A Few Base Notes About "The Sopranos."
Unlike perhaps most folks in NJ, I never cared much for Tony Soprano and his pals and family members. Perhaps that's just because, hey, if you're living in this state and feel THAT starved for media attention about this state....
I found the show badly acted, directed and written. There was very little "Jerseyness" about it.(I never even felt that its makers had ever set foot in such "social and athletic club"-ridden towns as Garfield and East Rutherford and certainly never had a real meal in a genuine Mafiosi feeding trough such as the long-gone Tony Maita's Villa in Union City.) And it seemed to feature either the most incompetent law enforcers imaginable on the Federal level (while as we know, the Feds thankfully have in truth basically crushed LCN in this state, albeit only to be presented with organized crime in several other formats) or posited a universe in which local and state law enforcers seemed to have vanished from this state entirely.
Mostly, however, I dislike the romanticization of organized crime members. Anyone who actually has ever met actual members of the Italianate subculture in which Tony Soprano and his ilk dwell should certainly acknowledge that these characters are just unregenerate scumbags, drooling slobs and louts in either warm-up wear or curiously shiny suits. Charming they really aren't. Nor are they likable. Unless, maybe, one already keeps lizards as pets.
Anyway, the general defense of "The Sopranos," especially in the Ledger, was often that the show was "really about family." (Which in fact is the usual defense made about "Sons Of Anarchy," which is equally morally dubious viewing.) This in fact is often the last possible defense fans of either "The Sopranos" or the somewhat more wretched "Sons Of Anarchy" (where did Charley Hunnam, a Brit,dig up that hokey twang he sometimes adopts, for example; it's certainly not what one really hears in the California zones where the show supposedly takes place, and here law enforcement appears even more hapless and often corrupt to boot) can muster. So they fall in behind a truly appalling concept of family. Why they simply cannot admit that either show is merely a guilty (even near-obscene) TV pleasure is beyond me. In the Ledger in particular, its crack critics have gone on and on as if writing graduate school-level papers on both shows.
(Here's my own similar admission: I used to really, really enjoy Fred "The Hammer" Williamson's blaxploitation movies, although I never saw them as anything other than amusing trash, once even gratefully accepted a t-shirt touting his "Mr. Mean" movie from the hands of the Hammer himself after a 10AM show of the movie on 42nd Street.. Hey, I even sat through and chuckled at Rudy Ray Moore's much cruder "Dolemite" series, and Jim Brown in both "Slaughter" and "Slaughter's Big Rip-Off." But I never believed that such movies reflected the true state of African-American families in these 50 states.)
Anyway...for those who either raise the issue of familial relationships by way of a weak intellectual defense for a weekly TV wallow or simply dumbly believe that LCN's assault on the public good at core has nonetheless always been about family no matter how violently and feloniously the "love" has been applied, I would like to commend the work of the British academic John Dickie.
Dickie's written several fine books, but the one worth focusing on here (it's available in paper) is his "Cosa Nostra - A History Of The Sicilian Mafia." The rare writer about Mafia matters who actually reads and speaks fluently Italian and its dialects, Dickie quickly demolishes the idea that LCN has ever been about family. Even more devastatingly, however, he also convincingly establishes that, unlike a belief many people have and I seem to recall even Tony Soprano buying into on the show, the Mafia-La Cosa Nostra is truly no more than a late 19th century phenomenon. (Sort of like what we know modern witchcraft, incidentally, despite the claims of its faithful to be the true "ancient religion, and there's even a case to be made that the "roots" of Wicca stem from a book of that time supposedly based on "research" in Italy.)
Worst and best of all, Dickie shows, from an examination of existing court records what the term "Cosa Nostra" really means, and how LCN's interest in ill-gotten gains stems from efforts by a criminally inclined few to control Sicily's citrus industry, since navies of the time depended on citrus juices as a means to avoid scurvy in its crews. It's a long, sad story, and it of course led to some bad Sicilians, the ones not as successful at crime as the local dons they admired, emigrating to America along with their law-abiding fellow countrymen.
But in no case did the origins of LCN really arise from any sense, even a perverted one, of "family." (Are you listening, Francis Ford Coppola?) That should be underscored first and foremost. America has suffered enough from Sicilian-style organized crime (as it now suffers from bike clubs, Mexican drug cartels, Russian mobsters, gangbangers, etc.) that we shouldn't also have to live with the myth of "family." (Most Sicilians of course have suffered even more, from Mafia rottenness in the mother country and from the stigma of possible organized crime involvement here, it seems such an automatic assumption of those of Sicilian descent that he or she at the very least always "knows somebody who knows somebody" who can get things done.)
Dickie's website is www.johndickie.net. For those interested in the social structure of Sicily where the modern Mafia-La Cosa Nostra has thrived, one might also read Norman Lewis's "The Honored Society," which explains how the Mafia actually strangles the land of its birth. That both Dickie and Lewis are Brits does American historians and even our pop journalists and filmmakers no credit, by the way. (Are you still listening, Francis Ford Coppola?)
In real life, alas, as opposed to reel life now that "The Sopranos" only carries on in the world of re-runs and DVD sets, Jersey remains full of organized crime scuzzballs. It's just that a lot fewer of them seem to have Italian surnames these days. And far too many of them (save for outlaw bike clubs which have their own special "uniforms") still have terrible taste in track suits and related "workout" clothes. The workouts they dress for, however, generally only amount to mulcting and oppressing the public.
(Here's my own similar admission: I used to really, really enjoy Fred "The Hammer" Williamson's blaxploitation movies, although I never saw them as anything other than amusing trash, once even gratefully accepted a t-shirt touting his "Mr. Mean" movie from the hands of the Hammer himself after a 10AM show of the movie on 42nd Street.. Hey, I even sat through and chuckled at Rudy Ray Moore's much cruder "Dolemite" series, and Jim Brown in both "Slaughter" and "Slaughter's Big Rip-Off." But I never believed that such movies reflected the true state of African-American families in these 50 states.)
Anyway...for those who either raise the issue of familial relationships by way of a weak intellectual defense for a weekly TV wallow or simply dumbly believe that LCN's assault on the public good at core has nonetheless always been about family no matter how violently and feloniously the "love" has been applied, I would like to commend the work of the British academic John Dickie.
Dickie's written several fine books, but the one worth focusing on here (it's available in paper) is his "Cosa Nostra - A History Of The Sicilian Mafia." The rare writer about Mafia matters who actually reads and speaks fluently Italian and its dialects, Dickie quickly demolishes the idea that LCN has ever been about family. Even more devastatingly, however, he also convincingly establishes that, unlike a belief many people have and I seem to recall even Tony Soprano buying into on the show, the Mafia-La Cosa Nostra is truly no more than a late 19th century phenomenon. (Sort of like what we know modern witchcraft, incidentally, despite the claims of its faithful to be the true "ancient religion, and there's even a case to be made that the "roots" of Wicca stem from a book of that time supposedly based on "research" in Italy.)
Worst and best of all, Dickie shows, from an examination of existing court records what the term "Cosa Nostra" really means, and how LCN's interest in ill-gotten gains stems from efforts by a criminally inclined few to control Sicily's citrus industry, since navies of the time depended on citrus juices as a means to avoid scurvy in its crews. It's a long, sad story, and it of course led to some bad Sicilians, the ones not as successful at crime as the local dons they admired, emigrating to America along with their law-abiding fellow countrymen.
But in no case did the origins of LCN really arise from any sense, even a perverted one, of "family." (Are you listening, Francis Ford Coppola?) That should be underscored first and foremost. America has suffered enough from Sicilian-style organized crime (as it now suffers from bike clubs, Mexican drug cartels, Russian mobsters, gangbangers, etc.) that we shouldn't also have to live with the myth of "family." (Most Sicilians of course have suffered even more, from Mafia rottenness in the mother country and from the stigma of possible organized crime involvement here, it seems such an automatic assumption of those of Sicilian descent that he or she at the very least always "knows somebody who knows somebody" who can get things done.)
Dickie's website is www.johndickie.net. For those interested in the social structure of Sicily where the modern Mafia-La Cosa Nostra has thrived, one might also read Norman Lewis's "The Honored Society," which explains how the Mafia actually strangles the land of its birth. That both Dickie and Lewis are Brits does American historians and even our pop journalists and filmmakers no credit, by the way. (Are you still listening, Francis Ford Coppola?)
In real life, alas, as opposed to reel life now that "The Sopranos" only carries on in the world of re-runs and DVD sets, Jersey remains full of organized crime scuzzballs. It's just that a lot fewer of them seem to have Italian surnames these days. And far too many of them (save for outlaw bike clubs which have their own special "uniforms") still have terrible taste in track suits and related "workout" clothes. The workouts they dress for, however, generally only amount to mulcting and oppressing the public.
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