Letters to the Editor
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what're you, royalty?
i hate it when salon uses "we." we don't want to hate tony soprano or anyone. we don't watch t.v.
we also didn't feel guilty for web stalking britney spears because we didn't web stalk britney spears.
please stop this "we"ing before it gets worse.
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pay attention please
some of these comments have a familiar ring. alot of 'black and white' statements about Tony from people who obviously didn't watch the show but base there knowledge on what they have heard about the show. the character of Tony never just 'whacked' someone for the sake of 'whacking' them. this was the great thing about the show but none of you losers would know because you didn't watch for more than the 8 minutes your attention span would allow.
fox passed on this show because no one was whacked in the pilot.
nice article Gary.
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Another Slant
One draw for our sympathy is that we see "T" as he tries to cope, with business, family, and self. He has an ugly side, but he is ultimately a schmo, struggling along. Aren't both true of all of us?
And kudos to Gary for drawing out so sensitively the parallels to the political context around us. I'm disappointed that the comments have largely ignored that important element.
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The end
I see Tony getting drunk and imaging the ducks have come back to the pool, going and getting a handful of seeds or corn or whatever, standing on the edge of the empty pool calling to them, trying to go back to the time before the fall then falling into the pool to drown, floating around like the unanchored person he is, surrounded by bird seed.
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Our favorite murderer
Dear Gary
When you finish that B.A at Disney University with the major in roller coaster, let us know. Until then, leave the paying jobs to the people who actually understand the material that you always attempt to write about.
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Who is the "we" and "our" that Gary is writing on behalf of?
I didn't know that "we" collectively loved "The Sopranos." In fact, prior to the recent media blitz surrounding the show's finale, you could go months without hearing a peep about "The Sopranos." Why is that, if "we" all love "our" Tony so much?
This is just a bunch of hype. A relatively high-rated show, with some quality writing and acting, is coming to a close. For those who have followed the program (and who can afford an overpriced HBO subscription), this might be a meaningful event. For the 98.5% rest of us, it isn't.
I agree with the guy who wrote that Tony Soprano is not a character deserving of our attention because he's a cold-blooded killer. I guess that's called having standards. While I have enjoyed occasional antihero or serial-killer characters, I wouldn't want to follow Hannibal Lector or The Talented Mr. Ripley for a full 24-show, 6-seasons worth of TV viewing. Screw 'em, how about a character who relates in some way to one's real-life concerns?
Basically I resent the assumption that because a show has a loyal following, we all must automatically be invested in it as if it's an essential part of modern culture. This just seems like so much horseshit to me.
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An after thought
The parallel between the Sopranos and our corporations that so well represent "American Interests" in the world are evident, even down to the bonsus they get when they whack someone. It is just business, see Enron, Bopal.
The have their families and girl-friends on the side just like the Sopranos. Morality and Christian sex are left to the rabid right like a bone thrown to a dog or a toy to a child while the people in charge take care of "business". If the price is right everything is possible - just as unscrupulous political power offers that same tempting dizzyness to those not afraid of dirty their hands. But there is no going back and no remorse, they are not Lady Macbeths with damn'ed spots.
I think one of the things that kept many of those interested in the Sopranos glued to the next episode was James Gandolfino's supberb acting that kept leaking into the background "what might have been," that unspoken something or longing he could not get rid of. Then he is reduced to his acts - it all boils down to - who comes first?
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What now?
I was really enjoying this article until the plot of The Godfather was confused with The Godfather II. Al Neri takes Fredo "fishing" for his betrayal in the second film. At the end of the first film his is still banging cocktail waitresses 2 at a time.
Salon, you're breaking my heart.
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Appreciation for Kamiya's article, with caveat: To love? a murderer?
You got to admit, this Gary Kamiya is insightful, hard-thinking and smart.
His insights into The Sopranos and its relationship to Bush's terrorizing the populace, the world). Especially,
"...a rigid, black-and-white, self-righteous insistence that what we are doing must be right and no one must question it. In Bush's America, this code has become singularly oppressive. ...
"... "The Sopranos" has allowed us to mock that frozen certainty... .It has given us a precious breather from sanctimony, a holiday from the tyranny of right and wrong. It has thrown us into the big, blue, endless sea and let us swim. It's scary being out in the middle of the ocean, no horizon in sight. But it's liberating."
I hadn't been aware, before, that part of the reason I watch The Sopranos is this scary 'holiday from right and wrong', the thrill of 'being out in the middle of the ocean, no horizon in sight.' And that that may be why it feels a bit liberating.
I do know that I did thrill to Livia's horribleness (I know that mother), and I got a frisson of 'something' when someone killed someone innocent in cold blood: Adriana's scabbling on all fours through the snowy woods trying in vain to evade the oncoming gun. I know that feeling. I made a point of watching it again when it came around as a re-run, hoping to see that shot, which had a certain beauty, an art. The injustice of seeing beauty killed, the frantic hope she had of extricating from the dark life, murdered. The horrible sense of relief I found in watching a certain familiar balance being restored.
And the cold shot in the back of the head Vito gave the man who walked ahead of him to let him use his phone after an accident. This horror wasn't art for me, or any thrill -- I wouldn't want to see it again. It had its usefulness; now we didn't have to watch Vito wreck his better, truer life -- and feel bad and sad for him, not after this. This show has, I think, always given the story a sense of containment; it would have been unbearable if Vito, having found a good, loving, honest life with a new partner, had driven recklessly, as he was doing, into his death and HAD NOT killed that man, not given us a reason to distance outselves and abandon any sympathy we might have had for him.
I liked watching this show for its artfulness, art.
This brings me to the caveat I would express about Kamiya's assumption that we 'love' Tony Soprano. I have never loved or identified with anyone in this series. I haven't even empathized with Tony Soprano. I was only shocked and interested. And, yes, liberated; (a sweet, nice guy, family man, who goes to therapy) shooting someone -- sooo taboo!
Isn't loving someone who murders a bit insane? It is like buying into George Bush's shrugging up of his shoulders while boyishly grinning, buying this as charming, lovable, while knowing of the thousands and thousands of people his policies have killed, while knowing of the tortures and loss of civil rights he has perpetrated without comment. Coldly. Without comment. Just like Tony Soprano goes on, smiles, 'checks out universities'. Everybody in Tony's world goes on, stuffs any lingering doubts about rightness or wrongness.
Isn't loving someone who murders dangerous? Like the beaten wife who keeps going back to her cold (but sometimes charming) violent husband repeatedly because she 'understands him', has compassion for him.
I once read a book on assertiveness which taught the concept of 'the compassion trap': not being assertive with your words, your voice, your knowledge (not letting yourself even KNOW what is true, the terror it would bring on), using compassion, 'feeling into' the felt weakness of the other person (maybe unconsciously recognizing it, but denying it consciously -- because glimpsing the bully's depth of fear and grief would be like almost falling into a bottomless pit), allowing compassion to override and overwhelm good sense.
(And as the series has put out recently, this type of person, sociopathic, uses his charming fears, his perceived victim-ness, manipulatively; remember after A.J.'s suicide attempt when Tony sits at the kitchen counter and says, 'I'm depressed' and looks up at his wife for sympathy. There is just no way this type of guy (or woman) is going to make contact with his real feelings, ever, probably(*), but uses a distorted, symbolic form of them to keep people around while keeping them at a certain distance always.) (*You notice I say 'probably', though I debated adding it, still hoping that the bullies I know like this might, someday, become real. 'Probably' is the trap.)
Observing Bush evokes so much outrage in me, and so much outrage for the LACK of outrage at his getting away with it which I see in ordinary lives of Americans (in the form of NPR, MSNBC (except for Olbermann), CNN and newspapers). [I do know there are many, many people who feel as I do, as Kamiya indicates he does, and that is why there is such a feeling of helplessness, disheartedness, such impotent rage that I perceive there is at the officials who might, if they would, counter Bush. I've sensed it just under the surface, recently, occasionally getting into the light in those same media.]
I once heard a woman say that Tony Soprano is 'lovable'. I have had these thoughts ever since: how can you ignore his unforgivable misdeeds, how can you still care about someone who has done that, and that...and that?
Tony Soprano is useful. It does show how possible it is for some people to be walking around so split -- and so dangerous -- and appear so ordinary. But to allow yourself to love him, I would submit, is, to the extent your heart is open to him, to avoid the fact of danger to yourself.