On this early summer weekend, when George W. Bush has officially become a lame duck -- or a cornered vicious animal, take your pick, when a modern American icon leaves us for good and a long-dead British tyrant-king who has captivated our imaginations for centuries takes a hiatus, a serial killer whose cop father has taught him to only kill those who deserve it is due back in the fall, and yet another trashy blonde has monopolized the airwaves all week, it's hard to avoid the question: Why does this country, which loves to wear religion and morality on its sleeve, worship at the pop culture altar of the amoral and the sociopathic?
The gangster genre is American pornography that somehow feels safe. It flies in the face of the American notion that virtue is its own reward and those who transgress will be punished. We live in a society in which the death penalty is trotted out every four years as a litmus test of how tough a candidate is (even though in the 2008 campaign, torture is the new death penalty) and how serious he is about crime/terrorism/sin/whatever. We rail against violence and then cheer every time Tony Soprano orders a whacking. We give lip service to the sanctity of the bonds of marriage and then don't care about Tony Soprano's goumah. Fictional mobsters get a free pass, and even real ones, like the late John Gotti, are met with the same mix of revulsion, fascination, and even admiration.
The mobsters in The Godfather feel sympathetic because for all that they kill with impunity, the carnage is in accordance with a strict, if warped, moral code. No one is killed without a damn good reason. Solozzo kills Luca Brasi and attempts to assassinate Vito Corleone, so he and the corrupt cop he has bought must die. Tessio betrays the family with Barzini and the punishment is death. In his own perverse way, Vito Corleone is a highly moral man. He is faithful to his wife, a good provider to his children, and when blood is shed, it's with regret and a feeling of resignation that such things are unfortunate, but necessary. Yet just one generation removed, the moral code has already begun to fray, with Michael living the consequences.
As a modern fictional mobster, Tony appears to have no moral code. It's all about business -- until it isn't. This is why the dispatching of Adriana was so shocking, for all that it was so necessary. That it also calls into question the moral code of Agent Harris, who loses his star witness and never seems to put together the obvious, is just one of those David Chase blind alleys, like the infamous Russian in the Pine Barrens.
The implosion of Tony Soprano's fictional universe this season, with even its most tightly-controlled, highly disciplined member, Silvio Dante falling prey to the series' entropy, is made even more significant by its parallels to the implosion of the tightly-controlled Bush Administration. Just as George W. Bush is being revealed not as the tough, decisive leader, but a sniveling little boy with daddy issues who has used the entire world as his Dr. Melfi, so has Tony been exposed, and now he and everyone around him have worn out their welcome. It appears that for their final act, Chase has stripped these characters of their veneers of likeability and exposed them for what they really are. Tony isn't Homer Simpson with a gun, or the neurotic product of one of the most toxic mothers in television history -- he's just a bad guy. Carmela isn't a strong woman trying to make her way struggling between her Catholic faith and her knowledge of what her husband does for a living, she's just an expensive whore whose silence can be bought for the price of a bauble. Even poor Anthony Jr., whose depression has been portrayed almost TOO convincingly by Robert Iler, whose own troubled past may be leaking through to his character, seems more of a sniveling, self-indulgent weakling than the product of one of the most toxic fathers in television history. Only the poor, dead Bobby Bacala and the so far untouched Meadow remain at all likeable.
I don't know about you, but for me watching this season unfold was like having house guests who outstayed their welcome two weeks ago and just refuse to leave. It's not unlike when Nate Fisher died on Six Feet Under. After watching six seasons of Nate's aging adolescent crisis and the increasing sense of doom surrounding him, his death was something to be applauded, not grieved. If Nate was the philosopher-king, the Anthony Jr. of Six Feet Under, his death liberated the rest of his family to more fully live their lives in a way that his continued pursuit of meaning never could have.
And so tomorrow night, whether he lives or dies, Tony Soprano will follow Nate Fisher into that ocean of HBO series finality. And it's time for Tony to go. But in case you thought that the confluence of the end of The Sopranos with the death throes of the Bush Doctrine was somehow reflective of some Bigger Cosmic Change, fear not, America, for there are other sociopaths to take Tony's place. Dexter Morgan returns to Showtime in the fall, Henry VIII will start chopping heads next year, and Rudy Giuliani promises four to eight more years of fearmongering and authoritarianism.
"Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity."
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