The Sopranos

Well I did watch Glory (Matthew Broderick & Denzel Washington) and was going to write about it for this post but I decided to go with something different. After all, I couldn't find controversial issues about Glory or Glory's characters, just non-stop, amazing reviews about the film. It was a brilliant way to commemorate the first all black regiment of the civil war. They were courageous, brave, and honorable soldiers - who could have an issue with that?

I hope it isn't terrible that instead I chose to write this post about The Sopranos; a show in which I just finished completely. I think it's fair to say that The Sopranos was without a doubt based on the real American Mafia (the Italian organized crime families in American today), mainly in the Northeast and Chicago. When I was growing up I witnessed plenty of mafia controversy in the media, and the 2 decades before I was born (1991), were no joke. The Sopranos originally aired in 1999, and concluded with it's sixth season in 2007. Of course such a massive hit-show, and a critically acclaimed show stirred up quite a lot of attention and controversy, since the main focus was on Italian Americans. It was criticized by many for making all Italians look bad, for giving people the wrong idea about Italians in America and in the country itself. Many thought that the show was too racist for TV. According to Netplaces.com (accessed 3/26/13), a New Jersey Congresswoman (New Jersey being where the characters lived in the show), even tried to have it banned. Italian Americans were reported to have complained that the show portrayed too many negative stereotypes.

According to ABCnews.go.com (accessed 3/26/13), an Italian-American lawyers' group began a lawsuit, trying to sue HBO for essentially making all Italians look like mobsters. They made the argument that the show violates section 20 of the state constitution's Bill of Rights. "Enrico Mirabelli of the American Italian Defense Association told ABCNEWS' Good Morning America that the show implies that most Italian-Americans are mobsters. For most people who don't know Italians personally, they look at The Sopranos and they think most Italian families are like The Sopranos," said Mirabelli." 

In the same sense that many historical films have their accurate moments, they also tend to have many inaccurate moments. Whether or not The Sopranos portrayed the mob to be crazier than they were, or the opposite - whatever the case, The Sopranos did make a drama based on real events. They portrayed an idea of organized crime in an educational and entertaining way. The criticism intertwined with the popularity. Out of the popularity came ignorance. In my opinion, the show was amazing. Any show that can make you root for a character that would usually be an antagonist in American media today, I think that's a well written and nicely crafted show. 

The blog.NJ.com also reported Italians having issues with the way parenting was portrayed in that show. The women and children were not supporters of violence in this show, but many did play the role of the stay at home wife who cooked and took care of errands and kids, while in the back of their minds they knew their husbands were  off being criminals, but still paying for their cars and huge homes. 

I remembered hearing about the issues with this show as it aired and I was in lower education. I never watched it because I never had HBO. But I truly enjoyed watching a show that showed me a little bit of how much of the violence I read in headlines growing up, worked. Furthermore, I was very interested to then step back from the "cool-ness" of the show and look into some of the controversy it had created; Literally analyzing parts that were considered to be far from the truth, and vice versa. I realize I probably should have stuck with Glory, I even watched Act of Valor and remembered it wasn't a historical movie 5 minutes before the end (stupidly), and had started to blog about that. Regardless, I certainly enjoyed the entire series, and I understand the arguments out there from people frustrated with the show. 

http://blog.nj.com/sopranosarchive/2007/03/for_some_proud_italians_sopran.html
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=93630&page=1#.UVKDzBw3u8A
http://www.helium.com/items/600563-did-the-tv-show-the-sopranos-help-or-hurt-the-image-of-italian-americans
http://www.netplaces.com/mafia/the-mafia-on-television/the-sopranos-cultural-phenomenon.htm