Author’s conception of the hit TV show ‘The Sopranos’
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The burden of identity, ethnic & otherwise
By
Mitzel
Someone recently asked me if I had ever watched "The Sopranos," an apparently popular and certainly much written-about television series. I told this person: "No." I have no interest in
this phenomenon whatsoever. (Well, maybe if Will and Grace and company guested on one episode....)
There's an awful lot out there which I blithely ignore, or do my best to ignore. But it got me to thinking. Back in the 70s, I had never seen any of the Godfather movies, the first of
which everyone assures me is a classic of the screen. Back in those days, I saw a lot of movies, but I deliberately avoided that series. Why? Well, I don't much fancy crime movies, at least
that variety of crime. I'm more interested in the violations depicted in something like
The Importance of Being Earnest or in any of the plays by the late Joe Orton.
But it isn't just the quality of the crime. It turns out that I'm just not very interested in the assimilation dramas of immigrant populations. (One friend recently returned from a trip
to LA. He was moaning and groaning about how he rarely heard English spoken there. Is this true?) How come? The country is full of immigrants, recent and not-so-recent. Many have
compelling dramas. Popular culture in the USA has long been a venue for depicting some of these stories. I grew up when ethnic humor-- what some these days might call ethnic stereotyping-- was
part and parcel of radio and TV programming. A friend of mine, who is currently teaching a course on Jewish popular culture at an Ivy League school, told me he showed some clips from the
old TV show "The Goldbergs" to his class (which is largely Jewish) and they were just shocked. Oh well.
I recently had the occasion to make my annual trip back to Ohio (Cincinnati) to visit family. While dining with my older brother and my maternal uncle, the topic turned to family
history, which uncle, it turned out, was quite good at, and I got an earful of useful information. I learned that all of them came from the South. When their ancestors floated over to these
shores, it was Virginia and other southern climes they called home. Driving back to my hotel, I had an epiphany. I ran through some of the ancestors' names: Wards, Poes, Hackneys, Tates,
Mitzels, Buschongs, Neffs, all Southerners; thus I had to accept the looming fact that, even though I was
born in Lakewood, Ohio, I was mostly the product of folks from the South. Some of
these people did wind up in Pennsylvania and Ohio, and these days, they're all over the country. I found this realization somewhat disturbing Why? Identity is such a fragile thing and, to steal
from Wilde, one touch and the bloom is gone.
I grew up in the Midwest and then came East. I'm sure each region of the country has its charms-- certainly the Midwest does; people are friendlier (that's both good and bad),
things seem to be more relaxed, etc. But I like the northeast; it's more culturally alive, people are testier (that's both good and bad), the anti-intellectualism so rampant in this culture is more
at bay here, and since we're the burnt-over district, we don't have as much of the Protestant Jesus thrown at us as folks do in the rest of the country. (My favorite cousin, a writer who
lives in Nashville, was once invited to consult with religious publisher Thomas Nelson on a new line of books. She turned them down. They were hurt. They asked her why; she told them: "Too
much Jesus.")
What I have met here in Boston, which I never ran across in the Midwest, is the Really Pretentious Quean. I have this new acquaintance and he is very grand, sort of a throwback to
the 50s quean, what I have called, I think exactly, the High Church Camp Quean. There's another one I've known longer, whom I met when he was just a nice Italian guy from a working
class neighborhood who, because of a chrysalis-like process which is most advanced here in Boston, turned into an excessively pompous phony aristo.
It's the Henry James Syndrome; just as the country's culture got more democratic, more inclusive, more vulgar, the queens in Boston molt into the exact opposite, Lady This,
Duchess That. One or two is OK, but it seems to be in the gay gene pool east of the Hudson. And a little bit can go a long way.
On the other hand, you have to give this type credit: they are completely self-inventions-- it's just that their dress pattern is so tired! I have no truck with this type. I have come,
finally, at age 55, to understand what I am and where I came from (with the new news of the deep Southern roots)-- just a middle-class Midwesterner, a simple country boy from Ohio, one of
the hardest facades to construct.
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