Here for the Gabagool: (Re)Making Mob History

As part and parcel of my ongoing fascination with The Sopranos, I’ve begun a deep dive into the history of organized crime in the NY-NJ area.

My thoughts about it—and about its relationship to the series—are still a bit rudimentary, but I’ll try to articulate a couple of key points here.

First, I’m intrigued by the way in which the history of organized crime is tied to the history of place.

As David Chase has argued—and as critics have observed—The Sopranos is deliberately set in NJ, not in NYC.

In most Hollywood renditions of organized crime, NJ is simply “the place where they dump the bodies.”

As a native-born New Jerseyan, Chase deliberately chose to change the lens and shift the focus.

This strikes me as significant in multiple ways: in the history of organized crime, place is important.

The neighborhood in which you grew up—the street where you lived—would often signal to others where your loyalties would likely lie.

As scholars have pointed out, the opening credits (“title sequence”) of The Sopranos trace that longstanding emphasis on place, while also using the medium of film to capture the idea of mobility implicitly associated with it.

We ride along as Tony drives out of New York—the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in his rearview mirror—pays the toll, and takes the NJ Turnpike back to his suburban home.

Along the way, he traverses the landscape of urban Newark—passing landmarks that play a role in the series itself—eventually pulling up in the driveway of his (slightly less-than-modest) McMansion in the suburbs.

In “Homeward Bound: Those Sopranos Titles Come Heavy,” David Johansson argues that the title sequences functions like the overture to an opera: it “sets the mood and the tone of the show, functions as prologue, and becomes epilogue, the tag by which the viewer remembers the whole series” (Reading The Sopranos: Hit TV from HBO, ed. David Lavery, New York: I.B. Tauris, 2006, pg. 27).

As Johansson points out, in the title sequence, “the action consists of images which exist outside an HBO series; they are real objects… on a real highway, where they exist as signifiers not only for the fictional history of Tony Soprano but also as recognizable signposts for the audience” (Johansson, in Lavery, pg 29).

Which leads me to my second observation: I’m intrigued by the ways in which The Sopranos incorporates stories and figures from the history of organized crime into the fabric of its depiction of Tony and his “families.”

On the one hand, characters often reference real-world gangsters as templates or role models for the various situations and scenarios they encounter.

In the first “hit” of the series, as Christopher Moltisanti commits a murder that he both hopes and expects (<— more about this tension in a later post) will make him a “made man,” the gunshots are deliberately counterpointed with images of famous Hollywood “gangsters”—men who were reputed to have connections to organized crime, in addition to “playing one on TV” (or in the movies).

Frank Sinatra.

Dean Martin.

Edward G. Robinson

What I find most interesting about the moments that represent the first “hit” in The Sopranos is the way in which it subtly—and simultaneously— “works” on the viewer of the series.

The Sopranos will name-drop real-world figures from organized crime, in addition to having characters who imitate Hollywood renditions of mafiosi, moments that take advantage of the ways in which film can enlist the power of suggestion in ways that other artistic forms cannot.

Despite its frequent use of Tony’s voice-over to give context to what we’re viewing, The Sopranos relies heavily on “showing” rather than “telling.”

If we’re wondering what Chrissy (<— more about this nickname in a future post!) is thinking, this sequence of images suggest that his thoughts are largely imitative.

He wants to be a “made man”: that’s what this murder is all about, and that’s what it “means” to him.

He will tell us as much after the fact when he remarks that he should have been “made” after that murder… but wasn’t. (He will also petulantly reprimand Tony, pointing out that “a simple ‘thank you’ would have been nice.”)

But the images that flash on the screen as Christopher commits this murder are, significantly, those of Hollywood gangsters, figures who may or may not have had “real” ties to organized crime.

As other critics and viewers have pointed out, the inclusion of these images in the thick of the brutality of Christopher’s act alerts us to the fact that The Sopranos isn’t going to be like the Hollywood versions of organized crime that we’ve become used to watching.

The anti-heros in The Sopranos will always be more “anti” than “hero.”

I think this scene is also significant for what it suggests about Christopher: he wants to be a mobster, no question, and he has the murderous impulsivity that this role requires.

But the scene also suggests that Christopher may be more concerned with what it means to “play” the gangster.

He wants the perks (money & notoriety) that come with the role he’s chosen for himself, but whether he really “is” a gangster is another question.

The images that punctuate his brutal action are not those of real-world gangsters; similarly, throughout the pilot episode we can’t help but notice that, when it comes to making a business deal, Christopher is unmotivated (at best) and lazy (at worst).

He didn’t make a phone call one night because it got “too late,” he didn’t make it the next morning because he “had a stomachache,” he’s often late, and usually at least somewhat high.

Even his plan to dispose of the body of his victim is a botched reimagining of The Godfather’s famous “Louis Brasi sleeps with the fishes” (Moltisanti can’t even name-drop accurately)—itself a Hollywood reimagining of the story of the murder of hit man Joe Jelly.

What I find interesting, and continue to think through, is the way in which Christopher embodies some of the issues that historians credit with undermining the potency of the mob—in particular, his own drug use is a red flag.

Needless to say, I’ll have more to say about Moltisanti—and about the way that The Sopranos triangulates history, fiction, and film— in future posts.