Sherry Becker is a self-actualized woman living in the New York City suburbs. One day, out of the blue, an emotionally fifteen but physically thirtysomething man named Jerry, whom she kissed a couple of times in high school, asks her to come into the city for lunch. After Jerry suddenly rushes out of the diner, screaming, Sherry pays both their bills and spends a lovely afternoon at MOMA.
Nina is a brilliant artist dating Jerry Seinfeld, a comedian who is as observant of life's surface-level quirks as he is terrified of actual emotion. At first, Nina is like, "Cool! Standup is an art form, too! After a bunch of drama involving Jerry's sociopathic friends, Nina and Jerry break up.
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