>>Which is why Tony Soprano is the hero of our time.
>>
>>Joanna
>
>
>I don't think it's the way Tony makes a living that enthralls people.
>That's been done a million times. I think it's the way he makes a living
>combined with his seeing a psychiatrist. Now he's even recommending his
>doctor to a friend. Like Tony told Carmela "cunnilingus and psychiatry
>have brought us to this."
To most USers, I doubt they even understand how Tony makes money anyway. It's rarely touched on in the show and you have to know something about the Mafia and how it makes money to get it. And, even so, the focus isn't on the details of whatever scam they setting up, but on the characters and their interactions. As Doug's always said, the show's popular b/c it doesn't present people as uni-dimensional characters. The kids were real brats, spoiled snots, but then you couldn't help but like them and sometimes you felt Tony and Carmella were too hard on them.
Or the episode when Tony gets pulled over for speeding, the black cop doesn't kiss his ass, and Tony retaliates by getting the guy canned. Then he has to face what he did when he finds the guy making a buck at the local big box hardware store, wearing an orange apron.
it's like this show that forces you to see your own fantasy life played out on the screen. What I mean by that is my reference to arguments that the reason why kids find fairy tales appealing is that it allows people to project onto something outside them -- in this case a fantasy story of fantastic witches, castles, princesses, and dragons -- their own psychic inner life.
We have the same thoughts Tony does. we'd like to get some snot at the fast food joint fired. And then we realize -- if we're typical -- that it was a crappy thought and move on, forgiving ourselves for being small.
Or we should. the Sopranos puts that all on the television screen, allowing s to see our inner psychic dramas projected onto something outside us.
So, Tony's the one who gets to act enact it all: he doesn't just have the fantasy, he does it, and he feels like a shit for it later, too.
Or sometimes he doesn't feel like a shit as consciously as he did in the episode described above.
Bitch | Lab http://blog.pulpculture.org