Roll Over Adorno: Critical Theory, Popular Culture, Audiovisual Media

6. Shot/Countershot: Sexuality, Psychoanalysis, and Postmodern Style in The Sopranos

153 6 Shot/Countershot Sexuality, Psychoanalysis, and Postmodern Style in The Sopranos A lthough there would appear to be little similarity between Melrose Place and The Sopranos, each program has helped to establish its respective brand and network: Melrose Place was one of the first programs, together with The Simpsons (1989–present) and Beverly Hills 90201, to put Fox on the map as the “fourth” network, while The Sopranos (which Fox famously turned down) has now made HBO a viable, even mandatory, alternative to both mainstream cable and broadcast television. In addition, the episodic seriality and strong female characters of The Sopranos not only locates it, like Melrose Place, in the “tradition of prime-time soaps,”1 its pronounced deployment of self-reflexive and citational devices produces a characteristically postmodern tonality. The latter pastiche effect, which is a hallmark of soaps from Dallas to Dawson’s Creek (WB, 1998–2003), ranges from oblique critiques of Fox’s Cops (Christopher Moltisanti [Michael Imperioli]: “Like the cop would be calling this asshole ‘sir’ if the fucking camera weren’t around”) to elaborately-staged metatextual gags. So, in one of the very first episodes of the series, Tony Soprano and his wife Carmela (Edie Falco) can be seen watching a TV show where a Mafia pundit, Jeffrey Wernick (Timothy Nolen), talks about his new book, Mafia: America’s Longest Running Soap Opera.2 In short, if The Sopranos can be said to constitute an evolutionary leap in the logic of televisuality (where this logic is predicated on TV’s appropriation and displacement of cinema’s aura), its extraordinary popularity is also the result of a rare telephilic synthesis of the epic and the domestic, of intimate melodrama and grand, Godfather-style family drama. Shot: The Godfather [T]he relationship between the conventions which go to make up [the gangster] type and . . . the real facts of whatever situation it pretends to describe is only of secondary importance and does not determine its aesthetic force. It is only in an ultimate sense that the type appeals to its audience’s sense of reality; much more immediately, it appeals to a previous experience of the type itself: it creates its own field of reference. —Robert Warshow, “The Gangster as Tragic Hero” Let me set the scene: Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) has been gunned down outside a fruit stand by “The Turk” Sollozzo’s men, oranges rolling in the street like so many little heads, and Michael (Al Pacino), steadfastly standing guard over his father at the hospital with Nazorine the baker (Vito Scotti), has had his jaw broken by one Captain McCluskey (Sterling Hayden). Cut to the Don’s office, interior, day. As the camera pulls in, Michael, face puffed out, seated in a chair like the Don, announces with a slight lisp to the assembled members of the Corleone Family—Sonny (James Caan), Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall), Tessio (Abe Vigoda), Clemenza (Richard L. Castellano): “[Sollozzo and McCluskey] want to have a meeting with me, right? . . . Let’s set the meeting. . . . if Clemenza can figure a way to have a weapon planted [in the restroom] for me then I’ll kill ’em both.” Sonny, standing, the Don’s walking cane in one hand, laughs, can’t believe what he’s hearing: “Didn’t want to get mixed up in the Family business, huh? Now you want to gun down a police captain . . . because he slapped you in the face a little bit? . . . What do you think this is, the army, when you shoot them a mile away? Ya gotta get up close, like this [pointing an index finger at the left side of Michael’s head]—bada bing!” Citationality: The Gangster as Serio-Comic Hero It will come as no surprise to anyone who has watched even one episode of The Sopranos, Home Box Office’s acclaimed series that premiered in January 1999, that Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather films (1972, 1974, 1990) remain the cinematic locus classicus for its own distinctive—in this case, televisual—take on the gangster genre.3 Tony himself, played to pitch-perfect warts-and-all perfection by James Gandolfini, is no Vito, let 154 PART 3: TV Fig. 12. Nuclear Gangster Family: Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini), Meadow (Jamie-Lynn Sigler), Anthony, Jr. (Robert Iler), and Carmela (Edie Falco). alone Michael Corleone, while Carmela (the extraordinary Falco) bears little resemblance to either Mama Corleone (Morgana King) or Kay Adams...