Seinfeld’s establishing shots emphasize the role real locations played in making up the show’s fictional—sometimes surreal—portrayal of New York City. But in this supercut, the familiar funk of the show’s musical riffs begin and end in rapid succession. It produces, initially, a disconcerting effect—a kind of nothingness defined by the suspension of movement, of repetition, and of continually denying resolution to the viewer. As the music diminishes and the shots become more varied, it offers a gradual suppression of suspension opening into a hauntingly bleak vision of the show’s world: an empty, uninhabited segmentation of New York City. Through it all the convention of the form, the establishing shot, becomes a kind of mocking specter of loneliness, of desperation, and finally of despair.
