Why Do We Love The Sopranos?
There is so much guilt involved in loving The Sopranos, perhaps similar to the guilt of enjoying a boxing match.
Here is a clearly group of men involved in illegal gains and violent enforcement of extortion. They beat up people, harass and intimidate, and even “whack.” They are big on family but they also all have mistresses and girlfriends on the side, and they cheat on their wives liberally, frequently, with gusto.
As to the wives and girlfriends – aren’t they equally guilty for participating in the same violence by agreeing to enjoy its fruits?
So, back to square one, why do we love The Sopranos as law-abiding tax payers?
For one thing, most of us are lonely, without the support of an extended family. Most of us are lucky if we have one other person in the house with us at night when we come home from a long day at work. Most of us cannot even use the HOV lanes because we just do not have a second person to drive around with.
And Sopranos have families. Big boisterous contentious lively noisy families, all living under one roof. Whatever they may be, the Sopranos are certainly not lonely people. We like that, for starters.
Sopranos also have friends. We like that too. They are the sort of friends that hug and kiss when they meet, and pat each other’s backs. We like that camaraderie too. There is so much warmth, harking back from slower and simpler times when everybody in a neighborhood used to know everybody else. There is safety and security there.
Sopranos know how to “take care of business.” When a guy bumps their car from behind and refuses to take any responsibility for it, and challenges them with a self-righteous “sue me!”, they don’t sue anybody. They settle the score through their own means. And since we had lost untold amounts of time and money in the past in either suing someone or getting sued, we understand the simplicity and "beauty" of the concept.
We know that their kind of “score settling” is not legal. But still we cannot help but take a shine to the kind of “direct justice” dished out by the Sopranos. It is a world in which no legal reforms are needed since everything is settled by brute force. We are aware that civilization cannot survive even for a single day if EVERYONE settled their problems like Sopranos do. However, we still derive a vicarious satisfaction from justice delivered quickly, without any ambiguities.
We also like the “honor code” that Sopranos manage to maintain despite all that depravity and violence, a code that values friendship and loyalty above anything else. Living in a relativistic world in which everything depends on what your lawyer can do against mine, that kind of ABSOLUTE ethics appeals to a primordial sense of morality encoded perhaps into our DNA. We like that too.
We like the guilty pleasures as well, for sure. Expensive dinners in expensive restaurants, fantastic cars, young mistresses, vacations, outings to the race track, and the whole works. Good life.
Last and certainly not the least – we even like the violence, don’t we?
We have to admit it. We watch it for the same reason we watch a bloody boxing match or an even bloodier free-fighting competition. Or, watch the car and train wreck and cop chase videos…
There is always something fascinating about the mystery of death and violence that we try to decipher by vicariously going through the experience, through the agency of others like actors, writers, and directors. The Sopranos provides us with that kind of roller-coaster scream of an hormonal experience as well. (Where else are you going to see a guy stuff the severed head of one of his closest friends into a bowling ball bag?)
When The Sopranos is off the air this summer, we’ll spend at least a few more years watching its past episodes on DVDs and wondering what happened to Tony, Carmela, or the others who brought us such forbidden and truly sinful pleasures for the last six years. They'll be missed.
Every episode of the SOPRANOS is getting us a step closer to the inevitable end. And, man, it's not pretty.
A lot of people are facing their own old age and demise. Johnny Sack is already gone after a not-so-dignified bout with cancer in jail. In one scene, after a close up of his head that went bald due to radiotherapy, the director mercilessly cut to a pool ball hit hard by a cue stick. What does that mean? That even the most merciless crime boss of New York is nothing more than a pool ball before the cue stick of fate and time?
Tony is really getting introspective and he looks like a dog beaten on the head by a rolled-up wet newspaper in each episode.
Some, like Little Carmine, gave up the fight to be Number 1, without any fuss or shame because they want to live into the old age with their wives and family – to Tony's disgust. Tony wants someone to pick up the pieces in New York but there is nobody yet to fill Johnny Sack's shoes.
So what does that say about his own legacy? Who will lead the NJ crew into the future if and when he is gone? Where is the beef? And, where is the love?
It's all darkness and everybody's looking over his shoulder... Paulie, Christopher... They know that the END is coming. But nobody knows what's coming NEXT as the FBI's dragnet gets too tight for comfort.
It's getting very PERSONAL for the Soprano crew and their enemies alike... The story had never been this wide open to double-crossings, betrayals and a heartbroken Tony Soprano.
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Ugur Akinci, Ph.D. is a senior writer and web content consultant with 20 years of experience.
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Article Source: Ugur Akinci
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