As Miguelon pointed out, “Evil” is such a subjective concept. Everyone in a position of power (even the Pope and President Clinton) are regarded by some others as evil. But nobody can deny fact that Tony Soprano is an incredibly moral person. Sure, his moral standards differ from most people in America. But he sticks to his moral code, the code that he was taught while growing up and the only code that makes sense to him. And this is part what makes him sexy and likeable.
Most people alive today (particularly those in positions of power) are far less moral than Tony. They’ll present an air of morality and break it any chance they get. Tony (and I understand that he’s a fictional character) will stick with it for good. No excuses and no exceptions.
And the “might is right” policy is a big part of the mafia moral code. You know, kind of like how it has been part of the US foreign policy for a couple of centuries. And British policy and Russian policy, etc. Might is right is a simple reality that’s been in place since the beginning of time. And remember, Tony has always played by the rules. Even when he was a low man on the totam pole. In fact, that’s a big reason why he worked his way up to become the kingpin.
As for his psychological problems, I think it has alot to do with the friction between his morality and the generally-accepted morality of his environment. He believes that no one understands him. His family members are all rewarded by the fruits of Tony’s “labors” (rewards that come from his mafia morality) but then they despise him and complain (because he doesn’t follow the generally-accepted morality). He realizes that they are all confused and that he is the only one who isn’t. But he has no way of communicating this because they just won’t listen.
And does Tony view himself as evil? Of course not. Remember his famous line (paraphrased): “What are you talking about? We’re all going to heaven. We’re soldiers, and all soldiers go to heaven.” Good point.
The main reason Tony Soprano (and this is also true of Michael Corleone) garners our empathy is that he exists on TV in a fairly isolated world. His world rarely interacts outside the organized crime world. He is either with his family or his “friends”, but they are all immoral. And Tony comes off actually looking good compared to those around him. Of course he isn’t completed isolated and it those times when we get a true feel for what Tony Soprano is really about.
Remember when his wife went to go see that analyst and she was telling him about Tony being a criminal and trying to be a good father, etc. The analyst told her that basically her complicity made her dirty and that she needed to separate herself from him. She, of course, couldn’t do that. The analyst told her “At least now you cannot say you haven’t been told.” In other words, now you know that this isolated world is evil, no matter how much you try to believe otherwise.
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And I’m so thankful that the script writers don’t.
That would be the formulaic, Hollywood way. The show, the characters and the storylines here are complex.
Mr. Billy nailed it. Many is the episode I’ve found myself thinking the exact same thing. Tony is decidedly not a nice, moral guy. But in the framework of his world, he is a King Arthur.
Of course the man is evil and thank God he hasn’t gotten his just desserts (yet). What is fascinating about the Sopranos is:
We see these men who make their living doing evil and yet have their own “code” of right and wrong. They are evil by our morality and yet seem to live by their own (admittedly selfish) moral code.
We are drawn to these men despite their evil nature.
Just like in the real world, their evil goes unpunished. Of course, not everyone who does evil gets away with it, but enough people do that it is redeeming (in my opinion) to see a show that leaves us to make our own judgment, rather than offering the simple bromide that evil must be punished.
There is a strong “banality of evil” subtext running through the whole series, wherein men who are talking about sausage one minute are firebombing a restaurant the next.
I understand the frustration at seeing evil characters portrayed as sexy, successful and, perhaps, moral, but let’s not forget that there is a lot of ambiguity here, too. Tony Soprano cannot be said to lead a very ahppy or fulfilling life, though it contains happy and fulfilling moments. The ambiguity and complexity and the refusal to mete out simple justice are what has made this show so satisfying, IMHO.
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But that’s why The Sopranos is so refreshing, in an admittedly mildly uncomfortable way. It’s not typical Hollywood, where the bad guy must be thwarted. It doesn’t readily and/or necessarily satiate our morality- and justice-seeking psyches, how we want the evil-doers to pay for their deeds.
No matter how much we’d like to think so, Hitler didn’t sit around wringing his hands, twirling that dumb little mustache and laughing nefariously. He liked the same things everybody else liked, had the same hopes, dreams and frustrations. Have you ever seen the film clips of him being laughing and kind with children?
I personally think evil is more chilling when its not raised to a comic-book stratosphere, but is instead couched in relative normality.
I thought I had done just that in my first post, when I said Tony was evil. However, for the sake of clarity, I’ll say that Tony is an immoral person. What’s more, what good things he does also carry the taint of the immorality of the evil acts that make them possible.
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Most people alive today don’t kill people who get in their way, assault their therapists, and burn down the businesses and homes of rivals or debtors.
**Though I disagree about the nature of US and UK foreign policy, you had a good point going until you got to this:
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Might does not make right. This has never been true. Having the power to enforce your beliefs does not make those beliefs moral or correct. There is a word for people who believe that having more power than another gives you the right to exercise control over their lives: bullies. Might is right is the bully code. Tony Soprano cares nothing about anyone other than himself and will do anything to meet his personal needs, regardless of what it does to others. He may be the biggest bully on the block, but that doesn’t make him right.
Stalin didn’t view himself as evil. Pol Pot didn’t view himself as evil. Idi Amin didn’t view himself as evil. But they were. The inability to recognize one’s own evil does not negate it.
Thanks, elvis for mentioning it - I’ve basically assumed Hannah Arendt’s observation, “evil is banal,” is a (the?) core theme of the series.
To those who suggest tony is moral because he lives by a code, I refer you to D&D: Tony’s a lawful evil.
Seriously, all you have to do is think third reich and you’ll see that a strict code of behavior and evil don’t have to be contradictory. Often they’re shockingly complementary. That observation is what gave us the hippy peace movement - the idea was no code, no evil. (Although I wonder how strict Tony is about his own code now that I think about it).
The big trap of the Sopranos is - you understand his motivations, and you sympathize even with his most evil actions. So you think - it can’t be true evil, because I know where he’s coming from. But that’s just because you have the cartoon-land vision of evil as unmotivated, mysterious, purely malevolent. When in reality it’s usually sympathetic, provoked, ambivalent, coerced, insecure… banal.
It’s one thing to find Tony Soprano sexy (I don’t like fat bald men myself, no matter how powerful); after all, everyone is attracted to different types of people and when they’re fictional characters what difference does it make?
But how can anyone defend Tony Soprano’s morals or his lifestyle? He himself thinks that his lifestyle is wrong! He has to see a shrink because he keeps fainting away due to the turmoil his life of crime causes him. He is tortured by memories of himself as a child witnessing his father’s acts of violence. He doesn’t want his son to end up like him. These seem to me to be the symptoms of a person who regrets his lifestyle. You could feel sympathetic for him, because he doesn’t seem to have had much of a choice, but to say that he’s moral? He’s a good family man? He may want to be those things, but he is wracked with guilt because he isn’t…
While this may not be the definition of morality in a dictionary, morality (to me) is the ability to distinguish between right and wrong. It is also the ability to adhere to a moral code or set of rules. And no one can argue that there are different moral codes and different perspectives on right and wrong throughout this world of ours.
Needless to say, immorality is the exact opposite of morality. It is the inability to distinguish between right and wrong and the inability to follow a set of moral instructions.
And someone who is evil (to me) is someone who is immoral. And looking at the definitions (admittedly, my own) that I’ve stated above, Tony is moral. It’s just that he’s not following some of the rules that you and I follow.
This is why I stated the quote from Tony. I think that he’s right. If you think that Tony is immoral (and evil), then you have to think that every soldier in Vietnam that killed another, and every Palestinian that blew up a bus, and every Israeli who shot an Arab, etc. are all immoral people.
Isn’t the inability to distinguish between right and wrong more properly characterized as amorality, whereas the inability to follow a set of moral instructions (which one presumably can understand and remember) is immorality?
OK. I guess I’ve managed to reduce this conversation into a semantics debate. And that wasn’t my intention, I swear.
So, can someone explain to me how Tony Soprano is any different than a US soldier in Vietnam, or a Japanese suicide bomber, or a Palestinian bus bomber, or a beef butcher in India?
Is Tony Soprano evil? Well, I see 3 possible ways for this question to be meaningful.
1: Absolute morality exists:
In this case, simply compare Tony’s behavior/choices/wants/etc. to the active principals of this absolute morality and make a judgment. What Tony thinks of himself, or what I think of Tony, are irrelevant. Since I do not believe in an absolute moral system, I have nothing relevant to contribute to this facet of teh debate.
2: Morality is relative: subcase a: Does Tony consider himself evil within his relative context? The easy answer is no, of course, and it might even be the correct answer. He clearly does not consider most of what he does to be evil, but he also shows signs of significant guilt and uncertainty. I can imagine him saying, “I’m not a bad guy, but I’ve done some bad things.”
subcase b: Do I consider him evil? Damn skippy I do. He’s a vicsious creep who can barely extend empathy to his closest friends and family. He violates the most important elements of my moral system repeatedly and with gusto.
JJ
He is not a soldier at war.
He is not a soldier at war.
He is not martyring himself for a political or religious goal.
Cows are not people.
Now, if you would like to build an argument that one or more of the groups specified above are also evil sonsabitches, feel free. I do hope that said argument doesn’t hinge upon the idea that the groups are indistinguishable from one another.
I never said that they were indistinguishable from one another. But, if you ask the 6+ billion people (or even a much smaller sample of them) in the world to put either a “good” or “evil” next to each of the 5 characters in our game (the American soldier, the Japanese soldier, the Palestinian, the butcher and Mr. Soprano), I’ll bet you get 32 (or 2^5) different answers. And you’d probably get a pretty uniform distribution too (although I can’t prove this).
And how can you say that the Soprano character is not a soldier at war? He clearly is in almost every episode. Sure, it’s not a war amongst nations, but it’s still a war. And morally, how should that make any difference?
The difference is that Tony Soprano kills for his own profit. Whatever value judgment we may make about the morality of war, we cannot say that the footsoldier is killing so that he can put in a new kidney-shaped pool…
Sure–so long as you ignore more than 2,ooo years of human military and cultural development. He is neither a soldier nor at war. He is a thug who uses violence and risks violent retaliation. Calling oneself a soldier does not make it so.
As to whether it makes a difference: yes. Warfare can be a moral endeavor. I do not condemn violence universally. I do condemn violence pursued solely for personal financial gain and applied against unwilling participants.
YMMV, of course, but I have yet to see you offer any support for your position beyond a series of statements that “Tony isn’t any different from . . .” It doesn’t help much that Tony manifestly is different from soldiers or kamikazes or suicide bombers or Indian butchers. Now, if you would like to make a case that those differences are insignificant in making a moral evaluation, again I invite you to do so.
As to what 6 billion people would say about Tony Soprano’s morality, unless they post to this thread I couldn’t care less. If you require consent from the mass of humanity before determining something immoral I can only assume that your moral system is indistinguishable from that of a sociopath.
Hold on a sec, you (Spiritus) said that morality is relative in a previous post. My hypothetical poll of the 6 billion people would’ve merely proven a statement that you already made.
So I’m not sure what your goal is here. You’ve weighed in with your opinion that Tony is immoral. Fine. But since you already realize that morality is a relative concept, it doesn’t mean much. Sure, you’ve attempted to answer my questions by forming a moral judgement based on whether or not a soldier is killing for the greed of the leaders of his nation vs. one who is killing because of being brainwashed by his greedy religious leaders vs. one who killing because of the greed of his crime family. But you’ve failed to see the whole picture: If morality is indeed relative, then there are no right answers here.
Two people can be on polar opposites of issues and actions and still be moral people. And if you take the thought to the limit, you’ll find that no two people feel exactly the same on every single issue. And if you consider any action or thought that doesn’t agree with your moral code as being immoral, you’ll find that you are the only moral person in the world. EVERYone else will be immoral to you.
You seem to equate moral relativism with moral paralysis. I do not. I feel quite comfortable asserting my moral decisions in teh real world. I do, however, inform those moral decisions with the understanding that someone else might be operating under a different set of rules. That understanding does not require me to excuse all actions.
Just because you think it’s okay doesn’t mean that I have to agree. It also doesn’t mean that I should feel prohibited from acting upon my moral code.
Your 6 billion people example demonstrated nothing about moral relativism. It is simply an observation of human nature. It is entirely possible that an absolute moral standard exists which is not perfectly recognized by all people.
As to what my opinion of Tony’s morality is wirth, well, it was a direct response to the OP. Some people think answering a question directly is a worthwhile thing, others prefer exercises in sophistry.
What other definition of immoral do you have to offer. Conntradictory to a moral code in which I believe seems a pretty straightforward and secure definition.
I do not equte the statements, “Tony is not perfectly moral” and “Tony is immoral”. The generaliztion in your conclusion can be seen as absurd simply by reversing the equation and declaring that any person who agrees with any single element of my moral code at any moment of their life is “moral”.
For that matter, I see no reason to accept your assertion that there is no other human being on this planet whose moral system is arbitrarily close to mine. Given the limits of a relative context I see no way to decide the question, but the shaping influences of culture, religion, philosophy, kinship groups, etc. argue strongly for teh reinforcement of common elements.