A Sitdown with the Sopranos: watching Italian American culture on TV's most talked-about series

2003 ◽  
Vol 40 (08) ◽  
pp. 40-4438-40-4438
Keyword(s):  
American Culture ◽  
Italian American ◽  
The Sopranos

A Sitdown with the Sopranos: Watching Italian American Culture on T.V.'s Most Talked-about Series

MELUS ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 226
Author(s):  
Ben Lawton ◽  
Regina Barreca
Keyword(s):  
American Culture ◽  
Italian American ◽  
The Sopranos

scholarly journals Failed Family Sagas

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-54
Author(s):  
Eva Pelayo-Sañudo
Keyword(s):  
Gender Difference ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Italian American ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Male Lineage

The aim of this article is to examine how failed family sagas have defined early Italian/American culture and female literary tradition through Julia Savarese’s The Weak and the Strong (1952) and Marion Benasutti’s No Steady Job for Papa (1966). The idea of failed (female) lineages is articulated in a thematic sense that is overtly expressed in the depiction of both families in the texts. These convey a doomed plot which matches the coarse realities of immigration and the depression, as well as reflects the boundaries represented by the intersecting limitations of embodying racial and gender difference. Particularly, the article focuses on how male lineage is paramount in the novels and define Italian/American culture. In this sense, the analysis also contends that, as the authors themselves also encountered similar limitations, the lost genealogy of these early precursors has equally endangered the Italian/American female literary tradition.

The Italian American Culture of Scenes

2021 ◽  
pp. 553-562
Author(s):  
Pellegrino D’Acierno
Keyword(s):  
American Culture ◽  
Italian American

Counselling the Mafia: The Sopranos Regina Barreca, ed., A Sitdown with the Sopranos: Watching Italian American Culture on TV's Most Talked-About Series (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002). 0 312 29528 6 David Bishop, Bright Lights, Baked Ziti: The Unofficial, Unauthorised Guide to The Sopranos (London: Virgin Books, 2001). 0 7535 0584 3 David Chase, The Sopranos Scriptbook (London: Channel 4 Books, 2001). 0 7522 6157 6 Glen O. Gabbard, The Psychology of the Sopranos: Love, Death, and Betrayal in America's Favorite Gangster Family (New York: Basic Books, 2002). 0 465 02735 0 The New York Times, The New York Times on the Sopranos, introduction by Stephen Holden (New York: ibooks, 2000). 0 7434 4467 1 Allen Rucker, The Sopranos: A Family History (London: Channel 4 Books, 2000). 0 752 26177 0 Allen Rucker (Recipes by Michele Scicolone), The Sopranos Family Cook Book As Compiled by Artie Bucco (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2002). 0 340 82724 6 David R. Simon, Tony Soprano's America: The Criminal Side of the American Dream (Boulder, CO, and Oxford: Westview, 2002). 0 8133 4036 5 David Lavery, ed., This Thing of Ours: Investigating the Sopranos (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002). 0 231 12781 2

2004 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-132
Author(s):  
NEIL A. WYNN
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Web Sites ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
Television Series ◽  
The New York Times ◽  
Family Head ◽  
Italian American ◽  
The Sopranos ◽  
The Uk

The HBO television series The Sopranos, produced by David Chase, achieved unprecedented critical acclaim and quickly established itself on both sides of the Atlantic as cult viewing. The fourth series, shown in the UK on Channel 4 in spring 2003, had already attracted record audiences in America and received 13 Emmy Award nominations. Not surprisingly, The Sopranos has generated several web sites and a considerable amount of literature, ranging from the usual spin-offs of television series, cds, scripts, collected reviews, and a number of more academic studies ranging from cultural studies through to explorations of the psychological aspects of the programme. At least one MA has been written dealing with the portrayal of psychotherapy in this series and in films. This is not as remarkable as it might seem given that therapy is central to the whole story. The main character, Tony Soprano (played by James Gandolfini), is the head of an Italian–American family living in New Jersey. However, like his name itself, “family” has a double meaning. Tony is also the head of a Mafia-style gang of mobsters, operating a “waste management company” and night club (The Bada Bing!). The two roles of family head are explored when Tony talks (or “sings”) to a psychiatrist (in addition to his gang-land counsellors) as a result of his anxiety attacks and depression. Thus, Tony Soprano, mobster, is presented as a troubled family man – troubled by his relationships with his wife, daughter, and son, and their futures, but also troubled by business rivalries and problems that arise from the nature of his “work” and colleagues. As one commentator writes, Tony is the subject of “profound moral ambiguity” and it is his struggle to come to terms with this that makes it possible for viewers to identify with him. It is also the focus of his sessions with the therapist, Dr Melfi (played by Lorraine Bracco).

scholarly journals The Immigrant's Journey: Race and Trauma in The Sopranos

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pouyan Tabasinejad
Keyword(s):  
Intergenerational Trauma ◽  
Italian Americans ◽  
Italian American ◽  
The Sopranos ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Developments

David Chase’s series The Sopranos (1999-2007) was a wildly successful and popular show which has attracted rich analysis from both critics and academics. However, what has not been adequately analyzed by scholars is the central role that race (specifically Whiteness and Whitening) plays within the series. By using theories of Whiteness (especially Sheshadri-Crooks’s idea of Whiteness as master signifier), Whitening, and racialization, this paper shows how Italian- Americans’ history of racialization, oppression, and eventual Whitening and deracialization expresses itself in complex ways within the series. Specifically, this paper focuses on how the trauma of historical Italian-American oppression and racialization are a constant theme within the seemingly Whitened Italian- American communities and relations portrayed in the series. This intergenerational trauma is considered in the context of historical developments in the Italian-American community and dialogue and plot developments within the series.

scholarly journals Elegies and Genealogies of Place: Spatial Belonging in the Italian/American Culture and Literature

2021 ◽  
Vol 62 ◽  
pp. 125-146
Author(s):  
Eva Pelayo Sañudo
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Urban Renewal ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Imagined Communities ◽  
Place Making ◽  
Politics Of Place ◽  
Italian American ◽  
Key Events ◽  
Little Italy

This article examines the poetics and politics of place in Italian/American culture and in Tina De Rosa’s novel Paper Fish (1980), particularly its portrayal of ‘elegies and genealogies of place’, an appropriate framework through which to read the importance of spatial belonging. It investigates the way in which cultural identity is mostly built on both imagined communities and imagined places, as is common in migrant and diasporic cultures, through the evocation or creation of ancestors and the homeland. In addition, the Italian/American community leaves the characteristic Little Italy enclaves or undergoes displacement due to urban renewal projects and the move to the suburbs in the mid-twentieth century, which is sometimes compared to a second migration or diaspora. As a consequence, former urban enclaves come to assume a centrality as lostsanctuaries, which is captured in the trope of the Old Neighbourhood. The article contributes to existing contemporary research on the binomial placeidentity by tracing how key events of US urban history impacted on Italian/American culture. Furthermore, the goal is to offer new critical readings of Paper Fish through the focus on place-making.

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