God and Gary Cooper Are Dead
Tony Soprano's belief that he inhabits a world of collapsing values is a major theme of the series. The ways he attempts to deal with such a world at first waver between life affirmation and life negation. But as the series progresses, Tony becomes more and more of a nihilist in the most negative and life-denying sense of that term. He is as much a victim of his own psychological weaknesses as he is a man who has been thrown into fated circumstances that weaken him. He is a mob boss whose power has eroded and whose authority has become increasingly fragile. But after a certain point, self-redemption is no longer even his personal goal, and therapy becomes nothing more than a charade. Tony's decreasing sense of the value of life in general has a debilitating effect on his family as well as violent consequences for those who dare get in his way.
Episode 1 ("The Pilot") of season 1 begins with Tony Soprano waiting to meet Dr. Jennifer Melfi (Lorraine Bracco) for his first session of psychotherapy. Tony is the embodiment of underworld machismo. He has summoned the courage to attend these sessions in order to combat the severe panic attacks that have led to his collapse on several prior occasions. Tony is soon established as a man of power, someone whose profession requires control and the ability to manipulate others. He interprets his malady as merely one of physical infirmity, and Tony is highly reluctant even to concede this degree of weakness. He is not willing to go beyond this admission to the further conclusion that his panic attacks may also be a symptom of emotional, psychological, and even spiritual instability. His position as a mob boss demands self-mastery: he can hardly master others without first governing himself. But to retain control and authority, Tony must first submit to his therapist.
The very context of Tony's therapy, a framing device that initiates the series and projects it forward, is significant in that it pronounces the goal of personal wholeness as well as the idea of narrative unity. Via the therapy sessions, Tony can narrate his life to Melfi as well as to the viewer. He uses his therapy as a way of bringing together the fragments of his otherwise disjointed existence. While the events and elements of the series cohere because of their dramatic connections, they are also integrated to a substantial degree because they eventually come to play a role in Tony's narrative, one that depicts his overall psychological and moral state of being.
The therapy session serves as a matrix of emerging narrative order because it provides an occasion for reflection and self-reflection. Tony's ailments and complaints indicate that the different aspects of his life have become compartmentalized and disconnected from one another. So the need for balance and order and stability is articulated most clearly in these sessions that summon him to recognize and act on such a need. If nihilism of a passive or pathological kind is our growing loss of faith in some greater purpose or meaning that integrates the various elements of our lives, some of which are unconscious, then Tony's ongoing therapy represents his struggle to combat such nihilism. If anything, The Sopranos is a show about its main character's quest for self-knowledge against a backdrop of moral confusion and despair.
As Tony waits to see Dr. Melfi, he gazes with perplexity at the intimidating statue of a nude goddesslike female, whose fierce, threatening stare pierces the waiting room. At a symbolic or subconscious level, this authoritative figure typically represents motherhood, the matrix (from the Latin mater, referring to the maternal) of fertility, generation, and emerging natural order. Indeed, we quickly discover in this episode that Tony has more than a slight problem with his mother, an intimidating woman with a fierce stare of her own. The mother figure, summoning primal energies of the psyche, is no longer associated strictly with nurture and nature. The maternal symbol of the matrix of birth and growth has become transformed for Tony into an icon of threatening power, as shown by both this statue and his own mother, Livia Soprano (Nancy Marchand). And as we learn by the end of season 1, Livia has conspired to terminate her own son's life for vengeful reasons.
This inversion of the archetypal image of birth, nature, comfort, and stability becomes a fitting departure point for a series that will hover persistently around this problematic mother-son relationship as well as around such nihilistic themes as death, rejection, despair, and dread.
Tony tells Melfi that he is back at work and, after describing his profession as "waste management consultant," begins to make a series of points about why he may be suffering from undue levels of stress. His very choice of a professional label, one that disguises his life as a gangster, is revealing in its indication of a life of immorality or even amorality. Tony is slowly coming to see himself as a manager of the moral wasteland that surrounds him. His brief speculation about the possible origins of his panic attacks becomes a monologue on the ills of society at large and how they have affected him. What he has not yet come to recognize is the spiritual wasteland that lurks within him.
Tony tells Melfi from the outset that he is plagued by feelings of decline and loss: "It's good to start from the ground up. I came in at the end. The best is over." His therapist responds: "Many Americans, I think, feel that way." We are already placed within the framework of American cultural commentary, and this commentary indicates a decline in social values and a nostalgia for better days. Tony explains to Melfi that his own father had it much better, that his generation had its firm standards and reasons for pride. "What do we got?" Tony asks pointedly ("The Pilot").
Tony then talks about this decline in traditional values and standards, even though he refers strictly to mob values and standards. Indeed, while nihilism typically involves the rejection or diminishment of traditional and conventional values, the decline of old-fashioned mafia values is doubly nihilistic, in the sense that the mob, with its own internal values and codes, is based on a complete rejection of conventional law and order. Tony complains to Melfi that contemporary mob members have no values: "Guys today have no room for the penal experience, so everybody turns government witness." Tony then laments the loss of the stoic hero of yesteryear: "Whatever happened to Gary Cooper—the strong silent type? That was an American. He wasn't in touch with his feelings—he just did what he had to do" (" The Pilot"). America today is pampered and therefore weak, according to Tony.
Tony often views himself as one of the last of the heroic types, one who at least attempts to embody old-style values and standards. He tries to base his life on the virtues of loyalty, respect, and honor—which are supposed to govern both his criminal and conventional life. But he recognizes that these virtues are decaying, in both spheres of his life. He has neither religious faith nor trust in the law to govern his decisions and actions. In addition, the usual supports of family and friendship have become increasingly fragile. Tony's family life is more than complicated, due to his own immoral choices, and he soon discovers that his professional colleagues may really be mob informants. His execution of Big Pussy in the final episode of season 2 ("Funhouse") demonstrates the truth of what he is saying as well as the severity of this loss of trust.
Tony's depression about the decline of mob values is reemphasized in episode 2 of season 1 ("46 Long"), which begins with an atypical pre-credits prologue. Tony and his comrades-in-arms are playing cards and listening to a television interview with an expert who describes the contemporary decline of the mob, discussing the failure of present-day mobsters to adhere to the old-fashioned rules of honor and secrecy. The gangsters of today, according to the interviewee, rat out each other and engage in drug trafficking, activities that were taboo for older mobsters. Tony concurs with the expert: "The shoe fits."
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