It appears that I am nearly the only person in the United States who never cared about The Sopranos. The most admired television show of all time, bringing to the medium a truly Shakespearean greatness, blahblahblah, and I just never got into it.
It’s probably because I’ve always hated the popular media theme that all American business is corrupt and gangsters represent deeper truths about business in the United States throughout history. Rubbish. It was nonsense when The Godfather movies popularized it, and it’s been nonsense ever since.
The corruption of the American dream is certainly a valid matter for investigation both by artists and social analysts, but it is important to bear in mind that is is not the dream itself that is corrupt, but people’s dishonest pursuit of it and the perverted, materialistic view all too many people take of it.
The American Dream is about opportunity, not acquisition.
As a result, the American Dream assumes the rule of law, for without law, powerful and corrupt people can run roughshod over others, denying them the opportunity to use their gifts in pursuit of their own dreams. Hence, crime is not an outcome of the dream but a corrupt use of the freedom that is at the heart of the dream.
To say that America is inherently corrupt, as such gangster fictions tend to do, is a despicable canard.
In addiition, I greatly dislike the overuse of psychology in fictional narratives to explain individuals’ wrongdoing. While psychology can be useful in identifying a person’s habits of thinking and proposing alternative ways to see the world and respond to it, the use of psychology in fiction is tyically more a matter of explaining away personal responsibility for one’s actions. I find that thoroughly repugnant.
Perhaps my acceptance of the truth behind the American Dream and my abhorrence of exculpatory fictional psychology are out of step with our society today, but in any case, they make it clear why I’ve never been able to enjoy The Sopranos.
I certainly don’t begrudge anyone their enjoyment of the program, but I simply cannot join in the festival of admiration for it.
It appears that I am nearly the only person in the United States who never cared about The Sopranos…
I may have you beat on this count, Sam. I’ve not watched even one second of “The Sopranos.” And haven’t had an interest in doing so. Which doesn’t mean, of course, that the show isn’t good; just that I care so little that I’ve not even tried. On the other hand, I’m rather nuts about “Lost,” for what it’s worth…
Thanks, Peter. I watched only the first couple of episodes and then dropped it. I’ll take your advice and give the show a second look. If you and Ross like it, that’s obviously a good recommendation.
Evidently we agree on the issues at hand here, and if The Sopranos does indeed constitute a reaction to these attitudes, that’s a very good thing indeed.
I see in your Sopranos post today that you weren’t a fan of the show. I don’t know how much time you’ve given to it, but it can be a tough show to get a handle on without some investment of time (I didn’t care much for the show until I started watching from the beginning). You might try going back and watching the first few episodes–I’d suggest going at least until episode 5, “College.” It’s not really about the innate corruption of American business (that’s there a tiny bit, but it’s barely a secondary theme). Mostly, it’s about the corruption and decline of the American family and the intrinsically selfish and flawed nature of man – and how those flaws have become an accepted part of our societal landscape. And far from explaining things through psychology, the show eventually comes across as an indictment of our culture’s reliance on it for easy answers and fixes, another outlet for self-absorption. You might look at Ross Douthat’s recent First Things piece on the show (which also dealt with Lost and BSG) – he does a typically good job of pulling the show’s pieces apart and making the case for it from a right-leaning, Christian-friendly perspective.