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Home , Henry Bromell, Northern Exposure, The Sopranos, The Sopranos (season 1), The Sopranos (season 5), The Sopranos (season 6)

“Family” Entertainment: Investigating the link between HBO’s and Showtime’s Brotherhood

By Colin McKinnon 2

Of the 31 million households that subscribed to the Home Box Office Channel on

Sunday, June 10, 2007, roughly twelve million people were tuned in at nine p.m. eastern time to watch the much anticipated final episode of the wildly popular and critically acclaimed series,

The Sopranos. On morning, an entire nation was abuzz with discussion about what they had seen the night before. MSNBC and Fox News from New York were reporting on the phenomenon of people calling up their cable providers to complain about what they had thought to be a test pattern at of the episode, both giving it equal time; E! News from Los

Angeles was asking “What’s Next?” for the cast and creators; perhaps most interestingly, a sports discussion show on ESPN called Pardon the Interruption, based in D.C., led off with

Sopranos-talk;. A show based on and essentially about middle-class life in , had permeated state borders and affected an entire country.

A year earlier, on the Showtime Network, another subscriber based cable channel,

Brotherhood, a show about the relationship between two Irish-American brothers in Providence,

Rhode Island, one a gangster and the other a politician, premiered. As Alessandra Stanley noted in her critique of Brotherhood’s debut in , “HBO…no longer has a monopoly on great .” At the time, in addition to the upcoming final season of The

Sopranos, HBO had two of its other critically acclaimed hour-long dramas, Sex in the City and Oz. Showtime had lost one of its flagship shows when Queer as Folk left the air and was experiencing modest success with shows like Huff, Weeds, and Sleeper Cell, clearly employing the model that had led to so much of HBO’s success in original programming. What better way to continue forward than to create a show that echoed one of HBO’s cornerstone enterprises?

This is not to say that Brotherhood is the Irish version of The Sopranos, rather than it is to point 3 out that both series follow similar modalities when it comes to how the shows were developed, who their audiences are, and what makes them popular.

David Chase, creator of The Sopranos, grew up in North Jersey and wrote the series by injecting much of his personal experience into its characters. A veteran of television, including

Northern Exposure, Chase originally set out to produce the show as a movie. When the series finally landed on HBO, Chase was given an opportunity to do something that had never been done on television before. While there may have initially been some doubt as to whether or not the show would be a success, one thing that is certain, Chase did not have to go to extreme lengths to create an audience for the series. Not only did its subject matter, the Italian mafia, hit a chord with the American public, it had the added advantage of being the first show of its kind on television, network or otherwise.

America’s longstanding fascination with has been a mainstay of the entertainment industry for decades. In addition to William Wellman’s , one of

Chase’s main inspirations stemming from his childhood, movies such as ,

Goodfellas, and Casino have hypnotized audiences with their depictions of the Italian mob.

Threads of Mafioso culture were mainstays of the 1990s, specifically concerning John Gotti, Jr. and Sammy “The Bull” Gravano. After several arrests in the 1980s, Gotti, better known as “The

Dapper Don” or “The Teflon Don,” for his flamboyance and ability to stay out of prison, respectively, was finally convicted of thirteen counts of murder and sentenced to prison in 1992.

In 1997, Gotti’s , Sammy “The Bull” Gravano, released a tell-all book, Underboss:

Sammy “The Bull” Gravano’s Story of Life in the Mafia, describing the intimate details of his dealings and exploits while in the employ of the Gambino crime syndicate, one of New York’s 4 famed Five Families. John Gotti, Jr.’s trials and subsequent convictions were well publicized, to the point that his lawyer, Bruce Cutler, became famous, making an appearance in the movie, 15

Minutes, playing himself. Underboss was well-reviewed by, among other publications, The New

York Times, and Gravano himself appeared in an interview with Diane Sawyer.

Between the twenty-four hour news coverage of Gotti’s incarceration, the success of

Gravano’s book, and the already Oscar-worthy edification of mafia culture, by January of 1999,

America had clearly and resolutely proven itself ready for a like The Sopranos.

To ’s credit, that was only the enticement for the series, and not the substance of it.

Drawing from much of his personal life, Chase set about writing a series that dealt with the traditional family. Psychological issues with his mother as well as chronic depression supplicated the intrigue of organized crime and helped draw in an audience that viewed Tony

Soprano as a more relatable character. As , HBO’s President of Original

Programming at the time The Sopranos was conceived, “The show is about a guy turning 40.”

Like David Chase, Blake Masters, creator of Brotherhood, following the model that The

Sopranos established, drew from his own personal life. Masters grew up in New England, where

Brotherhood is set. Also like Chase, Masters originally envisioned the show as a movie, as his background was in film. Unlike Chase, however, Masters had never worked in television before.

To ensure that the show had a chance to be success, Showtime executives suggested that Masters bring in a partner. Masters approached , a veteran of television series, such as

Northern Exposure, and the series took off from there. The Northern Exposure connection is no coincidence. If the writer/producer of one of television’s most acclaimed shows, Chase, worked on it, then someone that worked with him is a natural choice to develop a show in the vein of The

Sopranos. 5

Also like Chase, Masters and Brotherhood benefited from America’s fascination with organized crime, this time the Irish mafia. Dating back to early films like Angels with Dirty

Faces, while not as abundant, there have been a number of movies concerning the Irish mob. In

1990, the Coen Brothers released Miller’s Crossing, a film about the Prohibition-era and mob politics. In 1999, the cult phenomenon Boondock Saints, a film about two Irish brothers who fight crime by committing crime, was released. Tom Hanks starred in 2002’s Road to Perdition, a film about an enforcer for an Irish, Illinois-based who, with his son, robs from Al

Capone to avenge his family’s murder. Finally, in 2006, the same year that Brotherhood debuted, Martin Scorcese, of so many Italian mob movies, released The Departed, about the Irish mob in New England and its relationship with the Massachusetts State Police and Federal Bureau of Investigation.

In as much as The Sopranos benefited from real life Mafioso types like John Gotti, Jr.,

Brotherhood, a show not just about the Irish mafia, but about local and state political corruption, benefits from real life scandal makers in New England. Concerning Providence, Rhode Island, where the show takes place, Masters was able to draw from the experiences of Vincent Albert

“Buddy” Cianci, Jr., who served as the mayor of Providence from 1975 to 1984 and again from

1991 to 2002. Cianci was forced to resign during his first term after pleading “no contest” to assault. After being re-elected, Cianci was indicted in the spring of 2001 on several charges including racketeering and witness tampering. Of Cianci’s reign at the head of Providence politics, Judge Ronald R. Lageux was quoted as saying that, “In [Cianci’s] two administrations, there has been more corruption in the City of Providence than in the history of the state.”

While is said to be more closely modeled after David Chase, himself,

Blake Masters modeled his two main characters, Michael and Tommy Caffee, after two 6 infamous sons of New England: James “Whitey” Bulger and William “Bully” Bulger. The story of Michael Caffee parallels the story of Whitey Bulger, a menace of South Boston and the leader of the Winter Hill gang, appropriate as Brotherhood takes place in a neighborhood called, The

Hill. After several indictments were passed down against him, Whitey Bulger disappeared in

1994 and has not been seen since. For television’s sake, Michael Caffee returned after seven years. Bully Bulger, Whitey’s younger brother, was a state politician who became not only the longest tenured President of the Massachusetts State Senate, but from 1996 to 2003, served as the President of the University of Massachusetts. Tommy Caffee, Michael’s younger brother, is a local politician in the State Legislature and “knows his constituents by name.” In 2002, Bully testified before Congress about his older brother and in 2003, Governor Mitt Romney pressured him to resign from his position at the university.

Unlike the national buzz that was created by John Gotti, Jr. and Salvatore Gravano, however, the narratives of the Bulger brothers and Buddy Cianci were bigger news in New

England than they were in the rest of the country. As far as media markets go, New York is number one in the country, whereas Boston is eighth. The way this translates to television is that, what happens in New York is a big deal nationwide, while what happens in Boston is a relatively moderate-sized deal throughout the country by comparison. To counteract this, adhering to the mold that David Chase created, Masters has written a comprehensive story about family in addition to the legal/political intrigue.

An opening sequence to a television show plays one of the most important parts in letting the audience know what it is about; it’s the first thing that they will see. The Sopranos tells the audience two important things in its opening sequence: that the show revolves around its main character, Tony Soprano, and the relationship between and Northern New Jersey. 7

Brotherhood’s opening sequence consists of a slide that reads Showtime Presents and a slide that reads Brotherhood, blue words against a back drop. Showtime is wasting no time in telling the audience what this show is about at its very core: the complex relationship between brothers, family in general, and loyalty and morality in the community.

Further contrast between the two series stems from the family names. The Sopranos, by

Chase’s own admission, are named after a family that he knew in high school and hold no other significant meaning. Digging deeper into the surname of Brotherhood, Caffee is a variation of caffle, which means to depart from a course of action considered to be right or correct. Major issues of Brotherhood revolve around the fine line that Tommy walks between being corrupt or not in his quest for power in the Statehouse, Michael’s illegal dealings and how they benefit or hurt the community, Tommy’s wife, Eileen’s infidelity versus her duties as a devoted Catholic wife and mother, and Declan, a detective in the Rhode Island State Police, who struggles between his legal responsibilities and his devotion to the Caffee brothers, his childhood .

These contrasts only serve to bring the similarities between the two series to the foreground. They are only enough to get the audience to watch the first episode. After that, the shows need something more to keep the audience coming back week after week. At their core, both of these shows are about nothing more than family relationships and what a home constitutes in the ever-evolving modern era. The widely accepted understanding of what a home and a family consisted of was the structure you lived in and the people with which you lived in it.

As Tamara Hareven points out in “The Home and the Family in Historical Perspective,” “The concept of the home as a private retreat first emerged…in the United States among urban, middle-class families in the early part of the nineteenth century” (258). This concept of home meant that “The husband was expected to be the main breadwinner and worker outside the home, 8 and the wife a full-time housekeeper and mother” (259). This concept lasted throughout the better part of the twentieth century and took the form of television shows like The Dick Van

Dyke Show and Leave it to Beaver (Matheson 33). By the dawn of the twenty-first century, however, this view of the home had changed dramatically.

Reality television played a vital part in changing the landscape of the modern home and family:

In 1973, PBS’s An American Family presented a candid glimpse of the private conflicts of the Loud family and is widely identified as the first documentary series on U.S. television to probe family life in this way. It was considered controversial due to its frank representation of their domestic life and for what it revealed about the less than ideal dynamics that underpinned the “typical” suburban family. With the current explosion of reality based series, images of “real” family life now permeate all areas of the television landscape, presenting a variety of representations of marriage and child rearing. (Matheson 33) In addition to these shows that serve to represent what we are as a society, a slew of other shows featuring celebrities in their domestic lives, such as The Osbournes, emerged. These shows were meant to show that celebrities lived lives just like ours when, in reality (pardon the pun), most Americans will never experience the lives that celebrities lead. This notion lends itself to the theory that “stars” of reality television are no more real than there network programming counterparts, i.e. The Sopranos or Brotherhood.

If the appeal of reality television is observing how the Everyman acts when cameras are focused upon him, the appeal of the network serial is to observe the mythical hero in action.

From the early days of serial fiction when families gathered together every month to read about the adventures of dashing heroes, to the present-day where families gather together every week to watch The Sopranos or Brotherhood (HBO and Showtime are both subscription services), the idea of mythical heroes has a very real pull. As Hal Himmelstien explains in Television Myth 9 and the American Mind, “The hero is central to melodrama. The dominant concept of the hero in

Western culture dates from the heroic period of Grecian history that preceded the return of Greek soldiers from their conquest of Troy in Asia Minor” (198). If we put Tony Soprano and his crew in a historical perspective, does he not resemble the gods of Mount Olympus? Or at the very least, the heroes of the Trojan War? Do the Caffey brothers serve to represent Romulus and

Remus of Roman legend?

Himmelstein goes onto explain that:

Later, the heroic class came to include mortal men of renown who were deified because of great and noble deeds or for firmness or greatness of soul in any course of action they undertook. These men became national or local heroes. They included men distinguished by extraordinary bravery and martial achievement…Many heroes were boldly experimental or resourceful in their actions. Heroic actions were not always pure, however; cunning became a characteristic of the hero as he used his wit to outsmart the enemy. (198-99) Using this definition, Tony Soprano and the Caffey brothers are clearly modern day heroes. The viewing audience sees Tony Soprano utilizing the texts of Sun-Tzu and his psychiatric sessions in his everyday dealings, even though they are illegal. The viewing audience sees Tommy Caffey using his political influence to gain power in the Statehouse, even if he sometimes has to make back room deals to achieve his goals. Michael Caffey may himself be a violent gangster, but he cuts the ear off of someone who has violated a young woman and gives one free bottle of bourbon a week to an elderly woman in his neighborhood that cannot herself afford it. Before the comparison goes too far, however, it is important to note that

“heroes are ultimately ‘social types’,” which Himmelstein explains “are drawn from a cultural stock of images and symbols” and “reveal much information about our cultural traditions” (200).

Based on the overwhelming success of the two series, there must be something about these characters and their lives that we approve of, even if it is at a subconscious level. The two 10 series contain multiple acts of brutal violence. TV Living polled television viewers and found that the general response was that, “Television is primarily perceived to be a medium for family entertainment, and not only are representations of violence and sexuality seen as unsuitable material for family entertainment, but for some members of the general public, it is questioned whether this is suitable material for any type of television programme,” so what explains the shows popularity (Gauntlett 248)? Also reported in TV Living is that, “respondents-in common with the general population-were more likely to watch the news on television than to read about it in newspapers or hear it on the radio” (Gauntlett 55). In the post-9/11 era of televised news, violence, as well as sexuality and political corruption, is one of images most seen and interpreted by the average viewer. If they see violence on a regular basis on programming that is considered to be educational, what is the problem with it appearing on fictional programming? According to

TV Living, “it is not uncommon in…written responses to find contradictory arguments.

Respondents may dislike media violence, but find that they like to watch crime dramas which include it, or they may call for less violence on television, and then complain about the lack of realism in television drama” (Gauntlett 268). So, even if audiences are appalled by the violence they see on television, they are so used to what it looks like, that they are offended when it fails to meet the standard that they have set for themselves in their own minds.

Realism is a staple of serial fiction. Dating back to reviews of Charles Dickens’ Our

Mutual Friend, “good writing” was the equivalent of a “simple, ‘natural’ style” said The London

News (Hayward 69). Dialogue heard in both The Sopranos and Brotherhood contain local slang as well as, specifically in the case of The Sopranos, the use of Italian words intermixed with standard English conversation. Concerning location, Dickens was also praised for his

“descriptive powers, especially landscape” by The Sun (Hayward 69). As Peter Bondanella 11 notes in his book, Hollywood Italians: Dagos, Palookas, Romeos, Wise Guys, and Sopranos, the reason that The Sopranos is considered in high regard with films, even though it is a television series, is because David Chase “shoots his television series with film, not video” (297). Due to this creative choice, Bondanella explains that “everything about the production values of each individual episode of The Sopranos resembles a ‘stand-alone feature film,’ as Chase himself states, rather than a hastily made and hastily shot television program” (297).

Bondanella continues his explanation of Chase’s success by going further into detail about his artistic process:

Chase combines the best aspects of traditional Hollywood studio production (teams of scriptwriters who work together on numerous rewrites of the screenplays) with the guiding vision of the single director as auteur (Chase edits all the films even if he is not the director of a particular individual episode). Great artistic risks are taken in the series, and to date, they have invariably paid off with stellar performances and fascinating twists and turns of plot that have captivated a huge national audience. The Sopranos quickly earned the attention and respect of film and television critics and historians. The cast of the program is enormous, and the plots extremely complicated. The narratives unfold from one episode to the next in as complicated and as sophisticated a manner as a reader might expect from the great cycles of novels associated with late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century literary realism. (297-298) Blake Masters takes a similar approach, shooting on location in Providence, Rhode Island as well as including the Rhode Island Statehouse and the power plant and its three smokestacks in as many exterior shots as possible. The entire crew considers Providence to be a part of the ensemble cast, giving them a gritty, edgy look. The Weekly Times gives Dickens his final bit of praise for his serial reality when it says that Dickens expresses “a different interpretation of the

‘natural,’ one that invokes the sentimental: family interactions, romantic love, the figure of the dying child. The use of the term family in relationship to The Sopranos has a dual meaning because of the mafia implications, and in relationship to Brotherhood, it refers to the Irish 12 neighborhood known as “The Hill.” In addition to these extemporaneous meanings, however, family still means the home and who lives in it, the relationship between sibling and sibling, child and parent, husband and wife, and it is one of the most prevalent reasons that we, as an audience, tune in every week.

Of his series, The Sopranos, David Chase argues that:

It is inaccurate to say that [The show] is a successful venture because they portray gangsters as if they were ordinary people. [His] gangsters are individuals who live under extraordinary pressures, dealing with stressful situations that most people could not survive. In addition, they are forced to deal with all the normal problems that the average citizen faces: kids taking drugs and getting in trouble, marriage and divorce, infidelity, broken friendships, depression, illness, and so forth. Tony exercises a profession that forces him to kill his best friends, to commit mayhem even when he prefers another more peaceful solution to his problems, to live in constant fear of arrest and punishment, and what is worse, to fear for his very life and the future of his wife and children. Nothing about this situation is normal. What is normal about Tony is in addition to these very unusual conflicts in his life, he also has a wife who feels neglected; a daughter graduating from high school and looking for a to attend, who also questions her father’s occupation and has the usual adolescent crises; a son who has typical teenage problems with drinking and bad behavior; and bills to pay to maintain the upper-middle-class lifestyle to which his family has been accustomed. (Bondanella 313) Chase is right in that the situation that Tony Soprano finds himself in is not the situation that most Americans find themselves in on a day-to-day basis in terms of his vocation and the occupational hazards that accompany it. Chase is also right in portraying Tony Soprano, despite his vocation, as an average, upper-middle-class father that shares the same fears and trepidations, be it his family’s safety, his aging mother’s inability to care for herself, or a failing economy, that most upper-middle-class fathers suffer through on a daily basis. This dichotomy sets Tony

Soprano up as both the warrior hero and the Everyman, an appealing combination for the modern audience. 13

The comparisons between The Sopranos and Brotherhood are viable: the relationship between local politicians and the unions, the issues of family, the issues of crime. Being compared to The Sopranos is not necessarily ideal for Blake Masters, however. In an interview with UGO, he explains that:

It is both a blessing and a curse. The blessing is that anytime anybody says your show is like The Sopranos, it’s an incredible compliment because David Chase is Dostoyevsky for television. At the same time, it is a curse because we aren’t The Sopranos. We’re a very different show. We’re different socio-economically, thematically, in terms of our dynamics, and we’re different in terms of our pacing and tone. We’re different in a million different ways, so we want to avoid being compared to certain things. I could do without the comparison in a way, because they’re comparing me to probably the best TV series in the past ten years, dramatically, and it’s a show that casts a long shadow. (Braun http://www.ugo.com/channels/dvd/features/brotherhood/interview.asp) The major concern of Masters would have to be that his show would merely be labeled the “Irish Sopranos.” This could not be further from the case. Although the two shows do share similarities, perhaps most interestingly that both shows’ main characters have their mothers as central characters, they are clearly two different series. A major contrast between the two series is between Chase’s affinity for psychology and Masters’ affectations for theology. In addition to naming episodes after verses from multiple religious texts, he has written a narrative parallel to some of them. Michael Caffee is the prodigal son returning home after many years of the family believing him to be deceased. Tommy Caffee is the jealous brother who allows the attempted murder of his more beloved brother, a la Cain and Abel. There is enough subtext in these references to become apparent to an audience, even to those who aren’t privy to the episode titles or do not know their scriptures from the Bible by heart, or from the Samyutta Nikaya, for that matter.

Another noticeable difference is the way in which the two major female characters act.

While Carmela Anthony practically suffers in silence, confiding only in her priest and the only 14 other woman who knows what she is going through, she is content to make sure that dinner is on the table for her family, she makes sure that the laundry is done, she ignores the infidilities of her husband, accepting them as something she married into, and most importantly, she honors the code to which her husband swore, ensuring that she could spend her days adorned in expensive jewelry and fur coats. Eileen Caffee, however, is a working-class mother who does not work because her husband is an idolized public figure. With the occasional help of her sister-in-law and her mother-in-law, both of whom live on the same block as Eileen, dinner is made and laundry is done. Eileen does not necessarily suffer in silence, however. Eileen uses drugs to cure her boredom and has extramarital affairs to substitute for the lovingness that is missing from her marriage. It is worth noting, however, that both wives were the high school sweethearts of the central male characters in each series.

With that fact, I am forced to go back to the similarities between the series’ narrative structure. Mitchell Z. Newman calls for a radical change to occur in his assessment that modern television is required to evolve:

Over the quarter-century since the rise of the serial, American television has undergone enormous changes with the introduction of more than one hundred new channels, pervasive new structures of media ownership and synergy, and transformations in the technologies of media production and distribution. But in spite of all these developments, the past twenty-five years have seen a remarkably stable condition obtain in which the most basic narrative conventions of the [Prime-Time Serial] have not been significantly altered…Programs that seem quite different from one another may still share their basic storytelling principles. (16-17)

What Newman does not mention, is that the narrative structure has changed somewhat with the onset of subscription television, which only usually airs 13 episodes. As Jason Mittell would argue, both The Sopranos and Brotherhood are representative of the narratological form that contemporary American television offers as a true aesthetic innovation unique to its 15 medium” (30). More so than in standard episodic television, where the plot line from the previous episode has little to no impact on the following episode, and more so than in traditional serial form of television, where the viewer is required to know what happened in the previous episode but not much beyond that to understand the following episode, the form of narrative complexity requires that the viewer might be required to remember what happened several episodes ago, or in some cases, several seasons.

This evolving trend of narrative complexity stems from screenwriters and directors known for their work in film, such as for writing The American President and

Barry Levinson for directing Bugsy, who moved to television, Aaron Sorkin’s and Barry Levinson’s Homicide: Life on the Streets (Mittell 30). In this aspect, it is no coincidence that Chase and Masters have succeeded given their background in the film industry.

Mittell continues by noting the influence of reality television on fiction television writers,

“narrative complexity highlights one limit of reality shows, “asserting the carefully controlled dramatic and comedic manipulation of plots and characters that reality producers find more difficult to generate (31). If The Sopranos was a reality show, most of the main characters would already be in prison due to their crime being witnessed or DNA evidence linking it to them, not to mention the millions of viewers that would have called it in on them, or the police who would probably also be watching in the station house. If Brotherhood was a reality show, one of the back room dealings would have been exposed due to a press leak or a wire being worn by one of the representatives. Narrative complexity rids the writer of all of these burdens, chalking up the way that the plot works out to serendipity on the part of the characters. Perhaps the most attractive aspect of narrative complexity on television is that “many of these writers embrace the broader challenges and possibilities for creativity in long-form series, as extended character 16 depth, ongoing plotting, and episodic variations are simply unavailable within a two-hour film”

(Mittell 31).

No matter how well the show is written, however, it requires an audience to sustain its success. For that, Shawn Shimpach explains the beginning of the cultivation of a mass audience in his essay, “Creative and Cultural Labor of the Media Audience”:

As the motion picture industry rationalized its practices and standardized its product over the course of the cinema’s transitional era, it came increasingly to produce films for an audience imagined to exist [nonanalytically] to the movies being produced. The motion picture audience, constructed through the statistical imagination, came to be an objective entity and constituted a reality separate from (although clearly related to) the activities of the industry. This was an audience that could be measured, counted, calculated, and, through these calculations, known. This knowledge was an advance over the circulation numbers drawn on to construct the audience for commercial magazines beginning in the 1890s and was in turn advanced upon the broadcasting industry in the 1920s, whose audience could only ever be imagined through recourse to discourse and representation. In this way a legitimated and ubiquitous discourse constructing the audience as an objective category, statistically regularlized, played a crucial role in the industrial transformation of all the culture industries. It was in this way that the specific production of the “mass” in mass culture laid the foundation for the emergence of significant industries as well as the cultural and societal role they would be understood to have. (339) For Dickens to understand what his readership craved, he could not go by subscription alone, as many people were too poor to purchase their own copy, so he had to go by word of mouth. For Orson Welles to understand what his radio listeners were responding to, he would have to judge by newspaper reviews, as well as word of mouth. By the time that it was Martin

Scorcese’s turn to direct and The Departed, due to this revolutionary way of categorizing the audience, he knew that he could at least cover his bases. If it works for the written word, radio, and the big screen, there is no doubt that this method has been utilized in gauging television audiences. 17

Concerning the demographics for The Sopranos, “Italian-Americans make up the fifth- largest ethnic group in the last census (almost 16 million people) in the United States (Borandella

299). Although it is harder to gauge since so many have been in this country since it was founded and consider themselves to have Irish in their blood, the potential demographic for

Brotherhood from “the 1990 U.S. Census…threw up the…figure of forty-four million

Americans claiming their primary ethnic links to the old sod” (O’Hanlon 13). Based on the previously mentioned success of films about the Italian and the Irish and the modern trend towards narrative complexity, HBO and Showtime would have been foolish to not take a chance on two shows about these two ethnic groups. In addition, the modern media audience would influence those who weren’t aware of the shows to either subscribe to either or both of the networks or to purchase the when they became available. As trends in subscriptions and

DVD sales increased, advertisers would be more inclined to provide money for product placement, such as Tony Soprano drinking a Coca-Cola™ or Tommy Caffee going to a Dunkin’

Donuts™ instead of consuming generic brands, seeing as how neither HBO nor Showtime air commercials. The networks would bask in the increased revenue streams and the show would be renewed, further continuing the cycle. It does not have to stop there, however, the influence that these premier shows have over terrestrial networks is substantial. Now, toned down versions of the shows, meaning without the gratuitous violence, sexuality, and profanity, can be developed.

In addition to the audience that already watches The Sopranos and Brotherhood, perhaps intrigued based on their devotion to the show that they already enjoy, there now exists a media audience that either cannot afford the subscription to a premier network but is still interested in the subject matter or that just does not approve of gratuitous violence, sex, and profanity. This is 18 a media audience that will go see movies previewed on that network, that will purchase products advertised on that network, and perhaps most invitingly, watch other shows on that network.

The success of both The Sopranos and Brotherhood, is predicated on the idea that they can’t possibly fail. Cultural history is hard to ignore and when it comes to organized crime and political corruption seeing has how its media attention has been swallowed by the spoonful nationwide. The cultural make-up of our society, specifically the areas that can afford the

“good” cable, means that they’re not going to pay for it and not watch it. The vibrant subtext of each episode challenges the viewer to solve a mystery, reminiscent of the old days of Sherlock

Holmes. The narrative complexity in which episode is written implies that not one episode can afford to be missed. The representative dramatization of hopes and fears that we experience in our everyday lives draw us toward the characters and allows us to feel empathy for them. The modern-day icons that we are free to hero worship one night a week takes us back to the days when we used to collect comic books. Most significantly, even if none of these other reasons were relevant, we were programmed to by the modern American media. We chose this and we should not apologize for enjoying it. As John G. Cawelti points out, “popular culture and multiculturalism both claim to have a relationship with “the people” than elitist or canonic culture (4). Although, on the surface, both series seemed to be aimed their cultural demographic, the fact that they spread and are still spreading so far across popular culture suggests that it far exceeded expectations and made a difference in how America views television. The trend suggests, as David Chase has suggested that, “People don’t subscribe to HBO for breasts and blood. If the networks cared about the quality of the writing, they could do just as well. But they don’t, and so they don’t” (Davis 9). Will the networks be able to take the leap and to care more about their quality of writing (Davis 9)? If the unprecedented successes of 19 groundbreaking series like The Sopranos and Brotherhood are any indicator, they had better take that leap soon. America is ready for better television. The proof is in the spumoni…or the Irish pudding, if you prefer. 20

Annotated Bibliography

Bondanella, Peter. Hollywood Italians: Dagos, Palookas, Romeos, Wise Guys, and Sopranos. New York: Continuum, 2004. This book goes into specific detail about David Chase’s intentions for the series and the representation of Italians in the media.

Butsch, Richard. “Class and Audience Effects: A History of Research on Movies, Radio and Television” Journal of Popular Film and Television 29.3 (2001): 112-120. I am going to use this text to establish how certain classes react to different genres of television. Brotherhood is on Showtime, a subscription cable service.

Cawelti, John G. “Popular Culture/Multiculturalism.” Journal of Popular Culture 30.1(1996): 3-19. I used this text to help define popular culture and what makes it possible.

Champion Map of Providence, Rhode Island, and vicinity [map]. Champion Map Corp., 1980. I am going to use this map to establish where Brotherhood is supposed to take place.

Davis, J. Madison. “It’s Over When the Soprano Eats Onion Rings.” World Literature Today: A Literary Quarterly of the University of Oklahoma 82.1(2008): 9-11.

English, T.J. Paddy Whacked: The Untold Story of the Irish-American Gangster. New York: Harper Collins, 2005. This text documents two brothers, one a mobster, the other a local politician, on which the series Brotherhood mirrors. It is a cultural reference.

Fields, Ingrid Walker. “Family Values and Feudal Codes: The Social Politics of America’s Twenty-First Century Gangster.” Journal of Popular Culture 37.4 (2004): 611-633. Brotherhood and The Sopranos are about family relations as well as the image of the modern gangster. I will use it to examine and contrast The Sopranos as well as Brotherhood.

21

Gauntlett, David and Annette Hill. TV Living: Television, Culture and Everyday Life. London: Routledge, 1999. I use this text to explain trends in contemporary television audiences

Hareven, Tamara K. “The Home and the Family in Historical Perspective.” Social Research 58.1(1991): 253-285 This article was used to define what the modern family used to be considered and contrast it with what it is supposed to be now.

Hayward, Jennifer. Consuming Pleasures: Active Audiences and Serial Fictions from Dickens to Soap Opera. Lexington, KY: UP of Kentucky, 1997. I use this text to define realism in serial narration.

Hendin, Josephine Gattuso. “Tony and Meadow: The Sopranos as Father-Daughter Drama.” Literature Interpretation Theory 14.1(2003): 63-67. One of the main characters in Brotherhood, Tommy Caffey, the “good” one, has three daughters, the eldest of which plays prominently in Season One.

Himmelstein, Hal. Television Myth and the American Mind. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994. I use this text to explain the fiction audience’s fascination with the “hero.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KduZ7ziNJM8 This is a link to a brief documentary of the locations chosen for Brotherhood. http://www.ugo.com/channels/dvd/features/brotherhood/interview.asp This is an interview with Blake Masters from UGO online magazine.

Johnson, Colleen Leahy. Growing Up and Growing Old in Italian-American Families. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1985. I use this text to get a sense of what it is like to be in an Italian-American Family.

22

Levine, Edward M. The Irish and Irish Politicians: A Study of Cultural and Social Alienation. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1966. I use this text to get a sense of the modern Irish-American.

Matheson, Sarah A. “The Cultural Politics of Wife Swap: Taste, Lifestyle Media, and the American Family.” Film and History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies 37.2(2007): 33-47. I used this article to explain the influence of contemporary television on the modern family.

Mittell, Jason. “Narrative Complexity in Contemporary American Television.” Velvet Light Trap 58.3(2006): 29-40. I used this article to describe what methods are being used in the post-modern era of serial fiction.

Newman, Michael Z. “From Beats to Arcs: Toward a Poetics of Television Narrative.” Velvet Light Trap 58.3(2006): 16-28. I used this article to describe the evolution of the modern day television prime-time serial over the last twenty-five years.

O’Hanlon, Ray. The New Irish Americans. Niwot, CO: Roberts Rinehart, 1998. I referred to this text to get an idea of what the modern Irish-American considered himself to be. It was only useful for statistical data concerning the Irish-American population in the United States.

Pinsof, William M. Family Psychology: The Art of Science. Oxford University Press, 2005. I consulted this text as it is titled to get a sense of family psychology and how it is employed in The Sopranos and Brotherhood. It was not useful because my relationships were too specific. the effects of divorce.

Shimpach, Shawn. “Working Watching: The Creative and Cultural Labor of the Media Audience.” Social Semiotics 15.3 (2005): 343-360. This text will be used to explain how Brotherhood’s and The Sopranos’ audience is consuming it and the steps Showtime and HBO are taking to accommodate that audience. It was very useful in explaining how corporate research was done.

23

United States, Bureau of the Census, Geography Bureau. Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. U.S. Dept of Commerce pub. 1983. I am going to use this text to establish average incomes for the families that live in this region. They represent the intended audience for the show. 24

Works Cited

Bondanella, Peter. Hollywood Italians: Dagos, Palookas, Romeos, Wise Guys, and Sopranos. New York: Continuum, 2004. Cawelti, John G. “Popular Culture/Multiculturalism.” Journal of Popular Culture 30.1(1996): 3-19 Davis, J. Madison. “It’s Over When the Soprano Eats Onion Rings.” World Literature Today: A Literary Quarterly of the University of Oklahoma 82.1(2008): 9-11. English, T.J. Paddy Whacked: The Untold Story of the Irish-American Gangster. New York: Harper Collins, 2005. Gauntlett, David and Annette Hill. TV Living: Television, Culture and Everyday Life. London: Routledge, 1999.

Hareven, Tamara K. “The Home and the Family in Historical Perspective.” Social Research 8.1(1991): 253-285. Hayward, Jennifer. Consuming Pleasures: Active Audiences and Serial Fictions from Dickens to Soap Opera. Lexington, KY: UP of Kentucky, 1997. Himmelstein, Hal. Television Myth and the American Mind. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994. http://www.ugo.com/channels/dvd/features/brotherhood/interview.asp Matheson, Sarah A. “The Cultural Politics of Wife Swap: Taste, Lifestyle Media, and the American Family.” Film and History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies 37.2(2007): 33-47. Mittell, Jason. “Narrative Complexity in Contemporary American Television.” Velvet Light Trap 58.3(2006): 29-40. Newman, Michael Z. “From Beats to Arcs: Toward a Poetics of Television Narrative.” Velvet Light Trap 58.3(2006): 16-28. O’Hanlon, Ray. The New Irish Americans. Niwot, CO: Roberts Rinehart, 1998. Shimpach, Shawn. “Working Watching: The Creative and Cultural Labor of the Media Audience.” Social Semiotics 15.3 (2005): 343-360.