as seen represented in the characters of Anthony Soprano and Anthony âA.J. ... Tony Soprano, husband and father, as well as the boss of the New Jersey DiMeo.
1 Made Men and Constructed Masculinities: Viewing the FatherSon Relationship in The Sopranos Katarina Gregersdotter and Nicklas Hållén
Abstract In this paper we aim to discuss the father-son relationship in the TV-series Sopranos, from a gender -and class perspective. Aspects of masculinity and class as seen represented in the characters of Anthony Soprano and Anthony ”A.J.” Soprano will be discussed. The father – Anthony/Tony – and his son A.J. – can be seen as critical investigations of the emotional and often violent limitations of two separate masculinities. The father, born into the Italian-American working class, grows up to become a made man (a Mafioso) like his own father. His money makes his own family settle in the upper middle class. His own son thus grows up in a different class – with different views on and ideas about what a man should be. The show depicts constant clashes and negotiations between the two men in their mutual efforts to understand and get closer to the other. The negotiations involve what Sara Ahmed would call a push and pull relationship: they push against each other and pull away for various, contradictory reasons that involve for example, issues that involve the concept of masculinity and various forms of capital. This paper looks closer at some of the instances where the series depicts contemporary masculine ideals that simply are not working out. We argue that the series show the difficulties with adapting to a strict gender regime and that it will lead to depression, violence, self-loathing, and anxiety. Key Words: The Sopranos, masculinity, cultural capital, social capital, economic capital, violence, social mobility, TV ***** 1. Introduction
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In this paper we will discuss the father-son relationship in the TV-series The Sopranos, from a gender -and class perspective. Aspects of masculinity and class as seen represented in the characters of Anthony “Tony” Soprano and his son Anthony “A.J.” Soprano will be discussed. The relationship between father and son is riddled with periods of confrontations and antagonism throughout the series, and already in the first episode of the first season, when the father starts therapy, Tony has his first panic attack on his son’s thirteenth birthday. We argue that the series show the difficulties with adapting to a strict gender regime and that, in the case of Tony and Anthony Junior, leads to depression, anxiety, excessive aggression, and self-loathing. The two characters, because of this, are portrayed as being situated in a dialectic opposition where the son, Anthony Jr., AJ, can be seen as a means for the father to define his own masculinity. Tony and his son Anthony embody masculinities that are different in aspects that partly derive from different class identities, as these masculinities entail different emotional registers. The series revolve around and has its major focus on Tony Soprano, husband and father, as well as the boss of the New Jersey DiMeo mafia family. Born into the Italian-American working class, Tony grows up to become a “made man” like his father. Developments 0within the economy at large, as well as in organized crime, make him more economically successful than his father. His children therefore grow up in a different social-economic environment and a more prosperous economic situation than he did himself. Tony Soprano receives psychological counselling for his recurring panic attacks. During the progression of the series, the viewer learns about the reasons for these panic attacks but is not presented with one definite answer. One of the sources of distress is, however, Soprano’s inability to combine his two different patriarchal roles. During the first seasons of the series, Tony rises from the position of capo to the de facto head of the organization after the death of the previous boss Jackie Aprile, Sr. He becomes the symbolic father figure of a hierarchical organization in which traditional values are cherished, where violence is a means for subsistence and where social status has to be continually asserted and defended. However, Tony is also the patriarch of the Soprano family. He lives together with his wife Carmella and his two children – Meadow and Anthony Jr. In the Soprano household, Catholic family values are negotiated against a postmodern, middle class outlook, which is often represented by his children. As an example, Tony once says to his children: “Out there it's the 1990s, but in here it's 1954!”.1 His struggle to combine his livelihood and the culture that it entails with his family life is one of the causes of the psychological distress that he seeks professional counselling for. Because, despite his dual paternal power positions, Tony Soprano is depicted as a conflicted man whose masculinity is instable and constantly negotiated.2
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Tony Soprano idealises the kind of masculinity epitomized by actors such as Gary Cooper, who he refers to as “the strong silent type” and who he believes “wasn’t in touch with his feelings,” but “just did what he had to do” (“Pilot”). His memories of his own father are, at least in the beginning of the series, romanticised. He says that his father “had his people, their standards, and their pride” (“Pilot”). When he idealises his father, who like himself was the head of a mafia crew, he endorses the kind of hegemonic masculinity that Michael Kimmel describes in “Masculinity as Homophobia.” Kimmel writes that “the hegemonic definition of manhood is a man in power, a man with power, and a man of power.”3 On the surface, Tony Soprano too seems to embody this type of man. A further sign of Tony Soprano’s traditional ideals is that he frequently is shown watching The History Channel, and programs about military commanders, longing back to a past he has no first-hand experience of. 2. Social mobility and different forms of capital In the beginning of each episode, the viewer is reminded of the double patriarchal roles of the protagonist. The intro shows Tony Soprano driving down the New Jersey Turnpike, through an industrial landscape, past Satriale’s Pork Shop and along streets that eventually take him to the family house.4 This sequence may be interpreted as representing his oscillation between his two patriarchal roles.5 The drive takes him from an environment most readily associated with his role as mobster boss to one in which he plays the role of family father.6 The intro also reminds the viewer of Tony Soprano’s move up the social and economic ladder, or a version of The American Dream, as one critic asserts.7 The New Jersey backstreets that are shown in the intro may be seen as representing the working class environment that Tony Soprano hails from, as the reader learns from scenes in which Tony describes different episodes from his childhood to his psychiatrist, Dr. Melfi. These Italian-American working class neighbourhoods contrast to the wealthy neighbourhood to which his career in the mafia takes him and to which he is headed in his car in the intro sequence. The family is well-to-do and resides in a spacious house in an uppermiddleclass area of New Jersey. The real location of the house used as the Soprano house in the series, as well as the location of A.J’s school, is in the borough of North Cadwell which is one of the wealthiest areas in the state. 8 Their place of residence may be seen as a metonymical symbol for the Soprano family’s economic status. It may also be seen as a symbol for one of the two patriarchal roles that Tony plays. Here, he is the head off his family, just like he is the head of the mafia family when at the Bada Bing! strip club and the Satriale’s Pork Store located in considerably less prosperous parts of the city.
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This social mobility may be described in terms of Bourdieu’s differentiation of different kinds of capital. Here, we have used movement in space, from one neighborhood to another, as a symbol for a movement from one class to another. This movement, then, is made possible by the joint effects of Tony’s rise in rank within the crime syndicate and the economic benefits entail. His acquisition of economic capital does, however, not mean that he automatically acquires what Bourdieu refers to as cultural capital. Bourdieu writes about that cultural capital takes three different forms.9 One is the embodied state, in which cultural capital takes the form of cultivation or Bildung, which Tony essentially lacks.10 One is the objectified form of cultural capital – paintings, books and other cultural artifacts 11 which Tony to some extent does not lack as he has a beautiful house, which his wife Carmella decorates with Lladró figurines (“Everybody Hurts”).12 However, Bourdieu points out that while this kind of capital can easily be transmitted, say through inheritance, what is transmitted is the ownership of the artifacts and not the means to consume them, which can only be procured by acquiring cultural capital in its embodied state.13 The third and last kind is cultural capital in its institutionalised state. This kind of capital takes the form of educational qualifications and academic merits,14 which Tony, as he tells his daughter Meadow (“College”), all but lacks completely. Tony Soprano shares this situation with his son Anthony, Jr. Anthony is like his father a mediocre student. Throughout the first seasons of the series, as Anthony grows up, he displays an increasing inability to conform to school regulations. This behavior is partly portrayed as immature disobedience and partly as a reaction to becoming increasingly aware that all is not well in the family and that his is different from his friends’ families. The behavior is furthermore also a sign of some of the personality traits he in fact shares with his father. One of Anthony Junior’s teachers says in a meeting with Carmela and Tony that Anthony occasionally have problems following the rules, weighing consequences, and that he sometimes does not think before he acts (“Down Neck”) and this is simultaneously an accurate description of Tony, who works outside the boundaries of the law, and habitually and instinctively uses violence and/or a violent language before considering the options.15 While low on cultural capital, as the de facto boss of the mafia family Tony Soprano has considerable amounts of what Bourdieu calls social capital. Bourdieu writes that: social capital is the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutional relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition – or in other words, of membership in a group – which provides each of
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its members with the backing of collectively-owned capital, a 'credential' that entitles him [sic] to credit...16 This description of the “durable network,” which according to Bourdieu is the basis for social capital, has an almost uncanny comparability to the crime syndicate that Tony Soprano heads.17 He draws considerable power from this homosocial hierarchical structure and exerts his power within it. As the head of the family, Tony Soprano enjoys the group’s collected social capital, but also acts as what Bourdieu calls the “pater familias,” who “is recognized as the only member entitled to speak for the whole family group” and who is tacitly called upon to “defend the collective honor when the honor of the weakest members is threatened” .18 Moreover, because of the fact that he holds social capital within this specific network, it affects the potential social capital outside it. In his attempts to also be a better family father and husband he looks for a type of normalcy which would be accepted outside the crime syndicate. Yet, because he holds considerable social capital within this particular network he will not gain any outside it. In a scene which takes place on a golf course (“A Hit Is a Hit”) His efforts to have a dialogue with the male neighbors come to a halt when it turns out they are only interested in his role as a macho mobster. Tony returns to his “durable network,” his crew, after this to never attempt to socialize with his wealthy neighbors again. The upper middle class of his surroundings will never accept him. This is so both due to the fact that he holds social capital within his specific network and because he lacks the kind of cultural capital valued by people outside of the mafia family. A further example of Tony Soprano’s considerable social capital within his limited social sphere is an episode in which he realises the true mechanisms behind his popularity among his subordinates. In the episode “All happy families,” Tony’s wife Carmella tells him that the members of his crew give him insincere compliments. She says: “You are the boss. They are scared of you. They have to kiss your ass and laugh at your stupid jokes.” Later in the same episode, Tony visits the executive card game – a high stakes poker game run by Feech, an old member of the family who has recently been released from prison. Throughout the episode Feech’s tendency to deliver anecdotes and lengthy jokes has been getting on Tony’s nerves and at the executive game, he interrupts Feech with a different joke. In a shot that pans in slow motion across the card table, the viewer is shown through Tony’s eyes how his crew members, who have been ignoring Feech, laugh exaggeratedly. This scene ties back to Carmella Soprano’s comment to Tony and affirms her claim that those who he believes are his friends flatter him because of the power he enjoys as the head of the family. At the same time, it is repeatedly shown how Tony relies on his subordinates and how they rely on him for their mutual economic prosperity, for favors and for the honor of the family.
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This downside to the possession of the head position in the groups can also be illustrated by a chain of events portrayed in the fifth season of the series, when it is revealed that mid-boss (capo) Vito Spatafore is living a covert gay lifestyle (“Unidentified Black Males”). This launches a series of events that continues throughout the greater part of the season. Spatafore goes out of town and into hiding, but eventually returns to New Jersey where he is symbolically raped and murdered by members of a different branch of the mafia (“Cold Stones”). During Spatafore’s absence, members of the Soprano family calls for Tony’s immediate action and demands that he has Spatafore killed. Tony is, however, indecisive as to what to do and hesitates to order Spatafore’s death, but cannot allow his organisation to be undermined by the reputation about Spatafore’s sexual orientation, which is interpreted by other mafia families as a sign of weakness in the Soprano crew. While Tony’s masculinity is based on what Michael Kimmel calls marketplace masculinity19, in other words, Tony’s accumulation of economic capital through his acquisition of social capital, Anthony Jr. lacks direct personal access to all forms of capital. While the reason for this is of course that Anthony is not an yet independent from his family, his inability to pursue social capital and to apply himself in academically, socially and economically is repeatedly interpreted by his father as a sign of weakness. References to how Anthony has been affected by having been brought up in a upper middle class environment are repeated throughout the series. Tony often makes comments on how he is too spoiled and ‘weak’. However, the view of his son is double-sided and often contradictory. At the same time as Tony wants him to “toughen up”, as for example by wanting to send him to military school (“Mr. Ruggerio’s Neighborhood”), he constantly ridicules and diminishes his son, as if to draw a clear line between himself and his son. When Anthony Junior says “When I get confirmed, I’m gonna be a man,” Tony reminds him of the fact that he used to wet his bed at summer camp (“Down Neck”). Masculinity is always a homosocial enactment20, as Kimmel maintains, and is seen here in the fact that despite the fact that he has considerable power and authority, in a situation such as this, Tony needs to affirm his masculinity. By trying to make his son loathe himself, Tony minimizes his own self-loathing. An essential scene that illustrates the father-son relationship, at least from Tony’s perspective, is when he walks by Anthony’s room and sees his son chatting on the computer. He stops for a moment and watches, disgusted, how his son laughs at something on the computer screen. Later in the same episode, he talks to his therapist Dr. Melfi about his emotional reaction upon watching his son. Towards the end of the session, Dr. Melfi asks Tony if there is something he wants to talk about, and Tony says “How about the fact that I hate my son?” He says that he wants to ”fucking smash his fucking face in” because Anthony Junior is wasting
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his time, sitting in his underwear and giggling like a school girl, thus clearly linking his emotions to a judgment. A.J.’s behaviour is ‘bad.’21 Tony also states that he is glad that his own father is dead so he cannot see what type of son Tony has produced. His solution to the problem is that if he could give his son a sound beating as his father did to him, Anthony would perhaps “grow some balls.” The problem, according to Tony, is based on the fact that Anthony does not conform to the idea of what a man should be like, according to his own, his fathers or anybody else’s norms (Cold Stones). What becomes highly ironic in this scene is that Tony fails to see the negative impact his father and his father’s life style has had on his own self and life, which Dr. Melfi also points out. This scene is included in an episode that also has a plot line that follows the already mentioned homosexual capo Vito Spatafore. The rumor of Sapatafore’s homosexuality launches a series of events that continues throughout the greater part of the season. Tony Soprano’s view of Vito’s sexuality is much less overtly condemning, and he does not approve of the murder. Yet, the murder of Spatafore becomes a symbol of the fact that homosexuality is not accepted in the extended mafia organization. Neither Vito nor Anthony Soprano conform to the idea of what a real man should be like, and this follows the reasoning of Michael Kimmel who asserts that masculinity is a constant repudiation of the feminine, or in the words of Tony: to grow some balls. However, it is not only Tony, in his role as the patriarch of the Soprano family, who can be condescending or show disgust. Anthony Junior displays these emotions as well. But their relationship is as mentioned complex and their mutual need and efforts to understand each other is obvious at times. These efforts are often interrupted by open hostility and disgust, as was mentioned earlier regarding the scene where Tony watches his son chatting on the computer. According to Sara Ahmed, disgust, as other emotions, should be seen as social and cultural practices, and not as psychological states.22 In other words, they are learnt behavior, and not automatic emotional responses to a situation or a person. They can also to a great extent be linked to power relations. By showing disgust, for example, a certain distribution of power is maintained.23 Anthony Junior achieves certain amounts of power when he rejects his father, for instance when Tony tries to joke with him and ends up kissing him. Anthony Junior stiffens, and eventually breaks loose from his arms. The moment is depicted as very awkward, and Tony momentarily loses his power position (“Whoever Did This”). 3. Concluding remarks Anthony Junior also tries to reach his father at times. One way for Anthony Junior to try to reach his father is shown in his attempts to become more violent. 24 These efforts do not work out, however, and in a scene where he could have used
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violence or threats, he chooses to instead give away his expensive bicycle in order to solve a problem. Like his father, he also starts having panic attacks, once attempts to take his own life, and ends up in therapy, where he desperately exclaims: “Why can’t we all just get along?” (“Kennedy and Heidi”). One reason for that Tony and Anthony Junior cannot get along, is, as we have tried to show, because they embody two different masculinities and they are often in conflict with each other due to this. There are several scenes that show their many attempts to get closer to each other, and here we have talked only about a few, but throughout the series most of them show that the gap between their different upbringings is too wide and their different social, cultural, and economic capitals differ too much. Thus, Anthony Junior’s question – why can’t everybody just get along? – can be answered at least partly.
Notes
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“Nobody Knows Anything.” References to the series will hereafter be given within parenthesis, using the name of the episode. Merri Lisa Johnson comments on Tony’s obsession with the 1950ies: “[…]Tony longs for a pastoral domestic space from a past that never existed. Indeed his own home in 1954 was far from peaceful, complete with a borderline personality mother threatening to stick a fork in his eye and a mobster father cutting off a man’s pinky finger in front of him, then spending the night with his mistress while his wife suffers a miscarriage.” “Gangster Feminism: The Feminist Cultural Work of HBO’s ‘The Sopranos,” ïn Feminist Studies 33, no 2 (Summer 2007). 272. 2 Other critics have also discussed masculinity in the series. Avi Santo, for example, discusses The Sopranos and masculinity with a focus on how the male body is depicted. He claims that that the fat body is a “critique of current definitions of manhood.” 72-73 in “’Fat Fuck! Why don’t you take a look in the mirror?’”: Weight, Body Image, and Masculinity in The Sopranos,” in David Lavery, This Thing of Ours (2002). 3 “Masculinity as Homophobia” 114, in Privilege: A Reader. 4 Martha P. Nochinson also points out that the intro might be symbolic of masculine power. She writes: […]Tony Soprano returning home to New Jersey from New York, a huge cigar in his mouth, driving through a maze of of evocations of masculine power in America—bridges, highways, electric wires, and industrial sites. The sequence is shot from the driver’s PO, further emphasizing Tony’s dominance as he negotiates the twists and turns” (8). 5 The two patriarchal roles is of course a theme that is not hard to detect in the series. The first episode of season five is even called “The Two Tonys.” 6 These two worlds, the violent criminal underworld of masculine rivalry and the domestic patriarchal domain, are as the intro also implies not distinctly separate in Tony’s life but are rather two points on a continuum. This fact is continuously demonstrated in the series, in scenes where the Soprano family house is bugged or stormed by the FBI, etc. 7 Neil A. Wynn, “Counselling the Mafia: “The Sopranos,” Journal of American Studies, vol 38, No. 1 (April 2004), 130. 8 See Bill Carter, ”The Last Aria of Tony Soprano.” The New York Times, February 26, 2006. www.nytimes.com 9 Pierre Bourdieu, ‘The Forms of Capital.’ In Handbook of the Theory of Research in the Sociology of Education. Ed. J. E. Richardson. Trans. Richard Nice. Greenwood Press, 1986. 47. 10 Ibid. 48. 11 Ibid. 50 12 In the episode ”Chasing it,” Carmella breaks a Lladró figurine by throwing it at Tony during a heated run-in between them. 13 Bourdieu, 50. 14 Ibid. 49 15 In one episode Tony destroys the telephone in his house in an outburst of rage. A.J. seems both scared and worried, and Tony fails to explain his behavior to him. (“Big Girls Don’t Cry”). Bourdieu even adds that these network may “be social constituted by the application of a common name.” (51) 16 Bourdieu 51. 17 Bourdieu even adds that these networks may “be social constituted by the application of a common name”(51). 18 Ibid. 53. 19 Kimmel writes: “Marketplace Masculinity describes the normative definition of American masculinity. It describes his characteristics—aggression, competition, anxiety—and the arena in which those characteristics are deployed—the public sphere, the marketplace. If the marketplace is the arena in which manhood is tested, it is a gendered arena, in which tensions between women and men and tensions between different groups of men are weighted with meaning. These tensions suggest that cultural definitions of gender are played out in a contested terrain and are themselves power relations.” 113 20 Ibid. 118 21 See Sara Ahmed’s discussion about emotions as judgments in The Cultural Politics of Emotions. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004. 22 Ibid, 9. 23 Ibid. 88. 24 He tries to avenge his father on a few occasions, for example: he brings weapons to try and kill Uncle Junor. Bibliography Ahmed, Sara. The Cultural Politics of Emotions. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004. Bordieu, Pierre. ‘The Forms of Capital.’ In Handbook of the Theory of Research in the Sociology of Education, edited by J. E. Richardson. Translated by Richard Nice. 241-258. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1986
Carter, Bill. ‘The Last Aria of Tony Soprano.’ The New York Times, February 26, 2006. Accessed February 1st, 2011. www.nytimes.com Johnson, Merri Lisa. ‘Gangster Feminism: The Feminist Cultural Work of HBO’s ‘The Sopranos.’’ In Feminist Studies 33, no 2 (Summer 2007). 269-296. “’Fat Fuck! Why don’t you take a look in the mirror?’”: Weight, Body Image, and Masculinity in The Sopranos,” in David Lavery, This Thing of Ours Investigating the Sopranos. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. Kimmel, Michael S. “Masculinity as Homophobia.” In Michael S. Kimmel and Abby L. Ferber, editors. Privilege: A Reader. Boulder: Colo: Westview Press, 2010. 107-131. —, and Abby L. Ferber, editors. Privilege: A Reader. Boulder, Colo: Westview Press, 2010. Lavery, David, editor. This Thing of Ours. Investigating the Sopranos. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. Nochinson, Martha P. ‘Waddays Lookin’ at? Re-Reading the Gangster Genre through ‘The Sopranos’. Film Quarterly, Vol 56, No 2 (Winter, 2002-2003) 2-13 Richardson, J.E, editor. Handbook of the Theory of Research in the Sociology of Education Translated by Richard Nice. 241-258. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1986 Santo, Avi. “’Fat Fuck! Why don’t you take a look in the mirror?’”: Weight, Body Image, and Masculinity in The Sopranos,” in David Lavery, This Thing of Ours This Thing of Ours Investigating the Sopranos. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. Wynn, Neil A. ‘Counselling the Mafia: “The Sopranos,”’ Journal of American Studies, vol 38, No. 1 (April 2004), 127132.
Katarina Gregersdotter is senior lecturer in English and is currently working on an anthology on rape in Scandinavian and Anglophone crime fiction. Nicklas Hållén is finishing his dissertation on the role of material objects in British colonial travel literature about Africa.
