"Sopranos" Return.
Why Not " Birth of a Nation" ? Can Ethnic
Denigration be Art???
The
ANNOTICO Report
Clyde
Haberman is a thoughtful and perceptive
columnist, who long has been sympathetic to the Negative Stereotyping that the
Italian American Community has had to endure.
While
Italian Americans like Professor Viscusi and
Professor Krase, both of Brooklyn College (that may
explain it), seem "accepting" of Ethnic Denigration because it must
be considered "Art", Manny Alfano gets it right, in responding with
a trace of scorn: 'Birth of a Nation' was also considered Art!!
I
would be equally incensed if a TV Series called "The Shylocks" or
"Nigger Pimps" was aired, NO matter how well made they were!!!
AS
'SOPRANOS' RETURNS, ART IRRITATES LIFE
New
York Times
By
UNLESS
you've been hibernating all winter, you probably know that they are back on
Sunday, Tony and the gang, that fun- and gun-loving
brigade of sociopaths, the kinds who know how to put the Freud in schadenfreude.
After
a long break, a new round of "The Sopranos" is about to begin on HBO,
to the delight of devotees dying to see who gets whacked next.
But
there are others. Some Italian-Americans roll their eyes. Here we go again,
they say in resignation — another season of those on-screen gavones, those lowlifes, those embarrassments to themselves
and others.
Emanuele
Alfano will not be watching. He is director of a group called the
Italian-American One Voice Coalition, which would like to be sort
of an Anti-Defamation League for Italian-Americans, a flashing
light warning of bigotry and harmful stereotyping. Seven years after "The
Sopranos"
first went on the air, his dismay over it has not
waned.
"The
attitude toward Italian-Americans, especially those from
Alfano,
who lives in
Worse
for him is that the creative forces behind so many Mafia-themed films and
television shows are Italian-Americans, people with names
like Scorsese, Coppola and De Niro. In
the case of "The Sopranos," it is David Chase, original family name
De Cesare.
There
is nothing really new here. The pros and cons of "The Sopranos" have
been argued since its beginning. And for every Mr. Alfano, there is someone who
says, Get over it. Mafia movies are today's equivalent of the old westerns, a
harmless form of entertainment. One prominent "Sopranos" fan, former
Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, advises some of his
fellow Italian-Americans "to be less sensitive."
"You
could spend your whole life wanting to be insulted," Mr. Giuliani said a
few years ago. "Why?"
Part
of the why may be the relentless grip that the Mafia has on popular culture and
the news media. Witness the enormous, often
inexplicable, attention paid to all things Gotti.
That includes the current
in death, is treated by some newspapers as if he were a cross
between Garibaldi and St. Francis of
What
troubles the writer Helen Barolini is the incomplete
picture of Italian-American life that emerges. "I don't mind that it
exists," she
said of the "Sopranos" series. "Let it exist. But
where's all the rest of us?"
Dr.
A. Kenneth Ciongoli, board chairman of the National
Italian American Foundation, says he enjoys watching "The Sopranos."
But he
also feels that it has taken "what I as a doctor would call
the urban sclerosis of
Urban sclerosis? "Dysfunctional families, impolite people,
materialism, hedonism et cetera," he explained. "All of the things
that represent the excess of
ONE
wonders what Tony Soprano himself might think about this debate. In fact, we
have an inkling. No question, he takes his Italian
heritage seriously. But he is prepared to go only so far
down the group-pride road.
In
an episode about Columbus Day a couple of years ago, Tony reminds his consigliere, Silvio Dante, of all
that he has achieved. Leaving
out the expletives — no easy task with a
"Sopranos" script — he tells Silvio:
"Did
you get all this because you're Italian? No. You got it because you're you,
because you're smart, because whatever. Where is our
self-esteem? I mean, that doesn't come from Columbus or 'The
Godfather' or Chef Boyardee."
That's
the thing about "The Sopranos." Like it or not, it is often
insightful.
Robert
Viscusi, a professor of English at
Press). It is fair to say, Professor Viscusi
writes, that "discrimination inevitably accompanies and draws
nourishment" from
"The Godfather" and "The Sopranos." But make no mistake about
those works, he says. They are, "for good or ill, works of art."
Mr.
Alfano, for one, doesn't buy it. Asked if "The Sopranos" was not
indeed well made, he replied with a trace of scorn: "Well made. 'Birth
of a Nation' was also well made."
E-mail:
haberman@nytimes.com