Letters to the Editor
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Heather Havrilesky's 'double entendre' review of the last Soprano's
Picture this:
Two people see the same auto accident, but from opposite sides of the street. One sees the action move left to right; the other, right to left. Backgrounds are different, as are light and shadows. No wonder no two witnesses see the same event the same way!
But Havrilesky and I...and everyone else...saw the last Soprano's from the same vantage point-- in front of a TV. So how is it that she alone saw some double meaning in nearly every scene? Or am I the only one who missed what Havrilesky said SHE saw!
I've seen every Soprano's episode, live or taped, from the beginning. It's a story about life in the Mafia as viewed and experienced by one member American family and all their relatives and associates. It's been funny, macabre, grisly, explicit, real. If there's anything Tony Soprano & Co ISN't it's sophisticated and clever. But Havrilesky would make it so by 'seeing' more in the last episode than was there. In other words, she didn't report on the last episode. She interpreted it...and clearly her interpretation is her's alone!
If there were a hundred such 'reports' there'd be a hundred different points of view, i.e., how the interpreters each saw the episode with their own eyes while looking thru a prism of their own unique psychoanalytical wishes and hopes. We see what we want to see most often...and especially if we have time to sift thru what we saw for chunks of what we personally believe was missing.
Havrilesky told her own story, possibly because she is a frustrated screenwriter, and possibly because she wanted to prove just how unreliable a witness can be.
I saw Tony fading into history eating onion rings. That's typical and completely unsophisticated...and that's been the real point of the Soprano's from the beginning. There...but for association with the Mafia...are you and I