Television has long been a whipping boy medium for the cognoscenti. Amidst all the tripe churned out in the name of popular film, music, and literature, it is television alone which raises the ire of elitist cultural watchdogs as a medium. VW vans are festooned with bumper-sticking orders to “Kill Your Television,” while never is one encouraged to “Blow Up Your Cineplex” or “Smash Your MP3.” All of this raises interesting questions, like if ever there were a show which consistently attracted millions of viewers to a scathing critique of America’s toxic social pathologies surrounding class, gender, religion, and race, would we be satisfied?

HBO’s brilliant megahit, The Sopranos -- set to enter its fifth season this Sunday night -- is a prime example. Besides having thus far exhibited acting, direction, writing, and photography on par with the finest of American cinema, The Sopranos has consistently examined issues of racism, violence against women, the over-prescription of pharmaceuticals, and the intimate relationship between power, intimidation and wealth in capitalist America. And these stunod hippies still want me to clip my TV? Gedthefuggowdahere!

Mob cinema has always touched the Left for the simple reason that there are two kinds of people who think of organised criminals as being no different than any other kind of businesspeople: Mafiosi and anti-capitalists. The hyper-violence of the cinematic gangster -- whether Coppola’s Corleones or Scorcese’s good fellas -- is Marx’s “primitive accumulation” set to a mandolin soundtrack. Bored with the routinised violence of WASPs whose violent pillaging is always preceded by quiet, sophisticated New York Times op-ed pieces, audiences are thrilled by the sight of these street-level corporate hoodlums, this Enron in tracksuits who, unlike our bosses and tax collectors, still need to break a few knees in their shakedowns



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