Sopranos Feminist

Gangster Feminism: The Feminist Cultural Work of HBO's "The Sopranos"
Author(s): Merri Lisa Johnson

Source: Feminist Studies, Vol. 33, No. 2 (Summer, 2007), pp. 269-296
Published by: Feminist Studies, Inc.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20459136
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Gangster Feminism:
The Feminist
Cultural Work of
HBO's "The Sopranos"
Merri LisaJohnson
A L T H O U G H N O T A S H O "that goes in for 'very special episodes' about

abortion or bulimia," following reviewer Rebecca Traister's phrasing, The
Sopranos has tackled some women's issues that may be even more uncom
fortable."1 Given the regularity of scenes on HBO's six-season gangster
drama that correspond to recognizably feminist issues-for example, Janice
claims the identity of feminist despite letting Richie fuck her while hold
ing a gun to her head; Dr. Jennifer Melfi is brutally raped and subse
quently experiences symptoms of post-traumatic stress; Meadow's
roommate, Caitlin, suffers from an anxiety disorder and self-medicates
with Absolut Vodka; Carmela grapples with mixed feelings about her
husband's adulterous relationships-The Sopranos clearly qualifies as a site of
"primetime feminism," fulfilling quality television's role, formulated
eloquently by Bonnie J. Dow, as "an important ideological forum for
public discourse about social issues and social change."2 In its representa
tions of rape, battering, and spousal murder, the third season of The
Sopranos, even more than the series as a whole, persistently took up the
feminist cultural work of examining "the economic and social roots of
violence," mirroring a key tactic in cutting-edge cultural studies.3
The graphic nature of those scenes, however, prompted critics and
fans alike to ask whether The Sopranos went too far.4 Others asked why the
Feminist Studies 33, no. 2 (Summer 2007). ?) 2007 by Feminist Studies, Inc.
269
270 Merri LisaJohnson
charge of going "too far" came up only

women, while the more prevalent viole
frequently went unchallenged. These inq
The Sopranos recall similar critical conver
phenomenon, Twin Peaks. "What's new abo
affair with the interfaces of sex and death
dead or maimed or mutilated or suicidal o
they're sexually active?" asked Diana Hu
titled "Lynching Women" (a pun on fil
"Prime time business as usual," she answer
even feminists let it go by, behaving like c
a man so charismatic that we just couldn't
directed this charge in part at her own fa
to being a "Peaks freak" and struggled to
between her viewing pleasure and her "ob
[she] regard[ed] as reptilian." She wrote
port, who proposed that "Twin Peaks is in
with, recent feminist discussions about
evinces a "crisis of spectatorship" in femi
Halberstam made in relation to gay and
1991 film, Basic Instinct: "We simply do n
violence: all too often representations of t
phobia, racism, and sexism are collapsed b
racism, and sexism themselves." The texts
this crisis, given the nature of media ima
with forces of domination and resistan
optation and upheaval," as Douglas Ke
media culture. A tight weave of compet
antifeminist, and pseudo-feminist-riddles
It is within the context of these deba
violence in media culture that I wish to si
The Sopranos, "University," in which Ralp
member, brutally murders his pregnant g
the Bada Bing! Although I concede at th
guishing between representations of vi
Merri LisaJohnson 271
force sexism and representations of violenc

sexism, the following analysis trades the "t
chal villain" of 1970s film theory in for a
ality, tracing the intersecting oppressions
psyches of each character.6 Indeed, the
Sopranos resides specifically in the show's at
represented by the richly textured portrai
productively brought to the surface thr
worker feminism and feminist masculinity
THE STRIPPER AS RESISTING READE

Throughout the episode, "University," tw
woven. One narrative strand follows Trac
strip club, as she attempts to create a tradit
In the opening scene she approaches To
datenut bread and is gently reprimanded f
the binary of good and bad womanhood.
In Tony's layman's terms, "You can't be do
Silvio, Tony's consigliere, dismisses her m
jab at the ludicrousness of a stripper who b
Silvio instructs as he taps his watch, sendin
position as working girl.
When Tracee discovers she is pregnant
fantasies of a future homelife with her ga
despite his domineering personality and er
desires measure the extreme distortions pr
ogy of family values, as she pictures a stere
story: a loving marriage, a fulfilling moth
tidily poised at the end curve of a New Jer
experiences of the nuclear family as a vi
Tracee's hand on the stove when she was a
burning her infant son with cigarettes-a
nostalgia for home. This narrative strate
imagery of home as safe, peaceful, comf
frequent reality of home as violent, artific
tutes a major element of this episode. T

can be grouped with Tracee's delusions a
Like Tracee, Tony longs for a pastora
never existed. Indeed his own home
complete with a borderline personality
in his eye and mobster father cutting of
him, then spending the night with his
miscarriage.8 In its contrapuntal line of
memories, The Sopranos reenacts a wides
the "miscarriage" of family, home, and
subgenre characteristic of HBO original
drama-produces a paradoxically utopia
tives of family values. "University" mob
and dystopian visions of home in the
terization as a fallen woman with class-d
in the eyes of her gangster boss and boy
good life.
It is in fact a commonplace of the feminist movement against domes
tic violence that classism is responsible for the misleading idea of home as
a safe retreat from the dangers of the public world. Middle- and upper
class homes are not necessarily free of spousal abuse and other sexist social
ills. Through strategic editing, "University" echoes this insight, repeatedly
collapsing the violence of strip club spaces against the performed comfort
of home life to underscore the continuities between stigmatized and
socially sanctioned arenas, asserting that they are not as separate or oppo
site as our symbolic register suggests. For example, in his capacity as
manager of the Bada Bing! Silvio slaps Tracee and slams her down on the
hood of his car after she misses three days of work, as Ralphie laughs
vindictively from the window of his house. The scene change uses his
laughter as its transitional element, melding seamlessly into laughter at
the family dinner table with his high-status mob-widow girlfriend, Rosalie
Aprile, and their guests. The dinner party conversation is structured by
stereotypical dialogue from the "war between the sexes," as the women
trade cliched complaints about empty milk cartons in the fridge and "the
football trance." Men have, as Rosalie says, "the attention span of chil
dren." This rehearsal of the popular m

flags a lethargic antagonism beneath the s
tension amplified significantly by the pr
an obviously false performance of warmt
disingenuous facade of "family values" of
and justify violence toward the women
ability, signaled by her exclusion from th
approval of Silvio's corporal punishment,
social-ladder-climbing, middle-class
Ralphie's hands a back alley abortion o
murder at the intersection of sexism and
exposes the cold and calculating ideologica
bourgeois family, returning to the crit
"family as haven" and "heartless world."9
"brutal world of commerce" creates our n
ive retreat within the family-and the S
precise conceptual sites where "haven" bor
The second narrative strand follows Mea
negotiates romantic mythologies and imp
year at Columbia University. Fully awa
Meadow often embodies a perspective w
the barriers Tony erects between blood
savvy subverts our expectations that da
while strippers are worldly and cynica
daughter dynamic on The Sopranos, psych
argued that "Meadow and Tony are a matc
cive vulnerability and coercive power,"
demonstrate their shared skills in subt
Meadow is thus more "gangster" than T
more likely heir apparent to Tony's positi
A.J. Her loss of virginity in this episode
quest for domesticity. The "good" daug
"bad" stripper seeks the legitimacy of lov
These blurred boundaries between stereot
dictum that each pole is haunted and infl
Tracee and Meadow hold within their se

other, calling the good girl/bad girl binary
directly into question and, once again, poin
a defining axis of feminine respectability.
This transvaluation is deliberately crafte
rhetorically pointed segues in which Mead
one exemplary set of paired scenes, Mea
chat cozily in bed about Meadow's new b
asks her daughter if she is in love with hi
point I'd better be." Carmela follows up
demures, "We are so not having that conve
saw Meadow under Noah as he unwrappe
referring to the birds-and-bees conversati
able humor in family television. In her
ness, Meadow is not "going there" with
"very special moments" that shapes mu
dialogue. The dialogue is thus at odds with
discord between the viewer's conditione
comfort and the scene's oppositional traj
The next scene deftly reproduces the daug
tion between Tracee and Tony. Tracee tells
the baby is Ralphie's. Instead of taking pla
the family home, this conversation happen
vulnerable public space of a gravel parking
between dialogue and setting, the dia
harmony, while the setting casts this h
Positioned in relation to Tony in this sce
seeks advice and support, but, as unwed m
on the hybrid role of deviant daughter, do
ered status. Tony reminds Tracee of her ru
Family and Children's Services (D-FACS)
her innocent question, "If I have it, do you
"Oh sure, it'll be Father Knows Best over t
television history in Tracee's deluded visio
sion of "father knows best," Tony recomm
On one textual level, then, Meadow an

rate socially-classed material spaces: M
outside; Meadow is home while Tracee is in
is with family while Tracee is with he
enfolded in the comfort of bed and mate
literally and figuratively at arm's length
inanimate metal of his car door window f
lighting while Tracee squints in the harsh
ters are set up through this series of con
that "belong" in the other space. Meadow
virginity and confesses uncertainty about
Tracee indicates reluctance to get an ab
optimism for making a home with R
language of feminist narratologist Minro
home and strip club do not correspon
ideologies of gender, class, and sexuality-
Meadow and Tracee are "in different pl
than their scripts and settings would hav
versity," for instance, names a social inst
opposed to the Bada Bing! despite the f
work as exotic dancers. The title's off-cen
duces the cultural marginalization of s
implicitly acknowledging the flow of wom
and strip club, or respectability and sex
are being "schooled" in the possibilities an
cultural scripts, and the viewer is offered
clubs as mutually reinforcing disciplin
"bad" places. It is on this textual level
physical settings do not articulate prop
worker feminism emerges.
In particular, the commonly noted poin
the whore stigma affects all women struc
of character and morality. Jill Nagle, edito
urged her readers "to problematize not on
sex industry, but also choices not to,"
experiences can be viewed as a comm

Tracee's. Not becoming a stripper-a decis
choice to be good or to respect oneself
sion to limits on public displays of the r
social class rather than morality. Mead
her cultural script as Tracee's is. For,
something that women are not only sup
mistaken for. This division translates into
but also to appear virtuous, to again dem
privileged half of the good girl/bad g
Tracee and Meadow dismantles this te
traits of young women in the space b
borrow Nagle's language, "what purpos
categories to describe women."'12
In an interview with Terry Gross on NP
David Chase identified "University" as
episode of the series, and his comments
articulate) engagement on his part w
responsibility. Chase asserted that the e
that nobody cared about." His descrip
itself to a reading of Tracee at the inter
sexual stigma, as he situated the episo
"violence against women" that hap
culture.13 The series' use of extreme
economic roots of violence recurs in
"Sentimental Education," devoted in par
Asians. Although some viewers migh
simple reiterations of stereotypes in w
targeted for unproblematized attacks, t
with the perpetrators's financial and g
critique" of these episodes in the tra
studies reads for the social forces that e
response to economic pressures as lon
targets. Tracee's status as "whore" seems
as Ralphie mentions it several times to e
Tony eventually recognizes Tracee and M

sites, indirectly challenging Ralphie's bigo
episode, Tony looks at Meadow and sees
the two women's bodies refutes easy desig
deserving of safety and sexual freedom tha
Although Tracee's murder is about th
virtue" for all women, it is also about t
female sex workers, whose bodies and labo
tions strictly legislated out of most soc
ments.'5 As Jane Arthurs noted in Televisio
televised documentaries about strippers, t
Workers (IUSW) has "call[ed] for an end to
media through recognition of the diversit
clients."'16 In a gesture of solidarity with s
ing insight into the psychological impac
ages the audience to sympathize with Trac
hurt in a thousand small ways before the
show Tony her braces and is reprimanded
offers a kiss to Ralphie and he turns aw
tone, "How many cocks you suck tonigh
huge smile, but he waves her away and
stripper, closing the door behind them. St
tomato-red dress, hair swept up in an a
elegance, she has that look of gangly girls
time. With this shot, the stripper is trans
girl into wallflower. As the camera ling
and awkward retreat, she becomes som
can identify with, someone we have perha
The viewer can perhaps sympathize with
out of place or not good enough-but beyon
girlish insecurity, I use the word "fool" h
connotation, and I apply it with delica
historically had trouble seeing the strippe
Hardly an accusation of false consciousness
fool, as Dale Bauer explained in "Gender in
doesn't understand social conventions a

standing, she prompts "a dialogue about t
In this way, the fool acts "as a resistin
"provid[es] the means of unmasking do
resisting reader within the text, Tracee r
has often been a site of struggle over w
under what circumstances, a struggle o
words, an ideological struggle.
In several scenes, Tracee forces other ch
conventions that structure their relations
nut bread because he already has a family
difference between that gift-giving d
employer-employee relationship he expect
can't give a gift because (pace Gayle Rubin
Tony is pushed to articulate a cultural
understand. "Bread," he muses as she w
audience is meant to see more of the p
perceive. "The role of the reader" whe
return to Bauer's theory, "is to question a
intertextual frames' in which the char
ish.""8 The viewer's role, in the momen
relationship with her stigmatized position
problem. Tracee experiences these mome
communicates with the audience on a l
her, consistently linking her mistreatmen
misogyny.
The murder scene effectively demonstrates the ideological controls
that shape individual desires and pit Ralphie against Tracee. Her desire to
live with Ralphie, the motivating factor in this scene, returns us to the
destructive effects of the dominant ideology of home as safe haven, for it is
Tracee's unwavering psychological investment in this fiction that blinds
her to the dangers of making a home with the wrong person, and her
insistence on entitlement to this home triggers his violence against her.
The following dialogue takes place, once again, behind the Bada Bing!
TRACEE: Fuck you. Three days you don't cal

RALPHIE: Baby, I'm busy. I gotta work. How
you when you're nine months pregnant?
TRACEE: You serious?
RALPHIE: Of course I'm serious. We'll get a
know that guy who's a mortgage broker.
TRACEE: Really? [Ralphie nods.] Ralphie, I l
RALPHIE: I love you too, baby. I tell you w
after me. If it's a girl, we'll name it Trace
grow up to be a cocksucking slob just lik
your mind?
When Tracee questions Ralphie's seriousness in the above-cited dialogue,

he reacts defensively with verbal violence, at first seeming to insist on his
good intentions, then turning the question back on Tracee by denouncing
her worthiness as wife material. They continue this mutually abusive
conversation as Tracee calls Ralphie a "Guinea mother-fucking piece of
shit" and Ralphie greets her girl punches with more taunting and name
calling: "That's right, that's right, get it all out, you little whore." Finally
she slaps him and draws blood. Ralphie becomes suddenly serious, punch
ing her once in the face. Tracee further escalates the violence: "Does that
make you feel good? You feel like a man?" In response, Ralphie loses it, as
they say, and beats her to death, punching her several more times in the
face, then bashing her head into the guardrail. Ralphie ends the scene with
the predictable blame-shifting words of abusive boyfriends everywhere:
"Look at you now." Tracee wanted Ralphie to provide attention, affection,
and a little house. He sees these requests as evidence that she is "out of
[her] mind"-doesn't she realize that he too yearns for the idealized domes
tic life he sees in Tony's family and that a stripper wife could never be part
of that picture? In failing to recognize herself as an unwanted class
marker, Tracee runs into the brick wall of Ralphie's fist. Like the nine
teenth-century prostitutes targeted by Jack the Ripper-a complex instance
of violence against women documented by feminist historian Judith
Walkowitz in City of Dreadful Delight-Tracee's victimization results from sex
worker stigma, a combination of traditional misogyny and class disgust.19
In the final scene, a new dancer is bein

song, "Living on a Thin Line" by the Kin
reminder of the threadlike boundary
daughters and strippers, useful female b
to music what Jay Parini called the "des
and satire" on The Sopranos. In his essay, "T
from which I derive my title, Parini des
of violence on this series as "both a satir
that violence," and in this formulatio
performing a feminist analysis of th
episode. The show both problematizes
reproduces the pernicious visual clich6 o
way that, as Sarah Projansky argued in
1988 film, The Accused, "the graphic rap
both to challenge rape myths from a
tribute to the existence of violence again
murder scene in "University"-adding
necrology of murdered sex workers in f
against the feminist cultural work of
social and economic roots of violence aga
desperately thin line between realism (st
cal comment on stripper murder).20
As this episode of The Sopranos closes,
screen, exchanging gossip about Trace
says she heard Tracee went outside wi
Another cautions, "Keep what you hear
aside, they know their silence will prote
option in the short term. Tracee lost her
this sort of advice. She criticized Ralphi
man, refusing his characterization of
standard girlfriend. As Kim Akass and J
character on the show, "This powerfu
should not be said-is, however, a precari
how precarious as Ralphie reinstates his
teen lethal blows to her face and head. Y
Merri LisaJohnson 28I
lifeless body remains before our eyes, con

with the foolishness of the frame, a haunti
A GANGSTER Is BEING BEATEN

Although the obvious focal point of a fe
might seem to be the shocking and e
punished female body in this murder sc
quately addressed without noting the ideol
murder scene to the scene in which Ral
murder. After killing Tracee, Ralphie g
shoves his raw-knuckled fist into an ice
realize that something has happened to Tr
find her dead body, Tony demands tha
Ralphie returns to the scene of the crim
"Can I help it if she's a klutz?" His cover st
theme of sexual transgression, concretiz
woman. Her body has literally fallen-or
revealing the masculinist agency behind th
scene then rapidly shuffles roles, repositio
end of the beating, where Tracee recently s
as gangster-beating, the gangster reduced t
To the extent that feminist audience
violence toward Tracee by the sounds of
sobering horror and gore, it is let loose in
getting what's coming to him. Before we t
ure, though, it is useful to note that the v
double in this scene. We are implicated
share his punishment. The beating is sho
against which Ralphie's body falls, and the
the fence, seeing Tony's fist and angry face
school-yard bully, his crew gathered roun
ence the vulnerability of the male body be
As Tony moves toward his target, Ralphie
a "made man." His status should make him
unleashed on Tracee; his body should be of
ogy "made man" begs deconstructive gen

social construction of masculinity as an illu
self-assurance. Furthermore, in asserting h
concedes the question's validity. The stat
rounding this status, operating paradoxical
Ralphie's claim to dominant masculinity is
In feminist masculinity studies, the point
ble, even crucial, to examine the ways m
by the dominant fiction of masculinity wi
Judith Kegan Gardiner has asserted that a f
"help deconstruct static binaries in gend
oppressors, difference and dominance, a
dated) and alternative masculinities."
Wiegman's "Unmaking Men" called for at
of oppression in masculinity studies.22 In s
privilege can be seen as alternately consolid
lation with his white skin, Italian-Amer
education, blue-collar background, and mas
Ralphie cannot be cast simplistically by f
tic killer because his character is not ful
oppressor. In this point, I take as my mode
similarly rejects one-dimensional femin
American rapists of the Central Park jogger
be fully grasped as an instance of "male vio
another horrific and brutal expression o
these readings leave out the factors of race
within patriarchy is relative," writes hooks
men of color are not able to reap the mater
participation in patriarchy. In fact they
passively acting out a myth of masculin
Indeed, Ralphie's violence must be situated
privilege and class bias in order to grasp hi
myth of masculinity that is life-threatenin
with his frantic macho behavior. In additio
for killing Tracee, he is killed and decap
arguably as payback for Tracee's death.24 I

hooks's analysis of the rapists, excusing
Rather, an intersectional analysis links
women with systemic violence against
racism, and/or heterosexism. Without t
being psychotic and misogynistic ("I don't
what any little slit thinks of me"),25 th
within a differential network of power
parceling out of privilege among men.
Much of this episode focuses on Ralphie's
masculinity as he overcompensates for his
ranks. Ralphie's underappreciated ability t
in the mafia hierarchy, a fact he ment
intriguing figure of the contemporary Am
this point in the season, he has asked to b
denied. He borrows Russell Crowe's lines fr
do: "I have come to reclaim Rome for m
admit despair: "We are all dead men; all we
In one scene, Ralphie enters the club
bouncer, Georgie, calling him an idiot for
then putting a cigar out on his inferior's
of status thinly disguised as boyish play, R
around until he hits Georgie in the eye in
him take the injured man to the hospital.
sions of grandeur grate uncomfortab
contempt. Like Tracee, Ralphie longs to
father figure and welcomed into the upwa
and, also like Tracee, Ralphie is ultimately
Despite the clear inequality between R
characters are similarly disenfranchised by
tions of higher education and the acquis
same way that Tracee's class status made s
or liberating job choice, Ralphie too fa
options with his eleventh-grade educati
mafia in this sense is not unlike joining th
cise of power it is often a reflection of econ

into a violent, Darwinian, hypermasculi
are made to feel vulnerable and femini
because she undermines his masculinity in
class status makes it feel imperative to him
his violence against her is a manifestation
much as it is an exercise of patriarchal pow
can be perceived as a system of prostitutio
bodies, the struggle between Ralphie and
man and woman but between different k
peddles his aggressive masculinity to impro
eliding the difference between strippers an
sex workers and figurative ones, it is impo
barters for status and wealth with his bod
himself-taller, harder, more fearless-for c
Furthermore, Ralphie entertains the f
alter ego in a scene from a later episode th
paired scenes from "University" in which h
ing. His relationship to Janice Soprano, T
structure of desire in which Ralphie gets o
subject position while being anally pene
episode 42, "Christopher" (in season four),
She is working Ralphie from behind with a
play pimp and prostitute in a cross-gender
JANICE: How much money did you make to

RALPHIE: Three hundred.
JANICE: That's all, bitch? I'll put you back o
that ass.
Ralphie: Put me back on the street baby, yeah.
JANICE: Work that ass you little cunt.
Ralphie: Do you love me?
JANICE: Mama's little tramp, mama's little whore. I'll pimp you out, bitch.26
A phone call from Rosalie Aprile inte

modulates back into conventional dome
he'll be home for dinner. Through Ralph
Paz (also in season four), we learn even
she says he can't or won't "just fuck" her
drip candle wax on his testicles, rub his d
does not, in Tony's malapropism, "hav
volvo."27 Ralphie's desire for vulnerability
from the top" in Janice's description to T
fiction of masculinity to reveal the latent
gangster arena. According to Tony's psy
textbook masochist. His dominance over T
when reviewed through the additional nar
The female sex worker's productivity an
turn-ons in his fantasy landscape. Every ti
episode 32 expresses an inchoate recogniti
Thus Ralphie's masochism creates continui
addition to the expected gender hierarchy
Although a full discussion of male maso
of this article, the series' connection be
play with Janice and his sadistic real-life
duces stereotypes of sadomasochism that
those of sex workers currently under
between male masochists and psychotic
media representations demonize men w
(male dominant) sex roles, just as they
adhere to conventional (properly sanitized
roles. Despite these misrepresentations of
Sopranos contributes positively to convers
studies about male desire, departing fro
sexuality as unremittingly dominant. F
episode, "Big Girls Don't Cry" (in season t
about his exhilaration in listening to the
tearing up a tanning salon and beating th
wished it was me," he shares. Dr. Melfi
"Giving the beating, or taking it?"28 Th

gangster is being beaten breaks up th
masculinity as smoothly equating to
agency, allowing the viewer to perceiv
power in which men participate.
Midway through episode 32, a bri
complexity in microcosm. Tracee is part
her roles as girlfriend and sex worker. R
television screen, berating Tracee for cr
stands at the other end of Tracee's bo
Tracee's discomfort as she endures thi
stage in this scene. Her body stretches ac
sentation of intercourse as violation-
expression of hatred for women-offerin
Andrea Dworkin's words, the system o
the backs of women in the doggie positi
less important or interesting to notice,
to be getting much pleasure. Ralphie sco
his breath as Tracee's braces scrape t
encounter with another stripper late
produces less pleasure than one might ex
lege and hedonism, this blowjob is a stud
He can't get there, no matter how har
closes his eyes. The strip club provides a
orgasms. The utopic pleasure represent
another flimsy dominant fiction. Men g
strains and demands of post-sexual-re
and in this compensatory capacity it poi
ing or uncomfortable in these men's liv
utopian kernel in hard-core pornograp
one in the back of the Bada Bing! as she
they enact to discover "compensatory fa
domain of sexuality the power that is de
cal lives." Cultural anthropologist Kather
visits to strip clubs in terms of dissatisf
work and family, their desire to "relax" a

"[A]lthough customers' motivations are in
structures and inequalities, their visits ar
exercises in acquiring or wielding power."
operates as a space of escape from feminis
notes "that these men [nevertheless] exper
within . . . a framework of confusion and
one of privilege or domination." Ralphie a
Tracee in the threesome scene, for exam
menage a trois within a framework of conf
blue-collar class status far from the space
pays off in material comfort without man
A conversation between three crew mem
class anxiety, a perhaps unexpected subp
life of gangsters, as Tony's nephew Ch
wanted to work eighteen-hour days he'd g
Silvio retort, "Like they'd hire you." Wi
collar dissatisfaction in mind, Ralphie
Douglas Kellner's analysis of Rocky and Ram
white male paranoia which present mal
toms of the victimization of the working
ticulate, brutal," and "educationally dep
way that "Rambo's neurotic resentment is
those who run the social system in such a
to the institutions of articulate though
gendered defensiveness and his lashing ou
tically" as symptoms of the limits his wo
the rewards he can reap from the patriar
Ralphie's violence can be placed in the s
patriarchy, pushing the audience (or, less
what kind of system produces this sort of
The episode, not unlike Robin Wood's re
points two forms of violence: violence aga
men." "While the motivations for thes
violence may seem quite distinct," wrote
the film depends on our ability to grasp t

Repressed homoeroticism is the joining fa
violence. Fear of being questioned as a
woman or a queer, motivates the aggre
with masculinity. The cultural significanc
Sopranos may not be far removed from "t
itself as licensed and ritualized violence
smash the near-naked body of another fo
mentally erotic) of a predominantly male
where Christopher is forced to his knees
gun at Christopher's head. Or picture C
shorts on the bedroom floor while Tony b
belt, ending with a final shot across the t
homoerotics of gangster violence create
that target women and scenes that target
humiliation. In the fifth season, the anath
uality appears as a brief subplot, when Vi
security guard a blowjob. In the sixth
Mafia family and attempts to live openly
learns that the dominant categories are n
and mutilated body a sign of U.S. cultu
sexual subject positions. Again, Woods's w
well to The Sopranos, as both are media te
the disastrous consequences, for men and
of constitutional bisexuality." Tony,
Councilman are locked in a tense embrace
fearing intimacy with other male bodies. T
the female bodies that surround them po
and classist notions of masculinity that d
to murder.3'
Although Ralphie's excessive violence
and dominates the viewer's memory, th
point on a spectrum of patriarchal hurtfu
Brown criticized the genre of "stripper re
enough in their structural analysis of vio
manage to encapsulate systemic misogy

characters who are ridiculed as ineffectiv
psychopaths eventually killed off by t
Sopranos links Ralphie's violence to an esta
knows and is expected to abide by. Aft
Tracee's death, Silvio gently reminds Ton
goomah, was not related to him by blood
fore had no "legitimate" grounds for ave
are clearly marked as reprehensible, but t
the way things are, not a deviation from
The parallel subplot of Meadow's relat
this sense of a patriarchal continuum.
mother in terms that apply to Ralphie: "[
and then the next he's a totally diffe
Meadow with a not terribly comforting
men are." This Jekyll-and-Hyde imagery
monstrous, connecting him with Ralph
trait of unpredictability. A scene in whic
critic remarks at Spartacus is intercut wi
minus he got on an essay, again linking t
the paired beating scenes (Tracee's beating
to Meadow and Noah in the library. He
seeing too much of each other. She asks w
question, making evasive comments at fir
explanations that don't match what w
Although he says she's too negative, th
that she's not classy enough for him and
lawyer father. Noah's move from aff
Ralphie's trajectory from "I love you" to
more, Noah's biracial identity undercut
ity, indicating a legitimate insecurity th
Tony's open bigotry toward Noah is n
Ralphie, marking the two characters as si
ties. The break-up scene between Noah an
masculine behavior through Noah's lack
lateness. By juxtaposing these traits with

math, the episode explores the possibility
cal difference-the clean well-lit library in
behind the Bada Bing! or the civil convers
ing match and battering-Ralphie and Noah
than in kind. Although Ralphie's violen
excess that it might be difficult for the c
connection between Ralphie and Noah, the
Indeed, what I see when I watch this e
differ significantly from what non-sex wo
the latent feminism in this episode of The
subversive reading, as Mimi White defines
Sub-cultural readings are carried out in the

of dominant ideology by social and cultural
centrally addressed, or are largely ignored, b
sentation with its plurality of voices. The cla
general offers radical representations as an
cultural values. Rather, "against the grain"
latent possibility of alternative viewpoints
strategies of appeal that are normally at work
My situated and social constructionist v

that Tracee's work conditions and low stat
Bada Bing! where she is murdered. Other v
see Tracee's choices as the main causes of
as a stripper; chooses to blur the lines b
hooking; chooses to get involved in a relat
and then chooses to taunt him recklessly.
exactly, but their atomistic vision obscure
vidual lives and deaths. In contrast, my in
with representations of strippers, sex w
grounds meanings that may primarily
workers in the audience. Despite this con
am "reading too much into this text," a ch
ies professors are all too familiar, I never
Merri LisaJohnson 29I
forged by Wood in relation to Hitchcock

tive of "University" may seem to mov
patriarchal order, the monstrous oppr
exposed, and the episode's attitude toward
at the very least tragic.3
THIS FEMINIST THING OF OURS:

TOWARD A THIRD WAVE FEMINIST
Finally, my reading of "University" op
reflection on feminist media studies,
pattern of binary thinking about media
tive, in search of "a more dynamic mode
Marxism or feminism that primarily s
domination and oppression," as Kellner
cism in Media Spectacle. By unpacking th
Ralphie as dynamic rather than static "vi
to move the conversation in feminist me
from the "love/hate struggle" described b
The Hidden Life of Cultural Images from Pl
dazzled, beguiled but skeptical, always in
images." This language posits the fema
backslider" (recalling Hume George's phr
with the media as dangerous male sedu
The same trope appeared in Susan Douglas'
Female with the Mass Media: "If we are ho
loved the media as much as we have hate
same time." Even as I accept her assert
raging in the media is not a simplistic w
struggle between feminism and antifemi
conceptual trap of "guilty media pleasure
Wave feminists have asserted an interest
that were infused with conservative p
1970s-the pleasures of the sex wars, rang
to make-up, marriage, and intercours
theory might usefully revisit visual plea
patriarchal by Laura Mulvey, to insist on

culture. I am suggesting a new Third W
builds on the work of such innovative
Modleski but works toward a less restr
sion/containment model that at times lea
Whereas hooks powerfully modeled th
conducted here, her essays on popular cul
the absence of adequately progressive im
This pattern of reading for what is no
produces perceptive ideological analyses
with its negative focus. A brief sampling f
and Class at the Movies demonstrates this r
Whereas Crooklyn attempts to counter raci

tity, it completely valorizes and upholds s
about gender roles ....
Kids celebrates patriarchal phallic agency.

showing that females are violated so that
potency in no way serves as a critique....
indicates a concern with highlighting nons
Even though filmmaker Spike Lee may hav

new image of black female sexuality, She
perpetuates old norms overall. Positively
nature of black male-female power strug
craziness, and that is an important new dir
compelling liberatory reconciliation that
radical potential of this film.... While
attempt to tell a new story at the end of th
enough-it is not satisfying."
It is, likewise, "the absence of a compe

between the feminist cultural work of
visual cliche of the battered and murdere
pretation of this episode of The Sopranos.
and conservative content just a way to ap
members? Does the show offer us liberal-
and then, in a strategic move of containm
hooks made this argument even about

instance, asserting that Leaving Las Vegas
titute who is self-assured and smart a
scene that "undermines the more pro
Regarding Pulp Fiction, hooks criticized
"titillate with subversive possibility . .
right back to normal."37 Tania Modl
Feminism without Women: Culture and Criticis
in the Mist, a film that
seems to respect the notion of a woman s

husband and family in order to pursue
involves her living the sort of adventu
reserved for men in popular films and t
single-minded dedication to a cause typica
tific investigator. But the film takes it all
alizing" Fossey, neglecting to mention her
course of her research in the mountains
Harvard. The film further subverts its ap
en's independence by suggesting that Dian
mating ... her sexual desires and maternal
In her work on Hitchcock, The Women W

vention in the debate over his misogyny
say about David Chase's work in The Sopr
interpretation is available to the female
having to adopt the position of 'resistin
films "allo[w] for a critique of the [patr
for a sympathetic view of the heroine t
feminist spectatorship acknowledges a m
in which we can see the workings of id
something being done to us, but as somet
made available for critique.A
This part of Modleski's work fits well
call for "Postfeminist Television Critici
and Identifying Postfeminist Attitudes"
Examining the intricacy of these images p

route for feminist media criticism than s
acters and series as anti-feminist because o
conservative ideology. Especially when ser
audiences to the degree that many recentl
in these texts with an eye to their complex
them as part of a hegemonic, patriarchal, c
This "eye toward complexity" is certa

Tracee's story accentuates some of the
modern feminist media theory (perhap
term than "postfeminist" or "Third W
read representations of violence as both
time feminist challenges to sexism; h
treatment of women as only sexual b
lenging the cultural hierarchies that
bodies," as Jill Nagle wrote; and how
through social class subordination and
begin developing this theoretical mode
text, by working to read this stripper-b
the seductive but simplistic reactions of
or bashing the media.39
Notes
This article owes a significant debt to the anonymous reviewers of Feminist Studies,
to the Barnard Center for Research on Women, the University of West Georgia,
Cultural Studies Association for providing opportunities to discuss portions of thi
it developed, and to Carol Siegel and Katherine Frank for their keen feedback
none of this research would have been possible without the assistance of librarian
Fain and interlibrary loan mavens Sharon Tully and Allison Faix.
1. Rebecca Traister, "Is The Sopranos a Chick Show?" www.salon.com.

2. Bonnie J. Dow, Prime-time Feminism: Television, Media Culture, and the Women's Movem
1970 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), xi.
3. Henry Jenkins, Tara McPherson, and Jane Shattuc, "The Culture that Stick
Skin: A Manifesto for a New Cultural Studies," in Hop on Pop: The Politics and
Popular Culture, ed. Henry Jenkins, Tara McPherson, and Jane Shattuc (Durham
Duke University Press, 2002), 11.
4. Rob Owen and Barbara Vancheri, "Going Off-K

Graphically Portraying Violence against Women,
sopranos2.asp.
5. Diana Hume George, "Lynching Women: A Femi
Secrets: Critical Approaches to "Twin Peaks, " ed. Da
sity Press, 1995), 110, 119; Randi Davenport, "Th
Culture, Feminism, and Family Violence," Literatur
Judith Halberstam, "Imagined Violence/Queer Viole
en in the Movies, ed. Martha McCaughey and Ne
Press, 2001), 253; Douglas Kellner, Media Spectacle
6. Linda Williams, "Why I Did Not Want to Write Th
1 (2004): 1271.
7. The Sopranos, episode 11: "Nobody Knows Anything," original air date 21 Mar. 1999.
8. The Sopranos, episode 7: "Down Neck," original air date 21 Feb. 1999; episode 29:
"Fortunate Son," original air date 11 Mar. 2001; episode 59: "In Camelot," original air
date 18 Apr. 2004, respectively.
9. Christopher Lasch, "The Family as a Haven in a Heartless World," Salmagundi, no. 35
(1976): 42.
10. Josephine Gattuso Hendin, "Tony and Meadow: The Sopranos as Father-Daughter
Drama," LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory 14, no. 1 (2003): 67.
11. Minrose Gwin, "Nonfelicitous Space and Survivor Discourse," in Haunted Bodies: Gender
and Southern Texts, ed. Anne Goodwyn Jones and Susan V. Donaldson (Charlottesville:
University Press of Virginia, 1997), 416.
12. Jill Nagle, ed., Whores and Other Feminists (New York: Routledge, 1997), 4-5.
13. Terry Gross, interview with David Chase, "Fresh Air," National Public Radio, 2 Mar.
2004.
14. The Sopranos, episode 33: "Second Opinion," original air date 8 Apr. 2001.
15. Nagle, Whores and Other Feminists, 5.
16. Jane Arthurs, Television and Sexuality: Regulation and the Politics of Taste (London: Open
University Press, 2004), 99.
17. Dale Bauer, "Gender in Bakhtin's Carnival," in Feminisms: An Anthology of Literary Theory
and Criticism, 2nd ed., ed. Robyn R. Warhol and Diane Price Herndl (New Brunswick:
Routledge, 1997), 715.
18. Ibid.
19. Judith R. Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian
London (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 218.
20. Jay Parini, "The Cultural Work of The Sopranos," in A Sitdown with "The Sopranos": Watching
Italian American Culture on TV's Most Talked-about Series, ed. Regina Barreca (New York:
Palgrave, 2002), 76, 84; Sarah Projansky, Watching Rape: Film and Television in Postfeminist
Culture (New York: New York University Press, 2001), 96; for the concept of a necrol
ogy of dead strippers, I am indebted to the necrology section in Vito Russo's The
Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies (New York: Harper & Row, 1981).
296 Merri Lisajohnson
21. Kim Akass and Janet McCabe, "Beyond the Bada Bing!
Authority in The Sopranos," in This Thing of Ours: Investiga
Lavery (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 154.
22. Judith Kegan Gardiner, ed., Masculinity Studies and Femin
York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 2; Robyn Wie
Masculinity in Feminist Theory," in Masculinity Studies and F
23. bell hooks, Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics
24. The Sopranos, episode 48: "Whoever Did This," original air
25. The Sopranos, episode 47: "Mergers and Acquisitions," ori
26. The Sopranos, episode 42: "Christopher," original air date
27. Jay Parini, "The Cultural Work of The Sopranos," 84.
28. The Sopranos, episode 18: "Big Girls Don't Cry," original air
29. Andrea Dworkin, Intercourse (New York: Free Press, 198
Core: Power, Pleasure, and the "Frenzy of the Visible" (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1999), 163; Katherine Frank, G-Strings and Sympathy: Strip Club Regulars and Male Desire
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2002), 86, 96.
30. Douglas Kellner, Media Culture: Cultural Studies, Identity, and Politics between the Modem and the
Postmodern (London: Routledge, 1995), 64-65.
31. Robin Wood, Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan (New York: Columbia University Press,
1986), 252, 254, 258.
32. Jeffrey A. Brown, "If Looks Could Kill: Power, Revenge, and Stripper Movies," in Reel
Knockouts: Violent Women in the Movies, eds. Neal King and Martha McCaughey (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 2001), 74.
33. Mimi White, "Ideological Analysis," in Channels of Discourse, Reassembled: Television and
Contemporary Criticism, 2nd ed., ed. Robert C. Allen (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1992), 191-92.
34. Wood, Holly wood from Vietnam to Reagan, 246-47.
35. Kellner, Media Spectacle, 29; Susan Bordo, Twilight Zones: The Hidden Life of Cultural Images
from Plato to O.J. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 1; Susan J. Douglas,
Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media (New York: Three Rivers Press,
1994), 12-13.
36. bell hooks, Reel to Real: Race, Sex, and Class at the Movies (New York: Routledge, 1996), 44,
66-67, 235.
37. Ibid., 24,48.
38. Tania Modleski, Feminism without Women: Culture and Criticism in a "Postfeminist" Age (New
York: Routledge, 1991), 122; Tania Modleski, The Women Who Knew Too Much: Hitchcock
and Feminist Theory (New York: Metheun, 1988), 24-25.
39. Amanda Lotz, "Postfeminist Television Criticism: Rehabilitating Critical Terms and
Identifying Postfeminist Attitudes," Feminist Media Studies 1, no. 1 (2001): 114; Nagle,
Whores and Other Feminists, 6.

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Gangster Feminism: The Feminist Cultural Work of HBO's "The Sopranos"

Author(s): Merri Lisa Johnson

A L T H O U G H N O T A S H O "that goes in for 'very special episodes' about

charge of going "too far" came up only

force sexism and representations of violenc

THE STRIPPER AS RESISTING READE

tutes a major element of this episode. T

dren." This rehearsal of the popular m

Tracee and Meadow hold within their se

On one textual level, then, Meadow an

experiences can be viewed as a comm

Tony eventually recognizes Tracee and M

doesn't understand social conventions a

TRACEE: Fuck you. Three days you don't cal

When Tracee questions Ralphie's seriousness in the above-cited dialogue,

In the final scene, a new dancer is bein

lifeless body remains before our eyes, con

A GANGSTER Is BEING BEATEN

ogy "made man" begs deconstructive gen

arguably as payback for Tracee's death.24 I

cise of power it is often a reflection of econ

JANICE: How much money did you make to

A phone call from Rosalie Aprile inte

"Giving the beating, or taking it?"28 Th

work and family, their desire to "relax" a

the film depends on our ability to grasp t

manage to encapsulate systemic misogy

lateness. By juxtaposing these traits with

Sub-cultural readings are carried out in the

My situated and social constructionist v

forged by Wood in relation to Hitchcock

THIS FEMINIST THING OF OURS:

patriarchal by Laura Mulvey, to insist on

Whereas Crooklyn attempts to counter raci

Kids celebrates patriarchal phallic agency.

Even though filmmaker Spike Lee may hav

It is, likewise, "the absence of a compe

hooks made this argument even about

in the Mist, a film that

seems to respect the notion of a woman s

In her work on Hitchcock, The Women W

Examining the intricacy of these images p

This "eye toward complexity" is certa

1. Rebecca Traister, "Is The Sopranos a Chick Show?" www.salon.com.

4. Rob Owen and Barbara Vancheri, "Going Off-K

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