Jerry Seinfeld said he is nostalgic for the “agreed-upon hierarchy” of American culture in the 1960s, adding that he misses “dominant masculinity.”
Seinfeld shared the comments on Tuesday’s episode of the Honestly With Bari Weiss podcast, where he said he feels cultural hierarchy has “absolutely vaporized in today’s moment.”
“That is why people lean on the horn and drive in the crazy way that they drive,” he continued. “Because we have no sense of hierarchy. And as humans, we don’t really feel comfortable like that.”
Seinfeld was speaking in connection to his recent Netflix film (and feature-length directorial debut) Unfrosted, which tells the fictionalized origin story of the Pop-Tart and takes place in Michigan in the ’60s. During their conversation, Weiss told the comedian she felt the film represented a nostalgia for “a sense of one conversation, a common culture.”
Seinfeld agreed with Weiss’ assessment. “That’s part of what makes that moment attractive looking back,” he said, adding, “I always wanted to be a real man. I never made it, [but] in that era, it was JFK. It was Mohammed Ali. It was Sean Connery, Howard Cosell … that’s a real man.”
The comedian elaborated on his point saying, “I miss a dominant masculinity. Yeah, I get the toxic thing, but I still like a real man.”
Part of what defines that era of masculinity, Seinfeld continued, was “those movements of style. I like people that have a little style in everything they do.”
He cited Hugh Grant as an example. “He knows how to dress. He knows how to talk. He’s charming. He has stories, he’s comfortable at dinner parties, he knows how to get a drink.”
Grant plays Thurl Ravenscroft, a Shakespearean actor playing cereal mascots, in Unfrosted. The movie is available on Netflix now.
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