The Unhappiness of Tony Soprano
From Philosophy and the Sopranos, Open Court Press
Jennifer Baker
“I got the world by the balls and yet I can’t stop feeling that I am a loser.” Tony Soprano, “The Happy Wanderer”
Fans of The Sopranos acknowledge, with glee, that Tony Soprano has the world by the balls. When Tony is crossed — if someone owes him money, attempts to hold him to a contract, or harms something he cares about (be it a person or a racehorse) — the audience is primed to think “Don’t they know who they are dealing with? This is Tony Soprano.” Tony’s reactions rarely fail to support the viewers’ conviction that Tony Soprano is not to be messed with. And we admire the character for this. No one takes us seriously when we talk about “wanting to wring” someone’s neck.
In review after review Tony gets described as “lusty”. The dictionary has this as either lasciviousness or a pronounced vitality. When it comes to Tony, take your pick. Tony, when it comes to what he wants, has both aim (the lasciviousness) and reach (the vitality.) This makes Tony admirable in way number two: we like a man who knows what he wants and knows how to get it.
It seems like Tony has got it all. He wants money? Other people have money? He takes it for himself. He wants a family but girlfriends too? He makes it happen. And the mystery we want to address: why despite all that he has attained, does Tony feels like a loser? In the show, we look to Tony’s therapist Dr. Melfi to explain what is wrong with Tony. In this chapter, we’ll look to the diagnosis ancient philosophers would offer. That’s right, what would Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics and the Epicureans have to say about the happiness of a self-described “fat crook from Jersey”? We’ll see that they have plenty to say. Tony Soprano, who has hardly changed at all from his psychotherapy, could really benefit from a little philosophy.
Tony on Happiness
Tony, for all of his blustery anti-intellectualism, shows signs of having thought a bit about happiness. He seems to have discerned three different approaches to happiness, that of the “whiners,” the “happy wanderers”, and the “Gary Cooper”-types. His therapist Dr. Melfi’s aim, as he sees it, is make him a “whiner”, to get him to blame others (his parents) for his unhappiness and make him “feel like a victim” (The Happy Wanderer). If she succeeded, Tony thinks he would be like the “fucking Americans nowadays” who he describes as “pussies — crying, complaining, confessing.”
Tony distains the “whiners”, but it is animosity he feels for the “happy wanderers.” These “assholes” don’t need therapy and move through life cheerily oblivious to its trials and setbacks. Now, Tony would rather be a “happy wanderer” than a “whiner” but expresses this with the following: “Sometimes, if I see a guy with a clear head, you know the type, always whistling like the Happy Fucking Wanderer. I see this and… I wanna walk up to him and rip his fucking’ throat open. For no reason at all. Just go up to him and fucking pummel him.” (The Happy Wanderer). Despite being able to imagine this diatribe including that these types get their kicks from doing things like visiting zoos, Tony quite enjoyed acting the “happy wanderer” on the day he was made giddy by a new girlfriend and zoo visit.
It is Gary Cooper that attracts Tony the most, however. “First day I came here (to therapy) first fucking day I said how Gary Cooper was a man. Strong. Silent.” (The Happy Wanderer). Of course, what it is that “Gary Cooper” has is elusive to Tony, who is not even clear on what he understands to be “Gary Cooper”-like. He idealizes his father by putting him in the “Gary Cooper” category: his dad ran his own crew back when the mob had “values”. Yet at the same time Tony acknowledges that his mother “wore [his father] down to a little nub. He was a squeaking gerbil when he died.” (Pilot).
Does it seem far-fetched to suggest that ancient Greek philosophy can help clear up Tony’s confusion about happiness? Perhaps it ought not to, not even within the context of the show. The show’s writers have Tony read the following quotation in Bowdoin College’s Admissions Building (College): “No man can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true.” The author, Nathaniel Hawthorne, was undoubtedly inspired by the work of ancient thinkers when he composed this line. It reflects the ideas first put forward by Plato. In The Republic Plato has Socrates explain that happiness is a matter of organizing a harmony between the parts of one’s self. We ought to make ourselves a “perfect unity, rather than a plurality, self-disciplined and internally attuned.” And our actions must be consistent with this aim, so that we “preserve and promote” an internal harmony (Plato, Republic, book 4, 443c-d). Looking to the ancient Greeks for an explanation of what this internal harmony consists in shows up the deficiencies in Tony’s understanding of happiness. In particular, the ancients provide us with clear and more useful accounts of both the cause and effects of actual happiness. Tony neither needs to feel like a “victim” nor does he need to think that happiness is no more than a matter of fleeting moods. Even more significantly, in contrast to Dr. Melfi, who, in four years of treating Tony has hardly breached the subject, ancient philosophy can explain what is at stake in Tony’s continuing his life of crime.
The Ancients on Happiness and Tony and the Rest of Us
Despite his extraordinary talent for satisfying his more immediate desires, in the following respect Tony is not so different from the rest of us. We, like Tony, tend to think of happiness as a matter of having certain things in our lives. We expect to be happy once we get to college, or get our degree, or have a family and settle down. Or, if we have these things and get asked if we are happy, we respond with a list what we have and ask back “Who could ask for anything more?” According to Aristotle, people in ancient Greece were confused in the same way as we are today on the subject of happiness. Aristotle, in the Rhetoric, summarizes what was a matter of general agreement at the time. What seems, then, to have been a matter of ancient “common sense” is the suggestion that happiness is a matter of achieving a list of things: a good family, lots of friends, wealth, reputation, honor, old age…
But the ancient ethicists explain that happiness is not a matter of merely having things. The Stoics, in response to a list like that in Aristotle’s Rhetoric, write that “not even an abundance of these goods… makes a difference to the happiness, desirability, or value of one’s life.” The Epicureans believe that if we think deeply enough about happiness we will come to realize that good birth, wealth, reputation, honor and even a good old age do not directly contribute to our happiness.
There are two components to the difficulty of happiness, according to the ancient Greeks. First, happiness is a matter of activity—not acquisition. As Aristotle writes, “activities are what give life its character.” We cannot merely pursue and attain a good family, lots of friends, wealth, reputation, honor, and old age and expect to be happy. (How much easier if we could, huh?) Second, happiness is not something we can stumble into, despite Tony’s suspicions about the “happy wanderers”. To live a happy life requires a conscious effort to revise and integrate the goals we have picked up from a common sense understanding of what makes life good. The aims we have, before thinking philosophically about our lives, inevitably conflict. This is demonstrated in a spectacular way by Tony Soprano, who aims to be both a loving father and a murderer. Hawthorne’s quotation seems readily applicable to Tony, but does it apply to the rest of us? We, might pursue family and a career, do we have two faces as well? Something as seemingly benign as trying to “juggle” family and career can perpetuate a misunderstanding of what it is to be happy if we think we only need to strike the right “balance” between these pursuits. This would be to think of happiness as a matter of things we can achieve, rather than as a way to live our lives. Like Tony Soprano, our efforts to “juggle” different goals may keep us from following Plato’s recommendation—not an external harmony (just enough work and just enough play) but an internal harmony.
Happiness as a Matter of Integrated Motivations—The View of the Ancient Ethicists
What is it to make ourselves internally harmonious? The idea is rather simple, actually. We must merely reflect upon, and then revise, what it is we are really after when it comes to our pursuits. Doing this successfully, however, is not easy. It usually does not occur to the unsatisfied politician that he is aiming, above all, for glory. It is hard for habitually irresponsible to realize that they are living for pleasure and that this is the problem. But once we come to recognize what motivates us, either as a whole or in regard to particular aspects of our lives, the ancient imperative is to continue to pursue only those things whose motivation is one that can integrate all of our pursuits. What does this mean? If we realize we take jobs with higher salaries for the sake of how powerful this makes us feel, we have to recognize that power is not what motivates us to care for our families. In the case of Tony, his reasons for murdering are not the same as the ones he has for attempting to set a good example for his children. His adultery is not motivated by the same motivation he has for loving his wife. Living the way Tony does creates the sort of internal schism that Hawthorne describes. But the rest of us might also be making choices that are inconsistent when considered together. The consequence of this is a fractured personality. There are no more memorable descriptions of such a personality than Plato’s. Plato describes the fractured personality as being in a “civil war” with itself. He has us imagine that, if we fail to reconcile our motivations to one another, parts of ourselves “bite each other, fight and try to eat each other.” (Plato, Republic, 589a)
A working parent might experience this inner conflict, but the situation worsens if you live a life like Tony Soprano’s. In the Republic, Plato imagines what would happen to a person who gets put into a position of power over others, having not yet integrated his motivations for even the typical activities of a life. This exacerbates the already disorganized condition of a person, and, despite the public appearance of “having it all”, the potential is for such a person to be more unhappy than any of us. They have, in addition to more common tensions, worries about enemies and usurpers. Plato writes that such a person is like “an exhausted body” which “is compelled to compete and fight with other bodies all its life.” (Plato, Republic, 579c-d) The situation renders one friendless and terrified.
So it is no wonder that Tony does not feel well. The advice Plato would give Tony would be to leave the mob immediately. We mentioned that when it comes to what he wants, Tony has both aim and reach. He needs to reset his aims. He needs to aim for happiness. This requires that he become “self-disciplined and internally attuned”, and Tony has to understand that he can strive for this only to the exclusion of an array of his current aims. Until Tony figures this out, the pursuits that seem good to him are actually only distractions from happiness. So it turns out that Tony’s unusual ability to get what he wants really only hurts him.
As we all should, Tony needs to employ what Epicurus describes as “sober reasoning” — sober reasoning which “works out the causes of every choice and avoidance” and drives out “false beliefs” about what we ought to be pursuing. Until we have revised our lives in accordance with the results of this process, we should not expect to find life satisfying. Until we reflect on our choices and answer to our satisfaction what the point of our efforts is—we will be pursuing desires that are, as Aristotle explains, “empty and pointless” and inherently unsatisfying. For most of us, this type of reflection about our lives won’t mean we have to drop many of our life’s activities, like Tony Soprano would have to. It may be that we will keep the very same pursuits we currently have (love, career, family). These pursuits will merely come to mean to us what they can mean to us consistently. The psychological effects of this are what the ancients think are necessary for true happiness.
Objections to the Integrated Motivations View (and a Reply)
Some contemporary ethicists object to the ancient account of happiness in the following way: the ancients think they can recommend a happy life as if it and an ethical life are one and the same, but really, whatever the psychological benefits of working from a consistent set of motivations, they amount to neither happiness nor morality. The dispute about what constitutes happiness will be ongoing, and is capable of being settled only in the way philosophical debates typically are: through slow and steady attempts to come to terms with the opposing view by incorporating its insights or by explaining away its apparent advantages. On the second point, as to whether the ancients are recommending a moral life in recommending a life of internal harmony — we can begin to address this using the writers’ portrayal of Tony Soprano.
Critics of ancient philosophy contend that working from a set of consistent motivations is possible for even a Mafioso. So let us consider whether Tony could show one face to the world, yet have it be that of a mob boss. First of all, imagine all that he would have to give up. His family would be recruited to kill like he does, since all secrecy and shame about his profession would be out the window. Of course, his family would not be able to pass as they do in civilized society. They would be living more like outlaws in the Kentucky hills. And if Tony embraced his criminality—would he be as successful a criminal? For example, if everyone who dealt with him knew his history, would they continue to deal with him? Tony sometimes needs to sometimes wear a public face of respectability. He would be out of business were he not two-faced. It seemed obvious to the ancients: there is no way for a bad person to integrate his aims.
The show’s portrayal of Tony reveals something else as well: in order to live with himself Tony needs to think of himself as not so bad a guy. If we just imagine a bad guy, we would be able to overlook this feature of such a lifestyle. We too often imagine evil villains twirling their mustaches with glee– bad guys are more like Tony. And, as the show poignantly demonstrates: they don’t like themselves. They have to pretend they are not what they are. (“I’m not saying I’m perfect, but I do the right thing by my family,” Tony tells Dr. Melfi at the end of season three.)
Gary Cooper
Tony is right to think that Gary Cooper serves as a sort of contrast to himself. In High Noon, Gary Cooper plays a sheriff who must fight a returning band of outlaws. Though he was counting on their assistance, the townspeople refuse to help because they would rather disappoint the sheriff than to get on the bad side of the outlaws. Despite this, the character remains as Tony describes him, strong and silent. These are the effects of what Aristotle described as a life that is “self-sufficient.” Self-sufficiency is, for Aristotle, a requirement for happiness. Later ancients use the term in describing the happy life. In a happy and self-sufficient life, one’s contentment withstands the slights that trigger Tony. Without the aid of a philosophical account of happiness, Tony is left unaware that the difference between “Gary Cooper” and himself is neither a matter of brute strength nor the values of an era, but the sort of desires each pursues. Just imagine Tony plopped into Gary Cooper’s role in High Noon. Wouldn’t he be torturing his old neighbors before (and then after) the noon train arrives? You can’t mess with Tony Soprano, and the townspeople would not get away with their betrayal. Gary Cooper’s character is not after vengeance and does not think he has to get the townspeople under his control. Not desiring to have the world “by the balls” gives Gary Cooper’s character a chance to retain a sort of self-possession that Tony really can only marvel at. We could put it this way: Gary Cooper’s character cannot be messed with despite what the townspeople do or fail to do.
In contrast, Tony assumes people recognize him as a “sad clown” (Pilot). Hearing this shocks Dr. Melfi, as it would others who see Tony as a far more ominous figure. But a clown puts on a show for others, prancing around until he gets the right reaction. If we consider whether we can imagine Tony not doing the things he predictably does, we realize how few of Tony’s actions are self-directed and how little control Tony actually exerts over his choices. (Can he stop cheating on his wife? Can he forgive and forget, even once?) Why is Tony’s getting revenge so predictable? Perhaps it is because Tony, who, as we mentioned, we admire for being stronger than we are, is instead weaker. He differs from us in being unable to control the desire to strike back.
When Dr. Melfi suggests that behavior therapy might help Tony to control his anger triggers, Tony stops to consider the possibility. Without these triggers, “then how do you get people to do what you want?” (Employee of the Month). Tony has traded in self-control for the ability to manipulate those around him. This should make us rethink our assessment of Tony Soprano. He doesn’t really have the world “by the balls.” That is only the illusion, perpetuated by our own misunderstandings of happiness. It is the other way round, the world has that grip on Tony. Tony knows this. If he only also knew this: a happy man in the ancient sense attempts to control not the world but himself. This is no fool’s errand, which makes it unlike so many of the errands of Tony Soprano, sad clown.
