Empathy for the Devils
Do the "Sopranos" killers make us rexamine our view of murderers?
© Ted Gay
Five actual murders. The Soprano crime family. If we can empathize with the Sopranos when they show signs of humanity can we do the same with actual murderers?
Little Jay has burns on his chest because his cousin poured scalding water over him as a joke. Despite that he always had a smile. When he was teenager he got a job in a youth center supervising children. His mother had a drug problem and he watched over his younger siblings. He either killed, or ordered a man killed, who owed him drug money. He is sitting in prison awaiting trial.
Marquise starred for his high-school basketball team. He was the youngest of many and his mother doted on him. Today his daughter is a star pupil in her class, always nicely dressed and well behaved. Marquise does not see her often. Someone called him a derogatory name and he ran over him three times killing him.
Ricky was a good neighbor, cleaning around his apartment. He doted on his children loving to play with them. He broke into a woman’s house and choked her to death with his bare hands.
Scoop works as a drug abuse councilor. He goes into the roughest areas and gets people help. He is an advocate for the homeless, letting them sleep in his basement. When he was a young man he robbed a bank, and while he was in prison, he was challenged dozens of times, and that’s how many he killed, all termed self-defense.
Roy is a homeless, elderly man. He has a dog he frets over, trying to find him food before himself, and begging for free veterinary care. Roy hasn’t had many friends. He spent 40 years in prison for raping and killing a child.
Although their names are changed, these men are all real.
In television and films murderers are portrayed as pure evil, who the good guys bring to justice.
Only David Chase of the “Sopranos” has shown us that not only can we empathize for killers, but also we can root for them, worry about them, and mourn them.
In the first episode of the final season Bobby Bacala shot a young man who begged for his life on a bathroom floor. When the child like Bacala was killed excitedly holding a train he was adding to his collection, there was no conditioned response by viewers to cheer when the murderer died, there was sadness, because we got to see him with his children, got to know him, he was part of the family.
In the opening of the Sunday’s show Silvio Dante garrotes a disloyal family member. We have also seen him murder Adriana and Pussy. And we were still shocked to see him shot several times, and to learn he was near death. Not Silvio. We liked Silvio.
And that leaves us with Tony, huddled in a room with a shotgun, who had a hand in all these murders, who murdered Christopher, who was like a son, and Tony B, who was like a brother. But we wait for next week, hoping that somehow he escapes.
When Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 innocent people at Virginia Tech we wondered how his family could still love someone who caused such pain?
How could we as viewers not rejoice in the death of the Soprano Crime Family, vicious killers murdering without conscious? Because Chase has brought them into our living room.
“The Sopranos” has showed us that even the most evil people have moments when they bounce children on their knee, splash with the ducks, and love.
It has made blurred the line of good people and bad people on television to make it just a blurred as it is in real life.
