arts & entertainment
A Little Show About Minutiae
Contrary to type, Larry David's not at all neurotic.
He's prett-ay
prett-ay ... pretty good.
Rachel Shukert
Special to the Jewish News
Psychoanalytic theory
holds that neurosis
New York (Tablet)
T
hree adjectives are often used to
describe Larry David, the star and
creator of Curb Your Enthusiasm,
currently in the midst of its eighth season
after two excruciating Curb less years.
One is "bespectacled," which is fair
enough. Another is "bald," a signifier that
David's television alter ego regards as a
traditionally oppressed tribal identity
(spitting in biblical fury when the assim-
ilationists among this imagined fraterni-
ty of the hairless attempt to "pass" under
the camouflage of a baseball cap or, God
forbid, a toupee). Finally, and most ubiq-
uitously, he is "neurotic."
"Larry David plays himself as a bald,
bespectacled neurotic:' the New York
Times wrote in a review of the new sea-
son.
"Larry David plays a neurotic fussbud-
get named Larry David," the Washington
Post said in 2010.
"He's officially an L.A. neurotic:' the
New York Post recently bemoaned.
Far be it for me to argue with writers
for such august publications. But hav-
ing said that, I don't think any of these
people actually knows what "neurotic"
means, other than a word you swap in
when you think it's impolite to say "Jew."
I can't speak to the inner tumult of the
real Larry David, the writer and actor
behind the bald, bespectacled mask. I've
never met the man. (If I ever did, we
either would circle each other silently in
a moonlit forest clearing before gently
pressing our foreheads together like
unicorns performing a mating rite, or
within five minutes each lie dead by the
other's hand.) Yet by any measure —
and certainly compared to his Jewish
comedic contemporaries — Larry David
is a character remarkably free of internal
conflict.
Psychoanalytic theory holds that neu-
rosis occurs when the different parts
of the personality are at war with one
another. Now think of Larry David: He
has no internal conflicts; he's difficult,
. but he's content.
Not for him the unrelenting angst
of Albert Brooks or the comically tat-
tered sense of self-esteem of Richard
occurs when the different
parts of the personality
are at war with one
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50
August 18 • 2011
another. Now think of
Larry David: He has no
internal conflicts; he's
difficult, but he's content.
Lewis (a frequent Curb Your Enthusiasm
guest star). As for the Grand Emperor
of Neurotics, Woody Allen (and David's
director in the 2009 film Whatever
Works), the two men's public personas
could hardly be more different. Apart
from the glasses, the Brooklyn accent
and their Jewishness, David is, in effect,
the anti-Allen.
Skeptical? Consider, for a start, their
attitudes toward women. A defining
theme in Allen's oeuvre, women are no
more than an afterthought in David's,
and the latter gives his female stars far
more interesting things to do. (Just think
of Susie Essman's volcanically foul-
mouthed Susie Greene.)
David is no romantic; he wouldn't have
lasted five minutes with a whimsical
naive like Annie Hall.
In the first episode of Curb's latest
season, David's divorce from Cheryl is
finalized. First, though, there is a pos-
sibility of reconciliation, which David
characteristically bungles. Cheryl leaves,
and then David just cuts to his divorce
lawyer one year later. One can imagine
Allen commemorating this event with a
sentimental montage of happier times;
Larry is more concerned with Dodgers
tickets and whether his divorce lawyer is
lying to him about being Jewish.
Nor does sex hold him in any par-
ticular thrall. In a recent episode, as
his manager Jeff Greene (played by
Jeff Garlin), Leon Black (J.B. Smoove),
a Gulf Coast hurricane evacuee stay-
ing at Larry's house, and friend Marty
Funkhouser (Bob Einstein, who hap-
pens to be the real-life brother of Albert
Brooks) are rendered all but catatonic by
the bodacious ta-tas on Richard Lewis'
burlesque-dancer girlfriend — Lewis,
in true Allen fashion, can only bring
himself to admit he admires her for her
mind — Larry calmly slurps his drink
and later matter-of-factly informs her
that she has a mole on the underside of
her right breast that she really ought to
get checked out.
In all realms, sexual David is refresh-
ingly un-creepy. In the world of Curb,
Jeff and Susie's teenage daughter, Sammi
(Ashly Holloway), is Larry's antagonist.
In the world of Allen's films, she'd be a
love interest.
Their relationships with technology
are at odds as well. Compare Allen's
famous war with machines to Larry's
primal rage at vacuum packaging. Allen
blames himself for his difficulties. With
Larry, it's the package's fault. For David,
the conflict is always external, and this
lack of introspection characterizes vir-
tually all of his interpersonal actions.
When David refuses to add an addi-
tional tip for the servers at the country
club, the problem isn't his parsimony —
it's the server's greed. He feels similarly
in the right when he tries to rescind his
order for Girl Scout cookies or screams
at the neighborhood kids for serving
him sub-par lemonade. Why should he
allow himself to be taken advantage of?
As far as Larry is concerned, his only
problem is the unreasonableness of oth-
ers. He might come off like kind of an
a--hole, but that's your problem, not his.
He's a self-actualized a--hole.
It's tempting to ascribe David's blind
unconcern for the feelings and good
opinion of others on his immense
fortune, which is alluded to, if rarely
explicitly stated — if I had half a billion
dollars, I probably wouldn't care what
anyone thought of me either.
But Larry seems utterly unimpressed
by the trappings of wealth — he still
buys his pants at Banana Republic, for
God's sake — and as such, I propose
his bizarre self-confidence comes from
another, deeper source: Virtually alone
among his peers, Larry David has abso-
lutely no ambivalence about being a Jew.
From his disgust at Cheryl's enormous
Christmas tree, to the glee with which he
hangs a mezuzah with his father-in-law's
special Christ Nail, to his inadvertent
rescue of a Jewish man from a mildly
coerced baptism, David's outlook is
essentially tribal. To him, a Jew trying
to pass as a gentile is as ridiculous as
a bald man in a toupee. David's comic
pose is less that of the anxious assimi-
lationist eager to fit in than that of the
clueless greenhorn making his way in a
world to which he's not sure he cares to
belong.
Or perhaps he's even more atavistic
than that. Neurosis is often defined as a
focus on behavioral minutiae that can
border on the obsessive-compulsive, but
Larry's many preoccupations, from the
unwritten laws of dry cleaning, to the
proper way to treat chauffeurs, garden-
ers and other laborers, to the irrevocable
uncleanness of certain objects (pens that
have seen the inside of Jason Alexander's
ears, $50 bills laced with Funkhouser's
foot sweat) recall another endless
litany of unbending edicts: the Book of
Leviticus. Larry David isn't a neurotic;
he's just demanding. Like the God of the
Hebrews. H
This was reprinted from Tabletmag.com , a new
read on Jewish life.
Curb Your Enthusiasm airs 10 p.m.
Sundays on HBO.