Imagined "Realities": The Sopranos and Ways We Justify Violence and Oppression

[Disclaimer: This entry contains a lot of potential spoilers for those of you who haven't seen The Sopranos.]

 Dear World:

Aside from learning several, strange, and food-obsessed/centered Italian epithets, watching The Sopranos has actually been a really great experience—not only for the vicarious thrill of violence and good dialogue, but also in shaping my critical eye when watching well-written TV shows.  The Sopranos is one of those shows that purports realism (or at least its viewers say so), but for those who are not connected to the mafia in North Jersey, how the fuck are we supposed to know what is real and what’s not?  Is there a ritual to becoming a made man?  Probably.  Is there a lot of in-family tension and violence?  Likely.  Are members of the mafia racist and misogynists and homo/transphobes?  Again, likely.  But there is definitely something to be said for our individual and collective imagination(s) about what we consider “realistic,” and how that may relate to our own fantasies/justifications for racism, sexist, classism, violence, etc. 

Don’t get me wrong, watching The Sopranos has been fantastic.  We’ve watched two and a half seasons in three weeks (let’s thank my mom’s (f)unemployment for that!).  Many of the characters are dynamic, deeply disturbed and complex, and pitiable.  It’s always an emotional trip to hate a character (and their behaviors) in one moment, and feel deeply for them the next.  I feel that way during Tony Soprano’s therapy sessions, during Chris’s struggle with staying clean, with Vito’s struggle to survive as an out-ed gay man in the mafia, etc.  And my response to people’s struggles, their desires, and their violence makes me investigate my own struggles, desires, and violence.  Why is it that I find ways to codify and justify certain types of vengeful violence?  Why do I find myself rooting for Tony to beat the shit out of someone doing something misogynistic, when Tony himself is full of misogyny?  How is it that I find more humanity in certain characters who, in behavior, do the same exact things as a character who, in my eyes, has no humanity?  These are questions that I ask myself as a canine viewer, and the impetus behind these questions makes this an undeniably good show.

However, good shows can be fucked up, and that fucked-up-ness should always be investigated, no?  There have been many articles and blog entries about the violence against women on this show.  I won’t really go into that.  Obviously it upsets me (and definitely my mother) greatly.  For me, I’m more curious about what this pattern of violence means in the context of the low ratio/percentage of female characters that the audience can empathize with, as compared to the rather high ratio/percentage of male characters that the audience can empathize with.  Let’s list the central female characters of the show (at least up to the third season): Carmela, Janice, Livia, Adriana, Charmaine, Meadow and Dr. Melfi.  Carmela, though quite obviously devoted to the idea of being a wife, is often “annoying” and “nagging.”  Obviously the audience understands that she struggles with her husband’s trade and infidelity, but to me, she is written to be annoying and nagging.  Janice is written to be hateful, manipulative, malingering, lazy, shameless, licentious, and selfish.  Wait, so is Tony!  However, anyone who has watched the show will probably say that Janice has no depth, no history, and no profound reason to be pitied or empathized with.  Just like Tony, she is a victim of her family’s history of depression and her mother’s vindictive parenting style.  But, for whatever reason, she is more of a pain in the ass and more unlikeable than Tony.  In the scene below, Janice steals the prosthetic leg of her mother's in-home help, because her mother gave the "help" a set of records that she wanted for herself:

Livia, Tony’s horrible mother, is written to be a joyless, selfish, borderline personality who only struggles retroactively with her decision to have her son clipped.  So many of Tony’s serious and violent faults as a human being supposedly stem from this woman’s inability to be a “good” and giving mother.  And even as a viewer who understands the one-dimensional, unforgiving and simplistic analysis of a man’s incredible violence, I still feel for Tony’s hatred towards his mother.  The scene below is great.  For those of you who don't know what's going on here, this scene happens after Tony's mother "silently" agrees that her son should be clipped.  Livia is actually a VERY interesting and complicated character, but her complexity doesn't have any context the way that Tony's complexity does.

 Adriana, though sweet and undeniably supportive, is almost ridiculed by her lack of talent/smarts and her supposedly simplistic view of the world.  Tony's girlfriends are both mentally/psychologically unstable and suicidal, as if to say that these women cannot live without a strong man like Tony. These are clips of Tony's relationship with Gloria Trillo.

On and on we go.  The only central female character that has incredible depth (the way that Tony, Sil, Sal, AJ, Paulie, Chris, Junior, Johnny Sack, etc. are written to be profound), in my opinion, is Dr. Melfi.  To me, Dr. Melfi is a poignant reflection of my own struggles as a viewer regarding my desire for seemingly justifiable payback.  But she’s pretty much it.  This is an amazing scene after Dr. Melfi survives a sexual assault, and dreams of having Tony, her patient, protect her from violence.  It's a really interesting, complicated, and powerful scene.

I'm not saying that these women are completely pathologized by the show.  I am saying that they are written to be far more one-dimensional than the central male characters who also demonstrate similar "faults."

So what does it mean that in the context of intense sexual, emotional, physical, and psychological violence against women, that female characters are written to lack depth who cannot elicit much empathy from the audience?  Is that merely an accurate reflection of how made men view and treat women?  Maybe…partially.  Is it an accurate reflection of how fucked up mothers make their sons violent and depressed?  Well, yes, fucked up mothers can really fuck us up.  Or, perhaps, is it part of the imagination of the director and of the collective audience that we somehow want to reify, justify and codify the idea that violent, powerful and manipulative women with whom we empathize cannot exist the way that violent, powerful and manipulative men can?  Is there something threatening about a powerful, manipulative and intelligent woman who can wield violence in the same way as a man?  Of course.  Janice and Livia are examples of how these types of women rarely exist in “realistic” portrayals of anything. 

In a similar vein, I also think about the ways in which people of color are portrayed on this show in addition to the ways that the main characters handle their racism.  First of all, there are no central characters of color.  And one might argue, “well, this is a show about the mafia, so of course there aren’t any central characters of color.”  People might argue the same thing about the lack of central female characters.  But clearly the Soprano’s family works with young black men to steal some cars, do the dirty work, etc. 
 

Additionally, all the characters of color are written with even less depth or personality than the women on the show, and are either young and violent men (where the violence isn’t “justified,” as it is with the Italian-Americans), or simple victims of violent racism.  The only minutely complex character is the black activist who demands for Tony’s construction crews to hire employees of color, who, of course, takes a deal from Tony, which makes him a compromised, crook of an activist.  For those of us who are familiar with the politics of compromising for the sake of safety and for movement-building, we may see some complexity in this activist’s decision, but for many viewers (who already harbor some racist sentiments), this appears to be a crooked activist who actually doesn’t care about the well-being and safety of his community.  We also have a black character who dates Meadow, and he is seemingly framed as the “antithesis” of the audience’s imaginary black man – he is an intellectual who cares more about his grades than he does about anything else. 

Many people have already posed the question of whether this show is racist, sexist, and homo/transphobic.  The response is usually framed around a posed reality.  People say that this show only demonstrates and exposes the reality of the mafia and THEIR racist, sexist and homo/transphobic sentiments.  Even if this is the case (which I obviously don’t), what does it mean if this reality, these horribly violent feelings towards women, people of color and LGBTQ folks, is reflected in the viewer?  Even if the intention behind these portrays is to expose the truth, what happens when the viewer finds him/herself in a nostalgic haze, hearing Tony talk about how his daughter should never date a black man, or finds him/herself becoming smug upon learning the supposed crookedness of the black activist? 

But the bigger point is: where does the argument that this is "reality" stem from?  What do we know of this world?  How much of our imagination dictates what we understand as reality, and when something is labelled as such, are we given permission to become complacent?  There is motivation behind labeling the violence, discrimination and hatred in The Sopranos as something that reflects fact.  

I guess my real question is this: What would it look like for TV show creators to feel socially responsible for not only the intent, but also the impact of their work?  What would it look like for TV show creators to be proactively anti-racist, anti-misogynist, anti-homophobic?  If this was part of the picture, the “realism” of The Sopranos would look really different.

That being said, I’m not going to stop watching this show.  Mostly because my parents wont’ stop watching the show.  But also because it is still interesting and well written.  Because it helps me to identify what dialogues I want to pursue with regard oppression in TV shows, since the conversations around representation are just not enough.  And because I think Italian epithets are hilarious.  Of course, they are horrible and totally full of horrible meaning.  But “fennel” and “eggplant” and “polenta-eater” are translations of some of the mean and oppressive insults that Italians throw around.  Those all sound lovely, and make me hungry.

Okay – I’m out.

With Love and Rage,

Mandu