Certainly the analogy and interaction of gangsters and 'straight' businessmen implies a critique, but the more subtle critique I would say is that implied by the crooked path chosen by those who would otherwise classify themselves as losers or suckers. In other words, it's a critique of the latter's self-conception, which you could say is capitalism's conception of the worker.
Many stories concern the problem of trying to maintain a normal or respectable family life while leading a life of crime. Failure to do so generates farce and melancholy in the Soprano characters. You call this public and private but often both aspects are public.
There is a moral voice in the Soprano's that chimes in. Besides the psychiatrist, there was Carmela's jewish shrink -- one of the funnier vignettes in the series, IMO -- and the contractor guy Carm almost had an affair with. And of course, Carm's own fits and starts of conscience.
More than anything else, however, I would say this series is a male fantasy. A man beset with pedestrian, bourgeois problems is able to bull his way through them by breaking rules and heads, and have fun besides.
We haven't mentioned one of the major features of the show for the first three seasons -- Tony's mother. She doesn't seem to fit easily into any systematic explanation of the story. She's just a volcano. The scenes between her and Tony's equally conniving sister are some of the best in the series too. Maybe these women are the dark side of Tony's drive for male assertiveness. He's got a lot to cope with. When you think of it, there have not been many shows like this with four powerful female figures. His daughter's no wimp either.
mbs
> It seems to me this show is at the confluence of two gangster trends: the
> first, is illustrated by the thirties gangster movies which were
> nominally
> about gangsters but really about their (implied) capitalist counterparts,
> whose greed/business-as-usual had led to social disaster. (That
> is, it was
> OK to make movies showing the gangsters as thugs, whereas it was
> not OK to
> make movies showing the businessmen as thugs....so they made movies about
> gangsters.) The second trend started in the 70s with the
> Godfather movies,
> which, if you watch again should really impress you for their
> nostalgic/elegaic mood. "Godfather" is about a time when men were men,
> women raised families and were protected, and loyalty to family was more
> important then individualistic self interest. The "Godfather" films
> functioned as a critique of capitalism, revealing that it is NOT possible
> to separate the public from the private. That those actions men undertook
> to "protect" their families....would, in the end, destroy those very
> families. The "Godfather" exposed the illusion of the "protected"
> bourgeois
> family if you will. It is no accident that Godfather became the huge
> popular hit it was in the seventies, when women had to go out and work to
> enable their families to get by.
>
> Every show of The Sopranos opens with the credits sequence, during which
> Tony (the mafia boss) drives his SUV from the murkiest bowels of the New
> Jersey industrialized zone, through the white trash
> neighborhoods, through
> the middle-class neighborhoods, and winds up, pulling into his
> driveway in
> an upper class neighborhood. A newly minted very nouveaux riche house
> awaits him. During his upwardly mobile trekk (??), a fairly haunting Bob
> Springstee kind of song, murmurs behind him "got up this morning....got
> myself a gun." Tony's ride home is the American dream
> personified, and the
> question this show asks is this: is it possible to accomplish this dream
> without a gun? And the answer is No.
>
> Tony Soprano is a "good family man" and a "good catholic." All the
> neighbors and all the straight professionals he and his family deal with
> are perfectly aware of who he is and what he does. My absolute favorite
> part of the show is when some trouble arises...some crisis of
> conscience...Mrs Soprano going to confession...and these stalwart
> representatives of respectablity bend over backwards to reassure the
> Sopranos that there's nothing really wrong with what they're
> doing....provided they give that donation to Columbia University,
> contribute to the church, become more sensitive, etc.
>
> I don't want to go on and on. Those of you who have seen the show don't
> need any preaching. Those who haven't...the first, second, and third (?)
> season are on video at your video store. Check out a couple and have a
> look-see. You can't beat the acting, the dialog, the humor, and the
> critique. Fourth season starts in September; make friends with
> someone who
> subscribes to HBO!
>
> (P.S. to anticipate the "what you're a feminist and you bewail women
> working" comment. I don't believe that women were "liberated' into shit
> jobs in the seventies; I think they were forced into them by economic
> necessity. Some small percentage of women (like myself) were able to get
> jobs that paid well, but that was the exception, not the rule. Suffice it
> to say that when I had to leave my three-month old son and go
> back to work,
> it felt like I was cutting my arm off. I eagerly await the time when the
> work of "reproduction" is seen on an equal level with the work of
> "production" -- until then, it is all shite.)
>
> Joanna
>
>