TV Magic #3

In the two years since it finished, The Sopranos has left a sizeable hole in television. Sure, there have been other excellent shows, The Wire sticking out as an obvious example, but nothing has changed the way television drama is done in quite the same way since.

It would be no understatement to argue that The Sopranos changed the way people viewed T.V. as a medium. It was dense, complicated, superbly acted, episodes were often directed by guests (Steve Buscemi's episode is an absolute classic), and relentlessly unforgiving for those viewers unwilling to put in the time and pay enough attention. In short, it was the visual equivalent of a good book, and the more you put into it, the more you got out of it. Everything about it was perfectly put together, right down to the music chosen for the closing credits – I still fondly remember the episode where “Kid A” was played. One of my favourite things about The Sopranos, however, was the main character, Tony Soprano.

There's something to be said for a show that can make you like someone who is, on paper, intensely unlikeable. Tony was a murderer, a misogynist, a liar, a thief, angry, insecure, selfish... he wasn't someone you would feel safe in a room with, or want round for dinner, but, as a viewer, you always wanted to spend time with him. It wasn't just that Tony was interesting, all kinds of nondescript things are interesting, it was that he was undeniably human. For all his flaws, you really felt like you could understand him, and even sympathize at points. Given the kind of person he was, and the kind of business he was in, it was no mean feat on the writers part that they achieved this.

One of the central reasons for this was that, in a sea of amorality, Tony Soprano was committed to doing the right thing. Or, at least, he was committed to the right action according to his moral code. This was placed in contrast to his friends, family, and even the police force, all of whom were willing to abandon their ethics once an opportunity arose that they couldn't miss out on. Against this, Tony stood by his code, so much so that he was tragically trapped within it, constantly being brought to the edge of his sanity. He was a modern take on the gangster figure, doomed by his work and forced into therapy by the stresses and strains of his existence. Through all this we connected with him just enough so that we felt empathy. We were compassionate towards him because his flaws were understandable given the entrapments of his situation.

I'm writing this because I see a little of Tony in Don Draper, the central figure of AMC's recent smash-hit Mad Men, played to statuesque effect by Jon Hamm. Like Tony, Draper is not the easiest of people to like, he's moody, a womanizer, a drunk, distant, and a liar. Yet, like Tony, we sympathize with him, and ultimately, we understand him, even if we don't condone his actions. This is because both men are constructs, if not entirely victims, of their situations. Both shows deal with the inescapability of situations, the way in which time and place conspire to trap us, to force us into repeating the patterns of our parents' generation, of the difficulties of transcendence.

It's a topic that has been addressed frequently in books, the most obvious, and perhaps pompous, example being Marcel Proust's A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu (Remembrance of Times Past). It's an idea that has also been famously denied by Jean-Paul Sartre in his 1943 treatise Being and Nothingness. Ironically, Being and Nothingness, and existentialism, would hit its stride in the 60s, round about when Mad Men is set.

What would Sartre have said about Tony and Draper? Well, no doubt that they were acting in “bad faith”, they were choosing not to choose. For Sartre, we are all radically free to choose our actions and, in being so, are radically responsible, not only for our own actions, but for everyone else's too. To act in “good faith”, according to Sartre, is to recognize your freedom and act in accordance with it. Tony and Draper are choosing not to choose, revoking their freedom, and thus, Sartre would argue denying their essential humanity. Both characters are, however, clearly disturbed by their actions, both at some level aware of the wrongs they commit. Sartre would've explained this by suggesting that both suffer from “angst”, a reaction of despair to the recognition of one's own freedom. By acting in bad faith they attempt to undermine their angst, to pretend that they don't have a choice, while in reality both are all too aware that they do.

This reading would be disputed by Sartre's long-term lover Simone de Beauvoir, who argued in The Second Sex that situation can impede heavily on choice. Beauvoir applied her analysis to women, or what she took to be the construct of “the woman”, famously observing that “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” Her argument was that the roles we play in society are very much formed by the situation we are born into. While this doesn't excuse instances of “bad faith”, it makes them more understandable in certain circumstances.

I'm playing Sartre off Beauvoir for the reason that I want to meditate on the theme of how we, as viewers, identify with the characters on screen. A Sartrean reading of Tony and Draper might lead us to condemn both for their actions, but would have no way of explaining how we could sit through hours upon hours, or empathize, with them. Unless, of course, we endorsed their actions.

This last suggestion is not as absurd as it may seem, and many critics have pointed towards the misogynistic tendencies of both shows. A friend of mine was horrified by the apparent endorsement of abhorrent behaviours that she witnessed through the first season of Mad Men. Similarly, the glamorization of the gangster life-style is neither something that is new, nor something that looks like it will be disappearing in the future.

Despite this, I want to argue that a Beauvoirian interpretation is more appropriate because, whatever one might say about either character on either show, it would be hard to argue that their lifestyle is glamorized. Rather, both are absolute wrecks of human beings, with whatever cheap thrills achieved through womanizing, violence, and money being clearly at an imbalance with psychiatric illness, loneliness, divorce, and other misfortune.

Why would any one argue that both shows are misogynistic, then? Because, I think, both shows are display the modern tendency for there to be a lack of the deus ex machina in television. More specifically, neither character is directly punished by the Godly hand of the writer, but rather indirectly tortured by the confines of their own situation. This moral ambiguity, or Godlessness, is an irony that would not have been lost on Sartre who himself changed his views to be more in line with Beauvoir's later on in life. What is lacking in visceral, biblical vengeance though is made up by the humanity both shows have. If what both Sartre and Beauvoir are telling us is that the essence of being human is choice and that this is fundamentally constrained by our situation, then both The Sopranos and Mad Men are modern existential fables. Dark, troubling, but ultimately entirely human.