<em>The Sopranos</em> Re-Politicised

Introduction The television drama The Sopranos (1999–2007) remains highly celebrated, and is increasingly popular online, years after the broadcast of its finale. Sepinwall aptly summarises its legacy: “it rewrote the rules and made TV a better, happier place for thinking viewers, even as it was telling the story of a bunch of stubborn, ignorant, miserable excuses for human beings” (36). The series follows Italian-American mob boss Tony Soprano as he struggles to balance his domestic and mafia 'family' lives. Tony unusually attempts to navigate his struggles by consulting a psychiatrist throughout the series, allowing the audience to also analyse his psyche. During the COVID-19 pandemic, binge-watching television shows became an integral part of leisure for many. Horeck observes that during the lockdown “binge-watching was recast as a form of self-care” (35). The Sopranos, in a similar fashion to other popular shows, received heightened viewership, being named by GQ as “the hottest show of 2020”. In the article, Unterberger reports that according to data from HBO, the show received a viewership boost of 179%. A sharp increase in viewership has the potential to result in heightened activity in fan spaces online, thus producing a wider array of discourse surrounding the show. Andrews suggests that, during the pandemic, fandoms in general grew more politically intensified, often becoming radical (902). Building on this assertion, this article aims to gauge the prevalence and explain the broader significance of conservative readings of The Sopranos. This research examines politicised identifications with the show based on data collected from The Sopranos fan page (subreddit) on Reddit: r/thesopranos. It aims to answer the question: how prevalent is conservative identification with The Sopranos on the r/thesopranos subreddit, and are these readings supported by the series? This article situates the conservative fan readings within the broader context of the show by highlighting the tension between many of these readings and the show's broader subtext. With a popular text like The Sopranos, the publication of varying political interpretations is to be expected. Audiences interpret the series differently based on their ideals, thereby becoming active creators of the show’s meaning (Sandvoss, Mirror 145). The interest of this article lies in what new conservative audiences are saying and why it matters, but also, more broadly, in underscoring the importance of studying past media and how they can be used to process current political concerns. The article begins by situating The Sopranos within the existing literature regarding its fan culture and ideological interpretations, and examines scholarship concerning the function of Reddit as a platform for fan discourse. It then describes the methodological approach, which combines textual analysis of The Sopranos with a discourse analysis of data gathered from the subreddit. The central analysis examines how fans articulate their conservative interpretations of the show, and illuminates tension between these readings, progressive readings, and the broader subtext of the series. The article concludes by remarking on the broader implications of these ideological readings and how digital fan cultures have the potential to shape the legacy of complex screen texts like The Sopranos. Literature Review The rise of conservative reinterpretations of The Sopranos can be understood through the framework of post-object fandom (Williams). This phenomenon refers to a continuing engagement with a show after it has ended. The Sopranos finished but did not die; instead, its meaning has shifted and is today based on an ever-changing political and cultural context. The fans keep the series alive through online discussions and political appropriation. A good portion of recent literature on The Sopranos focusses on audience perceptions of the series (Beare, “Contemporary Afterlives”; Beare, New Audience), and in some cases attempts to examine the potential for political identification with fans (Beare, “COVID-19”; Samuels). The examined literature also sought to decode broader allegories and particular subtexts (Davies) such as motherhood (Akass) and toxic masculinity (Taylor and Curtis). Before the pandemic, depictions of race (Kocela; Tabasinejad), sexuality (Hibberd), and masculinity (Mullins; Senior) were researched in key literature. However, broader academic discussion of The Sopranos fandom remains sparse, although a comprehensive study by Monaco attempts to redefine prior notions of fan cultures in the context of the show. Monaco refers to the “construction of the fan as a 'good' active (anti-capitalist) subject in contrast to the 'bad' passive consumer” (75). Furthermore, Beare’s The New Audience for Old TV expands on prior literature concerning online fandoms in the post-COVID world. Beare remarks on fan groups and pages dedicated to the series and how they are politicised, highlighting examples like “Socialist Sopranos Memes” on X, and the large variety of contributions to the r/thesopranos subreddit. Beare considers the series as “nominally progressive” in its political nature, which he states implicates the broader ways in which scholars infer the text (2013). Boyle’s work on the politically active fandom of The Handmaid’s Tale examines how conservative and progressive fan interpretations of the show are able to co-exist (135), highlighting the polysemic nature of the series. This provides a useful comparative point for this article’s research, which aims to build on the notion of series polysemy by providing a closer examination of the Reddit posts contextual to the The Sopranos’ subtext. Thereby, it aims to fill a gap in literature examining fan readings of The Sopranos. Recent scholarship on Reddit has attempted to make a clearer sense of its affordances as a platform, including how users often deviate from the moderator's intention of maintaining a space for constructive discourse (Squirrell). Maloney, Roberts, and Graham note Reddit as a strong source for data collection due to it being one of the largest platforms on the Internet for user-generated content, which also demonstrates a high level of free discussion (6). Conversely, it is underscored that the platform privileges a white, middle-class, technologically adept user base, often conservative and misogynistic (7). This notion is shared by Massanari, who suggests that the Reddit algorithm exists to support this toxic culture (129). Chen and McCabe found that while Reddit often facilitates organic political discussion in entertainment subreddits not initially intended to be political, this political discussion is not always productive or “tolerant” (3491). The approach to substantiating assertions made about the fan commentary will be assisted by conceptualising Hall’s reception theory or, more specifically, how The Sopranos is first encoded and then decoded by different viewers. This process concerns “the people who make it”, “the people who watch it”, and the “larger cultural context” (Xie et al. 191). A text has two layers of meaning: “the connotation and the denotation of the image code”, or the “common sense and illocutionary meaning” (191). For instance, when The Sopranos is decoded by the audience, this may be influenced by internal factors such as political tendencies, personal knowledge, and established cultural positions (Xie et al. 193). The reading position of a viewer has the potential to result in an ideological appropriation of the show, allowing one to interpret the series based on their preconceived political beliefs: “as all experiences found by the fan in the fan text coincide with his or her horizon of expectations, the fan text takes on the role of mirror, and thus becomes the banal object of a narcissistic perspective” (Sandvoss, Mirror 145). The Sopranos fans, therefore, become active participants in the creation of the text’s meaning. Concerning online fan cultures, Sandvoss interrogates the idea that online fan spaces function as “collective intelligence” and asserts that they instead tend to function as “echo chambers” (“Enthusiasm” 274). Post-COVID, as binge-watching has been reframed as a “politically productive activity” (Horeck 37), this article uncovers the importance of analysing the political readings of The Sopranos in the online fan space, attempting to better understand politicised readings of the show and their broader implications. Methodology This article employs a combined methodology, consisting of a discourse analysis of politicised readings from The Sopranos subreddit and a respective textual analysis of episodes relevant to the corresponding topic. The research is further substantiated by referring to both Hall’s reception theory and Williams’s post-object fandom in the context of the discourse as outlined in the literature review. This approach enables an effective investigation into how conservative-identifying fans construct meaning from The Sopranos, and how these readings demonstrate tension with both progressive readings and the show’s broader subtext. Data Collection This research utilised purposive sampling to collect fan posts from the r/thesopranos subreddit. Reddit was utilised both for the sake of consistency and its active fan community. The dataset includes approximately 60 comment threads posted between April 2020 and December 2024. The date period was selected due to the surge of interest in the series following the COVID-19 pandemic. Threads were identified using Reddit’s internal search within the subreddit. Some examples of searches include the terms “conservative”, “alpha”, “gay”, and “woke”. Posts were also selected for inclusion based on thematic relevance and high user engagement. Posts were aggregated into two notable themes: the question of Vito’s queerness, and Tony as a masculine, anti-woke hero. These themes were inductively selected for bei