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I must confess a temptation to complacent
laughter at the frustration of all ''The Sopranos'' fans at the conclusion
of the series. It was the most important television project ever, comparable
to Don Quixote, Shakespeare, maybe even St. John's Gospel.
Why did it end not with a bang but a whimper? It was also a powerful critique of corrupt capitalist American culture. Academics and intellectuals -- and pseudo-academics and intellectuals -- had searched the weekly bloodshed and vulgarity for wisdom hidden from the ages. How could the series stop without ending? Ordinary viewers, satisfied with the violent whacking of "Uncle Phil" Leotardo, were disappointed by the conclusion, which was a stop and not an ending. The intellectuals should have been ready for David Chase's "post-modern" joke. What did the series mean? It meant that there was no meaning at all. Like all stories, ''The Sopranos'' series had no meaning because life has no meaning. |
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"Post-modern"
literary theory holds that an ending to a story is a "fallacy." An ending
tries to impose a meaning on a story, either an optimistic ending that says
there was a purpose in all these pains and sufferings or a tragic ending
which provides a "catharsis." Post-modernism (which can mean everything and
nothing) insists that life is neither comedy nor tragedy but a meaningless
series of events that stops eventually for everyone in the story when they
die.
Eventually Tony will die, so will Carmella, so will Meadow, so will A.J. Maybe the thugs in the men's room will come out and kill them. More likely Tony will eventually be whacked by those who want to take over his turf or in a prison stabbing. Life is absurd. The attempts of a story to fight back absurdity by creating meaning is fallacious. The stories told through the ages are merely attempts to escape from absurdity. We foolish, self-deceptive humans are wasting our time looking for meaning. |
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.The
Soprano family, around the dinner table, know nothing and have learned
nothing. Vanity of vanities, as the biblical book Qoheleth says, and all is
vanity. Neither, Chase tells us, have we learned anything. He mocks our
demands for an ending, for meaning, for purpose and laughs at his great
joke. All that remains is more sex, violence and absurdity.
And cruel stereotyping of Italian Americans. He has tricked us. He lured (some of) us into addiction to the series by the sex and the killing and the Italian stereotypes (and the vulgarity) to close the trap of absurdity on us. Yet he has also asked us to identify with the absurd life of the Sopranos and to re-examine our own stories. The background song tells us "Don't stop believing." But there is nothing in ''The Sopranos'' series that gives us any reason to believe. If we gotta believe, we must blindly leap into the darkness with which the final episode ends. Chase will give us not the slightest hint of why we should jump. I'm not a post-modernist, not even, truth be told, a modernist. If anything I am, like many of my own background, a pre-modernist. Regardless of the absurdity of life (which we of all people do not deny) we will not give up our stories, we will not yield our hope. Indeed it would appear now that evolutionary biologists are saying that humans are genetically programmed to hope. Maybe Paulie Walnut's vision of the Mother of Jesus is a hint to be taken seriously. As is A.J.'s assertion that we gotta remember the good times. Another book in the Bible says love is as strong as death. .
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