Rev. Andrew Greeley, the noted priest/sociologist, wrote this scathing
anti-"Sopranos" piece, that touched All the bases.

What I find particularly revealing is that whereas some Italian Americans 
don't understand that the "Soprano's are such a Negative Stereotype,
and that it would not be permitted by any other group, Rev. Greeley DOES!
 

'SOPRANOS' NOT FIT FOR PUBLIC CONSUMPTION

Chicago Sun Times
BY ANDREW GREELEY
Letters to the Editor
February 1, 2002 

HBO's Sunday night soap opera ''The Sopranos'' is ''The Godfather'' every 
week, only with more gratuitous nudity, more filthy language and-- what's 
really important to its success--much more brutal violence. It's also an 
insult to Italian Americans! 

As a Christmas present, someone gave me the DVDs of the second season. Since 
I purport to be a sociologist of popular culture, I figured I'd better watch 
some of them. I was astonished to discover that the main appeal of this 
highly praised series (even among intellectuals) was violence--cruel mayhem 
and bloody murder. Yet the Wall Street Journal hails it as ''the best TV 
drama of modern times.''

Well, Tony Soprano is certainly a free market entrepreneur. The appeal of the 
series consists of bare breasts and bloody bodies. The males are brutal 
psychopaths, and the women little better than weaklings who piously accept 
the brutality and the infidelity of their men--when they're not encouraging 
it, or in the case of Soprano's ineffable mother, actually engaging in the 
blood lust. 

Soprano (I'm surprised he's not called ''Tough Tony'') is a vicious monster. 
The ''high concept'' that he would see a psychiatrist and that a psychiatrist 
would actually attempt to treat him is more fantastical than the doings of 
Frodo Baggins and Gandalf the Grey. The acting is terrible; the dialogue dull 
(unless you like hearing the ''F'' word in every other sentence); the writing 
is pedestrian and unimaginative. Some of the episodes would be a cure for 
insomnia if the viewer didn't know that the payoffs of graphic mayhem and 
prolonged nudity were about to happen. 

''The Sopranos'' is a Western, a story written according to the paradigm 
established by the shoot-'em-up B movies and refined in "The Godfather" 
films. The only difference is that the Wild West has been moved to New 
Jersey, and the people whom the protagonists gun down or maim are not 
American Indians but mostly fellow Italians. 

Violence on American television is not politically incorrect, it would seem, 
so long as Italians are both the perpetrators and the victims. The phony 
picture of Italian personality, family structure and culture, absorbed from 
all previous mob movies, is pushed further than in the past. The theme, the 
series assumes, is simply Italian family life and loyalty applied 
systematically to organized crime. Indeed, those who enjoy watching the 
program are doubtless surprised that some Italian Americans take offense. 

Isn't that the way Italians are? Isn't that the way many films have portrayed 
Italians: as macho men and castrating women?

Can one imagine a series like this based on a Jewish, an American Indian or 
an African-American family involved in criminal behavior? There would be 
noisy protests and solemn editorial warnings. Because the Sopranos are 
Italian, it's all right. 

It doesn't help that they are Catholics. While ''The Godfather'' had some 
elegant photography of Catholic celebrations, ''The Sopranos'' concentrates 
on Carmella's refusal to leave Tony because her wimpy priest has told her 
that marriage is a sacred sacrament. I suppose there are still priests in the 
country who would urge a woman to stay with such a goon (there are priests 
somewhere who are capable of almost any idiocy), but most priests would urge 
her to take her children as far as she can from such a father. Otherwise Tony 
Jr. is destined to be a sadistic mob boss just like his father or his cousin 
Christopher. 

When Mario Cuomo was about to run for president, word spread around the 
country that he wouldn't dare run because there was some deep, dark family 
secret in his history--some secret that the media had not revealed when he 
was running for governor of New York. He was an Italian from Queens, wasn't 
he? Of course, he was connected; he had to be. 

At the start of the last century, a congressional commission presided over by 
Rep. William Dillingham (R-New York) argued for immigration restrictions on 
the grounds that Italians were ''innate'' criminals (and Poles were not 
intelligent enough to become Americans, and the Irish drank too much). It 
would seem that the Italian stereotype has not changed much since then. Only 
now it is no longer a threat to American civility. It has become a pretext 
for popular culture violence--violence that wins awards from the television 
industry.

E-mail: agreel@aol.com