Thursday, April 26, 2007

Why Do We Love The Sopranos? Part 2

I'm continuing to think aloud on the puzzling question of... why do we exactly love the brutal Sopranos?

Sopranos know how to "take care of business." When a guy bumps their car from behind and refuses to take any responsibility for it, and challenges them with a self-righteous "sue me!", they don't sue anybody. They settle the score through their own means. And since we had lost untold amounts of time and money in the past in either suing someone or getting sued, we understand the simplicity and "beauty" of the concept.

We know that their kind of "score settling" is not legal. But still we cannot help but take a shine to the kind of "direct justice" dished out by the Sopranos. It is a world in which no legal reforms are needed since everything is settled by brute force. We are aware that civilization cannot survive even for a single day if EVERYONE settled their problems like Sopranos do. However, we still derive a vicarious satisfaction from justice delivered quickly, without any ambiguities.

We also like the "honor code" that Sopranos manage to maintain despite all that depravity and violence, a code that values friendship and loyalty above anything else. Living in a relativistic world in which everything depends on what your lawyer can do against mine, that kind of ABSOLUTE ethics appeals to a primordial sense of morality encoded perhaps into our DNA. We like that too.

We like the guilty pleasures as well, for sure. Expensive dinners in expensive restaurants, fantastic cars, young mistresses, vacations, outings to the race track, and the whole works. Good life.

Last and certainly not the least – we even like the violence, don't we?

We have to admit it. We watch it for the same reason we watch a bloody boxing match or an even bloodier free-fighting competition. Or, watch the car and train wreck and cop chase videos…

There is always something fascinating about the mystery of death and violence that we try to decipher by vicariously going through the experience, through the agency of others like actors, writers, and directors. The Sopranos provides us with that kind of roller-coaster scream of an hormonal experience as well. (Where else are you going to see a guy stuff the severed head of one of his closest friends into a bowling ball bag?)

When The Sopranos is off the air this summer, we'll spend at least a few more years watching its past episodes on DVDs and wondering what happened to Tony, Carmela, or the others who brought us such forbidden and truly sinful pleasures for the last six years. They'll be missed.

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