The Genius of David Chase

Such as it is, was in combining the classic themes of the American gangster movie and the soap opera. I have watched a number of episodes, but I am by no means a fan of The Sopranos - though I must admit that my dear, sweet and non-violent wife is.

Having declared my non-allegiance to the cult, I have to admit that it was often gripping television, and that a number of excellent actors were in it, and that whatever his limitations as an actor (may or may not be), James Gandolfini was often perfect for his brutish thug of a character. My problem is that I think it was gripping for essentially bad reasons. The Roman gladiatorial games were no doubt gripping entertainment, and The Sopranos with all its nods to domesticity, was essentially about vicariously experiencing David Chase's sadistic fantasies. Tony Soprano was no Hamlet or MacBeth. His was an appeal based purely on his ability to do all the bad things we might want to do with utter impunity. Who hasn't wanted to humiliate and crush an enemy? Tony murders them, with sadistic details, and never has to pay for his crimes. The soap operatic domesticity gives him just enough of a hint of humanity to make it easier for us to identify with him, in a way that would be more difficult to do with a character whose only side we saw was depravity.

My view is distinctly in the minority. TV critics, talking heads, and their ilk mainly worship Chase (and Tony). Apparently I'm not quite alone, however. Tony Hendra, writing on HuffingtonPost, doesn't seem to be a fan in Arrivederci Tony -- and Good &%$@ing Riddance!.

He's a bit more hostile than I am:

Finally! It's OVER. The pandering, pretentious, overblown, over-wrought, over-interpreted, over-rated series about a loathsome subculture of brutal cowards who feed off the poor, the weak and one another, who despise anyone not of their race and express their displeasure with baseball bats (provided the odds are solidly in their favor) and manifest their manliness or loyalty or code or some such drivel by bravely shooting, stabbing or garroting their (preferably unarmed) victims from the rear.

No I'm not talking about the Republican presidential debates. I'm talking about The Sopranos

I sort of like the fact that he manages to link the thuggish Sopranos with the thuggish Bushies.

The Sopranos succeeded in catching the brutal retributive mood of the nation in the first years of the century, a mood fanned and pandered to by the mobsters in the White House and their made men in an all-Republican Congress. DC in those days was a one Family town. I doubt The Sopranos would have gone anywhere much if it hadn't been for 9/11. Gandolfini had to do very little acting to convey the unapologetic thuggishness that was in the air and people of all political stripes responded. The left had to find some intellectual ointment to ease their vestigial non-violent organs, but it wasn't too hard. Everybody wanted to whack somebody. And the reason they loved Tony so much, wooden and grim and inexpressive as he was, was that he -- no less than those infatuated by his unreflective brutishness - was NOT TO BLAME. Not in these very special times.

So one of the most loathsome characters in the history of American television played by one of the least appetizing actors ever to occupy the screen was the beneficiary of all kinds of grateful hot air about his conflicted-ness and his deep-seated needs and rotten childhood and his 'essential sweetness' That way when he went out to do bestial things to his enemies, just as they longed to, they needed to feel no guilt.

And that's why Tony never paid the price. Not even in the final episode. He was unaccountable. Just like the gang in the White House.

Bad-a-bing.

I'm not sure why he so despises Gandolfini, nor do I agree with him on that, but he does diagnose the Sopranos' modus operandi:

Every plot set-up, every twist, whether to do with The Families or the families; their countless schemes and scams and quarrels and plots against each other; the double agents or undercover cops or made men being turned or sit-downs or hits in restaurants or hits-to-be banging from inside the car-trunk -- it had all been done dozens of times before and far better in the Godfather or Goodfellas or in other mob and mob-related films from the 70s to the 90s.

If there was a Sopranos formula it seemed to be: let's put Tony and his tedious dysfunctional brood in some banal and unexceptional soap-opera wringer, grind them through the predictable conflicts and then liven things up by cutting to someone getting whacked in the most gruesome and graphic way possible. And because everyone on screen always had to conform to the morose, monotonic rhythms of its star even the soap-ish aspects of the series never came close to the zing of previous super-soaps, (which were also built around larger-than-life villains), like Dallas Dynasty and Falconcrest.

One of the reasons the Romans maintained their gladiatorial games at enormous public expense was to brutalize the population. Roman leader believed that the citizen's warlike qualities had to be honed by exposure to the most horrific violence. I don't think America needs to do that, and I greatly regret that so much of television is now dedicated to it.