“So commonplace are the motifs of the horror genre that Scream and the inevitable Scream 2 self-consciously spoof the genre while remaining within it. Thus does the horror at the heart of ordinary American life become a source of comedy. Woody Allen’s films are laced with this sort of humor. In the midst of one of his many forays into pop-philosophy, Allen has a desperate character, played by himself, rehearse various philosophical analyses of the meaning of life. He mentions Nietzsche’s theory of the eternal recurrence, but flippantly dismisses it: ‘It wouldn’t be worth it. I’d have to sit through the Ice Capades again.’ Allen’s brooding characters never completely break with Nietzsche’s philosophical mood and hence never attain a purely comic perspective on nihilism. Precisely this perspective is exploited by sitcoms like The Simpsons and, especially, Seinfeld, a show about the comical consequences of life in a world void of any ultimate significance or fundamental meaning. Seinfeld is, by its own account, a show about nothing.”
— from Thomas S. Hibbs, Shows about Nothing: Nihilism in Popular Culture from The Exorcist to Seinfeld (Spence, 1999)
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