10
by FlyOnMelfisWall
Wonderful post, End of Alice.
I had long wanted to do a really deep thread on this issue but never quite found the time. Now since we've got one rolling, I'm just going to throw things out as they occur to me.
In Carmela's Mayham session with Melfi, she was surprisingly honest about herself on this point. She admitted knowing on some level, at the very beginning, that Tony employed violence and brute force to get his gains and further admitted that she wasn't sure how essential that fact was to her attraction to him. As you point out, Tony certainly perceived that it was highly essential, thus his vivid recollection of the Dominic Tedesco/Pizza World story and his need to keep rationalizing to or in front of Carmela why he lost the fight to Bobby.
But Carmela's spontaneous outpouring in the hospital carried a different message. She said that it was Tony's physical strength that always turned her on, his extreme masculine power. She specifically mentioned the ease with which he could pick her up and throw her over his shoulder. So the display of strength that seemed to make the biggest impression on Carmela did not have a victim and did not involve violence.
Pronounced masculine strength is an aphrodisiac to the vast majority of women, particularly those who, like Carmela, are petite and for whom such massive power is so personally foreign and awe-inspiring. Of course I would argue that sublimated in all such attractions is an appreciation that the greater the physical strength of a male, presumably the greater his capacity to whip the ass of other males. Thousands of years ago, that meant the greater his capacity to protect and provide for a family, itself the ultimate basis for the attraction. But that’s an uncomfortable truth for most women (and men) to confront because it underscores that our most primitive mating impulses share quite a lot with those of the animals we see on Wild Kingdom.
In modern society, earning prowess/financial means have taken the place of physical strength as the ultimate measure of masculine power and, of course, is the reason that Bill Gates could command a million times the number and variety of romantic conquests as a 6’4”, 250 pound construction worker. In Tony’s case, the physical/financial line blurs because of how he “earns” a living. The money and property he obtains are somewhat symbols of his physical strength (how symbolic is open to debate since firearms pretty much level the playing field, are used extensively in Tony’s business, and since, for years, most “enforcement” has been done by others on Tony’s behalf). Once obtained, the money/property itself is or represents his power. So even though I believe Carmela’s initial attraction to Tony was based on his sheer physical strength and overt masculinity, in her youth and given his way of life, that could have led to confusion as to whether it was his strength or the violent uses of it that were actually turning her on.
The table for this has actually been set for some time. In what I presume was a deliberate act of physical casting, Carm’s father is a very small man, her mother comparatively big. And the size dichotomy there translates to power within that relationship, as most would agree that Carm’s mother wears the pants in that household. She even humiliates Hugh a bit by revealing that he once got down to 90 pounds (while suffering diverticulitis) in the Navy and was unfit to see any “action” (read, wasn’t man enough to fight).
Hugh, obviously in some measure because Tony is physically everything he himself longs to be, is wild about Tony and seems to derive a vicarious sense of masculinity through him. He loves to regale him with old stories, refuses to attend a special birthday party Carm has worked hard to put on unless “the man” of the house is there, beams over the manly toy (firearm) Tony gives him, loves to eat Tony’s grilled sausage (enough said), and proudly introduces him to his Navy buddies, who can relate tales of a day when Hugh himself took care of “Krauts” with cherry bombs, etc. If Carmela naturally lusts after big, strong men (Furio and Vic Musto continue the trend while Father Phil is physically much more like Carm’s father), she only inherited or learned the lust from Hugh. And given the emotional indifference sometimes expressed by Hugh towards Carm (e.g., end of Sentimental Education), I’m not surprised that she might seek emotional and physical security from a man that is his polar opposite.
From Tony’s perspective, it’s easy to see how he could come to believe what he believes about Carmela. As a kid, his first panic attack occurs after seeing his mother sexually aroused while carving a roast that Johnny got earlier in the day from a man Tony watched Johnny pin down and de-finger with a meat cleaver. Tony confirms that his mother was always in a good mood when “free” vegetable and meat deliveries came and that she probably only ever submitted to sex with Johnny on those days. The message here is that the violent, forcible procurement of goods to support a family are a means to please and even sexually arouse a woman. For a boy that will remain on a lifetime, futile mission to please and win the love of a borderline mother, that’s a powerful message.
And Johnny does his part to scar his son by actually expressing pride in Tony for not running away and “crying like a little girl” when he saw the hideous act of violence. Emotional indifference to violence, collecting debts by force, providing for one’s family, these are the express lessons of manhood that Johnny imparted to Tony that day. As Melfi points out, it’s no wonder that Tony fainted when he made the connection that, as a male, he would one day be the one “bringing home the bacon”.
It’s also little wonder that he might find initial attraction to a girl that seemed “blown away” when he beat the crap out of somebody at Pizza World. It was, afterall, only reinforcing what he’d learned in his own household about the attraction of women to men. The fact that Carm was undoubtedly awed more by the power than by the violence was a detail he was insensitive to.
Tony’s dreams have offered the most cogent evidence of the role Carmela (and Livia) play in forming his own gangster identity. In Calling All Cars, Carmela is at the wheel of his father’s car or, in other words, is the one driving and dictating the gangster lifestyle he leads. It’s her material appetites, her image of him as a tough guy and supreme provider that he’s trying to satisfy. It’s also the woman who used to ride in that car, his mother, that he’s trying to satisfy.
Even in this dream, though, there’s an uncertainty, a questioning in Tony’s subconscious if it is in fact really Carmela dictating their path or he himself. Though Carmela is driving, Ralph, representing a “changed” gangster after the tragedy with Justin (i.e., representing what Tony might become if he takes personal “change” for a “test drive” as Gloria suggests before morphing into Svetlana) is the one holding the map and dictating where they go.
In Test Dream, there is a duality to Carmela throughout the dream that underscores Tony’s doubt about who she really is and upon what basis her love for him is built. The black, funereal attire by real Carmela is counterpoint to the all-white worn by Annette Benning as “alter Carmela”. While real Carm remains mesmerized by an alter Tony (Makazian) who “sings” (pours out the truth in his heart, which, I submit is that he doesn’t wish to continue in the gangster lifestyle), alter Carm becomes gradually disenchanted and finally downright hostile to him. Alter Carm wants him to remain “Bugsy”, i.e., stick it out in situations that would overcome most gangsters. He then literally flees the mob and cuts his ties to them symbolically by sporting a cut necktie in the ensuing scene. Among the mob chasing him in the Frankenstein sequence is real Carm, indicating that Tony believes she was a key part of what created the “monster” (read mobster) that he is today.
When he tells Coach Molinaro that he has a “wife” living in the big house he bought, Molinaro asks “do you?”, a question I took to mean “do you have a wife if you are not Tony Soprano, rich gangster”? Would she drop you like a rock if you were no longer that kind of man?
Tony went back to high school, back to the place where he met Carmela, to quell fundamental doubts about himself and about her. The Coach played his demon of doubt about the two identity crises in front of him. And Tony went there to silence that demon (the gun with the silencer), i.e., to decide once and for all who he and Carmela really are. Was he, in his heart, a “leader of sport” . . . as in football? Was he longing for a “normal” life like that of a high school coach? Or was he in fact a leader of “sport”, as in a leader of mob guys in their deadly game and would therefore have to stick it out and make the difficult decisions that leaders in any field must make? And was Carmela a loyal wife to only the second of those two Tonys?
Tony fails the test, fails to shoot the coach, fails to silence his own doubts, fails the task of picking one, true identity, and thus is to remain doubtful beyond this episode about who he, and Carmela, really are.
Carmela’s complete abandonment of vanity and financial concerns (except as it related to his rehabilitation) in the days surrounding his shooting illustrated, to the audience if not to comatose Tony, that her love for him is based on far more than how much money he earns or whether he can beat someone up in a fight. She possesses a deep, inalienable love for him, one with a markedly nurturing, maternal quality, which in itself explains what I believe was the single biggest element in Tony’s initial attraction to her: the sense that she would make the kind of mother he would like to have had himself.
The coma “dream” leads us to believe that Tony was able to absorb some of the outpouring of love Carmela showed during his hospitalization. And he certainly absorbed all of her nurturing during his lengthy recovery. So he may be closer to realizing who Carmela really is, which may help him at last resolve his own identity crisis.
Tony, his spirits crushed after b-lining to the fridge first thing in the morning: "Who ate the last piece of cake?"
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