Deconstructing 'Sopranos': crumbling text, asymmetry &  song in  Episode 13 entitled "Army of One"(Season 3, 2001)

If I puff a tv show like 'Sopranos', it's not to show the ubiquity of pop culture, liberal broadcasting standards of HBO or even my own predilection for mafia storylines (though I've always been fascinated by them) but rather to give it its due. 'Sopranos' is nothing short of brilliant production work.

 Cinematic techniques run the gamut from film noir, to surrealist cinema, to pulp detective and, of course, classic gangster (kudos to David Chase); one-dimensional characters are a guise for rather complex Freudian & Skinnerian diagnoses (as the Dr. Melfi-Soprano therapy sessions illustrate). Here sociopathic personalities undergo literary, sexual and ethnic epiphanies—at times even the whole "Mezzogiorno" ethos coming in for some radical self-critique (as in the controversial Columbus Day episode of Season 1).

And the music (oh! the music), whether the arias, Dean Martin westerns, hip hop & Italian folklore, is an integral part of the narrative (again, thanks to David Chase). I think of the beautifully dissociative effect of pairing Fred Neil's song "Dolphins" with Christopher Moltisanti's heroin relapse at the circus.(Season 6, Episode 9)

One episode in particular, "Army of One", deserves attention not just because of any of the above-mentioned features; it illustrates a recurrent asymmetry between reality and art that I consider to be the show's defining quality.It's the discontinuities between intention and reality (Tony Soprano and psyche; Ralph Cifaretto and parenting; Vito Spatafore and sexual identity, etc) that make the 'Sopranos' text.

But a text whose center cannot hold. What begins as a 50s traditional patriarchal household dissolves into ego, hidden resentments & irrational parody of itself. All the traditional codes, socio-cultural, ethnic and linguistic break apart as story progresses, one by one, sometimes inexplicably and sometimes as the result of a logic of brutal retributive justice. Whether the cosmos or mob dynamics is to blame is best decided individually.

The title itself "Army of One" is a false cipher, among many, for patriarchy & patrimony, one falsely promising control over the maddening randomness of Paterson, NJ. There are two scenes worthy of note linked to two characters, A.J. and Meadow. Consider the last resort to national homogeneity and tradition in the case of an undisciplined son enrolled in a military school against his will. But A.J. Soprano Jr, prone to the same anxiety attacks as the father, collapses on the floor in his shako. With paternity and patriotism all gone in an instant, the father is left questioning the idea of progeny itself.
In Episode 13 (Season 3) things looks fairly stable until, of course, the intruding chaos of the unexamined Italo-American life, the familiar pattern of stability and rupture: first the violent death of Jackie Jr at the hands of his step-dad, then Meadow Soprano's almost hysterical reaction at the wake and her disingenuous avowals afterwards of who is ultimately responsible. A distraught daughter who later futilely tries to exact her own type of revenge against the putative crime boss Corrado Soprano by tossing bread balls at him as he sings a Neapolitan song "Core 'ngrato".

I think viewers recognize that the break with tradition, even a sense of family and clannish loyalty the 'Sopranos' celebrates, comes with a terrible price: no less than that of ethno-cultural distortion or even non-identity. Perhaps 'Sopranos' is a continuing metaphor, throughout all six seasons, of Corrado's "Core 'ngrato" song, a lament for the immigrant experience or transmission of European soul horribly misappropriated in America and fated to end in a final abrupt fade-out.

Perhaps I see in 'Sopranos' a little of the parody of myself as another son of Italy far flung from his cultural shores, left to relive a lost patrimony through perhaps an equally foreign Americanized gangster version. Perhaps too bedazzled to see the "obscenity of spectacle" (Baudrillard) in the brilliant staging, music and narrative of my favourite tv show.