Posted on 05/22/2006 4:38:29 AM PDT by Chi-townChief
TV dramas hardly ever float my boat. Two reasons: I don't see myself, or other people of color, lookin' back at me. Besides, the vast majority of television entertainment is dreck. For years, friends have been badgering me to watch the hit HBO series "The Sopranos." I just sneered, Tony Soprano style.
Finally, in the sixth season of this critically acclaimed show, I'm hooked. Last week I watched the latest episode. Then I watched it again. Then I watched it again. It got more delicious with every iteration. Then it hit me. We need a black "Sopranos."
The show is loaded with lush characterizations. The faces of the actors, the visceral sexuality and violence of the physiques, the dense sets all conspire to abduct you into the Manichean world of "New Jer-zey'':
Where Tony and Sil slither into the Bada Bing ("gentleman's") club to trade barbs with the boys at the bar. Where Soprano spouse Carmela presides over afternoon wine parties to dish with the girls, whose men are "away," i.e., up the river, awaiting trial or memorialized in concrete. The kids anguish in self-pity, spoiled and neglected at the same time.
Check it out: Johnny Sacramoni, Tony's next-door neighbor, huddling with his Jewish attorney about his dire legal predicament. "Johnny Sack" explains to the counselor: "Being a rat -- where I'm coming from, that's like asking a person where you're comin' from to become a f------ Nazi."
The language is street, with clarity and color. The observations are trenchant, brimming with insight and theatricality. Here's a scene that skewers our work mores with a hammer and nail. One morning mobster Vito Spatafore is at work, masquerading as a handyman and "sawing wood."
Vito ruminates on how good it will feel to tear into his lunchtime sandwiches. "Don't look at your watch," he tells himself. After all, he says, he must be halfway there already. Then he's hammering away at a plank, and by now, he figures, it must be at least 11:15. But don't look at your watch. Savor the pleasure that it will be noon in a twinkle. In 15 more minutes, it will be a half-hour to glory -- the day will be practically over. Just look at the sun and shadows -- it must be nearly noon. Just one more nail, and then I'll check the time.
Vito peeks. It's 9:50 a.m.
Who hasn't had a day like that at work? We've all had far too many.
Why am I slobbering over a show like this? Because it hits the highs and lows of life. It uses the murder and mayhem as a backdrop for discussion of the issues of the day. Homosexuality. The challenges of addiction. The out-in-space cost of health care.
Yes, I know what the armchair critics say. "The Sopranos" is replete with stereotypes about Italians and other groups. Stereotypes can reflect reality. The bottom line: Reality is complicated, and ''The Sopranos''' sturm und drang is operatic.
I want dibs. Black family life is just as multifaceted and crazy. We have drama to spare. Dopeheads, lawyers, gang-bangers, doctors, church ladies, fat ladies, moonlighters and trifling fools. We've got it all.
And we've got to honestly acknowledge this diversity before we can take it on. The one-dimensional portrayals of black life on network TV just don't ring true. As mob boss Tony Soprano says, "People think you're weak, they see an opportunity."
African Americans are strong. But we do have weaknesses. And that presents an opportunity.
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They're called "rap artists".
All they need to do is go to New Orleans and start filming. They have a great story there! Can't get better corruption anywhere!
Not in our life-time will New Orleans ever be worth going to for a vacation or any fun times. I will only go if I have to for work. It earned its murder capital of the USA for a reason.
Think it is time for 'A&E' to rerun Ken Burn's 'Civil War' series. . .
It's already here. Has anyone seen "Thief" on FX?
Somebody on comedy central had one called "The Serranos" an hispanic version. It was muy funny.
COPS
FBI agents load the back of a minivan at the Rayburn House Office Building 'horseshoe' entrance Sunday, May 21, 2006, on Capitol Hill in Washington. Beginning Saturday evening, May 20, 2006, agents from the FBI searched the congressional offices of Rep. William Jefferson, D-La. (AP Photo/Lauren Victoria Burke)
I hear he has a lot of cash.
Only twice.
Good Goobily Goop !
Why not and I'm guessing it will break new ground by going gay as well....
The writer could just look out of her window if she lives in a poor black community.
There've been worse ideas. How bout the one of taking a group of novice priests out of Seminary for awhile and tempting them with women?
had a show like that...."Good Times"
"African Americans need a black version of 'Sopranos'"
No.
All the "B" movies with stereotyped black crack dealers were not enough?
How about a show about a Black Family where the husband works as a sanitation engineer for the city of Philadelpia who doesn't cheat on his wife or treat her like a 'Ho?
If the Black version of the Sopranos were produced in the vernacular of the Black street culture, I would venture to say there would be a need for closed captioning of the dialog.
It's a total contradiction and would never work... a black Tony Soprano that is independent and achieves something on his own and gets off the plantation of the NAACP, Jesse Jackson, Calypso Louis, Al Sharpton, etc. would never be popular with the 85% of the blacks in the U.S. that blindly vote to stay on the Democratic plantation year after year after decade after decade... it would never work.
"New Jack City" comes to mind ...
What an idiotic analogy.
There are millions of Americans across the Country whose sole exposure to Italian-Americans and New Joisey is what they glean from the Sopranos. The ovehwelming majority of Italian-Americans are patriotic, law-abiding individuals who have assimialted well into the American mainstream.
Creatures like the Sopranos are few and far between - although even a handfull are too many. But that is not the perception of many Americans today, thanks to the Italian scumbag who produced this and the idiot Italian-Americans who play roles in it.
Similarly, the majority of Black Americans aren't drug-dealers, gang-bangers, and hip-hop jerks. That number is small and probably dwindling. Although, again, even a handfull is more than enough. Such a production would generate similar negative images of blask Americans among millions of other Americans, especially those with limited exposure to the many decent black Americans in this country.
This editor needs a good reality check.
Now hold on a cotton....er...hold on a minute! (Let me interject at this point that I am black myself.)
Good Times was not a black Sopranos! The Evans family were poor project-dwellers, but they weren't a crime family. There were early suggestions that eldest son J.J. was involved in petty theft (played by Jimmie Walker, who was out of the closet with his conservatism long before Bill Cosby started blasting away), but a memorable episode involved matriarch Florida Evans (Esther Rolle) confronting gang members who had recruited young son Michael with a baseball bat.
Good Times was a creation of People for the American Way founder Norman Lear, a spinoff of Maude, which was a spinoff of All in the Family. Naturally, there were overtures of white man (or black men doing the duty of white men) keeping the black family destitute. In retrospect, the show was a black version of Gilligan's Island with the Chicago projects serving as the island. You know the family's never getting out, because if they do, show's over!
The Soulprano's?!
Wasn't there already a show about that? Oh yeah, it was called THE SHIELD.
If there's one thing we need more of it's MORE gangsta role models for youth.
Johnny Sack doesn't live next door to Tony.
Yep, that's what we need -- an all African-American version of a TV show where the "F" word is the most often used expression. I watched two programs on DVD that a friend loaned me. I was not impressed. Remake the program with all Black actors and I still won't be impressed. In fact, remake it with people of any color, ethnicity, national background, race, or creed and it will still stink until someone with some real talent writes the scripts.
Actually it is about two warring Black crime families fighting over supremacy and territory.
Their main activities involve corruption, extortion, money laundering, illicit sex, perjury and shakedowns and money for "insurance" against bad things happening to business owners.
Their actions are covered endlessly on every television network.
One family is based in Chicago and the other is in New York.
They are know by various names but are more commonly known by the names of the heads of the families: Jackson and Sharpton.
That's my problem with this goofy idea as well. If you had a show like that with an all-black cast and all evil characters, imagine all the hell that would break loose.
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