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from: Judith Shulevitz

Roll Over, Diane Keaton

Posted Thursday, Jan. 13, 2000, at 4:40 PM ET

Dear Jeffrey:

What's misogynistic about saying, "I don't fall asleep when the Soprano women are on screen." You're onto something here. The women are another way The Sopranos breaks with the past. What was Diane Keaton doing in The Godfather? I always thought Michael married her because she was a Wasp--because she embodied his abandoned dream of assimilation, and also because she gave him cover. In other words, he married her because of what she represented, rather than who she was, and the story never freed her from that dehumanizing fact--never gave her any individuality, dignity, presence, which meant that we never felt compelled and maybe even didn't want to watch her. (Except in III, and Carmela Soprano and her loverboy-priest speak for all of us on that one: What the hell was that?)

Carmela's just the opposite. Or at least she used to be--they don't give her much to do in what we've seen so far. She's been supplanted by Tony's sister Pavarti, aka Janice, who, as you say, is an epic drag--a bullying, self-important, unsympathetic, bohemian drag. But back when the writers were interested in Carmela, which was the first half of last season, she had all the qualities that Diane Keaton lacked. She was a real counterweight to Tony and Silvio and Paulie Walnuts and Pussy and all the charm they hold for the likes of you, which in a mob context amounts to a giant feminist manifesto. Edie Falco does the hardest thing an actor can do--she makes Carmela's suburban decency both fierce and interesting. Carmela sees through Tony, but takes tender care of him anyway because, frankly, what else is she going to do? She may not say much--hey, she's supposed to be emblematic of the mob's new yuppie isolation, so who would she say it to?--but she's plenty smart and aware, as we learned when she dressed down Father Paul for being a schnorrer who plays head games with lonely women because he "likes the whiff of sexuality." This being the Sopranos, however, which lets the moss of goodness gather on no one, Carmela can also be a self-deluded, preening, Italian JAP. There was that wonderful episode early last year where she's appallingly condescending to an old friend, the wife of a restaurateur who's been burned out of his restaurant. She hires the couple to cater some fund-raising party, then, in a room presumably filled with all their mutual friends, waves her friend over as if bossing around some maid. She's clearly forgotten upon what her higher financial status rests, though the friend wastes no time reminding her.

Which brings us to the Soprano marriage, which is, as you say, compulsively watchable. Our editor suggested to me yesterday that it's a somewhat Clintonesque marriage--Tony has a mistress whom he fucks rather joylessly and with whom he never has an actual conversation, but he's really dependent on his wife (although unlike with our president, you have the sense that Tony screws around mostly because that's what mob bosses are supposed to do rather than out of real need). In another likely Clinton parallel, the two of them have a long history of hurting each other that makes it impossible for them to get the important stuff out there, even though their desire to do so is palpable. All this just hangs around in the air, unresolved, which makes you wish the writers would get back to it. I dunno. Maybe I'm just getting my soap-opera yayas out with a nighttime series. But I do think their marriage has the rare distinction (on television, anyway) of feeling like something living, breathing, and evolving--another feminist touch, in its way.

So here's my question to you, who know so many mob children (as opposed to Hasids--though weren't you once friendly with some big Hasidic rabbi? Didn't you cover them back in your Forward days, before you abandoned the chosen people to hang out with the people you claim are the envy of the world?) What do you make of Tony and Carmela's kids, Meadow and Anthony junior? Do you buy how easily Meadow swallows her father's bullshit about what he does for a living, even after she has pointedly asked about it? I do, absolutely. I think it's an excellent dramatization of the weird state of knowing-and-not-knowing that mob kids are forced to live in. She's not deceived by her father's lies, as she makes clear in lots of little sarcastic asides. But if he actually 'fessed up, then she'd have to deal with his unpleasant reality, which would rock her world a little more than she's ready for right now.

All this, in fact, is taking Meadow to the verge of becoming The Sopranos' next great female character. As far as I'm concerned, the best thing that happens in the second season is a major discovery we make about her in Episode 3, which for once I'm not going to give away. Suffice it to say that she might not be an unbearably self-involved spoiled brat after all, though of course she's that too. Maybe I just want to see her get in on the action 'cause I was a huge self-involved spoiled brat in my day, but I think the girl has potential.

Spoiled or not, I was taught enough manners to say: It has been a pleasure doing business with you, even if you did chop my herring up and stir it into onions and cream sauce. I find that you are not, in fact, a mook. Quite the opposite.

Love,
Judith

tv club
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from: Judith Shulevitz

Roll Over, Diane Keaton

Posted Thursday, Jan. 13, 2000, at 4:40 PM ET
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This week, a discussion of the new season of The Sopranos, which premieres Jan. 16 on HBO. Jeffrey Goldberg, a regular contributor to Slate, is a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine. Judith Shulevitz is the New York editor of Slate and writes the "Culturebox" column.
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