Today I will be looking into the background and discriminatory themes behind the 3rd season of The Sopranos. A TV Series from which I am focusing was made between 1999-2001, portrays an Italian-American family, where the father is one of the main men in the North Jersey Mafia. It dives into family struggles, life as an Italian-American, depression and mental illness, betrayal, abandonment, and more. The main character, Tony Soprano, is a middle-aged Italian man with 2 kids, AJ and Meadow Soprano, and wife Carmella Soprano. There are a lot of moments of discrimination against both Italians and those of our ethnicity’s in the show, as it is meant to show a ‘traditional’ time as an Italian-American in the USA.
One example of this is when Meadow Soprano begins dating an African-American male, and when Tony finds out about this when he meets the man, he confronts him with racial slurs and disrespectful language and the man doesn’t come to visit Meadow at her house after the incident any longer. When Meadow finds out about this incident, she says that she is no longer on speaking terms with her father, and that he is a bigot, and stuck in the past. Tony’s explanation discussed about how Italians have to fend for themselves, that he has plenty of ‘black acquaintances’, and both sides know not to go any further than that. He claims it is wrong for his Italian daughter to date a black man, and it shows how Others can have a mentality to stay together rather than diversify when discriminated against. Throughout the show, Tony and the rest of the Sopranos are looked down upon by high-class Americans, as they don’t believe there is a way that an Italian family can be wealthy without coming from crime. Once, Tony goes to a golf outing with some high-class individuals. The entire time, they ask him about mafia movies, Italian culture, and make him do things they think a stereotypical Italian would do. This is why Tony is so passionate about his Italian background with his family, because he thinks it is them against the world, and is in his head why he denied Meadow from dating Noah.
Although Tony has no power over being Italian, it is identity that in the USA he has to live with, and to take control of it, he makes it a prideful thing rather than something to be ashamed about, for better or for worse. In cases, this means he doesn’t let xenophobic comments affect him, but then in other instances it means that he is discriminatory towards others in the show. This is what happens when somebody who has been discriminated against has a chance to be the one doing the discriminating. Even though he understands how much it affects him, he wasn’t hesitant to do it to someone else, this shows how people react to power or control over another, no matter how they were raised or treated before. Power changes people, and this is no different in the situation of Tony Soprano and his daughters boyfriend, Noah. The directors of the show wanted us as viewers to see how traditional values can affect discrimination, and how having power can result in the worst of a person to come out. It asks us the question about if one would be willing to get rid of their discriminatory values or if what is comfortable and safe is what is better for them.