A Sitdown With the Sopranos: Watching Italian American Culture on TV's Most Talked-About Series

Rating:
Summary: A Sitdown with the Sopranos
Review: Editor and author Regina Barreca's newest collection of essays examines the sweetness and controversy of both revenge and cannoli in HBO's The Sopranos with an authority, authenticity and insight that only a group of fellow Italian Americans writers could provide. Taking the television series as a jumping off point to examine Italian American cultural and identity questions, the essays reflect an attraction and repulsion with the misconceptions and realities of stereotypes about Italian Americans. There are no easy answers to any of these issues, but "A Sitdown with the Sopranos," with its own remarkable cast and writers does an exceptional job of addressing them.

Rating:
Summary: A Sitdown with the Sopranos
Review: Let's face it---there is something intriguing about the gangster character. Perhaps his rebel status--living on the edge of society, not following the usual conformist formula to gain success titilliates the majority of us who have gone the regular route. As I am an Italian American, America's fascination with the gangster and his sense of family and his affiliations with the culture and traditions of my own ethnicity strikes me as utterly amusing and ironic. It seems to contradict what Americans have always held sacred: the values of self-reliance and individualism so masterfully illustrated in the essays of Emerson and Thoureau --- values that define the American spirit. So why the Hollywood double, no, the nth-degree take on the Mafia, a body of nonconformists who adhere to their own code of honor in order to skip the assimilation process that all immigrants must undergo to enter into the mainstream American system?

Should Italian Americans be annoyed with 'Sopranos' creator, David Chase (an Italian American himself), for yet again portraying the third generational Italian American as the mobster rather than the honest businessman/doctor/lawyer who through higher education and hard work finds himself a rung on the ladder of the American Dream?

These are the types questions discussed in "A Sitdown With the Sopranos". This extremely serious book contains eight essays, all written by Italian-Americans who have assimilated into the system and are not in the least bit negatively piqued as are the Italian American anti-defammation groups who label the hit HBO television series a 'thumbs down' in almost every conceivable category. Under the guise of studying the Sopranos, these essays encompass a socialogical spectrum of all things Italian American: religion, the family, the mother/son relationship, culture, father/son relationships, manhood, even a look at how family-centric Italian Americans view such a breach of 'omerta' by participating in such a heinously un-Italian-American act of speaking to the outsider or psychoanalyst rather than a family member or a priest.

If you are Italian American, you will get the great satisfaction of knowing that America is enraptured by the Italian American family structure and intrigued by the seemingly exotic religious traditions brought to America by those true purveyors of the American Dream-- your grandparents. The analysis provided in the essays will vocalize some of the issues over which you, as an Italian American, have pondered. You will smile as you realize that your ethnic lifeblood (for surely even with the mob theme running through the Sopranos, you recognize and nod over many of the secret handshakes of Italian American life that before which have never been depicted quite so wonderfully)is suddenly very much in vogue and that your ancestors accomplished their mission. If your're not Italian American, you will recognize that even if Tony Soprano did not go through the usual route of assimilating into the American mainstream, he nevertheless must bow his head (perhaps in the form of his panic attacks) to the change of time and society. Tony's confronts the same issues that we all confront; he wants his children educated in the best schools, covets the best that life has to offer and yet feels the same spiritual void that many of us do. Highly recommended!

Rating:
Summary: A Exploration of the American "Family"
Review: Let's face it---there is something intriguing about the gangster character. Perhaps his rebel status--living on the edge of society, not following the usual conformist formula to gain success titilliates the majority of us who have gone the regular route. As I am an Italian American, America's fascination with the gangster and his sense of family and his affiliations with the culture and traditions of my own ethnicity strikes me as utterly amusing and ironic. It seems to contradict what Americans have always held sacred: the values of self-reliance and individualism so masterfully illustrated in the essays of Emerson and Thoureau --- values that define the American spirit. So why the Hollywood double, no, the nth-degree take on the Mafia, a body of nonconformists who adhere to their own code of honor in order to skip the assimilation process that all immigrants must undergo to enter into the mainstream American system?

Should Italian Americans be annoyed with 'Sopranos' creator, David Chase (an Italian American himself), for yet again portraying the third generational Italian American as the mobster rather than the honest businessman/doctor/lawyer who through higher education and hard work finds himself a rung on the ladder of the American Dream?

These are the types questions discussed in "A Sitdown With the Sopranos". This extremely serious book contains eight essays, all written by Italian-Americans who have assimilated into the system and are not in the least bit negatively piqued as are the Italian American anti-defammation groups who label the hit HBO television series a 'thumbs down' in almost every conceivable category. Under the guise of studying the Sopranos, these essays encompass a socialogical spectrum of all things Italian American: religion, the family, the mother/son relationship, culture, father/son relationships, manhood, even a look at how family-centric Italian Americans view such a breach of 'omerta' by participating in such a heinously un-Italian-American act of speaking to the outsider or psychoanalyst rather than a family member or a priest.

If you are Italian American, you will get the great satisfaction of knowing that America is enraptured by the Italian American family structure and intrigued by the seemingly exotic religious traditions brought to America by those true purveyors of the American Dream-- your grandparents. The analysis provided in the essays will vocalize some of the issues over which you, as an Italian American, have pondered. You will smile as you realize that your ethnic lifeblood (for surely even with the mob theme running through the Sopranos, you recognize and nod over many of the secret handshakes of Italian American life that before which have never been depicted quite so wonderfully)is suddenly very much in vogue and that your ancestors accomplished their mission. If your're not Italian American, you will recognize that even if Tony Soprano did not go through the usual route of assimilating into the American mainstream, he nevertheless must bow his head (perhaps in the form of his panic attacks) to the change of time and society. Tony's confronts the same issues that we all confront; he wants his children educated in the best schools, covets the best that life has to offer and yet feels the same spiritual void that many of us do. Highly recommended!