March 14, 2006
The Sopranos
The Sociology of Sociopaths
If you walk the streets of New York City one of the faces you're most likely to find on a t-shirt is that of Al Pacino's from Scarface. It's likely that a survey of college dorm room walls would probably yield similar results. Even though Brian DePalma never intended Scarface to be a glorification of a life in crime, Scarface has been assimilated into our culture as a hero, a man who built an empire from nothing. He lived the "American dream" but he was also a lousy bastard.
This cultural phenomenon of celebrating gangsters even when it's not intended by the creators is what has always troubled me when trying to defend The Sopranos against accusations of glorifying the mob.
The ramifications of a show that some members of the public look at and think of as a celebration of the mob does warrant some thought regardless of whether it's intended. Then again, anybody foolish enough to be influenced by a show like this has other issues that need to be straightened out. What can you do when others love a work of art for all the wrong reasons?
(As you can probably guess, I'm not a fan of blaming social issues on the media.)
Of course, none of this controversy would stop me from watching on Sunday after waiting nearly two years for the show to return to HBO. Although I don't watch a lot of television, I'm going to go out on a limb and declare it the greatest TV show ever.
In five stellar seasons, the show has managed to combine a typical mob drama with intelligent writing, a great sense of humor, unpretentious examinations of suburban ennui, and an incredibly rich (and large) cast of characters rivaled only by Achewood. Yeah, that's right. The link is correct.
But, like Scarface, Tony Soprano and his thugs are just that: thugs. Sociopaths to the highest degree. They murder for a living then go home and tuck their kids in and kiss their wives goodnight.
So then, what is it that makes the show so fascinating if the characters are so despicable?
Well, the fact that they go home, tuck their kids in and kiss their wives goodnight. When Tony goes to talk to his shrink he doesn't talk about mob related issues, he talks about his mother, his uncle, his pain in the ass son. Strip away all the mafia subplots from the show and you're left with a family drama in which the father is in a little over his head and suffering panic attacks as a result.
As disgusting as some of their actions are, the dilemmas these characters face are compelling and sometimes profound. Obligations to both families (actual and mafia) push, pull, and overlap. The need to make a living keeps them in the mob but being in the mob carries a very high risk of a shortened life and any effort to leave the mob could also result in a death sentence. Once you're in there's no getting out, Tony explains it by telling one of his thugs who wants out in the season premiere, "it's not a hockey team."
This final season promises to be full of the twists and turns you would expect from a family perpetually on the verge of falling apart. In the two years they were away, Tony and Carmella developed a taste for sushi, it allowed them to get away and have some semblance of a normal upper middle class life. Although it's not a hockey team even Tony seems to be flirting with the idea of stepping down as coach and starting a new life. But, like in life, almost nothing is simple. There's not always a right answer or a solution to everything and the characters in the Sopranos know that better than anybody else. They live in a colorful world full of black, white and lots of gray, a world that's fascinating and familiar and one that I'll be sad to see go.
