What are we living for? 1
It’s a question posed by Dominic Chianese and could be the official subtitle of the series. After reading several articles on the philosophical interpretation behind The Sopranos, I continued to watch it from a different point of view, as a great treatise on existential philosophy masked as a gangster story. Try to fill the cosmic void again and again, a horror vacui that forces us to see our routine as a big ironic bluff.
The strength of the series lies exactly in making this routine addictive. The mob’s life depicted in the images is exactly what the ultimate informant, Joe Pistone, said in this interesting interview. A life made of waiting and a constant sense of unease.
It’s all a big nothing
Everyone is chasing material solutions to a spiritual problem. It’s all a big nothing, Livia Soprano’s words.
Existentialism tell us that we are born without a predefined purpose. We’re condemned to be free, as some guy one said. Free and responsible for choosing, for create our own life meaning in a universe that, in itself, has none. Fascinating, isn’t it? Kierkegaard described the dizziness of freedom as the vertigo that we feel when we realize we have the absolute possibility to choose. An infinite number of possibilities, but only a single choice.
Tony falls into it again and again. After the coma, on peyote, with his admission to Melfi. These are all windows on a different existence, a possible new meaning. His drama lies in the continuous refusal to change, even when the way out is shown to him clearly. It’s a perverse form of resilience, a word used so often in recent years. If we look past the positive connotation we’ve given it, the term comes from the Latin resilire (to leap back), meaning to return to the starting point, to give up. Tony’s resilience is not the strength to overcome trauma in order to evolve, but rather giving up on change to return to being the person he was. To go back to what you were, despite having had the chance to change. It’s the choice not to choose. Gandolfini can be seen as the embodiment of the existentialist paradox. He has everything society tells us to desire, but he doesn’t know who he is and where he’s going 2
So what?
In the end, The Sopranos offers no redemption nor salvation. Only a mirror. Perhaps the only meaning is the one we create for ourselves, for better or for worse, with compromised and self-deceiving choices. So, let’s not take ourselves too seriously.
What’s your meaning? Do we choose to no stop believing, as Journey sings, or do we admit that it’s just the best illusion?