The Sopranos
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Americans at times seem to be consumed by crime, showing at one and the same time a fear of crime and a fascination with it. Crime is a topic in the daily newspaper, often crowding other news off the front pages. Crime and fear of crime are important subjects in political campaigns. Crime is a staple on entertainment programs on television and in books and movies which detail both real and fictional crimes from a wide variety of points of view. Organized crime is only one aspect of the crime problem in America. In the past, organized crime was a more potent and feared force, especially in the cities of the Northeast, but then and now organized crime has an effect on society in terms of added costs to goods and services, increased costs for law enforcement, and an effect on the administration of justice and on the degree to which Americans place their trust in their law enforcement and judicial systems. Organized crime has also served as a sort of reverse royalty in American society and has been immortalized in books and films through most of this century. Each of the immigrant groups that came to America brought with them a negative element in the from of criminal gangs that would prey on other immigrants and then on American society as a whole. The Italian segment of organized crime, variously known as the Mafia or La Cosa Nostra, prevailed for decades but has fallen on hard times because of a changed environment and improved law enforcement. Media depictions have fu
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r types of crime in the goods and services provided and in the relationship between the criminal enterprise and its customers:
Organized crime supplies goods or services wanted by a large number of people--desperately needed cash, narcotics, prostitution, the chance to gamble. These are its principle sources of income. They are consensual crimes for the most part, desired by the consuming public. This fact distinguishes the main activities of organized crime from most other crime (Clark 68).
The public creates the demand for the activities of organized crime, and this also means that law enforcement is working against the strong desires of a significant sector of the public (Clark 69-70).
Another part of the appeal of the show is the fact that the characters are heightened by their criminal role so that their emotions are often at peak, their reactions over the top, their responses violent:
"People can be angry at someone who betrayed them or the next door neighbor who cut down their tree, and they'd like to react the way Tony Soprano does," says Gerald Shargel, the New York attorney who has represented alleged Gambino bosses John Gotti and John Gotti Jr. "They're not bold enough, and they're not criminals, but they like
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1979
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)
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