Friday,
June 08, 2007
Brown of Sun Times Addiction Trumps
Sopranos Negative Italian Stereotyping
The
ANNOTICO Report
Mark Brown
attributes a lot of "The Sopranos" immense popularity due to our
fascination with the Mafia, of course, he is mindful that because of that
fascination, "Sopranos"
has contributed to a continuation of a certain stereotyping of Italian-Americans.
I
Mark,
it
Very
much like you would have done if a series called the "Shylocks" or
the "Niggers" aired.
Mark,
I will give you credit for at least acknowledging the damage it does, rather
than using the general lame excuse, "It
It
It
By
Mark Brown
Sun-Times
Columnist
June
5, 2007
There
wouldn
I suppose it
could be Phil who gets arrested, while Tony staggers on into an uncertain
future, but that would feel like a copout. Maybe the only question is: who
kills Tony?
If
you don
When
"Seinfeld" and "Friends" came to an end, I had nothing to
contribute, never having developed into a faithful fan of either program.
Nothing against those shows, but they didn
While it is
categorically untrue that "The Fugitive" and "M*A*S*H" were
the last Big Final Episodes that I have seen, I
As a cable
program that requires a premium subscription, "The Sopranos" doesn
Your
loss.
I
In its early
years, "Sopranos" was the smartest, freshest, most entertaining
program I had seen.
As the
storytelling became more sophisticated and ambitious over time, some of that
raw quality was arguably lost. But it was still worth blocking out the 8 o
If it weren
As it is, there
are now at least two HBO shows -- "Deadwood" and "The Wire"
-- that I
That
What always made
the show so arresting was that we could see bits and pieces of our own families
in Tony
In between the
violence, "Sopranos" explored the nature of kids growing up and
parents growing old.
I never saw it as
a realistic portrayal of Italian-Americans so much as insightful portrayal of
life in the mob and life in general -- with about 400 percent more killing than
in the real world to boost ratings.
Now all that
The consensus
seems to be that Tony has to die, but with some sort of twist that would live
up to the show
My friend, the
Jersey Kid, who gets goose bumps just watching the intro, suggests this
scenario:
Okay, that
A few weeks ago I
thought maybe Vito
You could do better,
I
Tommy sees Tony
surviving, and in the final scene we watch him following his morning routine of
walking out to get the newspaper, but then the camera pulls back and we see he
I could see it. Tony spilling his guts in witness protection. His instincts for survival winning out over his sense of honor.
Carmela never
letting him hear the end of it.
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