Love in an age of cynicism

In the early nineties the biggest show on TV was Northern Exposure, and in the late nineties it was Seinfeld. It crosses my mind that something drastic changed in the Western world over the course of the decade, and these programs are connected to it.

Northern Exposure, as I hope you recall, followed the adventures of a cynical Jewish New York doctor forced to practice in the wilds of Alaska. Five seasons later he'd been utterly transformed; his shrill, stressed exterior had been toughened by the rigours and delights of the natural world, and his condemnation of everything too different had been tempered into a sublime peace with the world.

Seinfeld, as you know backwards, followed the adventures of four cynical Jewish New York nobodies who hovered in their comfort zones for season after hilarious season. Their chronic characteristics were an inability to change (emphasised by George's success when he actually manages to 'do the opposite'), and their endless antipathy toward anyone or anything different (man hands, cinnamon bubka, etc).

It's weird to romanticise the early nineties, but it stacks up. We had a Labor government here in Australia, and America would soon elect a Democrat President. The Cold War had ended, and even the pretend war in Kuwait seemed like a Bush-family folly, a throw-back to the USA of the fifties, rather than a sign of things to come. Corazon Aquino was still in charge in the Phillippines, Nelson Mandela had just been freed, the Berlin Wall had just been destroyed, and Smells Like Teen Spirit sounded like a soul-scream subduing the superficiality of the eighties. And there was Northern Exposure.

It had a huge influence on the Femme and I. We left the city and moved to the bush on the strength of its vision, and even when the reality faltered, the vision lost none of its allure. The show's model of how people can live together, heightened by its exploration of how people can change, still rings true as we work through the DVD box-sets today.

But the world today … WTF has happened? I love both shows equally, but thinking about them now, it just looks like Seinfeld undid everything that Northern Exposure wove into the world. The characteristics that Seinfeld mocked – the judgmental, cruel, weak and vindictive natures of its heroes – have become our social norm. We don't try to improve. We don't like people who are happy or optimistic. We get suspicious, we vote them off the island. Harshness, condescension, the killer blow - fine.

There was a writers' directive in the production of Seinfeld that no characters could ever hug each other. Northern Exposure didn't have an episode without a hug. This absense of affection in Seinfeld, perfect for the show, is an out-of-control meme in the outside world. And no-one reads subtext, so no-one processes the dichotomy. It's dog-eat-dog because we're all hungry dogs - well, aren't we?

I remember thinking after 11 Sept that maybe compassion would overwhelm fear in the long run. No, of course not. I remember thinking during Sex & The City that maybe delight could eventually overwhelm comfort. But everything's darker than that.

The damage is in the next generation now. The closest thing to a hippy-chick at my work votes Liberal because she can't separate the social agendas of the Left and Right. There is simply the yoga and meditiation of her immediate world, and the important economical realities of the wider world. Nothing connects, and the wider world has no other feasible options. Red states of mind.

I mentioned a link between these shows and the world at large, hoping it would become apparent as I wrote. Depends what you think of art, though, doesn't it? Does art inspire the zeitgeist, or does it distill the qualities already in the air? I'm not blaming Seinfeld with the destruction of love, of course … or maybe I am. But if Seinfeld did that, it was because we wanted it to happen. Someone had to prepare the way for Big Brother.

I watched the part one of the BBC's new series on Casanova last night, and was captivated to see people passionately and irrationally in love. It shouldn't be such an anathema.