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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/Tokyono on 2024-11-17 12:08:49+00:00.
Hello everyone! I am trying to get back into writing posts and wanted to start with something short.
Edit: the “hiatus” in the title refers to the episode being pulled for four years not the whole show. Sorry for the phraseology here.
I haven’t seen Seinfeld, but…points to user flair.
What is Seinfeld?
Or rather, who is Seinfeld?
Jerry Seinfeld is a stand-up comedian, actor, writer, etc, with a varied and colourful career. Among the many gems he has created, is The Bee Movie. He also got in trouble once for dating a 17-year-old girl when he was 39…but that’s a story for another time.
Seinfeld (the show) is a fictional account of Jerry Seinfeld’s life in New York City, with three of his zany friends: George Constanza, Elaine Benes, and Cosmo Kramer. It’s often described as a “show about nothing”, focusing on the daily lives and mishaps of its characters. The show ran from 1989-1998, for 9 seasons.
Seinfeld was incredibly successful. 76 million people watched the finale. It’s loved by critics and viewers and has earned billions in syndication. It also heavily influenced shows like Arrested Development and The Sopranos.
But that doesn’t mean the show was free from controversy. 🇵🇷 🔥
The episode
The episode I am going to be discussing is season 9 episode 20, “The Puerto Rican Day”. It aired on May 7, 1998. It is the second most watched episode of Seinfeld ever, with 38.8 million viewers. *TBF it is the episode before the finale.
Seinfeld and his friends are driving through town, when they get caught up in traffic because of the annual Puerto Rican Day Parade. Some other things happen, but at one point the character Kramer accidentally sets a Puerto Rican flag on fire with a sparkler. He then proceeds to throw it on the ground and stomp on it in an effort to put the fire out. People around him quickly notice and voice their disapproval, before a Puerto Rican, because he is just so damn fiery and patriotic, verbally attacks him. Kramer yells “Momma” and flees, closely followed by the Puerto Rican and several others, because they are just so damn fiery and patriotic. They proceed to damage Seinfeld’s car and throw it down a stairwell, causing Kramer to quip, “It's like this every day in Puerto Rico.”
Unsurprisingly, Puerto Ricans IRL did not like the comedic destruction of their flag nor the stereotypical portrayal of their country.
The backlash
Within a day, the episode drew complaints from Puerto Rican activists and community leaders:
But Manuel Mirabal, president of the Washington-based National Puerto Rican Coalition -- who's been complaining to NBC and Castle Rock executives since late April, when only the show's title was public knowledge -- was not laughing yesterday.
Instead he staged a news conference at which he demanded that NBC, Castle Rock and Seinfeld himself apologize during next week's final episode and promise that "Puerto Rican Day Parade" will not be aired in syndication.
"When I watched last night, at first I wasn't too upset, but I was concerned that the Latinos depicted in the show were very stereotypical, like in West Side Story,' wearing the kind of clothes that people wore 40 years ago," said Mirabal, whose organization monitors congressional action and government policy affecting around 7 million Puerto Ricans living in the United States and on the island. "Then Kramer started running around with the Puerto Rican flag. . . . At the point at which the flag was burned, my blood started boiling."
Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer also condemned that scene -- in which the bumbling Kramer accidentally sets the flag ablaze with a sparkler, provoking a riot among parade marchers who trash Jerry's Saab. Kramer then makes one of his typically loony comments.
"The burning of the Puerto Rican flag as a sight gag was insulting to the millions who hold that flag dear, as was the slur that men rioting and vandalizing a car is Like this every day in Puerto Rico,' " Ferrer said in a statement.
Ferrer's office in the Bronx -- where many of New York's 800,000 Puerto Ricans reside -- received "a couple of dozen" calls protesting the fictionalized flag burning, according to his communications director. But Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's office reported none.
Ironically, the real-life Puerto Rican Parade is scheduled to be broadcast live June 14 by WNBC, the network owned-and-operated station in New York. Parade President Ramon Velez said he, too, was disturbed by the flag-burning. "Otherwise I didn't have too many objections. I'm not condemning anybody," he said. "There is a positive aspect, in my opinion. That is, millions of people are now exposed to the fact that there is a National Puerto Rican Parade."
Concerns had been raised about the episode several months before it had aired:
He (Mr. Mirabal) wrote to Mr. Wright last month, before he had seen the show, to express his concern and to suggest that NBC have Hispanic consultants review the program for offensive content. Until that point, NBC had said only that the episode would be titled ''The Puerto Rican Day Parade.''
In a response to Mr. Mirabal, an executive with the ''Seinfeld'' production company said that the episode could have been written about the St. Patrick's Day parade or Columbus Day parade, but that they did not occur during baseball season.
''We do not feel that the show lends itself to damaging ethnic stereotypes, because the audience for 'Seinfeld' knows the humor is derived from watching the core group of characters get themselves into difficult situations,'' the network said in a statement.
NBC's president, Robert Wright, added, ''Our appreciation of the broad comedy of 'Seinfeld' does not in any way take away from the respect we have for the Puerto Rican flag.''
The protests continued into June with people sending angry letters to NBC and even demonstrating outside Rockefeller Center. NBC responded by removing the episode from reruns.
As for the Seinfeld cast and crew, they objected to the objections. From ‘Seinfeld - Season 9 - Inside Looks - "The Puerto Rican Day"’:
Jason Alexander (George Costanza): “If you don't see the irony and the humor in having him (Kramer) be responsible for a burning flag then you've just missed the point and I just kept thinking this is so sad that everybody is they're so oversensitized that they just don't get the joke it's not it's not a shot at anybody if any if it's a shot on anybody it's a shot on Kramer um and it it was you know it was it was the second to last episode so it was really a sad thing to have that sort of Downer happen towards the very end.”
Jerry Seinfeld (Jerry Seinfeld): “I remember speaking with the head of uh a a some sort of Puerto Rican Pride Coalition and he spoke to me and told me that they were going to uh protest uh the episode and they were very upset that we had done this um and I said but you haven't seen the episode yet I said how do you how do you know that there's something in there that you want to protest and I'll never forget his exact words were “we assume that it's offensive”. So that's when I knew I wasn't dealing with anything that was you know really legitimate it was just someone wanting to and the really the only thing the episode was about was traffic it had nothing to do with the Puerto Rican Day Parade I mean it was just one of the we just thought it was the funniest of the many parades that they have in New York City that that cause these terrible traffic snarls.”
George Shapiro (executive producer): “Jerry after the series ended went to the broadhurst theater in Manhattan to do uh his show called ‘I'm telling you for the last time’ which was a standup show on Broadway culminating in this HBO special I'm telling you for the last time and they protested across the street from the stage door every night ‘Jerry Seinfeld is a racist’. It was like a big protest he was getting death threats it was getting serious he had we had security we had plane closed policemen there and uh the last show which is the one that went out live to HBO uh it was a great show and Jerry was exhilarated you know he he felt he did the best of all the shows for the full week and he comes out of the stage door and across the street are the protesters and before anyone could notice Jerry strides across the street with his long strides goes up to the guy shakes his hand the guy smiles at him he shook a couple of people and it sort of diffused the whole...
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