Analyze this! Another Seinfeld bit: The arrogance of Life cereal

It’s time to look at another bit from Jerry Seinfeld’s new book, Is This Anything? (Simon & Schuster, 2020). I am going to use a different format from the one I used for “The Left Bit.” First I want to say a little about priming, which is very important in comedy. Then I present Seinfeld's bit straight, without commentary. Finally I present it again, this time inserting comments.

When reading my comments, which do go on, remember Seinfeld’s assertion that jokes are intricate well-crafted little machines. It’s not easy to describe machines, especially machines you can’t observe directly. I’m doing the best I can.

Finally, don’t make the mistake of thinking that my commentary is about what the bit really means. It means what it means. I’m interested in the machinery behind the meaning.

Priming

From Wikipedia:

Priming is a phenomenon whereby exposure to one stimulus influences a response to a subsequent stimulus, without conscious guidance or intention. For example, the word NURSE is recognized more quickly following the word DOCTOR than following the word BREAD. Priming can be perceptual, associative, repetitive, positive, negative, affective, semantic, or conceptual. Research, however, has yet to firmly establish the duration of priming effects, yet their onset can be almost instantaneous.

We’ll be looking at two cases where Seinfeld’s particular word choice primes us – sets us up – to react in a certain way to subsequent material. Notice that word “duration,” which is about time. Timing is crucial in comedy. Too soon, or too late, and there’s no laugh.

The Bit: Life Cereal

Too much arrogance.

Everywhere.

Even the food industry.

Where in the world do you get your balls

to call a breakfast cereal LIFE?

What do they see in their little square oat cereal

that makes them think that it should be named after our very existence?

“How about Oaties, Squaries, Brownies?”

“Oh no, this is much bigger than that.

This is LIFE, I tell you.

It’s LIFE.”

What other names you think they considered?

How about “Almighty God”?

Was that in the running?

Who wouldn’t want to wake up in the morning to a nice big bowl of “Almighty God”?

Or New, “Almighty God With Raisins.”

And if you don’t like it,

you can go to hell.

Analysis and Comments: Life Cereal

Too much arrogance.

Everywhere.

Even the food industry.

“Arrogance,” that’s our topic. What’s it mean? Roughly, claiming something you have no right to. “Everywhere” – What work is that doing? Why “even” the food industry; is there some reason we might think them exempt? Likely not, but in allowing the suggestion Seinfeld is already undermining them.

Where in the world do you get your balls

to call a breakfast cereal LIFE?

He’s asking a question, directed at the food industry. And that question has some serious priming: “balls.” That word is what got my attention when I was reading through these bits. That word is what told me there's something going on here. It sets up a background resonance that’s there for exploitation. Jerry could have said “gumption,” “guts,” or even “chutzpah.” He could have used “cajones,” but that’s just “balls” in a different language. They all mean the same thing: “You have a lotta’ nerve.” Well, that’s not quite right, but you get the idea. “Balls” refers specifically to testicles, male sexual organs. We’re now out of the innocent world of breakfast cereal. How’s Seinfeld going to redeem, if you will, this priming? Where’s it leading?

What do they see in their little square oat cereal

that makes them think that it should be named after our very existence?

“How about Oaties, Squaries, Brownies?”

“Oh no, this is much bigger than that.

This is LIFE, I tell you.

It’s LIFE.”

The first two lines, they’re a question. He’s asking us to think, but also implying that he’s going to give us an answer. Perhaps “square” resonates just a bit with balls. Both are shapes, but contrasting. And “little”? Of course it’s little, it’s a chunk of breakfast cereal, but Seinfeld needs to get that on the table so he can use it a couple of lines later. It plays off the “arrogance” theme; for Seinfeld continues, “that makes them think.” There it is, that’s the charge of arrogance. How do the captains of the food industry go from “little square” to “our very existence”?

Now he changes his tone and voice. He suggests other possible names. And he’s in effect, making these suggestions to those very captains – on our behalf? The first two suggestions are just silly – implying a judgment on this whole business – and aren’t real words. The last IS a real word, and it has two senses. Brownies are little chocolate cakes, but they’re also the junior division of the Girl Scouts. Are those little oat squares actually brown? No.

Seinfeld is playing the familiar game, “which of these don’t belong?” To use a linguistic term, “Oaties” and “Squaries” are unmarked terms, while “Brownies” is marked. It’s the one that doesn’t belong. Why is he doing that? More priming.

Jerry changes voice and tone again. Now he’s giving voice to those captains of the food industry as they explain themselves. They do so, not through any reasoning, but though mere assertion. That takes, you know it, balls. Notice the repetition of “LIFE” and the short concluding line. Timing.

Now we head off in a different direction.

What other names you think they considered?

How about “Almighty God”?

Was that in the running?

More questions, directed to us, including a suggestion wrapped in a question. That suggestion is every bit as arrogant as “LIFE,” if not more so. LIFE is secular, but “Almighty God” brings a whole different range of resonance. We’ve left the secular. Seinfeld’s raised the stakes.

Who wouldn’t want to wake up in the morning to a nice big bowl of “Almighty God”?

This, of course, is ridiculous. Notice that it takes the form of a question directed, once again, at the audience. And, he's picking up the pace.

Or New, “Almighty God With Raisins.”

Even more ridiculous. We have cereal with raisins all the time; they’re just added in to the mix. But “Almighty God” is such a strong phrase, with religious resonance we cannot sidestep, that we absolutely cannot think of it as merely the name of little oat squares. We have to think of some anthropomorphic being of immense proportions and powers. And just what is this Being doing with raisins? Tossing them in the air and catching them in his mouth?

And if you don’t like it,

you can go to hell.

Who’s speaking here? Sounds like a religious scold, a prophet bringing fire and brimstone down on a straying flock. Yet it has to be those captains of industry, perhaps conflated with that immense anthropomorphic being. But why do we deserve to go to hell? Isn’t that a bit much for merely not liking their cereal?

And now we can see the fruits of that priming, balls and brownies. If you do a web search on “eating brownies” you get pictures of kids eating little chocolate cakes and helpful information about those cakes. What do you get when you search on “eating brownies joke” (don’t use the quotation marks)?

You know what you get, don’t you? You don’t even have to do the search. You get a joke that puns on two senses of “eat” and two senses of “brownie.” It’s a nasty joke. Why are you consigned to hell? Because you already know the joke.

But, but, you object, that’s not what Seinfeld said. It’s not really there. I know that. That’s what that priming is about. It’s sets up the resonance from which that laughter erupts.

I ask you, why did Seinfeld use “balls” with its sexual connotations when other words would have done just as well? Seinfeld is known for NOT doing “blue” material, and while this is not flagrantly and obviously blue, there’s no talk of sex anywhere in the joke, still the resonance of that particular term is unavoidable. And why suggest “Brownies” as an alternative name for the serial when those little squares are not brown? Tan, maybe light brown, but not brown. Now, there is a chocolate flavored version of the cereal, and those little squares ARE brown. But Seinfeld didn’t say anything about them. 

Still not buying it? Imagine a product meeting within the company where they’re kicking around possible names – as Seinfeld asks us to do. I find it hard to imagine that someone wouldn’t have thought of the pun and brought it up in the meeting. That would have killed it. But, on the chance that it got through and that became the name, surely once the cereal was on the market someone would make the connection, maybe a comedian would put it in their act, but the connection would be made and what then? The Quaker Oats people would have had trouble, no?

Seinfeld has said, time and again, that jokes are intricately crafted and finely tuned machines. Everything matters. I have no reason to think that he had the brownie joke in his mind while crafting this bit; but it may have had him in its grasp. His choice of words is not haphazard or accidental. His reasons my not be obvious, even to him, but there is a logic here. 

Finally, in the days when Freudianism was riding high, the Freudians wouldn’t have had any problems with that reading. But those days are gone, though I still retain some psychoanalytic ideas. But that’s really what’s not on my mind. What I’m thinking is the brain. Let’s say I’m right – and how the hell do we get empirical evidence? – isn’t it a marvel that the brain can do things like that?

Note: More Seinfeld commentary.

* * * * *

Seinfeld delivers a somewhat different (I assume more recent) version of this bit.

Except for last line she added, Angela Zoiss delivers it.