By Andrew Anthony.If the Sopranos, which returns this week for its fourth series, is arguably the most accomplished drama in television history, there is no doubt at all that it's the most analysed. Never before has a programme been subject to such extensive interpretation. While the story concerns a New Jersey mafia boss and his middle-class suburban family, no self-respecting critic would ever say that's what it was about.
Ever since he first appeared on US television back in January 1999, Tony Soprano, the show's monumental anti-hero played by James Gandolfini, has been a gift to the metaphorically minded. He is the American Everyman, the embodiment of ruthless free-market capitalism, the defining figure of balding fat manhood in midlife crisis, and much else besides. It's no wonder Gandolfini stoops, carrying that weight of symbolism around on his shoulders.
That Tony also visits a shrink to discuss his problems, and that shrink in turn visits another shrink to discuss the problem of seeing Tony, makes him even more a target for intellectuals than he is for rival gangsters or the feds. Not only does he face imminent destruction but also endless deconstruction.
Ever since he first appeared on US television back in January 1999, Tony Soprano, the show's monumental anti-hero played by James Gandolfini, has been a gift to the metaphorically minded. He is the American Everyman, the embodiment of ruthless free-market capitalism, the defining figure of balding fat manhood in midlife crisis, and much else besides. It's no wonder Gandolfini stoops, carrying that weight of symbolism around on his shoulders.
That Tony also visits a shrink to discuss his problems, and that shrink in turn visits another shrink to discuss the problem of seeing Tony, makes him even more a target for intellectuals than he is for rival gangsters or the feds. Not only does he face imminent destruction but also endless deconstruction.
Now the heavy mob have turned out in force. North American academics, among them Lavery, have recently published no fewer than five books about The Sopranos. The authors i
nclude psychiatrists, sociologists, literary theorists, postmodernists, post-structuralists and the other usual suspects. It's only fair to warn you that these are determined individuals who will not waste two words when a chapter will do.
Among the daunting array of weaponry on display is some state-of-the-art jargon. Phrases like 'referencing the new narrative spaces' and 'circumscribed marginality' can knock the sense out of you, having already had the sense knocked out of themselves, and whole paragraphs brazenly make no concession to comprehension.
Hypersensitivity of this stripe has led some Italian-American pressure groups in the past to picket The Sopranos set. The American Italian Defence Association makes the point that television would never dream of depicting Jews as organised criminals. In fact, there is a Jewish gangster, Hesh Rabkin, who regularly appears in The Sopranos. Added to which, we must take into account Livia Soprano's comment that psychotherapy is 'nothin' but a racket for the Jews'.
Some people, however, are never satisfied. 'The one problem so central to understanding the American condition that is almost never confronted on The Sopranos is racism,' writes David R. Simon in his book Tony Soprano's America. Simon sees the series as a document in which all the evils of US society - except racism - are laid bare so that we might learn how to correct them. Tony's real character flaw, we gather, is that he's never read C Wright Mills.
Simon likes facts and figures but he doesn't appear to understand cause and effect. His methodology is to look for anything bad in the world, then relate it to American greed, then list random statistics, and then make some tenuous link to The Sopranos, although sometimes he doesn't bother with this last bit. 'On September 11, 2001,' he writes, 'America got a first-hand view of its real crime problem. It learned that what it sees every week on The Sopranos is really the tip of a very dangerous iceberg.'
nclude psychiatrists, sociologists, literary theorists, postmodernists, post-structuralists and the other usual suspects. It's only fair to warn you that these are determined individuals who will not waste two words when a chapter will do.Among the daunting array of weaponry on display is some state-of-the-art jargon. Phrases like 'referencing the new narrative spaces' and 'circumscribed marginality' can knock the sense out of you, having already had the sense knocked out of themselves, and whole paragraphs brazenly make no concession to comprehension.
Hypersensitivity of this stripe has led some Italian-American pressure groups in the past to picket The Sopranos set. The American Italian Defence Association makes the point that television would never dream of depicting Jews as organised criminals. In fact, there is a Jewish gangster, Hesh Rabkin, who regularly appears in The Sopranos. Added to which, we must take into account Livia Soprano's comment that psychotherapy is 'nothin' but a racket for the Jews'.
Some people, however, are never satisfied. 'The one problem so central to understanding the American condition that is almost never confronted on The Sopranos is racism,' writes David R. Simon in his book Tony Soprano's America. Simon sees the series as a document in which all the evils of US society - except racism - are laid bare so that we might learn how to correct them. Tony's real character flaw, we gather, is that he's never read C Wright Mills.
Simon likes facts and figures but he doesn't appear to understand cause and effect. His methodology is to look for anything bad in the world, then relate it to American greed, then list random statistics, and then make some tenuous link to The Sopranos, although sometimes he doesn't bother with this last bit. 'On September 11, 2001,' he writes, 'America got a first-hand view of its real crime problem. It learned that what it sees every week on The Sopranos is really the tip of a very dangerous iceberg.'
