Letters to the Editor
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Sigh
It is the nature of drama that it challenges us to redefine our attitude towards characters outside accepted moral types. Richard III is an obvious example. He's a rat bastard, but boy are we intrigued by him. Same goes for Heathcliff. If The Sopranos failed to make us care about Tony, that would not be a sign that we were less of a coporate, evil America. It would be a sign that the show was poorly written.
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Not to mention that
evil, coporate types are not the ones who seem to be writing those letters in praise of the show.
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Appreciating the artistry behind the creation of Richard and Heathcliff isn't the same as 'loving' them
or minding that they fall. I'm not convinced that Chase wants us to love Tony, btw. Compassion and understanding aren't the same as love. It does teach us something about the world, and entertain us, to show us how gangsters are born and made, but, for this viewer anyway, understanding doesn't compel allegience, just a more informed horror.
On another matter, as Christopher pointed out, Tony isn't a working class guy, he's a rich fuck who will do anything to anyone in order to stay a rich fuck. In that way, his values are exactly those of the people whom George Bush lied us into Iraq to protect. He might affect 'regular guy' mannerisms, but he makes his living as a parasite on regular people. Come to think of it, his affectation of regular guy mannerisms reminds me of a certain pampered someone....
I really am a little baffled here. Mr. Kamiya has made some of the most persuasively argued criticisms of the road taken by the Bush administration to appear in Salon. So why all the Tony-love? (Yes,of course I read the whole article. Still don't buy the argument. I would have thought that he'd read The Sopranos as a mirror of the moral tangle we find ourselves in, not a liberation from it.)
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Shri Krishna
To me The Sopranos are like the Indian epics, Shrimad Bhagavatam or the Ramayana. An all powerful hero who for the time being is compromised. It may be the age in which he has appeared or a vow he must be true to. And The Sopranos is full of cultural truths just like those 2 narratives.
Being true to family in Italy is very important and the mob defends itself chiefly on that one principle. Being true to love is the main theme of the Ramayana.
Italians and Indians have something in common too, in that both are a foreign people, much as the epics Bhagavatam and Ramayana are to our Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer.
I have a craving to see shows that reflect the yogi's point of view. His views may appear to be as pre-existant as Tony Soprano's.
I have read and heard of many good books that tell the tale of enlightenment and self-realization but I have seen none of them become Oscar winning films or Emmy Award winning TV shows.
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Not love, but rooting for
I think the whole debate about loving or hating Tony is off-base. I doubt that any viewers really love Tony. But, viewers are rooting for him. Drama is about conflict. Just as most people immediately root for one team or another within seconds of starting to watch a sporting event, dramas are set up for us to root for someone against somebody else. On The Sopranos, we root for Tony because the writers have structured the show that way. The Shield is another show with a clearly immoral lead character that we still root for.
Given that the show is about the conflicts between criminals, then those who watch can only root for a criminal. A question: Does anyone know anybody who is rooting for Phil Leotardo? I doubt it. And, if you desire cops and robbers morality, then you are out of luck because the Feds are such miniscule characters in the show that there is nothing to root for.
Now, if someone wants to write an article about why people would want to watch a show that is a conflict between two criminals, then there's probably some interesting points to make. However, I doubt that the interesting point would be that somehow this show tells us about the psychology of the average American and their views in Iraq. That's a stretch.
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Gary
How do you find time to watch television?
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As Art, "The Sopranos" Succeeds
Now I do not mean to suggest that I am rooting for Tony in any way. I tuned out some years back when it became hard to tolerate the brutality of the story. My partner, gentle soul that she is, began having nightmares. I'm sure David Chase was playing for irony and humor by positing that the criminal lifestlyle of an inarticulate thug named Tony Soprano was causing him anxiety and therefore he needed therapy! I suspect he knew we were in on the joke. As if therapy and medication could ameliorate the reality of being a cold-blooded murderer, and the fact that your closest friends are, well, cold-blooded murderers. I totally get the attempt to make these characters nuanced and possibly even sympathetic, but as the second to the last episode shows, the quicksand box these people play in has a pretty powerful undertow and you know, even if Carmela can't admit it, this won't end well. These are not nice people. They're not even morally compromised, which would suggest some possiblity for redemption. No. Tony and Co. had given over to the Dark Side long ago, and as they say, when you make a deal with the devil, the devil always collects. Now that may sound too simplistic for these times when no one seems to be ever held accountable for anything. But if an overly pampered, rich and vapid party girl can get her comeuppance, and if an amoral President can feel the noose closing around his neck, then Tony Soprano can face the music too. I suspect he will. The universe has its own kind of justice.
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Tony
Mr. Kamiya got it: Tony are us writ large. Beyond refutation.
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George Orwell on Gangstas
For everyone's edification, here is a quote
from George Orwell (click on my name for the
link):
"In America, both in life and fiction, the tendency to tolerate crime, even to admire the criminal so long as he is success, is very much more marked. It is, indeed, ultimately this attitude that has made it possible for crime to flourish upon so huge a scale. Books have been written about Al Capone that are hardly different in tone from the books written about Henry Ford, Stalin, Lord Northcliffe and all the rest of the ‘log cabin to White House’ brigade. And switching back eighty years, one finds Mark Twain adopting much the same attitude towards the disgusting bandit Slade, hero of twenty-eight murders, and towards the Western desperadoes generally. They were successful, they ‘made good’, therefore he admired them."