Awkwardness
or,
The Cultural Logic of Larry
David
University of Amsterdam
Research Master Media Studies
Graduate School of Humanities
Peter Gigg
Student Number: 10396462
petergigg@me.com
Supervisor: dr. A.M. Geil
Abstract
Awkwardness is something we are all familiar with. We recognise it when we experience it and identify it in other people or situations, but the question of what awkwardness is remains crucially unanswered. This thesis will take the contemporary prevalence of ‘Awkward Comedy’ in popular culture as impetus for a theoretical and philosophical study of awkwardness’ structures and effects.
With HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm as its chief case study, this project asks what awkwardness tells us about the contemporary world. It shows that feelings such as awkwardness are not ‘natural’ occurrences – rather, they are informed by particular social and political movements, reflecting the logics and assumptions of their moment in history.
Awkwardness as read through Curb both evidences its socio-‐political context and offers a means of critique, interrogating the standards of normativity through which it comports itself. It demonstrates the determinism inherent to our ‘free’ society, and affords a means of emancipation, through the active pursuit and embrace of our awkwardness.
Contents
Introduction ... 4
Chapter 1 – Existential Awkwardness ... 13
Chapter 2 -‐ Awkward Comedy ... 29
Chapter 3 – An Awkward Politics ... 45
Some Awkward Conclusions ... 59
Bibliography ... 64
Introduction – “it was kind of an awkward moment…”
Awkwardness seems to both precede Larry David and follow in his wake. As the creator, lead writer, and star of the quasi-‐biographical HBO sitcom Curb Your
Enthusiasm, David has a knack for identifying and constructing locus-‐points of
the awkward – uncomfortable or ‘difficult’ social situations which he is forced to navigate with vary degrees of non-‐success. This awkwardness is a slippery concept, somehow both a feeling unto itself, a modifier of other feelings, and a reaction to a broader, societal, ‘feeling.’ And yet, despite this elusivity, Larry discloses its critical potentials quite succinctly; when a stranger accuses him of being a “self-‐loathing Jew” for whistling a Wagner melody, he deadpans, “I may
hate myself, but it has nothing to do with being Jewish.” Indeed, his self-‐loathing
has everything to do with everything else.
Aside from its talented ensemble cast and brilliant improvisatory dialogue, the show’s enduring success resides in this deceptively sophisticated oscillation between self-‐hatred and societal-‐hatred, a railing against one’s own inadequacies and the failings of our contemporary milieu. In this tension, Curb discloses the means by which the human subject is produced, through the essential incompatibility of the individual and the collective. To be awkward is to experience oneself as lacking, but also to experience the society which produces the self as inherently lacking.
In this light, my thesis shall consider the essential structures and generative potentials of awkwardness, as read through Curb Your Enthusiasm. Awkwardness can only exist relative to its context, the guiding terms of ‘normality’ which stipulate the standard from which awkwardness deviates. Could the essential awkwardness of Curb then advance a vital critique of the conditions of western society? In its very existence, awkwardness problematises the logic of everyday conduct, demonstrating the ‘failings’ of conventional ideology. But in doing so, awkwardness problematises its own logic, discrediting the existential basis of normativity through which it comports itself.
cyclical processes. It is clearly a defining ‘mood’ of this contemporary moment – the prevailing notion that things don’t quite make sense, that one is constantly struggling to keep up with an ever-‐advancing schema of societal codes and ‘norms’ – but it is hard to specify exactly what awkwardness is. Colloquial attempts at definition often approach basic tautology: awkwardness is simply that which is awkward. Official definitions hardly fare any better. Merriam-‐ Webster variously stipulates the awkward as:
- lacking dexterity or skill - lacking ease or grace
- lacking social grace and assurance - not easy to handle or deal with
Is awkwardness then to be understood purely as a negative concept, a fundamental lack in the subject’s social ‘being,’ or something that they are not doing? This seems somewhat discordant with the endemic scale of modern awkwardness; if awkwardness is so widely felt, then doesn’t this fundamentally challenge the ‘standard-‐ness’ of the standard from which it deviates? Likewise, these various definitions are only relevant when read in relation to a single subject; if an entire generation is principally “lacking social grace and assurance,” then this calls into question our normative criteria of social grace and assurance. This last notion of “not easy to handle or deal with” ironically also speaks of any attempt to grasp the concept in its entirety – a further tautology. Rather appropriately, it would appear that awkwardness can be quite awkward.
As if to support this, Merriam-‐Webster offers something of an awkward sub-‐ definition – “showing the result of a lack of expertness.” What is this expertness to which the awkward pertains? In staging the hypothetical questions awkwardness necessitates, we are beginning to consider awkwardness as reflecting and commenting on its particular societal context. However, in turn, this reduces awkwardness to a mere “result” of some other condition. I think it is more productive to think of it as both result of a pre-‐existing circumstance, and a specific circumstance in its own right. Or rather, awkwardness on a societal level
produces awkwardness on a social level, which then cyclically informs the principles of a society. Similarly, we can think of awkwardness as a feeling or mood in its own right (“Well, that was awkward…”), and as a modifier of other feelings -‐ one can experience awkward joy, awkward tears, and indeed awkward laughter. Perhaps then, it is better to think of it as something of a ‘meta-‐mood’, somehow both general and particular at the same time, and in the same movement.
A cursory look at the etymology of awkward is useful. In his pop-‐philosophy essay Awkwardness, Adam Kotsko proffers the following:
The -‐ward of awkward is the selfsame -‐ward as in forward or backward. As for the first syllable, it comes from the Middle English awke, which designated something turned in the wrong direction. (13)
Here we have an integral element of movement, which will recur frequently in the theory I later address. More pertinent at this stage is the directional quotient, implying a subject (whether consciously or not) specifically turning away from normative ‘being’. I think it is crucial to state that this ‘wrong’ direction is not a binary opposite of the ‘rightward’ movement, but can be a myriad of counter-‐ normative positions and directions, such that the mere existence of awkwardness repudiates our basic societal conceptions of right and wrong. To be awkward is a movement perennially out of step with received practices, but one which requires at least a basic knowledge of societal customs so as to keep it from the realm of blissful ignorance. To be awkward is to understand one’s own deviance, but to be somehow unable (or unwilling) to assume the ‘correct’ stance.
Quite tellingly, little social theory addresses the phenomenon of awkwardness. This is maybe a product of its very contemporaneity, with theorists having not yet 'caught up' with a condition still in development. Alternately, this speaks of a sociopolitical environment in which awkwardness has become effectively naturalised, assumed as something which simply 'is', a necessary condition of
our being, rather than an emergent category of experience in its own right. If we understand awkwardness in terms of its essential deviation from the standards a society ordains, it can be wielded as a flexible means of societal critique, pointing to the means by which ‘standards’ are produced and standard-‐ised. Similarly, the self-‐consciousness engendered in the awkward moment affords a remarkably capable means to examine our own subject position from an ‘exterior perspective,’ since “awkward moments have a way of pitting ourselves against our own history” (Batuman). Awkwardness then allows the subject to assume a critical distance from their self and selfhood. In unpicking awkwardness, and establishing its essential structure, we can critique internal and external processes of governmentality and self-‐regulation as integral to our normative, hegemonic, society.
Furthermore, the difficulty in establishing a fixed definition or model for awkwardness should not necessarily be considered a hindrance. Feelings that are in flux, or a state of development, can inform a more nuanced understanding of societal determinism than a dependence on established models of behavior. In the chapter “Structures of Feeling,” in his Marxism and Literature, Raymond Williams argues that “it is the reduction of the social to fixed forms that remains the basic error” (129, emphasis mine). The social is always experienced in the present tense, so any corresponding social theory must adopt a malleable stance, and resist falling back upon the established (and thus outdated) structures of the past. As Williams clarifies, “we have indeed to find other terms for the undeniable experience of the present […] a particular quality of social experience and relationships, historically distinct from other particular qualities which gives
the sense of a generation or of a period” (128-‐31, emphasis mine). Awkwardness,
with its multivalence of causes and effects would certainly appear to reflect and characterise the experience of the present1. Moreover, these structures “do not
have to await definition, classification, or rationalisation before they exert palpable pressures and set effective limits on experience and on action” (132) – we can consider these processes’ lived effects before we concretely determine exactly what the processes are.
Supporting my methodological approach, William’s argument suggests “a way of defining forms and conventions in art and literature as inalienable elements of a sociomaterial process” and that “forms and conventions in art and literature are often among the first indications that such a new structure is forming” (133). My thesis shall hence consider awkwardness as a principally contemporary ‘feeling,’ as evidenced by the recent prevalence of awkwardness in popular entertainment, specifically in American and British situation comedy. The proliferation of ‘awkward comedy’ (sometimes termed ‘cringe comedy’) throughout the early 2000s to the present demonstrates the emergence and establishment of new “forms and conventions” in our pop-‐culture landscape. We can then conceive of the postmodern taste for the awkward as evidencing these inalienable elements of the contemporary social-‐political situation, elements which will reveal themselves and develop through further analysis.
This brings me back to my principal case study, the long running (2000 – present) sitcom, Curb Your Enthusiasm. Dubbed “the apotheosis of awkward” (Kotsko), Curb functions as something of a ‘meta-‐sequel’ to David’s seminal
Seinfeld. It adopts a curious cinéma vérité stance, depicting the quandaries and
foibles of Larry’s day-‐to-‐day existence in the wake of his past success. This “Larry David” is clearly something of a comic construct, but inhabits various aspects of David’s ‘real’ life; he too is the creator of Seinfeld, lives an apparently luxurious life in the Los Angeles suburbs, and mingles with the appropriate ‘showbiz’ cohorts2. Despite his material achievement, Curb reliably demonstrates
Larry’s social failings, his persistent inability to assume the 'correct' mode of conduct amid his various neuroses. Narratives are purposefully mundane and inconclusive -‐ a typical episode might focus on a fellow customer at a bowling alley accidentally stealing Larry's shoes, or around an ongoing debate as to the appropriate "cut-‐off time" for telephoning a neighbour in the evening. Episodes are usually cyclical in structure, with Larry irresistibly drawn to some apparently trivial annoyance, which produces increasingly disastrous effects.
2 For the purposes of clarity, I will herein refer to Larry David the creator/write/performer as
“David,” and Larry David the character within Curb as “Larry”.
Inevitably, despite his best efforts and occasional best intentions, Larry's actions make the situation exponentially worse, locking him into a vicious cycle wherein awkwardness produces and informs further awkwardness.
Take the following example: Larry is waiting to meet his new orthopedist girlfriend in a hospital canteen. While using the bathroom, he overhears a fellow patron on his phone, berating the "300 pound nigger" who dropped a piece of furniture on his arm. Larry is understandably shocked and, upon eventually meeting his girlfriend, recounts the story to her. Just as he reaches the offending term, his anecdote is overheard by a black doctor – who doesn’t realise that Larry is repeating the word so as to comment on its abhorrence. The moment is obviously extremely awkward, even more so since Larry cannot voice his protestations over the doctor's anti-‐racist tirade ("You just used the most vile word in the English language […] you are despicable!”). Unbeknownst to Larry, the same doctor is operating on Jeff, Larry's close friend and agent, and, confounded by his rage, mistakenly shaves Jeff's prized head of hair. In later re-‐ re-‐telling the episode to Jeff's short-‐tempered wife, Suzie, Larry again repeats the slur, only to be overheard again by Loretta, his (black) lodger. The scene descends into an even greater furore ("Is that what you think of us? That we all a bunch of niggers up in here?"), with Larry's protestations of innocence falling on similarly deaf ears. Such is the nature of the show that this process repeats itself several more times, generating further unintentional offence, and corresponding awkwardness (as Larry is prevented from explaining himself), at each stage.
While nominally a comedy, instances such as this problematise our basic conception of the comic. Curb's particular brand of 'awkward' humour is of specific interest, since it so often tends away from producing outright laughter. Instead, it produces sites of painful recognition and squirming discomfort, such that we are laughing just as much at the conceitedness of our own subject positions than at the actions of the characters onscreen. Curb is both symptomatic and emblematic of a contemporary taste for 'awkward comedy,' first coined via Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's The Office and now
prevalent in everything from Parks and Recreation to True Detective3 (Mills 63-‐ 64, Middleton 2). The pairing of awkwardness and comedy seems appropriately awkward, thanks to the two fields’ perceived incompatibility. Comic levity is something we, as western subjects, typically enjoy and actively pursue, something through which we construct social bonds and establish our sense of self in relation to. Awkwardness outwardly resembles humour's inverse, a sensation we wish to avoid, something we are societally conditioned to expel and push away. To revel in awkwardness in one's daily life would render one a sociopath. What then, explains this counterintuitive paring? More pertinently, what explains the active and concentrated pursuit of awkwardness one instigates when engaging with awkward comedy? In order to satisfactorily answer these questions, and develop further lines of inquiry, we need a methodological approach which does not reduce its object to a mere ‘result’ of its context of origin, but which reads it as both cause and effect. Or rather, Curb produces awkwardness, but it is also produced in awkwardness – categories which necessarily feed back into each other.
Adopting a stance of ‘philosophy through film’ (or the more cumbersome yet more precise 'philosophy and social theory as read through popular television’), this thesis will theorise the Western phenomenon of awkwardness, as evidenced through a comprehensive reading of Curb Your Enthusiasm. That is to say, we can observe the ‘performance’ of modes of socio-‐political inquiry through this specific medium, and consider it as actualising certain branches of philosophical thought. In turn, I ask what awkwardness discloses about the logics and assumptions of our contemporary society, and how, in doing so, it might point to other, more emancipatory, perspectives and modes of conduct.
My first chapter examines the existential structures of awkwardness, theorising the processes of awkwardness in relation to Martin Heidegger’s analytic of “anxiety”. Awkwardness resembles anxiety in terms of effect, eliciting a comparable dissatisfaction with the terms of normative society. Likewise the two
3 An altogether more somber affair, but there is something undeniably comedic in the
‘moods’ (Heidegger’s term for the manifestation of ‘how one is’ (Gorner 119)) are self-‐perpetuating – anxiety and awkwardness necessitate the construction and perpetuation of societal ‘norms,’ our unwritten ‘rules’ which stipulate the bounds of acceptable behavior. But in turn, these norms produce further negative emotions through their conflation and contradiction, a vicious cycle of anxiety. Despite their evident correlation, I believe it is a categorical mistake to just read awkwardness as anxiety per se. Indeed, I envisage awkwardness as a specific response to a condition of societally produced anxiety, which necessarily adopts its structures but produces different effects, and tends away from Heidegger’s somewhat constrictive category of ‘authenticity’.
This leads me to consider in my next chapter the relationship between awkwardness and comedy, which Curb so evidently depends upon. As I have already mentioned, there is something of an assumed tension between these two concepts, awkwardness’ innate ‘ugliness’ contrasting with the obvious attraction of humour. As I shall argue, this apparent disjuncture depends upon a rather too basic conception of comedy as mere perception of incongruity. ‘True’ comedy is both more sophisticated and more elemental than this understanding allows, evidencing what Alenka Zupančič identifies as a ‘short circuit’ between the Hegelian universal and its concrete manifestation. This understanding of the comic movement certainly correlates with awkwardness, particularly in its relation to established principles and their often-‐awkward actualisation. Furthermore, I argue, this correlation helps to establish the intrinsically political nature of true humour, in its elemental subversion, which is similarly carried over into the realm of awkwardness. As it emerges, not only are humour and awkwardness quite compatible after all, but they operate quite symbiotically; true humour is quite awkward, and awkwardness is innately comic.
Having established something of the structures of awkwardness, and its potential political applications, in my third chapter I shall turn to consider socio-‐ political awkwardness as a product of the essential terms of late capitalism. Again the process moves in cycles; I shall examine specific instances of awkwardness in Curb as produced by and through the abstracted and
institutionalised logic of capital, which subsequently instigate further political action. Capital, after all, subsists in the distance and movement between the ‘universal’ logic of the free market economy and its concrete manifestations. We can see, in Curb’s specific invocation of an upper-‐middle class milieu, an implicit critique of modern liberalism and its quite aggressive conflation of neoliberal and neoconservative values. Curb demonstrates the essential contradictions and inequalities afforded through Capital’s relentless expansion, and embraces the awkwardness inherent to this self-‐evisceration. This is saved from outright nihilism by way of the viewer’s self-‐identification with the (admittedly stylised) society depicted. After all, the first step towards enacting productive change is identifying one’s own reliance upon and complicity with institutionalised structures of inequality and oppression, which the movement-‐distance of awkwardness allows.
This is then a study which examines both the stultifying effects of awkwardness, and its positive potentials. In its evidencing of a more elemental realm of experience ‘beneath’ the super-‐structure of our postmodern society, awkwardness hints at alternate modes of comporting oneself, pointing to the chinks in capital’s apparently impenetrable armour. The ethics of the awkward can be briefly surmised in closing, with Larry’s irreducible awkwardness a persistent challenge to the seemingly hegemonic terms of the everyday. In embracing awkwardness, and perhaps regressing into it, we might envisage a more authentic conception of authenticity, and ourselves as its conduits.
Chapter 1 – Existential Awkwardness
In a rare moment of humanity, Larry David makes a new friend. Struggling with the coin mechanism on a newspaper vending machine, he welcomes the assistance of a passing stranger, who assures him that he has “the magic touch”. The stranger lives up to his promise – the newspaper is freed – and in making conversation, admits to Larry that he is a huge fan of Seinfeld, “probably the biggest fan … I loved that show … I miss it.” Larry naturally enjoys the stranger’s praise (or at least the change it makes from the various permutations of “bald asshole” he usually receives), but his pleasure is curtailed by his knowledge that a convicted sex offender has moved to the neighbourhood. This amicable stranger certainly matches his neighbours’ descriptions (“This is very bad for the bald community … if he’s going too be a sex offender, I’d rather he had a full head of hair”), yet Larry can scarcely muster any degree of ill-‐feeling towards him; he just seems very nice. This resounding positivity continues across their next chance meetings: the stranger, now introduced as Rick, assists Larry with his groceries and, bonding over a shared enthusiasm for golf, invites him home to practice his swing with the aid of his novel backyard camera system. The tone shifts only when Rick pointedly inquires as to Larry’s plans for the forthcoming Passover:
Larry: Oh, just having some people over. Rick: Really?
Larry: Yeah ... what are you doing?
Rick: Nothing … nothing … … Totally free.
Larry: [Extended pause, shifting from foot to foot.] You … you want to come to my
house?
The moment is typical of Larry’s many awkward social interactions, yet this particular exchange (and the rest of the episode, “The Seder”) exemplifies the awkward moment as the conflation of apparently non-‐compatible societal norms. These 'norms' are the oft-‐cited yet rarely-‐challenged terms of acceptable (and unacceptable) conduct which contribute to our understanding of a collective ‘society’; human beings as organised around shared or compatible
social norms. Noell Carroll explains that “we are bound together by shared assumptions” (77), and that “this constellation of norms also goes by the name ‘culture’”(84). As such, a subject of ‘civilised’ (western) society is continually forced to navigate the terms of these naturalised laws, even when they directly contradict one another. Larry’s nervy discomfort is a product of this, his partial compliance with variously contradictory social ‘laws’. On the one hand, he knows that it is generally frowned upon to invite sexual criminals around for intimate family-‐religious events. On the other, Rick appears entirely harmless – his is one of the few examples of another person extending genuine goodwill towards Larry and, as a fellow Jew, he feels a certain obligation to help integrate his new neighbour into the community. The internalised antagonism consumes Larry for the remainder of the episode, not aided by the inevitably reactionary judgements from his peers and family:
Cheryl: You invited a sex offender over for Seder!? Are you out of your mind!? Larry: Well, it was kind of an awkward moment...
Semi-‐unwittingly, Larry has extrapolated the basic structure of these recurring awkward ‘set-‐pieces’ that pepper Curb: the conflict between two or more societally-‐shared ’norms,’ which are nominally incompatible, despite Larry’s protestations. Such is the nature of the show, and David’s skill in devising such locus-‐points of the awkward, that Larry is necessarily doomed to social ‘failure’ from the outset. A full commitment to either position will generate further offence and discomfort, and thus Larry can only assume a degree of partial compliance, which serves to generate further angst through this awareness of his own nonconformity.
These impossible cyclicisms ground the mode of awkwardness in a basic
anxiety, an anxiety which doubles back on itself when one becomes anxious
about one’s own initial anxiety. This is then anxiety in Martin Heidegger’s existential sense, the “wholesale collapse of familiarity [wherein] everyday familiarity collapses” (232-‐233), or an all-‐consuming, directionless, fear which discloses social structures and institutions as vacuous and arbitrary – typically
“inauthentic” modes of being. Since fear is primarily object-‐directed and future-‐ oriented (we are typically fearful of some fearful object or event, occurring in the relatively near future), anxiety (an objectless fear experienced in the present tense) is a contradictory response to a situation of contradictions. Anxiety is not directed towards any object or institution in particular, but rather towards the configuration of western society, and its dependable ability to produce moments which do not make ‘sense’, or stipulate a ‘correct’ course of action. If it is the “constellation of norms” which constitutes society by establishing something of a collective will, anxiety reveals this will as inconsistent and arbitrary.
In theorising awkwardness it can be easy to read it simply as anxiety, or a mode of anxiety – a generalised sense of discordance and social incongruence, and an awareness of one’s difference from the ’norm’. Awkwardness and anxiety evidently share a certain internal logic, but then differ in terms of their affect. An understanding of the workings of anxiety is necessary to theorise awkwardness at the level of our basic ontology, but awkwardness somehow flouts the epistemological ‘choice’ inherent to Heidegger’s anxiety. As this chapter shall argue, awkwardness can be read as a response to the existential condition of anxiety, mirroring its structures through a distinctive oscillatory movement which comes to form the ‘essence’ of our awkward experience. Heidegger uses anxiety as means to distinguish between his existential categories of the “authentic” (a turning away from collective will) and “inauthentic” (an embrace of the collective will) as the moment when the subject must necessarily ‘choose’ one or the other. Awkwardness presents moments of anxiety wherein this ‘choice’ is variously denied or blocked, and the subject becomes locked in an exponentially anxious cycle.
But first, let us examine the correlations between awkwardness and anxiety. Anxiety itself belongs to the "non-‐specific" branch of emotions which, “aim less at some specific object as the fetish of their desire than at the configuration of
the world in general, or at the future disposition of the self” (Bloch in Ngai 74-‐
75). Since it points to the contrived nature of our guiding norms and principles, effectively problematising our ‘reality,’ it can be quite hard to pinpoint exactly
what anxiety is, echoing the slippery nature of the awkward. Indeed, “anxiety is amorphous, a stultifying fog that comes from nothing and nowhere specific […] part of what makes it anxiety is that nothing specific triggers it (Braver 65, emphasis mine). The “nothing specific” is of particular interest, since it speaks of a generalised fear, a dissatisfaction not with any particular institution as its target, but a dissatisfaction with the complete contemporary “Situation,” ie. “not a specific event but rather every event” (Žižek Living in the End Times 56.):
Heidegger searches for the “right mood,” that is, the mood that most effectively brings to light the oppressive, disturbing character of existence, and for this reason examines anxiety, a primordial state of Dasein’s attunement. Anxiety reveals existence as a phenomenon that eludes all attempts to explain and control it, thus opening up the fundamental elements of Dasein’s existence (Magrini 78)
Anxiety is thus the somewhat-‐paradoxical form of an object-‐centered feeling (fear) lacking an object, such that “anxiety is anxious about being-‐in-‐the-‐world as such” (Critchley). In experiencing anxiety, the subject indirectly grasps the nullity of being, the existential “falling” in which the inauthentic majority are caught, blinkered by their false desires and reliance upon codifying ‘rules’ of social engagement. In this way, anxiety requires (indeed, depends upon) a knowledge of its normative ‘Other', the mass of Heidegger’s “they-‐selves” acting under the guise of a collective ‘will,’ and experiences the distance separating self and other both in and as moments of anxiety. Thus, anxiety has a built-‐in guilt quotient, as the subject recognises the normative path of experience and becomes increasingly self-‐conscious of their inability to ‘be normal’. In
Curb there are countless examples of the supporting cast (usually Cheryl) calling
Larry out on his behaviour or opinions, imploring “why can’t you just be normal?” or variations thereof which serve to compound Larry’s neuroses by drawing further anxious attention to them. In the previous example, Larry’s initial angst in debating the ‘right’ course of action is exacerbated by Cheryl’s inevitable negative response: “you do not invite a sex offender over to dinner without talking to me first!” with the implication that he must be mentally deficient to do so. Accordingly, one principle (that sex offenders are not welcome
house guests) takes precedence over the other, although the reasons for this are not qualified – they just simply ‘are’. This reflects something of the bureaucracy of Neoliberalism, wherein these “bureaucratic procedures float freely, independent of any external authority; but that very autonomy means that they assume a heavy implacability, a resistance to any amendment or questioning” (Fisher 50). Cheryl, who we can take as acting in accordance with conventional societal will, enforces this rationality, transmuting it into an objective stance: ‘we’re not having a sex offender over for dinner. No.”
Heidegger warns us to be skeptical of such appeals to ‘common sense’ or self-‐ evidentiality, since “the tradition that in this way becomes dominant, far from making what it ‘transmits’ accessible, initially and for the most part conceals it, It delivers over what has been handed down to obviousness and blocks access to the primordial ‘sources’ from which the traditional categories and concepts were … drawn” (21). Moments of anxiety, such as Larry’s quandary, work to critique ‘common sense’ axioms and consequently tend towards more ‘primordial’ aspects of our being by pointing to the conceitedness of Western standards of ‘normality’.
This particular instance also exemplifies the means by which we generate “unpleasurable feelings about [our] unpleasurable feelings” (Ngai 10) in a vicious cycle of negativity – no matter which he chooses, Larry is bound to feel bad about it. Furthermore, in Cheryl’s attempt to combat Larry’s angst by stipulating what she perceives to be the ‘right’ action (not inviting sex offenders to dinner, apparently), she only facilitates the process wherein “feelings may be formed and even ’shaped’ by the means used to project, discharge, or ‘expel’ them” (ibid 222). That is to say, in attempting to ‘correct’ his anxiety, Cheryl only draws further attention to Larry’s deviation from the accepted norm, propagating his angst indefinitely. Since it has no external object, anxiety then works to locate the necessary ‘flaw’ as internal, prompting the anxious subject to police themselves more strictly by reflexively encouraging them to feel anxious
about their anxiety. This motion is akin to that which Freud identifies in arguing “the price we pay for civilisation is a loss of happiness through the heightening of our sense of guilt” (134), positing anxiety as a tool to be wielded in late capitalist governmentality, deliberately cultivating a panoptic sense of the self as under constant scrutiny. Much in the same way as Michel Foucault’s disciplinary structure relies on the potential of one’s being surveilled, the anxious subject knows that they are always open to the negative judgement of others, whatever they do.
Likewise, in the spheres of late capitalism, we have witnessed a shift away from the traditional-‐religious idealisms of capital, promising fulfillment and redemption through the tribulations of hard work. Now we confront only the “permanent threat of the apocalypse” (Jones 30), be it environmental, economic or social, with Western governments promising only to stave off the impending doom as best they can for as long as possible (Beck). Naturally, the constant reminder of our potentially immediate demise is a source of anxiety, and an invitation to instigate more openly conservative means of government. This compounds various facets of what Alenka Zupančič terms "bio-‐morality,” (5) the societal norm which insists that “a person who feels good is a good person; a person who feels bad is a bad person […] the unhappy and the unsuccessful are somehow corrupt already on the level of their base life”. The anxious subject is then encouraged to perceive their being as ‘lacking,’ in its non-‐ accordance with the norm. When Larry retorts “I do hate myself, but it has nothing to do with being Jewish,” he has unwittingly disclosed this process; it is not his Jewishness which is at fault, it is the fault of a society which consistently reprimands its outliers on an existential level – to both punish and engineer a basic self-‐hatred in the same movement. Thus, the anxious (and by extension, awkward) subject maintains a perpetual awareness of the ‘norms’ from which they deviate, but can never properly inhabit them. Anxiety effectively 'other-‐ises’ the self.
Perhaps it is useful to think of anxiety as a structuring principle which destructures thought and experience, opening up the
necessary ontological space for the awkward subject to navigate. And yet, despite its principally negative connotations, this state of anxiety is a necessary stage in the subject’s ascension to Heidegger’s authenticity, as an “understanding state of mind in which Dasein has been disclosed to itself in some distinctive way” (Heidegger 226). Dasein is Heidegger’s authentic subject, “ontically distinguished by the fact that in its being this being is concerned about its very being” (11). Indeed, the mode of “care” integral to Dasein has echoes in the awkward subject’s engagement with structuring ‘norms’, visible in Larry David’s persistent skepticism towards established social codes. Although we might think it a something of a stretch to consider Larry as Dasein, given his open narcissism, we are reminded of “the most important thing we learned about Dasein” (Braver 68) – that its very being is an issue for it, constantly drawing his attention in a world rife with distractions (Heidegger 32). Maybe, given his lack of material concerns, the only thing really occupying Larry is his own “being,” and those “unwritten rules” which set the parameters of appropriateness in society. Whereas Seinfeld was often termed a “show about nothing”, we might understand Curb Your Enthusiasm as a show about being, at once about nothing in particular, and everything in general.
Anxiety is then the means by which Heidegger differentiates the authentic from the inauthentic. Inauthenticity amounts to a manner of ascribing to the collective will of the generalised mass of “they-‐selves,” subjects happy to assume the bland “they-‐ness” of majority rule, “moving along passively with the ebb and flow of things” (Magrini 79). As such, authenticity is an existential “possibility that has been seized on and chosen by the Dasein itself” (Heidegger 287), a decisive
reaction to anxiety, with its intense (and specifically chosen) individualism
spurring a myriad of awkward situations in the face of blanket inauthenticity. That said, it is problematic to think of Larry as inherently ‘authentic’. Although there are certainly elements of authenticity to Larry’s general comportment, at least in his reliable “turning away” from normative will, it would be a mistake to think of his being as wholly that of Dasein. In Heidegger’s terms, the ultimate ‘meaning’ of Dasein’s being-‐in-‐the-‐world is his mode of “care,” his unique combination (afforded through anxiety) of “facticity” (an understanding the
world as informed by our lived experiences and decisions) and “projection,” the ability to ‘project’ oneself onto the potentials of one’s being, such that Dasein is always “ahead of itself … ‘beyond itself’” (Heidegger 236).
Larry both demonstrates this mode of care, and problematises it through the resultant generation of awkwardness. When he runs into some vague acquaintances, he asks if their adopted Chinese daughter has shown “any proclivity for chopsticks,” and is surprised at their offended response. Of course, this is an entirely inappropriate thing to ask, such as it makes quite racist assumptions of a very young child (when pressed if she would fare better with chopsticks than an “American” infant, the father points out that Larry has assumed the white American as “the control group” in this case). And yet, this is an adequate moment of authentic Heideggerian care: Larry’s well-‐intentioned racism depends upon his understanding of the world’s facticity (that Chinese people use chopsticks more than Western/white people) as well as a certain projection (in imagining and engaging with this other being’s future being). Naturally, the parents express their reticence to this line of enquiry and quickly extricate themselves from this situation. Are we to understand that they are consequently inauthentic, and we should be more racist towards infants? Of course not – but herein lies a situation wherein Larry’s quasi-‐authenticity produces only a situation of further angst. This is just one of many examples whereby Larry demonstrates behaviour which is categorically authentic by means of his care, but inauthentic in its reliance on arbitrary structures, misinformation, or simple correlation mistaken for causation. “Facticity,” that which we understand of the material basis of the world, can be quite contingent, a synthesis of arbitrary norms unto itself. The simple choice between authenticity and falling is revealed to be not so simple after all, and a singular action or perspective can be a conflation of both.
Indeed it seems entirely self-‐aggrandising (at least to a degree not befitting Larry David) for the executive producer and lead writer of a long-‐running sitcom to postulate himself as a model of authentic being. Likewise it is difficult to perceive of Curb as essentially prescriptive; David and the show’s creators are hardly
arguing that the world would be a better place if we were free to carpool with prostitutes, or comment on the size of children’s genitals (however impressive) – we are certainly laughing at Larry as much as we are laughing with him. Despite this, Larry is decidedly not joining the many "they-‐selves" in their collective “falling,” and preoccupation with inauthentic concerns and mores. This suggests as a response to existential angst which is neither resolute authenticity nor inauthenticity, but which requires a basic knowledge of each position. Somewhere in this distance, we find awkwardness.
Still, it is through these anxious underpinnings that we might begin to consider awkwardness in terms of its positively generative potential, as a flexible mode of critique. These “expectation emotions” evidence a fundamental dissatisfaction with the terms of the everyday, and work to isolate moments of contradiction and inconsistency in the fabric of our dominant ideology. As such, it does not level criticism directly, nor does it suggest corresponding re-‐action, but this doesn’t make it any less pertinent. As Raymond Williams explains, “it is the reduction of the social to fixed forms that remains the basic error” (129) -‐ it would be principally reductive to reject the “fixed forms” of societal norms, only to insist on different norms taking their place.
Much like anxiety, we can consider awkwardness as something of a ‘meta-‐mood’. That is, it is a feeling/affect unto itself, but also the means by which other feelings (and further awkwardness) emerge and develop. Despite an evident causal correlation, I think it is a categorical mistake to read awkwardness and anxiety as the same thing. Angst might underpin the experience of awkwardness, but one could hardly describe a given social faux pas, or an uncomfortable social event as "a bit anxious” – awkwardness is something more developed, and problematic. It is not so much a distinct turning away from social norms as a simultaneous partial compliance and partial rejection. Likewise, though Larry is typically angst-‐ridden his angst more often than not has an object, from the ejaculate-‐stained comforter in his guest bedroom to Christian Slater’s overly-‐ aggressive caviar technique. If anxiety is an object-‐oriented emotion lacking its object, then awkwardness is perhaps the even-‐more-‐contradictory case of an
