If you’ve been around pop culture for a while, especially in films and series from the 90’s and the 00’s you’re probably familiar with this phrase. It was all over the place, being used in advertisements and television, even being referenced in Shrek! However, you might not be familiar with its origins.
The show that this phrase can accredit its popular use to is Seinfeld, a ridiculously successful sitcom from the 90’s, created by and starring Jerry Seinfeld as Jerry Seinfeld. Even though it went to have absurd levels of success later on in its lifespan, the early years of Seinfeld were quite shaky. It was an incredibly unconventional and experimental sitcom. The producers at NBC, the network it originally aired on, were so unsure of its success, partly due to an awful test audience, that the first season was, instead of the usual 20-something, only 4 episodes.
Part of the reason of its struggle for survival was due to rumours surrounding the star of the show, Jerry Seinfeld. Back when he was in college, a character he played in a theater production was falsely reported to be gay by a review in the local newspaper. Ever since, these rumours and allegations have followed him relentlessly, partly due to him having had a long-time close gay friend, and partly due to him living with fellow comedian George H. Wallace for so long that people just assumed they were a couple.
Now, in today’s day and age this wouldn’t be much of a problem. At the time however, rumours like these could be enough to end someone’s career. At the same time, homosexuality slowly became more and more accepted to the point where, also due to Seinfeld’s personal position on the matter, it became quite crass and rude to deny them as vehemently and aggressively (even to the point of suing for slander) as was common not long prior to this. So, he decided to have some fun with it.
Since the writing of the show was based on the real lives of both Jerry Seinfeld and head writer Larry David, it felt natural to tackle this topic in one of the episodes in the show. In season 4, episode 17, the outing, Elaine, one of the main characters on the show, as a joke, would loudly proclaim that Jerry and George, one of the other main characters, are in a relationship, knowing there were two girls near them that were overhearing their conversation. As it turns out, one of those girls is a journalist and wanted to interview Jerry and George, Jerry being a somewhat well-known comedian locally, without them knowing that she thought they were gay and in a relationship. When this becomes apparent at some point in the interview, Jerry and George deny it with as much conviction as they could muster and explain to her the misunderstanding.
When the cast did a table read for this episode, they felt something was off. They couldn’t figure out how to have Jerry and George deny the accusations of homosexuality without making it look like the show was claiming it isn’t okay to be gay. They even got to the point where they wanted to scrap the episode entirely. However, at one point, responding to another writer talking about the characters being gay, one of the writers said the words: “Not that there’s anything wrong with that!” Jerry overheard it, pointed at the writer and said “That’s the line.”
After that, they changed the episode so that every single moment where a character expressed any discomfort with homosexuality, they would follow it up with “Not that there’s anything wrong with that!” Time and time again that line is repeated throughout the episode and it became one of the show’s many recurring jokes. The crucial difference here was that instead of the joke being that the concept of being gay is disgusting and awful, it’s the characters’ discomfort we’re supposed to be laughing at.
This was such a big deal that, not only did the show win an emmy for this episode, it also got an award from GLAAD (the gay and lesbian alliance against defamation), for the positive message it spread with this episode. Personally I find this situation not only hilarious, but a very unique and interesting part of queer history that shows how slowly and subtly, queer presence in the public eye became impossible to deny.
If you’re interested in watching the episode, Seinfeld is currently only streaming on Netflix. You might think that since it’s season 4 you’d have to watch every episode prior to it, but this is the kinda show where that’s totally not necessary. Have Fun!
