Mobster Movies
Jeff at Alphecca has a post about the Sopranos and the real Mafia.
folks, these Mafia dudes, organized crime types, whatever you want to call them, are terrible people. Yeah, you can feel for Tony but in the end, they are nothing but thugs. And that’s the problem with TV and Hollywood: They love to glorify the miscreants of the world. And kids then think these thugs are cool.
I couldn’t agree more. Just take that Casino movie, for example. At the end of the movie, De Niro’s character is lamenting how the Evil Corporations are ruining Vegas. Hey, De Niro: you and your goons just spent the whole movie beating and killing people! You’re telling me the corporations are the bad guys?
Rubbish.
March 25th, 2004 at 12:09 pm
But the sopranos and heat were damn fine entertainment!
March 25th, 2004 at 1:30 pm
Most screenwriters will tell you that villains are more interesting and watchable than good guys. Movies about good people aren’t as interesting as movies about bad people. That’s why Xena was more popular than Hercules.
March 25th, 2004 at 2:01 pm
Sure, sure, I understand all that. I just don’t like it. And personally, I don’t find thugs who threaten and kill people to get their way all that interesting. I find them repulsive. Same with murderous evil geniuses such as Hannibal Lecter; if he were real, I’d say he’s the poster boy for capital punishment.
I’m not saying I think we need to crack down on Hollywood or anything like that; even if the movies have an adverse effect on children, that’s not something I want government busybodies involved in. Nor am I saying that movie characters need to be purely good or evil, or even that I a priori hate all movies about bad guys. I’m just saying that personally I’d prefer to see a movie (and a world) where the gangsters, thugs, and evil geniuses were jailed or killed.
By the way, I never watched either Xena or Hercules, so I didn’t know Xena was a bad person. I thought she was more popular because everybody was wondering if she’d make out with her sidekick. 😉
March 26th, 2004 at 3:45 pm
I think the series meets the evil that the mob represents fairly dead on. One of the major themes of the show is the American fascination with vriminals in general. Tony Soprano is the perverted version of the American Dream. If he hadn’t been brought up in the family he was brought up in and had instead been given the chances that he gives to his daughter (in recognition that he does not want his children to follow his lifestyle). An FBI agent, with grudging respect, once said of Myer Lansky, the mastermind of the mafia’s heydey (fictionalized as Hyman Roth in the Godfather films) that “He would have been chairman of the board of General Motors if he’d gone into legitimate business.” And I think this has a lot to do with the fascination we have as a nation with the mafia. For the working class they represent an escape (see also, the glorification of gang life in some strains of hip hop). The middle and upper class see something of themselves and admire the ruthlessness with which these men run their empires even if they are ultimately repulsed by the violence that such ruthlessness entails. And the Sopranos is as much about that as anything else. The creator has as much as said that Tony Soprano is not to be seen as a mascot. He is evil. He as also human. Recognizing that means recognizing we each have a latent potentiality towards evil. And that is the shows ultimate message.
March 30th, 2004 at 6:25 pm
I’m not sure I’d say the characters in Sopranos are glamorous. They are backstabbing, lying, cheating. Tony couldn’t keep his marriage together and ever episode this season has shown the fallout. I wondered why Tony would cheat on his wife so much… then I realized, he’s a sociopath. It wouldn’t be his character if he didn’t cheat on his wife and family.
Just saying that nobody on the show seems particularly happy, much less glamorous.