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Bowman examines a scene from The Sopranos where John "Johnny Sack" Sacramoni seeks permission, from Tony Soprano among others to "clip" Ralph Cifaretto for jokingly insulting his wife's weight, which has done damage to her "body image, self esteem." None of his superiors will bite, and Bowman notes that the episode "exploits the comic potential of this collision between feral honor that criminal gangs so often keep alive and the narcissistic culture of therapy and self-indulgence. The mortal offense of an imputation against a woman's chastity (or a man's courage or truthfulness) becomes merely absurd when translated into hurt feelings and bruised sensitivities about 'body image.' Johnny Sack is not wrong to take Ralph's joke as a sign of disrespect, to use the term most commonly employed now in place of the honor language. But the concept of disrespect, unlike honor, does not contain within itself a generally accepted hierarchy to direct the flow of respect or a tariff of penalties for its omission. . . . Tony's problem is always to find some acceptable compromise, some middle way between the Sicilian-American honor culture to which he remains attached as an ideal and the values, including self-esteem, of the consumerist paradise that he and his fellow gangsters wish to continue inhabiting. He is not often successful. . . .in the end, honor usually has to give way to one or more of the various strategies by which the American middle classes have recently learned to avoid individual responsibility."
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, August 28, 2006 at 03:37 PM
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