What can Tony Soprano tell us about American television in the late 20th century?

What can Tony Soprano tell us about American television in the late 20th century?

Character Analysis Paper – Guidelines
The Character Analysis paper will be a literary analysis of a film or television character who appeared after 1990. (If part of a franchise/remake of a film or show which began/appeared before 1990, that’s fine, but the analysis should focus primarily on the post-1990 version.) The general idea is to follow certain instincts of Auerbach’s in looking at how an individual character represents artistic decisions and cultural values in a given time period.

The essay will be approximately 3-5 pages. Successful essays will likely be closer to 5.

Example: What can Tony Soprano tell us about American television in the late 20th century?

Possible Lines of Inquiry for Example:

How is Tony Soprano portrayed differently/similarly to Italian-American crime bosses in earlier American decades? (Such as in The Godfather, Goodfellas, etc.)

How is Tony Soprano portrayed as a male head of household? How does his portrayal comment upon changing gender norms and attitudes toward masculinity of the late 90s? How is his relationship with his wife and with his therapist (a first for a mob boss character) unusual relative to previous depictions of mafia bosses? How might Tony’s separation of his criminal life vs. his domestic life (i.e., how he interacts differently with his criminal associates vs. his family) be part of a larger commentary on work vs. home in American culture?

How is Tony Soprano part of a larger emergence of “anti-heroes” in American television of the late 90s and early 2000s? (e.g., Don Draper of Mad Men; Walter White of Breaking Bad.) Are these characters similar to or different from earlier American anti-heroes? Are they more or less realistically portrayed? Does this crop of gritty anti-heroes display a nostalgia for earlier American male anti-heroes who weren’t afraid to break the rules or violate social norms? Are they fantasy figures upon which we project our own desires?

Is The Sopranos “meta-fictional” at all? For example, Tony and his fellow Italian-American criminals exist in a fictional universe in which they are “real” but earlier cinematic mafiosos (such as Michael Corleone from The Godfather) are fictional. What can we learn from their attitude toward American culture’s previous portrayals of the mafia and Italian-Americans in general? Is The Sopranos at all about class divisions and social respectability? Is it at all about nostalgia for an earlier time period?

What about questions of cinematography (how scenes are shot and lighted) for those of you with some knowledge of film techniques? What about questions of narrative and plot? (The most glaring example being: we don’t know precisely what happens to Tony at the end of the series, whether he lives or dies. What does that mean? How does that decision tell us something about how we’re supposed to relate to the character?)

All of these questions and more could form the basis for a successful essay. Use MLA guidelines if you cite outside sources (and I encourage you to do so).

By admin in Essays on November 1, 2015