Why do black people like the Sopranos?

[grumpy_new_yorker]

Same reason they like goodfellas, casino and scarface.

 

[drunkenone]

Never watched it; The Wire was my show. The Wire >>>>>> The Sopranos

 

[jsnowpro]

I mean lets keep it real....i watched every episode and whenever a black person is on screen they are portrayed in a way that makes them look stupid or unable to put a sentence together. the black people are either drug dealers o rin some sort of anger rehab. Even the half balck guy was killed for dating "the bosses" daughter. the mother had a black housekeeper and the first thing tony says is."please no guns around my mother" and th mother thinks shes stealing.

Why do we continue to support this show? i know its only entertainment, but i would rather not have any blacks on the show rather than low wage earning, drug dealing criminals. The only sucessful black was half jew? wtf

no he said .. please no 'ganja'

i just started watching this and didn't know that that light skinneded brotha was going to get clapped. thx for the spoiler

 

[rage]

I mean lets keep it real....i watched every episode and whenever a black person is on screen they are portrayed in a way that makes them look stupid or unable to put a sentence together. the black people are either drug dealers o rin some sort of anger rehab. Even the half balck guy was killed for dating "the bosses" daughter. the mother had a black housekeeper and the first thing tony says is."please no guns around my mother" and th mother thinks shes stealing.

Why do we continue to support this show? i know its only entertainment, but i would rather not have any blacks on the show rather than low wage earning, drug dealing criminals. The only sucessful black was half jew? wtf

You can be black and appreciate a well crafted, written, produced and acted show about bigots, racists and some really despicable people overall....because its entertainment based on the reality within that world.

 

[jsnowpro]

nah ive watched the wire before. its just a better show on all fronts. it was more realistic and had better character development. sopranos feels barebones and superficial at times. its too many cardboard characters in this show ... ie janice

still entertaining though. im on season 3

 

[stoneface]

lmao, what are you talking about? the half Jewish/Black dude who was smashing Meadow never got killed. lol if that were to happen. There has been a few black characters in the show who werent portrayed like the way you described but yeah, I agree there were some that were portrayed stereotypically. Ironically, a lot of the Italians and people of other races in the show were portrayed stereotypically as fuck, too. I wouldnt be surprised if theres a gang of Italian American folks offended by this show. Its a great series and one of my favorites, though I honestly dont feel the show was blatantly trying to be racist, imo.

 

[RawAce]

there is a gang of italian americans that hated

the sopranos

growing up gotti

jersey show

and now they hate mob wives

its magnifying the stereotypes of them and not showing any positive italian americans

 

[jsnowpro]

though I honestly dont feel the show was blatantly trying to be racist, imo.

same. tony was an equal opportunity hater so i wasnt taking that shit personal. he prolly threw more darts at jews & polish folk than niggas in that show.

 

[NothingButTheTruth]

I can't even get past an episode. Too boring IMO.

 

[CoolJoe]

I watch it because it's a great show.

 

[2stepz_ahead]

Sopranos >> The Wire.

But because of the authenticity of the story telling in Sopranos, and the fact that it is common knowledge the Cosa Nostra did not particularly like people of color.. well basically, you can put two and two together.

John Gotti hated niggas, that is a fact.

And his predecessors were the same.

But having said that there are a few instances in the Sopranos where they give niggas high positions like the dude on the Board for the housing scheme Tony wanted to exploit.

And when Tony got pulled over by a black cop he complained to his inside man about it and he had him fired. Then it shows Tony go back and try and make amends and get his job back.

But reality is most of the show portrayed niggas in a negative light.

damn i forgot i made this shit...its like a year old

but anyway

the cop was made to look like weak...and made to look like tony had more authority and thats why he was fired

the housing dude....was shown in a light to go against his people and sell them out

those are really the only dudes that could put a sentence together

 

[jsnowpro]

Cop was made to look like weak...and made to look like tony had more authority and thats why he was fired

tony got him fired but it was cuz he was a pig not cuz he was black. when Tony saw him working at home depot on account of his shady dealings, he started looking into how he was going to help him get his job back. he had started doing it, but then meadow seeing that black dude kind of soured him and he was just like fuck it and he let the situation stay the same.

the housing dude....was shown in a light to go against his people and sell them out

it was a business thing for tony, not a racism thing. i dont feel like the show had a specific vendetta against colored folk. almost every non italian person in that show caught some sort of ether, so i didnt take it personal. and even like somebody above me said, it doesn't portray italian americans themselves in the most positive light.

 

[jsnowpro]

i just remembered another scene where there was black folk. it was this episode where a white family was driving a mercedes suv . they were driving and driving and stopped at a deserted parking lot only to get robbed by niggas.

after the thugs left with the stolen car, the white dudee shouted 'fucking niggers!!' when he said i was like cot dam racist crakka, but after that they showed his wife gasping and glaring at him for using that word infornt of his children, so that kinda softened it for me. its funny cuz after his wife glared at him, he glared back and shouted 'who else???' and then in the next scene they showed tony smiling holding a picture of the stolen suv (he was the one who was [ultimately] responsible for the jacking)

 

[stoneface]

Damn, i just noticed how old this thread is, I thought it was new.

 

[atribecalledgabi]

italians didn't/don't like black people. it's not news. still a good show.

 

[Dupac]

Same reason they like goodfellas, casino and scarface.

this here, niggaz like watching gangster shit...

violence, crime, money, bitches.....recipe for good entertainment

wire>>>sopranos though

 

[Swiffness!]

ok, first off, the racism is why I never bought into that "Tony's a bad guy, but the viewers LOVE him" shit. Yeah, WHITE viewers lol. I'm glad that fat fuck died at the end. (and YES, he did die) The racism is enough reason for me to hate Tony thankyouverymuch. A black person liking Tony too much is borderline coonery IMHO.

BUT,

ya'll kind of missing the point OF the racism....its not just cuz real life mafioso are racist, its deeper than that, peep:

It's here that I want to take a step back and, again, talk about the ways this series compares to The Wire and Deadwood. Deadwood - perhaps my favorite series of all time - takes the broadest possible view of humanity. We're all one unit, struggling together toward similar ends and all affecting each other in ways we don't fully understand. The Wire is a bit more bleakly deterministic - most of the people on it will never see even a modest victory - but it, too, observes all of the people in its universe as complex, complete people, as pieces that are connected in complex and interesting ways many of them will never know about. The Sopranos takes the narrowest view of its world and humanity possible. These people are venal and self-obsessed, and they will never change. The only way they - or we, really, since they are the people we view this world through - will notice the protestors or Melfi's patient who commits suicide is if someone (Melfi, in this case) forcibly throws open the window and makes us and them look at that sight. Someone dies on Deadwood or The Wire, and you feel it. It reverberates. Someone dies on The Sopranos and they're outside of Tony's immediate field of vision? They don't even exist.

One of the criticisms I and other critics have held against The Sopranos has always been that it doesn't really develop characters outside of its central mafia world. When the series tries to head off to Hollywood or visit the African Americans Chris works with in the projects or drop in for dinner at Melfi's house, it often feels hilariously awkward, as though the series has completely left its wheelhouse. It's rare to hold that complaint against an episode of Deadwood or The Wire, where the writers easily slip between the classes within their fictional cities. But on this rewatch, I'm less and less convinced this is the case. The characters we meet from outside of the mob world are so often bare stereotypes or simple plot points because the point-of-view characters we observe this world through see them that way. The only one of the protestors who gets much development at all is the preacher, and that's because he's the only one Tony can really understand, since both men are corrupt, to some degree. Men fighting for something better than what they have? Not really something Tony can grasp. But a man taking advantage of others to line his own pockets? Tony sees bits and pieces of that every day in his line of work. The Sopranos misses the "little people" so thoroughly because the SOPRANOS miss the little people so thoroughly. They're just people standing in the way. (In this way, The Sopranos is probably just as trenchant and complex a criticism of pure capitalism as Deadwood or The Wire.)

http://www.avclub.com/articles/guy-walks-into-a-psychiatrists-officedo-not-resusc,43261/

Makes sense when you look at it like that, right?

Here's another example: Compare the rap music you hear in the background on The Wire to the rap you hear in the background on The Sopranos. The Wire is like a time capsule of early 2000s rap. You hear DMX and Jay in Season 1, 50 in season 2, Luda in Season 3, etc. But on The Sopranos, *EVERY* rap song you hear is some dumb no-name superwack shit that sounds like a racist white person's idea of what ALL rap music is. Get it?

and BTW i think The Wire is the better series (Sopranos has a couple of whole episodes that are straight up WACK - not The Wire!) but Sopranos has better visuals and beautiful widescreen cinematography. That's why I think Breaking Bad will be GOAT when its all said and done, every ep of Breaking Bad is just filmed ridiculously beautiful.

 

[lighthearted26]

Wasn't someone on there married to a black woman and he found her dead in the bed? And I also remember Carmela saying something borderline racist when their son was dating the Dominican chick and brought her to dinner.

 

[bigsmooth14]

Hesh had a black girl

 

[jsnowpro]

the wire was an all round better show, nobody can debate that.