Criticism Volume 51 | Issue 2 Article 7 2009 Ethical Uplift, "Not For Nuthin" Charles J. Stivale Wayne State University Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/criticism Recommended Citation Stivale, Charles J. (2009) "Ethical Uplift, "Not For Nuthin"," Criticism: Vol. 51: Iss. 2, Article 7. Available at: http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/criticism/vol51/iss2/7 ETHICAL UPLIFT, Dana Polan’s The Sopranos—the fi rst volume of Spin Offs in the “NOT FOR NUTHIN” established Duke University Press Charles J. Stivale series The Console-ing Passions— presents the challenge to readers, and especially to viewers/fans, of The Sopranos by Dana Polan. how one might read, understand, Durham, NC: Duke University and interpret a popular media Press, 2009. Pp. 232, 29 product in the age of corporate illustrations. $74.95 cloth, marketing strategies and commer- $21.95 paper. cial tie-ins and spinoffs. Through- out a two-part study—the fi rst part devoted to “The Sopranos on Screen,” the second to “The Sopra- nos in the Marketplace”—Polan suggests that no nonironic, non- problematized, thus no simple in- terpretation is possible especially of a series created by writers and pro- ducers who deliberately exploited the show’s ironic content and shift- ing cultural status. In the prologue, Polan focuses on the controversial nonending of The Sopranos’s fi nal episode as a way to emphasize two main foci of the study: on one hand, series features and motifs (part I) that engendered such fervent audi- ence involvement over a decade and reactions to the nonending, and, on the other hand (in part II), the life of the series after its pur- ported end via new media products, including the web. Focusing on the apparent nar- rative inadequacies of the series’ nonending, Polan argues that many fans fell into several interpretive traps: most notably, they confused narrative levels—“the fi ction ver- sus its fabrication and its narra- tion” (5)—and, by demanding to Criticism, Spring 2009, Vol. 51, No. 2, pp. 339–348. ISSN: 0011-1589. 339 © 2009 Wayne State University Press, Detroit, MI 48201-1309. 340 CHARLES J. STIVALE know what “happened next,” they The different motifs addressed implicitly denied that Tony So- in the “on screen” section I include prano “exists inside a fi ctional narrative strategies (in chapter 2; context that has creators behind it” for example, the mix of stand-alone (5). Another trap is that “the show stories with continuous serial itself had already made clear that tales, and expansion strategies via no such end would probably be backstory, unforeseen interactions, fully satisfying within its frame- and new characters), the complex work” (6) by deliberately situating role played by food (in chapter 3, the developing story with refer- linking nutrition to memory and ences to other, comparable cultural also revealing how the insignifi - products—for instance, Martin cant detail could gain signifi cance Scorsese’s Goodfellas and The God- through later narrative deploy- father fi lms—that The Sopranos ment), and the concomitant role would evoke, but not imitate. Also, played by forgetfulness (in chapter to this strategy of “refusal to satisfy 4; that is, how plotlines disappeared the viewers’ easy expectations,” and also how character develop- Polan connects David Chase’s in- ment seemed to be undone as a debtedness to modernist European character remained locked into cinema, yielding an experimental cycles of repetition of familiar be- creative thrust, “a practice of popu- havior). In contrast to this repeti- lar modernism . blending the tive pattern, in chapter 5, Polan comforts of the already known borrows the concept of “late style” with the challenges of the boldly from Theodor Adorno and Ed- new” (9). Hence, the audience ward Said to describe The Sopranos had been set up by this “work of as a manifesto of “the sentiment popular culture deeply invested in that [artworks] have literally ar- irony, but an often playful one rived late on the scene of history caught up in the undoing of each and that there’s nothing affi rma- and every certainty [one might] try tive left to be said” (65)—hence, to formulate about the show” (9). belatedness both biologically (for Finally, alongside these complex the individual) and historically creative strategies, Polan situates (for a society). The overarching the series’ status within the grow- thematics of the loss of moral ing corporate mediaverse as a mar- certainty—for example, Tony So- ket commodity, as a sociocultural prano’s reverence for the lost hero- signpost (extending even into the ism of Gary Cooper and disdain 2004 presidential race), and as an for the growing culture of victim- intersection of “not only meaning- ization—result in a series “peopled fulness and substance, but also [of] with characters who seem out of hipness, newness and cutting-edge sync, stuck in a time out of joint” innovation” (15). (66). These thematics of loss also ON POLAN’S THE SOPRANOS 341 engage issues of physical decay “upscale,” “liberal do-gooder,” and (bodies losing strength, vigor), and “possess[ing] disposable income”— Polan ironically reads this belated- gets set up as seeking to “fl irt with ness as a caution not to read too taboos and to push the envelope of much into the series’ “seeming dis- propriety,” while HBO can pro- play of deep meaning” (69), noting duce what such viewers might the ways that the show can operate value as “high-quality TV even as “in the register of farcical defl ation, it eschewed many of the imputed reiterating that there may be some- foundations of such quality in pro- thing both sad and laughable about found drama, moral uplift, deep the destiny of seriousness in ironic seriousness, and liberal responsi- times” (71). bility” (85). Although Polan ends Polan shifts the reading strategy the chapter there, this apparent di- signifi cantly in chapter 6, address- gression into narrative-as-gaming ing the viewers’ experience of The allows him to pull the veil away Sopranos as a mode of gaming, as and impute viewers’ inherent bad they learn “how to assemble the faith and hypocrisy. In this sense, data of a vast fi ctional universe that while the chapter’s title is “Gaming requires one to remember plot The Sopranos,” it’s the viewer who details and character interrelation has gotten gamed by HBO and across vast stretches of episodic through this analysis. narrativity” (73). While this focus The shift away from a tight fo- does divert the reading somewhat cus on series’ features and motifs from the “on screen” thematics, continues henceforth: in both chap- Polan takes up the gaming strate- ter 7 (“Getting High in The Sopra- gies in order to question, in the nos”) and 8 (“Qualifying ‘Quality chapter’s concluding paragraphs, TV’”), Polan’s concern is the para- the show’s relationship to its target doxical status of a popular media audience. That is, the narrative-as- product as representing so-called gaming approach yields a vicarious quality TV, a term in media studies experience (a kind of Second [view- for “shows of supposed high value” ing] Life, as it were) through which (86). Hence, in chapter 7, the “The Sopranos enables the urban “getting high” in the title refers sophisticate a chance to slum, an only incidentally to drug use and opportunity to throw off propriety primarily to culture in terms of the and fl irt with a scandalous and art-house form of The Sopranos even dangerous world,” since this (due to the infl uence of European work of popular culture “provides cinema on producer David Chase), a temporary, ludic space to indulge notably, the sobriety of style, the in political incorrectness” (85). Yet theatrical infl uence on the produc- again, ironies abound since the tion, and idiosyncratic, even mys- target viewer—cast by Polan as terious scenes (like the many dream 342 CHARLES J. STIVALE sequences; Christopher’s near-death gaming and quality TV comple- view of hell as an Irish bar; and mented and enriched the already Tony’s coma-induced visions and stimulating analysis of features subsequent peyote trip in the Ne- and motifs (chapters 2–5), chapter vada desert). Polan’s key point 10 comes off as a rather high- returns yet again: all of these traits minded and, indeed, peculiar “may hint at meaning but never imitation of The Sopranos’s “pierc- deliver it up since their real power ing [of] the pretensions of high lies in their performance of style art,” in this case, contra the critics and look” (99). Then, in chapter 8, thereof. Polan’s complaint is that Polan locates The Sopranos within critics (notably, authors of “a half the TV medium’s search for qual- dozen or so academic books on ity initiated by the tradition of HBO’s The Sopranos,” Polan’s American golden age televised emphasis) treat the show “as a ve- dramas of the 1950s. Polan also hicle for real-life issues and claim explores, in chapter 9, another as- that the show’s emotional and pect of quality TV in the medium’s intellectual appeal stems from early decades, specifi cally the do- traffi cking in such topics” (114). mestic sitcom that had a strong in- Although Polan admits that such fl uence on The Sopranos, with the issues do serve as “signposts that added twist, of course, that in The audiences recognize and can lock Sopranos, the depiction consists of into,” his objection is that these are intersections of two families, do- really “recognizable big issues that mestic and Mafi a. Polan concludes bring one into the work but that chapter 9 by emphasizing that any serve ultimately as free-fl oating attempt to separate The Sopranos’s motifs in a playful environment quality from the popular culture where proper morality is suspended and comedy to which the show and where willful ambiguity is owes so much would constitute exploited” (115).