Race, Ethnicity, Adaptation, Sitcom: The Finales of Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm

This article reads the finale of Curb Your Enthusiasm as an adaptation of the final double episode of Seinfeld . It argues that the continuities and differences between the two finales reflect a fundamental change in the comedic televisual representation of race, ethnicity and whiteness that points to broader historical transformations. Re-reading the Seinfeld finale from the perspective of sitcom, race and Jewishness, the article reveals a repressed racial subtext in the episode that complicates the Seinfeld characters’ whiteness through echoes of the televised murder trial of O. J. Simpson. This presence/absence dynamic of race and ethnicity is then made explicit, critiqued and subverted in Curb Your Enthusiasm ’s reinterpretation of the sitcom genre. Belatedly acknowledging Seinfeld’s and sitcom’s complicity in the exclusionary racial regime of 1990s television, Curb Your Enthusiasm explores alternative ways of representing and comically grappling with questions of racial and ethnic identity.