A Moral Never Never Land: Identifying with Tony Soprano By: Monique Garca & Isabella Mejia I like Tony Soprano; I cant help it. I like him dispise the fact that i recognize that hes a vicious and dangerous criminal. Tony Soprano isnt real- hes fictional. TV shows like The Sopranos make very bad people seem, well, likeable. Tony Soprano has attracted its fair share of its kind of criticism. When is art dangerous? PLATO was the 1st western philosopher to worry seriously about the effect of fiction on its audience. Poetry can be dangerous b/c it can lead us to sympathize with ficitonal characters & the feeling of the fictional character comes to infect the audience. Tolstoy though the same was as Plato, he rejected all art, expet popular chritian peasant art. 1.Its a ongoing TV serie not a 2 hour movie. Vieers of the Sopranos spend a long time w/ these characters, getting to know them and care for them 2.Tony is portrayed in deeply psychological and often quite intimate. Through Tonys session w/ Dr. Melfi we get to know his feelings, get tu udnerstand his childhood, hopes, concers, and fears. 3. The Sopranos strive for versimilitude. It does not have the ironic stylishness of Goodfellas, not is it and idealized period piece like The Godfather. -The # of gang killin in the show is stinkingly realistic. Psycoloanalysis, New Jerseys settings, thelanguage, Tony & Carmelas family dynamics, FBI serveilliance tecniques, mob structure and organization is very close to what is found in real life. The show is sent in our times and what we deal with: Prozac, teen drug use, competitiveness of college acceptance, Attention Deficit This show lead its audience to identify with a terrible person. Not ALL characters are gangsters some are good people like Dr. Melfi & Meadow Soprano. Many who are not good, atleast suffer pands of conscience for the evil they do and try to do good like Carmela, Artie Bucco and Adriana. The audience identify themselfs with Tony Sopranos victims. We see things from more than one point of view. The Sopranos provides us with multiple moral perspectives on evil characters & which offer room for moral reflection, might even be good for us, rather than evil.