I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of my life watching terrible men: men who lie to their families; men who sabotage their relationships; men who make catastrophically bad decisions with astonishing confidence. As far back as I can remember, I’ve loved every second of it (yes, that is a “Goodfellas” reference).
I have long been drawn to crime movies. I have a meticulously long list of recommendations in the genre, built brick by brick over years of binge-watching mafia classics and action thrillers — I’ve probably seen over 300 at this point. But why? Why would a young woman spend so much time watching terrible men do terrible things?
The less dignified answer is that I apparently enjoy watching these men wear expensive suits while being morally ambiguous, destroying their own lives and, by extension, ruining the lives of everyone around them. The slightly more intellectual answer is that I love these stories because they do not flatten characters into heroes and villains. Strip away the guns and the outfits, and you’ll see that mafia stories are rarely just about crime. They are about loyalty, ambition, guilt, ego, fear and, above all, self-deception.
The characters in these dramas face higher stakes, and the consequences usually involve law enforcement, but the underlying psychology still reflects our real lives. Everyone has secrets. Everyone has motives. And honestly, who doesn’t like that kind of story?
At this point, it should surprise no one that one of my favorite fictional men is Tony Soprano, the protagonist of “The Sopranos.” Tony is, in many ways, the perfect culmination of my obsession with gangster stories. He has all the traditional ingredients: the power, the temper and a moral code that bends whenever it’s convenient.
But “The Sopranos” goes far deeper than simply asking us to watch a mob boss commit crimes. Creator David Chase took one of the most familiar figures in American crime fiction, the mob boss, and gave him the one problem no amount of money, violence, or masculine posturing could solve: himself. Before Tony Soprano is fully introduced to us as a mob boss, husband, father, or criminal, he is first presented as a man having panic attacks.
For those unfamiliar, HBO’s “The Sopranos” follows a New Jersey mob boss whose life begins to split under the pressure of the two worlds he is trying to control.
At home, Tony is a husband to Carmela and a father to Meadow and A.J., dealing with marital problems, parenting and the ordinary frustrations of suburban family life — including his difficult mother, Livia, and his overbearing uncle, Junior. At work, Tony is a powerful figure in organized crime. He becomes the boss of the DiMeo crime family, managing rivalries with other New York-affiliated families.
The result is a constant back-and-forth between the version of Tony who wants to understand himself and the version who refuses to change.
The same man who cries over a family of ducks leaving his swimming pool can terrorize someone over a debt; the same father who drives Meadow to her college visits can murder a former associate-turned-informant on the very same trips. Tony is fascinating because he is not a villain in a distant, theatrical way. He is funny, affectionate and very needy. He can also be selfish, cruel and casual about the harm he causes. But the show’s brilliance does not lie solely in Tony’s vulnerability. Vulnerability, on its own, is not redemption. Plenty of terrible men have feelings. Some of them have very elaborate, even emotionally intelligent, feelings.
In therapy, his panic attacks are not just symptoms of stress; they are proof that the control he exercises everywhere else is fragile. That is the central contradiction of his character: Tony wants to be feared at work and adored at home. He wants the authority of a mob boss and the innocence of a suburban father.
Perhaps this is why I liked the show so much. The way Tony justifies himself and expects everyone around him to absorb the emotional cost of his behavior. Then, why are men like Tony so often granted the luxury of being endlessly understood?
That question matters to me because, as a woman watching the show, I am aware of how familiar this dynamic feels. Not the mob boss part, obviously. My life has involved, blessedly, zero “sit-downs,” zero envelopes of cash and zero urgent meetings at the Bada Bing. But Tony’s emotional framework is all too recognizable: He is one of those men whose pain becomes everyone else’s problem, men whose cruelty we justify because, somewhere underneath it all, they are sad.
“The Sopranos” exposes that Tony is human, yet his humanity does not save him. His humanity does not erase his violence. And his love for his family does not undo what he asks them to endure.
And no one endures him more knowingly than his wife, Carmela.
Carmela Soprano makes the show even more interesting because she forces us to look not only at male power but also at the women expected to live with it, benefit from it, question it, resent it and still make it look presentable. She is not just Tony’s wife. Carmela Soprano is the person who molds his violence into something resembling a home.
What makes Carmela uncomfortable to watch is that she knows just enough — enough to feel guilt, enough to seek refuge in confession with Father Phil and enough to ask questions, then stop asking when the answers threaten the life Tony’s crimes have bought her. The show never portrays her as innocent, but it also never paints her as stupid.
After watching all six seasons of this crime drama, I realized that the show’s gender politics do not end with Tony and Carmela. Stories about terrible men have a way of following you back into real life, usually in the form of another guy asking if you have “actually seen” the show at hand. And the question not only reflects all the reasons why Tony gets to be endlessly understood, but also why I have to prove I understood him in the first place.
There is a strange suspicion that follows women who love stories like Tony and Carmela Soprano’s. When a woman says she loves mafia films and morally complex male characters, people are inclined to ask whether she is really interested in the genre or just trying to seem cool. Is she a fan, or is she performing for male approval? The girl they’re imagining is the one who likes gangster movies because she wants men to notice that she is different from other women.
At least those were some of the explanations I’ve got from talking to some men about my interests. What a boring little cage in which to imprison someone’s taste.
In Tony’s world, women are constantly characterized by their relation to men: wife, mother, daughter, mistress, therapist, witness, problem. They are rarely allowed to exist without being interpreted through the lens of men and the patriarchy.
Carmela is judged for staying with Tony, for benefiting from him, for challenging him and for not challenging him enough. This dynamic reflects the way women’s interests are interpreted relationally. Who are we trying to impress?
But, despite this all — what if I simply still like mafia films because they are some of the best stories ever made?
That is why Tony Soprano was never just for the boys. And if that still surprises anyone, maybe that is the point: The real question was never why a girl would love “The Sopranos.” The real question is why anyone thought girls would not understand these stories in the first place.
Bianca Mirica PO ’29 loves gangster movies and crime dramas and has endless material for opinions about her favorite mobsters, which she is more than happy to put into writing.
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