Katherine Hyunmi Lee, "The Ghost of Gary Cooper: Masculinity, Homosocial Bonding, and The Sopranos"
(page 4 of 4)

Conversely, the storyline featuring Junior illustrates Sedgwick's contention that relations between men structure their relations with women, and vividly displays how "ghostly" ideals inform both. In Boca Raton, Junior orders Bobbi to keep the details about their sex life private and she asks why:

Junior: Because they think if you'll suck pussy, you'll suck anything.
Bobbi: Oh, you're kidding.
Junior: It's a sign of weakness. And possibly a sign that you're a fanook.
Bobbi: A fag? That's ridiculous. How would the two even translate?
Junior: What're you gonna do? I don't make the rules.

Junior's allusion to a vague "they" and his admission that he does not "make the rules" signifies his adherence to heterosexist masculine codes (or in this case, the appearance of his adherence), even though their origins are unknown to him and do not really make sense.[4] Indeed, as Bobbi's incredulity makes clear, these "rules" seem highly illogical: Junior is fearful of being perceived as less powerful, or even gay, for performing a heterosexual act. Yet, the very fact that this is a "rule" signifies its status as a time-honored and socially sanctioned convention. As Roger Lancaster points out, this convention is also culturally specific—"in Anglo-American culture, orality defines the homosexual"—and mapped onto real practices, regardless of who the practioners are (Lancaster 43). Contradictory though these rules may seem, Junior simply accepts them; like Tony in his discussion of Cooper with Melfi, Junior has to ignore or elide the inconsistent nature of heterosexual masculinity in order to identify himself as a powerful man.

And, of course, Junior's fears come to fruition. During the last homosocial bonding scene in "Boca," Junior, his consigliere Mikey Palmice, Tony, and Silvio play a round of golf. The beginning and end of this scene features a close-up of a golf ball being hit, a visual reference to the practice of "busting one's balls," that is, asserting superiority by denigrating another's masculinity, and what ensues is a masculine anxiety fest of sorts, a game of one-upmanship in which Tony and Junior attempt to define themselves by attacking one another [clip from "Boca," 37:06-39:06]. Tony playfully though annoyingly interrupts Mikey's swing and Junior humiliates Tony on several fronts. He sides with his consigliere over his nephew and then refers to an incident from Tony's adolescence in which Tony's athletic performance fell short—"If you'd a shut up during that game with Mountain Lakes you wouldn't have missed that fuckin' fly ball"—which effectively links Tony's past inadequacies as an athlete (and by extension, as a man) to the present day. Junior also intimates that Tony's personal failure is familial ("I was ashamed to face my friends"), and that Tony is Junior's inadequate representative.

Tony retaliates by employing various slang terms associated with oral sex as a means of informing Junior that he knows his uncle's secret without explicitly saying so; the terms also insult the act of oral sex itself and Junior for performing it. As Tony sings "South of the border, down Mexico way," he taunts Junior by holding his golf club like a phallus, visually establishing his superior masculinity. He also associates Junior's manhood with his Italian heritage, implying that Junior is not only not a "real" man, he's not a "real Italian" man: "I thought you were a baccala man, Uncle June. What're you doin' eatin' sushi?" Junior's allusion to Tony's therapy, which at this point in the series, is still a secret—"At least I can deal with my own problems"—is also couched in terms of masculine superiority and autonomy.

The grand irony here is that Tony disparages Junior for engaging in a sexual act that he too practices; earlier in the episode, Carmela rightfully calls Tony a hypocrite when he laughs at the news about his uncle. More seriously, Tony's baiting triggers grave repercussions: Junior eventually attempts (and fails) to have Tony assassinated, and Tony retaliates by ordering Mikey Palmice's death. In a subsequent episode, at the nadir of his relationship with his uncle, Tony remembers this leisurely golf-game-gone-bad as the catalyst: "Uncle June and I, we had our problems with the business. But I never should've razzed him about eating pussy. This whole war could've been averted" ("I Dream of Jeanie Cusimano," episode 13). Thus what began as verbal riposte ends in a war between two mafia crews and two generations of Soprano men in an attempt to uphold an ideal that no one actually follows: The injunction against performing oral sex. This riposte also ends in heartbreak: As a final punctuation to its depiction of the distance between the ideal and the real, "Boca" pays homage to the 1931 film The Public Enemy, starring James Cagney as Tom Powers, the ultimate gangster. In the film, Tom viciously shoves a grapefruit into his girlfriend Kitty's face; in "Boca," Junior shoves a lemon meringue pie in Bobbi's face to break up with her. But while Tom is unremorseful and immediately finds a new girlfriend, a tearful Junior walks dazed into the dark street.

What "Boca" demonstrates, then, is that while homosocial bonding helps men define themselves in relation to one another, they are ultimately and collectively defined by unattainable or contradictory heterosexist ideals that are ephemeral in nature but yield real consequences, costs, and benefits, for men and women.[5] And in the end, this is what helps make The Sopranos a feminist metatext—its willingness to show the continual interplay of and disjunctures between reality and fantasy that inform the characters' notions of who they are, to engage in that same interplay with us, and to comfort, terrify, and shock us with the realization that when we see ourselves in the characters, sometimes we are barely recognizable.

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Lisa Johnson of Coastal Carolina University and Jackie McGrath of College of DuPage for their comments and advice.

Works Cited

Akass, Kim and Janet McCabe. "Beyond the Bada Bing!: Negotiating Female Narrative Authority in The Sopranos." In Lavery, This Thing of Ours , 146–61.

"Boca." Episode 9 of The Sopranos. Written by Jason Cahill, Robin Green, and Mitchell Burgess. Directed by Andy Wolk. HBO. Transcript.

Donatelli, Cindy and Sharon Alward. "'I Dread You'?: Married to the Mob in The Godfather, Goodfellas, and The Sopranos." In Lavery, This Thing of Ours , 60–71.

Gardiner, Judith Kegan. Introduction. Masculinity Studies and Feminist Theory: New Directions. Edited by Gardiner, 1–29. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002.

Halberstam, Judith. "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Men, Women, and Masculinity." In Gardner, Masculinity Studies and Feminist Theory, 344–67.

Heidkamp, Bernie. "Just When Men Thought They Were Out . . ." PopPolitics, July 13, 2000.
http:www.poppolitics.com/articles/2000-07-13-bigmen.shtml.

Lancaster, Roger. "Subject Honor, Object Shame." In The Masculinity Studies Reader, edited by Rachel Adams and David Savran, 41–68. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002.

Lavery, David, ed. This Thing of Ours: Investigating The Sopranos. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002.

Sedgwick, Eve. Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.

The Sopranos. Created by David Chase. HBO. 1999–.

Walker, Joseph. "'Cunnilingus and Psychiatry Have Brought Us to This': Livia and the Logic of False Hoods in the First Season of The Sopranos." In Lavery, This Thing of Ours, 109–21.

Endnotes

1. In addition, women characters in The Sopranos are also more than capable of engaging in brutal behavior, as evidenced by Livia and Janice Soprano, whose mercenary tactics show that women could succeed in the mafia as well as men. If, repeating Akass and McCabe, Tony's "options are circumscribed by a morality defined by civilizing women," then women such as Carmela, Jennifer, and Janice are circumscribed by the mafia's status as a misogynistic and socially transgressive institution. [Return to text]

2. Bernie Heidkamp presents an extended discussion of the "crisis of masculinity" as a post–World War II phenomenon in his discussion of The Sopranos, "Just When Men Thought They Were Out . . . "
http://www.poppolitics.com/articles/2000-07-13-bigmen.shtml. [Return to text]

3. While Cooper/Kane is Tony's personal ideal, his other identificatory model is the Rat Pack, a group that exemplifies how masculinity becomes reinforced through homosocial bonding. While Tony and his peers ostensibly have more in common with Frank, Sammy, and Dean, this model ultimately proves as alienating as Cooper/Kane, as depicted in "The Rat Pack" (episode 54). The title's dual meaning alludes to the Rat Pack portrait that Tony is given by colleague Tony Massarone, who is also an FBI informant, and thus signifies the distance between the ideal incarnated by the original Rat Pack and the current mob, which is corrupted by disloyalty. Also, Soprano invests his desire to maintain homosocial bonds in his cousin, Tony Blundetto, who is released from prison in the episode. But Blundetto tells Soprano that he has ambitions of becoming a massage therapist instead, thwarting Soprano's plans. At the end of the episode, Soprano throws away the painting. [Return to text.]

4. If Tony's nostalgia hearkens back to his father's era, Junior, who actually is from that generation, turns out to be equally haunted by masculine ideals. We find out in a later episode that, like Tony, Junior conflates masculine with national ideals, as his identificatory model is John F. Kennedy. When Tony asks him about Kennedy's stance on organized crime, Junior dismissively replies, "That was the brother" ("Second Opinion," episode 33). He even chooses an oncologist with the same name, with almost fatal effects. He, too, seems to emulate the "Rat Pack" era, fantasizing about Angie Dickinson in "I Dream of Jeanie Cusimano" (episode 13). [Return to text.]

5. As Joseph Walker points out, contra Akass and McCabe, Tony's drunken declaration to Carmela at the end of "Boca"—"I didn't hurt nobody"—is only partially true. While Tony does not hurt Hauser, he essentially causes Junior and Bobbi's painful breakup. See Walker, "'Cunnilingus and Psychiatry Have Brought Us to This.'" [Return to text.]