Sunday, Jul 20, 2008
Why an ultraviolent drama about a New Jersey mafioso paints a more nuanced portrait of women than anything you'll find on Lifetime.
Mar 6, 2004 | If you've caught one of the breath-stealing trailers for the fifth season of "The Sopranos," which premieres Sunday night, you may have noticed that it's pretty heavy on the women: Carmela opening the door to her emptied house; a pack of cross-armed broads in a parking lot looking like some angry beauty technicians caught on the set of "West Side Story"; and the tag line "Hell Hath No Fury ... Like the Family." Forget Lifetime, forget soap opera, forget even the recently departed "Sex and the City." This is real women's television.
"'Sex and the City' was about gay men; 'The Sopranos' is about straight women," says Regina Barreca, a professor of English and feminist theory at the University of Connecticut and editor of a collection of essays called "A Sitdown With the Sopranos."
Yes, underneath all the big paunches and bare breasts of HBO's mob drama lies a woman's heart. It belongs to Carmela Soprano (Edie Falco), and when we last saw it, it was beating with so much fury, frustration and desire that it looked like it was close to breaking. "I am here! I have things to say!" she howled painfully at her husband in last season's final episode. He may not be listening, Carm, but we are.
"The Sopranos'" official centerpiece is New Jersey mafia bear Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini). He is surrounded by people who want nothing more than to bust his balls: his wife and kids, his late great mother, his sometimes-therapist, the gang of murdering extortionists who call him boss. The conceit, of course, is that these are all different kinds of families, people to whom Tony is bound by love, duty or trust. The domestic spheres of family, home, vulnerability and sentiment have always been tied to notions of femininity -- contrasting with the professional, political, scientific and athletic schools that bring us things like cop shows, "Star Trek" and professional wrestling. At "The Sopranos'" expensively swaddled premiere on Tuesday night, while hundreds of guests waited for the Radio City Music Hall lights to go down and the synthesized drumbeat of the show's theme song to begin, "Sopranos" creator David Chase thanked HBO, with whom he has "felt a partnership." He praised his colleagues for being "so supportive." He got positively misty about how good it was that the premiere "was bringing us all together again." Blame his touchy-feely speech on the expressive mob aesthetic or Chase's interest in psychotherapy, but you'd be hard-pressed to catch Martin Scorsese or Woody Allen talking about supportive partnerships that bring people together. (Never mind that the episodes that followed featured Tony watching "The Prince of Tides" and quoting Dr. Phil.)
They also reminded us where last season left off: After her crush on her husband's henchman Furio ended with Furio leaving town in a bid for self-preservation, Carmela broke down in tears to her friend Rosalie Aprile, tangled with her daughter, Meadow, threatened to shoot Tony's former mistress, and -- in four hellishly intense scenes -- finally threw her husband out of their home. "The Sopranos" is not a show that goes in for "very special episodes" about abortion or bulimia. But through Carmela, it has tackled some women's issues that may be even more uncomfortable: the trade-offs between fidelity and cold cash, Catholic guilt over divorce, stifled professional and sexual desires, a biting jealousy that threatens to overtake her happiness for a daughter on the brink of a much happier life than she will ever know. These are not female experiences addressed by Hallmark Cards -- or by most popular drama.
Next month, Open Court Press will publish an academic book called "The Sopranos and Philosophy: I Kill Therefore I Am," which includes an essay by Lisa Cassidy, an assistant professor of philosophy at Ramapo College of New Jersey, called "Is Carmela Soprano a Feminist? Carmela's Care Ethics." Cassidy said by e-mail that the answer to the question posed by her essay is a resounding no. "Feminists want to challenge the power structures that keep women subservient," she says. "Carmela (until the very end of the last season, at least) was content to cooperate and benefit from a marriage that was demeaning to her. But just because Carmela isn't a feminist doesn't mean that she represents the hyper-masculine, Mafioso culture either."
Rather, Cassidy argues, Carmela uses a philosophical orientation called "Care Ethics," advanced by scholars like Carol Gilligan. According to Cassidy, Care Ethics refers to people who "understand moral problems as stemming from conflicting responsibilities -- responsibilities to care for yourself and responsibilities to care for your loved ones." Carmela spent previous seasons willing to sacrifice herself in order to make her marriage to a cheating husband work, but at the end of last season, says Cassidy, Carmela threw her thinking about responsibility into reverse: In separating from Tony, "she reasoned that this was the best way to take care of her entire family; she saves herself and her children from emotional harm by ending a disastrous marriage."
The conflagration that ended -- or at least temporarily halted -- the Soprano marriage was unexpected after a season in which the male-driven drama of the plot had climaxed with the beheading and dismemberment of Ralphie Cifaretto (Joe Pantoliano).
"That they ended a mob program on a domestic note last season was very daring," says Barreca, who added that the upcoming season's trailers have left her expecting more in the same vein. "Phrases like 'turf war' and 'going to the mattresses' are going to have a new meaning here," she continues.
But, argues Barreca, the emphasis on the domestic doesn't break with "The Sopranos'" history; it merely reinforces what has been bubbling under the gory surface ever since Season 1: "They are drawing on what they established with [Tony's late mother] Livia and [Tony's sister] Janice and Meadow. There are all these mothers and daughters -- you've always had Tony surrounded by the feminine."
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