Sunday,
April 08, 2007
Celebrating Christ's Return, not Tony's !!
The
ANNOTICO Report
Journalist Fran
Wood wonders about the Sacrilege of The Soprano's Return, on Easter, the same
day Christian's Celebrate Christ's Resurrection.
Point
well made. But just Chalk it up to Media's devotion to Money vs. Morality,
or even Good Taste.
Fran
also takes vehement exception to the Sopranos being an
"Everyman" story. She Distances herself in the most emphatic terms.
Score
Two for Fran, and she does it with great humor.
Only
one thing Fran Missed, How would she have Felt if she
was of Italian Heritage and had these "Boorish Bumpkins" constantly
draped in Italian "images"????
Fran,
Further to your remarks about The Sopranos making your State look bad, I refer
to the New Jersey Newspapers periodically, and the OVERWHELMING degree of
Attention that is shown to The Sopranos in the Newspapers and on their Web
Sites, I would Not be surprised to hear that some one has proposed changing the
name of your State to "Sopranoland"
I
have friends living in
Remember
we are a Product of Nature and Nurture, and I'm thinking that your environment
has got to be knocking off a few points of IQ every year!!!! :) :)
Celebrating
Christ's Return, not Tony's
By
Fran Wood
Sunday,
April 08, 2007
For
me, the Resurrection celebrated on this Easter Sunday does not refer to the
return of "The Sopranos."
But
if you've paid even a modicum of attention to the "Sopranos" hype
that's been building over the last month, it's clear the religious reference is
not completely out of the ballpark. The press is so overwhelmingly reverential
in its devotion to this series that to say anything against it seems to border
on sacrilege.
Truth
is, I even suspect the producers' decision to kick off the final nine episodes
of a show that revels in violence and murder on this particular Sunday is no
coincidence.
So
if you're thinking by now you're not hearing from a "Sopra
nos" fan, you catch on fast.
And
if you're wondering what I object to, it's the premise.
Let
me be clear: I have no problem with a TV show about the mob. Nor do I have a
problem with portraying violence associated with organized crime.
What
offends me is the implication these are just regular people whose employer
happens to be the mob.
What's
supposed to be disturbing -- yet riveting -- about "The Sopranos" is
not the ways Tony and his extended family are different from us, but how much
they are the same as us. As Tony's "family" and his business have
been un veiled and explored over the years, we're
supposed to see them as comparable to our own lives, our own families, our own
businesses.
We're
supposed to conclude that, at the end of the day, Tony and Carmela want the
same things for their kids that we want for ours, so hey, we aren't so
different after all.
Sorry,
I've never bought that. In fact, a more repugnant premise for coaxing an
audience to look kindly, even with affection, on people whose lives are built
on depraved indifference is hard to imagine.
I
am not like these people. If, as a member of the human race, I share some of
the same concerns and traits, the similarities end there. The code of ethics
held sacred by those whose income derives from corruption, illegal drugs and
brutality isn't my code of ethics.
That
said, I bear no grudge against the show's 8 million
viewers. I'm married to one of them, and I am a blood relative of several
others.
I
also admit my introduction to the show was not the most favorable.
I
had gone upstairs to watch Channel 13, as is often my habit on Sunday nights,
and discovered the public station was holding a bega
thon. So I came downstairs to see what my husband was watching.
The
sight that greeted me -- on the largest TV screen in the house, thank you very
much -- was a couple of topless (and, to be frank, virtually bottomless) pole
dancers. This, I later learned, is standard entertainment at the Bada-Bing Club.
Before
I could utter one syllable of shock and disbelief, the scene switched to a dorm
room, where the family's teenage daughter Meadow was enjoying some, uh, "quality time" with her boyfriend. From there, the
action (I do not use the word lightly) returned to a back room at the Bada-Bing, where Tony was indulging in some, er, private entertainment.
The
show ended with possibly the most chillingly graphic brutality I've ever seen
on any screen: Ralphie beating a young stripper to
death.
"This,"
I gasped to my husband, "is what you're watching on Sunday nights while
I'm upstairs watching 'Masterpiece Theatre'?"
He
insisted I'd seen an unusually graphic episode.
Months
later, when I next saw the show, Tony was in Ralphie's
kitchen beating him to a pulp. Then Tony and Christopher chopped him up, packed
his head into a bowling bag and buried the pieces.
Now,
I'm not suggesting any of these characters is overtly portrayed as a role
model. But there's an inescapable aura of glorification that attends "The
Sopranos." Be cause their story is compelling enough to be told in an
expensively produced television show, in a perverse way they come off as cool.
And under the cover of saying "Isn't this terrible?,"
the producers get away with, frankly, borderline pornography.
In
one way, and one way only, I will miss "The Sopranos." Because it
does such an effective job of portraying
Fran
Wood may be reached at fwood@starledger.com.
/
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