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The Sopranos Visit Italy - 5 Things
Oct. 1st, 2021 04:45 pmIn The Sopranos season 2 episode 4 Tony, Paulie, and Christopher travel to Naples, Italy. Tony is looking to strike a deal with an organized crime family there who are distant relatives of his. By the end of the episode he strikes a deal, but story about how he gets to that deal is less about the deal itself and more about how he and his colleagues learn— or fail to learn— about how being Italian-American is not at all like being Italian. Here are Five Things:
1) They don't speak the language. In every episode in the series we see members of the Soprano gang, their family, and their friends liberally mixing Italian words into their conversation. On the car ride from the airport Paulie threads together words to ask a question of the hired driver in Italian. The driver chuckles— and it's unclear whether he's laughing in agreement with Paulie or laughing at his broken Italian. This scene seems like it's the start of a thread about the characters brushing up their language skills but actually it's the ironic high point. For all they take pride in their Italian heritage, the Americans are like fish out of water in Italy. They emphatically don't speak the language. They rely on the few Italian counterparts who do speak English to translate, and many of their counterparts openly mock them in Italian while they smile dumbly.
2) Tony can't fathom a woman leader. As Tony is introduced to various people in the Naples crime gang he objects to being told to negotiate with people he knows are not the boss. As he calls them out for disrespect he learns that the elder patriarch, whom he presses to talk to, is senile. The more recent boss, the man's son-in-law, is in prison serving a life sentence. The real boss now is Annalisa, daughter of the elderly patriarch and wife of the boss languishing in prison. Tony is openly skeptical that a woman could be a gang boss. For someone so consumed by expectations of respect for his position as a boss it's ironic that he treats her disrespectfully over the course of a few conversations. He does come around to respect her position, sort of, after a few days— though his respect is partly because he finds her sexually attractive.
3) The Italians are more violent, and the police more corrupt. In one scene as the gangs are leaving a swank hotel/restaurant a young man in the street sets off a few small fireworks. The Italians immediately go into "Secret Service protecting the President" mode, pushing the elderly patriarch to the ground and covering him with their bodies against what they loudly decry is a hail of gunfire. Meanwhile, Tony and Paulie just stand there like, "Yeah, those are firecrackers, not guns." (Bonus cultural difference: American know what guns sound like because we we hear them so often.) The Naples gang finds the young man who lit the firecrackers and starts beating him up. Tony and Paulie suggest they let him go because he meant nothing by it, but the Italians really lay into him. A police officer at the scene sees the gang beating him up and drives away. To be sure, there are corrupt US cops portrayed in the series, but their corruption is not so naked as witnessing a violent crime while in uniform and on duty and driving away while a civilian is possibly murdered.
4) Paulie tries to fit in, is unwelcome. Throughout the episode Paulie tries to fit in as an Italian man. This is, after all, the country of all his ancestors, and he always been proud of his heritage. Yet at every turn he's confronted with the fact that he's not Italian and Italian people couldn't care less about him. Italian counterparts at a dinner make fun of him (in Italian) for wanting pasta and tomato sauce instead of the shellfish delicacy everyone else is eating. Diners at a cafe roll their eyes and turn away when he greets them in Italian. A passerby on the street, upon learning that Paulie is from American, cares only that an American Air Force pilot was responsible for a ski tram accident in which several people died.
The way that Paulie was confronted over and over with the fact that being Italian-American is not at all like being Italian resonates with me because I have a relative who spouts off frequently about being Italian. Meanwhile I roll my eyes and silently rebut, "No, you're not Italian, you're an American narcissist from Brooklyn." (Yes, BTW, this is "Lennie", whom I've written about before.)
5) "Keep your nose clean". That's a saying I've heard in connection with other organized crime stories. It means don't use drugs— particularly for people who traffic drugs. It's advice that the character Christopher would do well to heed. Early in the trip to Naples he spots that one of his counterparts has needle tracks all up and down his arm. Rather than think, "Hmm, this is a person to avoid," he decides it's a person he needs to hit up for a fix. After starting the trip with aggressive plans to visit Mt. Vesuvius just outside of town he ends up spending the whole time in a bedroom glassy eyed and half passed out with other junkies.
1) They don't speak the language. In every episode in the series we see members of the Soprano gang, their family, and their friends liberally mixing Italian words into their conversation. On the car ride from the airport Paulie threads together words to ask a question of the hired driver in Italian. The driver chuckles— and it's unclear whether he's laughing in agreement with Paulie or laughing at his broken Italian. This scene seems like it's the start of a thread about the characters brushing up their language skills but actually it's the ironic high point. For all they take pride in their Italian heritage, the Americans are like fish out of water in Italy. They emphatically don't speak the language. They rely on the few Italian counterparts who do speak English to translate, and many of their counterparts openly mock them in Italian while they smile dumbly.
2) Tony can't fathom a woman leader. As Tony is introduced to various people in the Naples crime gang he objects to being told to negotiate with people he knows are not the boss. As he calls them out for disrespect he learns that the elder patriarch, whom he presses to talk to, is senile. The more recent boss, the man's son-in-law, is in prison serving a life sentence. The real boss now is Annalisa, daughter of the elderly patriarch and wife of the boss languishing in prison. Tony is openly skeptical that a woman could be a gang boss. For someone so consumed by expectations of respect for his position as a boss it's ironic that he treats her disrespectfully over the course of a few conversations. He does come around to respect her position, sort of, after a few days— though his respect is partly because he finds her sexually attractive.
3) The Italians are more violent, and the police more corrupt. In one scene as the gangs are leaving a swank hotel/restaurant a young man in the street sets off a few small fireworks. The Italians immediately go into "Secret Service protecting the President" mode, pushing the elderly patriarch to the ground and covering him with their bodies against what they loudly decry is a hail of gunfire. Meanwhile, Tony and Paulie just stand there like, "Yeah, those are firecrackers, not guns." (Bonus cultural difference: American know what guns sound like because we we hear them so often.) The Naples gang finds the young man who lit the firecrackers and starts beating him up. Tony and Paulie suggest they let him go because he meant nothing by it, but the Italians really lay into him. A police officer at the scene sees the gang beating him up and drives away. To be sure, there are corrupt US cops portrayed in the series, but their corruption is not so naked as witnessing a violent crime while in uniform and on duty and driving away while a civilian is possibly murdered.
4) Paulie tries to fit in, is unwelcome. Throughout the episode Paulie tries to fit in as an Italian man. This is, after all, the country of all his ancestors, and he always been proud of his heritage. Yet at every turn he's confronted with the fact that he's not Italian and Italian people couldn't care less about him. Italian counterparts at a dinner make fun of him (in Italian) for wanting pasta and tomato sauce instead of the shellfish delicacy everyone else is eating. Diners at a cafe roll their eyes and turn away when he greets them in Italian. A passerby on the street, upon learning that Paulie is from American, cares only that an American Air Force pilot was responsible for a ski tram accident in which several people died.
The way that Paulie was confronted over and over with the fact that being Italian-American is not at all like being Italian resonates with me because I have a relative who spouts off frequently about being Italian. Meanwhile I roll my eyes and silently rebut, "No, you're not Italian, you're an American narcissist from Brooklyn." (Yes, BTW, this is "Lennie", whom I've written about before.)
5) "Keep your nose clean". That's a saying I've heard in connection with other organized crime stories. It means don't use drugs— particularly for people who traffic drugs. It's advice that the character Christopher would do well to heed. Early in the trip to Naples he spots that one of his counterparts has needle tracks all up and down his arm. Rather than think, "Hmm, this is a person to avoid," he decides it's a person he needs to hit up for a fix. After starting the trip with aggressive plans to visit Mt. Vesuvius just outside of town he ends up spending the whole time in a bedroom glassy eyed and half passed out with other junkies.
