Television has long been a whipping boy medium for the cognoscenti. Amidst all the tripe churned out in the name of popular film, music, and literature, it is television alone which raises the ire of elitist cultural watchdogs as a medium. VW vans are festooned with bumper-sticking orders to “Kill Your Television,” while never is one encouraged to “Blow Up Your Cineplex” or “Smash Your MP3.” All of this raises interesting questions, like if ever there were a show which consistently attracted millions of viewers to a scathing critique of America’s toxic social pathologies surrounding class, gender, religion, and race, would we be satisfied?

HBO’s brilliant megahit, The Sopranos -- set to enter its fifth season this Sunday night -- is a prime example. Besides having thus far exhibited acting, direction, writing, and photography on par with the finest of American cinema, The Sopranos has consistently examined issues of racism, violence against women, the over-prescription of pharmaceuticals, and the intimate relationship between power, intimidation and wealth in capitalist America. And these stunod hippies still want me to clip my TV? Gedthefuggowdahere!

Mob cinema has always touched the Left for the simple reason that there are two kinds of people who think of organised criminals as being no different than any other kind of businesspeople: Mafiosi and anti-capitalists. The hyper-violence of the cinematic gangster -- whether Coppola’s Corleones or Scorcese’s good fellas -- is Marx’s “primitive accumulation” set to a mandolin soundtrack. Bored with the routinised violence of WASPs whose violent pillaging is always preceded by quiet, sophisticated New York Times op-ed pieces, audiences are thrilled by the sight of these street-level corporate hoodlums, this Enron in tracksuits who, unlike our bosses and tax collectors, still need to break a few knees in their shakedowns.

To the social critic, the Mafioso is the logical, ugly, and inevitable outgrowth of the profit system, or at very least its carnival mirror reflection. Further evidence to this end lies in the inability of law enforcement, compromised by bribes -- as well as a fundamental agreement with the mob as to the legitimacy of aggression in the name of protecting privilege -- to quell the gangster. La Cosa Nostra is never taken down from above; virtually every mob set-back dramatised on film results from a subversion of hierarchy: Henry Hill destroys his superiors through disloyalty (Goodfellas), Michael Corleone sits prone and vulnerable in his limousine, down $2 million as he is rocked back and forth without mercy by a crowd of Cubans celebrating the triumph of their revolution (Godfather Part II). In season four, Tony Soprano’s connections to thugs on the streets and in City Hall are unable to stop a group of Native Americans from protesting the genocidal, slave-driving legacy of Christopher Columbus. In every case, the strict, all-male Mafia hierarchy, a semi-bastardised image of class society-at-large, can only be subverted from the bottom.

The Sopranos has taken all of the potential offered up by the Mafia anti-hero and augmented it with the abilities unique to the medium of serialised TV. Where we spent less than nine hours investigating the Corleone family (and that’s if you count number three), and less than three hours with the Goodfellas, over 52 hours of Sopranos has woven one of the most intimate character portraits ever seen. An immaculate pacing over four seasons has exposed us to all the nuances and vicissitudes of Tony’s sexism, racism, psychiatric conditions, contradictions, and paranoia. Strong, brilliantly acted female roles underscore a thematic concern largely lacking from the rest of the genre.

What makes the series’ social commentary even more compelling are its masterful aesthetic achievements: Each still is a perfect stand-alone. The dialogue is simultaneously dark, brilliant, hilarious and, above all, natural. Each song selected for the extensive soundtrack is perfectly apt.

Thus far, the writing and directing of the series -- whose tones were set and continue to be guided by creator David Chase -- have been buttressed by the efforts of contributors such as Steve Buscemi, who directed the celebrated season three episode “Pine Barrens,” and who is set to join the cast as Tony Soprano’s cousin this season. Stellar scripts have also been forthcoming from one of the show’s stars, Michael Imperioli, who plays Tony’s impetuous, formerly heroin-addicted nephew, Christopher Moltisanti. Imperioli, whose previous collaborations with acclaimed filmmaker Spike Lee have explored the nuances of the relationship between black and Italian communities in America, wrote season four’s “Christopher,” centred around the aforementioned conflict between indigenous activists and Columbus-worshipping Italian nationalists. Shunning any cowardly ambiguity, the episode places a rebuttal of Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States in the ignorant mouth of Tony himself, who tells his son, who is reading Zinn’s opus: “In this house, Christopher Columbus is a hero. End of story.” The most openly and offensively anti-Native of the gang is Silvio, played by Stevie Van Zandt -- the rock star noted as much for his role in founding indigenous rights groups such as the Solidarity Foundation and Artists United Against Apartheid as for being Bruce Springsteen’s guitarist in the E Street Band.

The publicity surrounding season five indicates an even darker, more troubling set of 13 episodes outlining the lives of these back-alley capitalists and those who surround them. If these VW-driving elitists keep their contract out on my favourite show, available to Canadian viewers on Movie Central this Sunday night, I just may have to look into Witness Protection.

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