Essay: The critical reception of Ursula K. Le Guin's "Left Hand of Darkness"

Whilst the literary history of science fiction (SF) has been marked primarily as a male domain, ‘women have been writing science fiction for as long as science fiction has been around’ (Larbalestier 2006:xviii). Indeed most commentators agree that Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus (1818), was the first genuine example of SF. Thus, it could be said that the genre of SF was inaugurated ‘with a woman’s critique of scientific or technological development within a patriarchal society’ (Mellor 1982:244). With the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s, feminist SF emerged, which embraced ‘the political “sexual revolution”, uncovered the genre’s ingrained sexism, and challenged male supremacy through time and space’ (Jones 2009:485). In this essay I will be discussing the critical reception of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), one of the most read texts in the feminist SF canon, if not SF as a whole. In particular, I will be focusing on examples of the early criticism that arose, with particular attention on the supposed failures of Le Guin’s imagining of an androgynous society, and her widely criticised use of the male pronoun. 

The relationship between science fiction and feminism becomes apparent when you consider how both fields engage with discourses that repeatedly challenge ‘the stability of boundaries between categories and concepts’ (Seed 2005:n.p.). One of these concepts is gender. Feminist thinking which is inherently utopian, in seeking to eliminate discrimination on the basis of gender, ‘posits a gender-free alternative world that does not now exist but which is possible within historical time and space’ (Mellor 1982:243). In this way, feminist writers have turned to SF as a genre, which ‘provides the opportunity to test various hypotheses concerning societal organisation and ethical codes’ (Mellor 1982:244). As noted by Annas (1978:144; my emphasis) 

Implicit in science fiction literature is a non-ethnocentric and dialectical vision of society: non-ethnocentric in that a fundamental premise of the genre is that things-as-they-are should be questioned rather than merely accepted and described; dialectical in that alternate paradigms are played off against any given reality. Science fiction…is structurally suited to a role as revolutionary literature. 

According to Le Guin (1979:162), The Left Hand of Darkness, ‘is the record of my consciousness, the process of my thinking’. It is a ‘thought-experiment’ in the same way that Schrödingers’ cat was in quantum physics. She notes that ‘one of the essential functions of [SF]…is this kind of question-asking: reversals of an habitual way of thinking, metaphors for what our language has no words for as yet, experiments in imagination’ (Le Guin 1979:163). The radical and revolutionary thought-experiment Le Guin was interested in posing was a society in which gender is eliminated ‘to find out what was left. Whatever was left would be, presumably, simply human. It would define the area that is shared by men and women alike’ (Le Guin 1979:163). However, she notes that, ‘as an experiment, it was messy.’ Regardless of how messy it was, The Left Hand of Darkness has been immensely important ‘for people writing from a feminine perspective or looking for ways to question discourses of gender and sexuality’ (Pearson 2010:139).

The winner of both the Hugo and Nebula awards, The Left Hand of Darkness not only established Le Guin as a major science fiction writer, but it also drew significant critical attention to her work, and indeed ‘[m]ore academic work has been written about Le Guin than about any other SF writer, including H.G. Wells and Mary Shelley’ (Pearson 2010:136). In November 1977, the academic journal Science Fiction Studies, dedicated its entire issue to “The Science Fiction of Ursula K. Le Guin”. As a self-declared feminist, Le Guin has ‘influenced and inspired several generations of SF readers, writers, and critics…and is credited with being influential in showing that SF has literary merit’ (Pearson 2010:137). This has mostly been due to the attention that has been paid to her by critics outside SF. For example, in Robert Scholes’s essay, “The Good Witch of the West”, he asserted that Le Guin was ‘the best writer of speculative fabulation working in the country [at the time], and she deserve[d] a place among our major contemporary writers of fiction’ (cited in Bittner 1979:37).

In The Left Hand of Darkness, Le Guin imagines the possibility of biological androgyny; that is, a single reproductive sex fused with male and female characteristics’ (Mellor 1982:251). Set on the imaginary planet of Gethen, also called Winter, Gethenians are biologically neuter. In the chapter, “The Question of Sex”, the female narrator, in providing an ethnographer’s field report, theorises and describes Gethenian sexual physiology. Thinking the alien race ‘an experiment’, we are told that ‘the sexual cycle averages 26 to 28 days’, for which ‘21 or 22 days the individual is somer, sexually inactive, latent.’ On about the 18^th day, the individual enters a period called kemmer. In this 6-day period of fertility,

the sexual impulse is tremendously strong…controlling the entire personality, subjecting all other drives to its imperative. When the individual finds a partner in kemmer, hormonal secretion is further stimulated…until in one partner either male or female hormonal dominance is established. The genitals engorge or shrink accordingly, foreplay intensifies, and the partner, triggered by the change, takes on the other sexual role…Normal individuals have no predisposition to either sexual role in kemmer; they do not know whether they will be male or female (96-97).

In regards to childbirth, ‘the mother of several children may be the father of several more’ (97). It is in this way that Le Guin is able to write one of the greatest sentences in the history of literature: ‘The king was pregnant’ (106).

The narrator of the chapter then looks at the social consequences of this biological androgyny. Given that any Gethenian is liable to be

tied down to childbearing…no one is quite so thoroughly “tied down” here as women, elsewhere, are likely to be – psychologically or physically. Burden and privilege are shared out pretty equally…Therefore, nobody here is quite so free as a free male anywhere else (100).

On Gethen, ‘there is no unconsenting sex, no rape.’ There is ‘no division of humanity into strong and weak halves, protective/protected, dominant/submissive, owner/chattel, active/passive’. In fact, there is ‘no tendency to dualism’ (101). Perhaps the most remarkable conclusion of this is ‘the elimination of war’. The narrator quotes an ancient source: “did they consider war to be a purely masculine displacement-activity, a vast Rape, and therefore in their experiment eliminate the masculinity that rapes and the femininity that is raped?” (102).

Critical reception of The Left Hand of Darkness has ‘displayed a tension of opposites appropriate to the novel’ (Spivack 1984:57). According to White (1999:47), when the novel first appeared, it did not garner completely favourable reviews.’ For example, Alexei Panshin, reviewing the book for Fantasy and Science Fiction, deemed it a ‘flat failure’, and was the first critic to object to Le Guin’s use of masculine pronouns when referring to the androgynes (cited in White 1999:47). The feminist scholar and science fiction writer, Joanna Russ, in her article, “The Image of Women in Science Fiction”, laments that whilst Le Guin was able to imagine how a people’s culture and institutions would be very different from ours, she fails in leaving out the family – ‘childrearing is left completely in the dark, although the human author herself is married and the mother of three children.’ Russ (1972:89-90) also criticises the use of the male protagonist, Genly Ai, a human anthropologist on Winter, and the fact that the Gethenian main character, Estraven, is represented primarily as masculine – ‘at least, “he” is masculine in gender, if not in sex.’ With regards to the use of the male pronoun, she concedes that due to ‘a deficiency in the English language…these people must be called “he” throughout’ (Russ 1972:90).

The controversy continued in 1971, when Australian science fiction magazine SF Commentary, published an article by Stanislaw Lem. In “Lost Opportunities”, Lem criticises the novel, noting that ‘[i]t carries an important message, but it does not develop the message.’ He notes, [a]lthough her anthropological understanding is very good, her psychological insight, on the other hand, is only sufficient and sometimes even insufficient’ (1971:22). Lem feels that the novel is ‘psychologically unsound because the Gethenians’ constant gender change should wreak havoc on relationships and personal identity’ (White 1999:47). He takes further umbrage at Le Guin’s failure to represent the Gethenians as anything other than wholly masculine – ‘because Karhider garments, manners of speech, mores and behaviour, are masculine. In the social realm, the male element has remained victorious over the female’ (Lem 1971:24).

In a later issue, Le Guin (1972:91; original emphasis) vigorously defends Lem’s challenges. She invites Lem, or anyone else, to ‘point out one passage or speech in which Estraven does or says something that only a man could or would say.’ Instead, she blames cultural conditioning, such that ‘we tend to insist that Estraven and the other Gethenians are men, because most of us are unwilling or unable to imagine women as scheming prime ministers, haulers of sledges across icy wastes, etc.’ As for Gethenian clothing, she notes that she modelled the garments on typical Eskimo attire (Le Guin 1972:92). In reply to the common argument over the use of the male pronoun, Le Guin (1972:91) acknowledges how the ‘use of the masculine pronoun influences the reader’s imagination’, but defends her use on the basis of the limitations of her medium, and not wanting to ‘deform English’. She even gives an example of the difficulty of deploying a neuter pronoun by re-writing a passage using se/sem/sen. It should be pointed out that the Australian SF author Greg Egan successfully used a neuter pronoun in the impressive post-human novel Diaspora (1988), where he used ve/vim/vis.

One of the most interesting aspects about Le Guin as a writer is that she is also a critic, and open to changing her mind. She says, ‘it is rather in the feminist mode to let one’s changes of mind, and the processes of change, stand as evidence – and perhaps to remind people that minds that don’t change are like clams that don’t open’ (Le Guin 1989:7). In response to her many critics who all brought her to task on her decision to use male pronouns, her unwillingness to allow Genly and Estraven to have sex, and the masculinity of her imagined world, she wrote two essays. In the first essay, “Is Gender Necessary?”, Le Guin (1979:163) identifies herself as a feminist, and explains the process by which she eliminated the Gethenians of gender to ‘find out what was left.’ The essay is mostly a defence of her decisions, including the use of the male pronoun, but she does admit that she might have been more clever in creating the Gethenians.

In the second essay, “Is Gender Necessary? Redux”, Le Guin (1989:15) notes that in the first essay, ‘I was feeling defensive, and resentful that critics of the book insisted upon talking only about its “gender problems”. She also changes her mind on the use of pronouns, noting the exclusionary effect of ‘the so-called generic pronoun he/him/his’, which ‘exclude[d] women from discourse’ (1989:15). Le Guin ultimately capitulates, accepting that ‘this is a real flaw in the book.’ She also gives in to the critics who noted that sexuality for Gethenians is necessarily heterosexual – ‘I quite unnecessarily locked the Gethenians into heterosexuality. It is a naively pragmatic view of sex that insists that sexual partners must be of the opposite sex!’ (Le Guin 1989:14). With regards to the male point of view, she notes that the book ‘allowed men a safe trip into androgyny and back, from a conventionally male viewpoint. But many women wanted it to go further, to dare more, to explore androgyny from a woman’s point of view as well as a man’s’ (Le Guin 1989:16).

In conclusion, this essay has provided a discussion on the critical reception of one of the most important and widely criticised texts in feminist SF, and SF in general. Examples were provided from critics who noted the limitations, gaps and problems in Le Guin’s imagining of a biologically androgynous society. Whilst many other examples could have been provided, the discussion has been limited to criticism situated around the early reception of the work. Understanding how The Left Hand of Darkness has been received critically also sheds light on how SF as a genre is received both within the genre, and outside it. Finally, as a canonical text, further enquiry into the history of the critical reception of the novel may also bring into question the processes of canonisation, and where SF stands in the literary firmament. 

References
Annas, P.J. (1978) “New Worlds, New Words: Androgyny in Feminist Science Fiction”, Science Fiction Studies, 5 (2): 143-156.

Bittner, J.W. (1979) “A Survey of Le Guin Criticism” in J. De Bolt (ed.) Ursula K. Le Guin: Voyages to Inner Lands and to Outer Space. New York and London: Kennikat Press: 31-49.

Egan, G. (1988) Diaspora. London: Millenium.

Jones, G. (2009) “Feminist SF” in The Routledge Guide to Science Fiction. e-book, accessed 21 September 2011, .

Larbelestier, J. (ed) (2006) Daughters of the Earth: feminist science fiction in the twentieth century. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press.

Le Guin, U.K. (1969) The Left Hand of Darkness. New York: Ace Books.

Le Guin, U.K. (1972) “Re: Lost Opportunities”, SF Commentary, 26: 90-93.

Le Guin, U.K. (1979) “Is Gender Necessary?” in The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons: 161-169.

Le Guin, U.K. (1989) “Is Gender Necessary? Redux” in Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places. New York: Grove Press: 7-16.

Lem, S. (1971) “Lost Opportunities”, SF Commentary, 24: 17-24.

Mellor, A.K. (1982) “On feminist utopias”, Women’s Studies, 9 (3): 241-262.

Pearson, W.G. (2010) “Ursula K[Roeber] Le Guin (1929-)” in M. Bould, A.M. Butler, A. Roberts and
S. Vint (eds.) Fifty Key Figures in Science Fiction. London and New York: Routledge: 136-141.

Russ, J. (1972) “The Images of Women in Science Fiction” in S.K. Cornillon (ed.) Images of Women in Fiction: Feminist Perspectives. Bowling Green: Bowling Green University Popular Press:79-94.

Seed, D. (ed.) (2005) “Introduction: Approaching Science Fiction” in A Companion to Science Fiction. e-book, accessed 21 September 2011, http://www.blackwellreference.com.ezproxy.lib.monash.edu.au/subscriber/book?id=g9781405112185_9781405112185.

Spivack, C. (1984) Ursula K. Le Guin. Boston: Twayne Publishers.

Various contributors (1977) “The Science Fiction of Ursula K. Le Guin”, Science Fiction Studies, 2 (3).

White, D.R. (1999) Dancing with Dragons: Ursula K. Le Guin and the Critics. Colombia: Camden House.

Essay: Fuhgeddaboudit! The Sopranos - a genre and audience analysis of the best TV drama ever!

The popularity of Home Box Office’s (HBO) award-winning serial The Sopranos (1999-2007), continues well beyond the finale of what is often cited as the ‘the best TV drama of all time’ (Nelson 2007:29). The show has also been credited with changing the way that television is being made, contributing to what some have called ‘the HBO effect’ (Leverette et al 2008:1; Keeton 2002:131). Clearly drawing on generic antecedents from the mobster movie genre, the show is also a family melodrama and owes its lineage to earlier television conventions from which it has borrowed, ultimately transforming and transgressing the expectations of the gangster genre (Nelson 2007:36; Keeton 2002:131; Leverette 2008:125-126). In this essay I will discuss the show with regards to genre, and the way that genre necessarily constructs a particular audience. This will be achieved by looking at the show from three perspectives: industry, audience and text, which are not mutually exclusive, but operate together and provide a suitable basis for textual analysis in television studies.

The term genre is a French word meaning ‘type’ or ‘kind’, which was first invoked in literary studies, and then later applied to film analysis (Neale 2000:1; Turner 1993:85). Whereas the literary use is concerned with the categorisation of fiction by subjective categories with little regard for industry and audiences, genre study in film and television, due to the nature of the material conditions in which it operates, must examine the relationship between industry, audiences, and texts (Schatz 1981:15-16). Genres are also defined as ‘a particular set of conventions, features and norms’, which are ‘a fundamental aspect of the way texts of all kinds are understood’ (Neale 2008:3). They also bring with them a ‘horizon of expectations’ for the viewer, and construct a ‘generic audience’, one that is sufficiently literate and familiar with a genre’s conventions, and who participate ‘in a fully genre-based viewing’ (Jauss cited in Neale 2008:3; Altman cited in Neale 2008:3).

Neale (1990:49) also notes how genres operate through the process of ‘intertextual relay’, which he describes as

the systems and forms of publicity, marketing and reviewing that each media institution possesses – plays a key role not only in generating expectations, but also in providing labels and names for its genres and thus a basis for grouping films, television programmes, or other works and texts together.

This can be seen in the way that critical, industrial and other discourses surrounding The Sopranos are presented in terms of ‘quality television’, and ‘original programming’ – what I call meta-genres, or generic signifiers which represent, not just a particular period in television production, or institutional programming policy and market strategy, but also issues surrounding authorship, aesthetics and audiences (Santo 2008:19-42; McCabe and Akass 2008:83-92).

Since going on the air in 1972 as one of the first nonterrestrial cable networks (and becoming one of the first to broadcast via satellite in 1975), HBO has continually striven to redefine television, and has gained a reputation for offering high quality original programming (Leverette et al 2008:1). Indeed, HBO has come to be regarded as a premier site of what has come to be called ‘quality television’, which according to Thompson (1996) is defined in contrast to the earlier broadcast period of ‘least objectionable programming’ (LOP). This was ‘the strategy in the network era of making bland programmes which would build and sustain audiences not by directly attracting them but by offending the fewest’ (Nelson 2006:62). As Thompson (1996:13) has pointed out ‘[q]uality TV is best defined by what it is not. It is not “regular” TV’.

This very point is inscribed in the HBO tagline: “It’s Not TV. It’s HBO” (Nelson 2006:62). A clever marketing strategy, and as HBO relies on viewer subscriptions, a key marker of difference which helps the organisation separate itself from commercial stations, and, consequently, take chances (Leverette 2008:15). This risk-taking can be seen in HBO’s policy of ‘original programming’, which it instituted, staking its groundbreaking reputation on ‘notions of “quality” based on branding, cost, and innovation as it sought to find a place for itself in the overcrowded television marketplace’ (Leverette 2008:16). However, whilst HBO may define itself as “Not Television”, most of the content appearing on HBO ‘draws upon existing television forms, narratives, aesthetics, themes, and economic and institutional practices in order to articulate [its] difference’ (Santo 2008:24).

HBO has also ‘relied upon various regulatory and economic differences between pay and regular television to add variation to its programming strategies, but very rarely produces anything non-televisual’ (Santo 2008:24). In this regard, HBO holds two considerable advantages over its network competitors. Firstly, its shows are not subject to the same censorship regulations as broadcasting. This is due to the outcome of its court battle with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and the Court of Appeals’ declaration that cable, due to being purchased rather than ‘freely distributed’ like radio and broadcast television, was ‘more akin to newspaper publishing, which is offered protection under the First Amendment’ (Strover in Santo 2008:25). This means that HBO is able to ‘incorporate nudity, violence, and vulgarity in ways the networks [can’t]’. Importantly, this gives HBO a competitive advantage whereby it can appeal to audiences as a site for content they can get nowhere else (Jaramillo 2002:65). However, I would suggest that in recent years, due to the ‘HBO effect’, groundbreaking shows can be found on competing cable networks such as Showtime (Weeds, Dexter) and AMC (Mad Men, Breaking Bad), and on commercial networks such as ABC (Lost, Desperate Housewives) and Fox (24).

Secondly, due to being subscription-based, HBO does not to have to ‘tailor the content of its programming (as the networks do) in order to appease merchandisers seeking inoffensive material appealing to the greatest common denominator’ (Santo 2008:27). But there is also a considerable textual advantage too. By not having to incorporate commercial breaks, HBO programs can be written, such that they ‘build steadily towards a climax through multiple examinations of a particular theme from myriad perspectives’ (Santo 2008:28). I would also say, that by deploying a serial narrative structure, characters can be better psychologised, ultimately lending a greater degree of realism to their representation.

These factors work to target a niche audience – ‘an elite…intellectual audience with high expectations, willing to pay a premium price for the subscription service’ (McCabe and Akass 2008:91). This means that HBO can demonstrate a greater respect for its audience, and according to Jaramillo (2002:66), it ‘implies that [HBO’s] consumers can handle graphic language, sex and violence in a more thoughtful and productive way than broadcast viewers.’ Santo (2008:33) adds further that this sort of exclusivity offered at HBO, ‘supposedly grants paying viewers membership in a distinct community that clearly ranks above the riffraff who watch the standard broadcast and cable stations.’ From a creative perspective, David Chase, the creator/writer/director of The Sopranos, notes that his authorial latitude is granted in terms of the audience: “We all have the freedom to let the audience figure out what’s going on rather than telling them what’s going on” (cited in Lavery 2006:5). In this way, the show rewards ‘active viewing’, in which the viewer ‘has to dig for links and meanings beyond what’s spelled out on the surface and is often left with mysteries’ (Yacowar 2002:12).

The Sopranos, then, can be classified as ‘quality TV’, which according to Thompson (1996:15) ‘creates a new genre by mixing old ones…tends to be literary and writer-based [and]…is self-conscious’. In this regard, The Sopranos has created a new genre – let’s call it an existentialist gangster drama – by mixing the mobster film genre with television family melodrama. For example, the show takes the conventional gangster as protagonist, but mixes with it with a family melodrama storyline. One of the early taglines for the show was ‘Family. Redefined’. By combining these two genres, the show is able to expand on the various constructions of family – crime family, work family, private family (Jaromillo 2002:68; Nelson 2007:36).

Nelson (2007:36) points out that as a family melodrama, ‘the strong women in…Tony’s life [feature] fully, partly in relation to him, but also in their own right.’ For example, Carmela (Edie Falco) Tony’s wife, holds the family together and takes the major responsibility for bringing up their children, Meadow (Jamie Lyn Sigler) and Anthony Junior (Robert Iler). This is evident in the pilot episode, in which Carmela is making preparations for Anthony’s birthday, and later, due to catching Meadow climbing out her window, has to discipline and ground her, temporarily upsetting the order of their mother-daughter relationship. These family dimensions ‘afford intercutting of action-adventure sequences and scenes of gang conflict and violence, typical of a mobster movie, with domestic locations and issues (Nelson 2007:37). And according to McCabe and Akass, in The Sopranos, ‘the gangster genre collides with the [family melodrama] in a series in which the mobster finds himself in unfamiliar generic territory characterised by mundane chores and domestic worries’ (cited in Nelson 2007:37).

This notion of being in unfamiliar generic territory also extends to the audience. According to Keeton (2002:132), ‘[w]hen viewers tuned into the premiere episode of The Sopranos in 1999, most expected a conventional gangster narrative, but what they saw did not match their expectations.’ The opening shot after the credits frames a nervous, angst-ridden middle-aged male half hidden by a statue of a naked woman. Yacowar (2002:16) suggests that this shot ‘expresses the anxiety of a man insecure in his manhood’. Looking at Tony Soprano’s (James Gandolfini) body language he is clearly uncomfortable in his environment, suggesting to the audience he is on unfamiliar turf (Keeton 2002:132). When he finally goes into psychiatrist Dr Melfi’s (Lorraine Bracco) office, the camera cuts between them as they study each other, moving from longer to closer shots. Melfi then breaks the silence.

In the exchange between the two characters that follows, it is established that Tony has had a panic attack, and that due to ‘the line of work [he is] in’ it is ‘impossible [for him] to talk to a psychiatrist’. In this opening scene, we have a new meaning being circulated for the audience, which has been created through frustrating the conventions of melodrama. In other words, the conventions of the gangster genre prohibit Tony from speaking to a psychiatrist because what he does is illegal. And as those audience members who are literate in the gangster genre would know, he is bound by the code of silence – omerta.

This scene also establishes the tone of Tony’s intense feelings of anomie and alienation, which permeates most of the series, and can be read at a wider cultural level, of reflecting postmodern concerns of a loss of meaning in the midst of unprecedented potential for affluence (Keeton 2002:133). For example, in the scene, Tony recounts his state of mind the day of his first panic attack: “The morning of the day I got sick, I’ve been thinking. It’s good to get in on the ground floor. I came in too late for that. I know. But lately I’m getting the feeling I came in at the end, that the best is over.” Melfi replies: “Many Americans, I think, feel that way.” Tony continues: “I think of my father. He never retired. He never reached the heights like me. But in a lot of ways he had it better. He had his standards, his people, his pride, not like me. What have we got?”

So even before the first guy is ‘whacked’, this initial exchange ‘suggests how far the show has moved from its traditional gangster roots of the working class ethnic underdog forced into a life of crime by the closed hierarchy of capitalist society’ (Keeton 2002:133). This scene serves another purpose in that it creates sympathy for Tony as he works through the traumatic revelations of his childhood abuse, which are later discussed with Melfi. In representing Tony as a gangster with working class roots, it further encourages empathy because he ‘romanticises the time when a working-class man with minimal job skills could enter the workforce and support a family’ (Keeton 2002:142). This also invokes a moral ambiguity for the audience, as it encourages empathy towards ‘a thug whom we watch committing heinous acts’ (Holden in Yacowar 2002:17).

The show wears its proud gangster generic heritage through the self-conscious intertextual references to The Godfather (1972-1990) trilogy of films and Goodfellas (1990). This works to also encourage a degree of authenticity, which stems in part from the ways in which these references are used by the audience – or those who are familiar – to locate the fictional world of the series (Johnson 2007:17). For example, in the pilot, there is a scene in which Tony ranks Goodfellas against The Godfather trilogy. In episode two, “46 Long”, Silvio (Steve van Zandt) quotes Michael Corleone’s famous line from The Godfather: Part III: “Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in.”

Other instances of referencing can be found in the casting decisions. For example, Dominic Chianese who plays Corrado ‘Junior’ Soprano, appeared in The Godfather II, and several other cast members are Scorcese alumni from Goodfellas. Indeed, Michael Imperioli who plays Christopher Moltisanti in The Sopranos, and who also appeared in Goodfellas, is able to reprise the fate of his character in that film. In episode eight, “The Legend of Tennessee Moltisanti”, he shoots a bakery clerk in the foot, clearly referencing the scene in Goodfellas in which Joe Pesci’s character shoots his character in the foot.

However, in my opinion the most important reference comes at the end of the show’s final ever episode, “Made in America”. Its significant because, whilst the ambiguous and non-closed ending can be read without the reference, it allows a rewarding reading to those literate in the genre. In the final scene, the family are getting settled around the table at a diner, and a man that has been sitting at the counter with a jacket that says ‘members only’, walks into the toilet. Just as Meadow enters the diner, there is a sudden cut to black, and that’s the end of The Sopranos, and if read as the end of consciousness of the show’s protagonist – the end of Tony Soprano. What this reading implies, is that the man walked out of the toilet armed with a gun and shot Tony – another Godfather reference. I would argue that the ‘members only’ jacket is a self-conscious wink to that part of the audience – the privileged ‘members’ – who have the literacy to figure this out.

Finally, the show is literary and writer-based, and due to its serial format is able to develop characters into complex beings, providing ‘a slice of life as textured, nuanced, and involving as a Charles Dickens novel’ (Yacowar 2002:13). Indeed, Schulman (2010:27) praises the show asking ‘has there ever been an existentialist social novel quite like The Sopranos?’ The pedigree of the writing can be seen in episode fifty-two, “Whitecaps”, in which Tony calls off the hit against Carmine Lupertazzi (Tony Lip), telling Carmine’s underboss Johnny ‘Sack’ (Vince Curatola) that it would ‘create chaos in the organisation and be bad for business’. To which Johnny replies, incensed that he can’t bear to go to work tomorrow, take orders again ‘like it never fucking happened?!...Creeps in this petty place!’ To the astute observer, this is a clever reference to Macbeth, and ties the scene to one of Shakespeare’s ‘great proto-existentialist moments, the speech Macbeth makes after he can only greet news of his wife’s death with indifference’ (Schulman 2010:38).

In conclusion, the above discussion has provided an analysis of genre by considering the way in which genre constructs a particular audience. In considering the ideas surrounding notions such as ‘quality TV’ and ‘original programming’, The Sopranos can be situated in a discourse which also explains the positioning of its audience. Examples were provided from various episodes which demonstrated the hybrid generic nature of the show, intertextual references to its mob gangster roots, and the degree of its literary qualities. Finally, it can be said that through transforming and transgressing the conventions of the gangster and family melodrama, The Sopranos has not just remade the rules and expectations of the mob narrative, but through the ‘HBO effect’, has been responsible for transforming audience expectations of television at large.

References

Jaramillo, D.L. (2002) “The Family Racket: AOL Time Warner, HBO, The Sopranos, and the Construction of a Quality Brand”. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 26 (1): 59-75.

Johnson, C. (2007) “Tele-Branding in TVIII”. New Review of Film and Television Studies, 5 (1): 5-24.

Keeton, P. (2002) “The Sopranos and Genre Transformation: Ideological Negotiation in the Gangster Film”. Atlantic Journal of Communication, 10 (2): 131-148.

Lavery, D. (2006) “Introduction: Can this Be the End of Tony Soprano?” in D. Lavery (ed) Reading the Sopranos: Hit TV from HBO. London: I.B. Tauris: 1-14.

Leverette, B. (2008) “Cocksucker, Motherfucker, Tits” in M. Leverette, B.L. Ott, and C.L. Buckley (eds) It’s Not TV: Watching HBO in the Post-television Era. London and New York: Routledge: 123-151.

Leverette, B., Ott, B.L., and Buckely, C.L. (2008) “Introduction” in M. Leverette, B.L. Ott, and C.L. Buckley (eds) It’s Not TV: Watching HBO in the Post-television Era. London and New York: Routledge 1-10.

McCabe, J. and Akass, K. (2008) “It’s not TV, it’s HBO’s original programming: Producing quality TV” in M. Leverette, B.L. Ott, and C.L. Buckley (eds) It’s Not TV: Watching HBO in the Post-television Era. London and New York: Routledge: 83-94.

Neale, S. (1999) “Questions of Genre”. Screen, 31 (1): 45-66.

Neale, S. (2000) Genre and Hollywood. London and New York: Routledge.

Neale, S. (2008) “Studying Genre” in G. Creeber (ed) The Television Genre Book (2nd edition). London: Palgrave Macmillan: 3-5.

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Filmography

The Godfather, dir. F.F. Coppola, 1972.

The Godfather II, dir. F.F. Coppola, 1974.

The Godfather III, dir. F.F. Coppola, 1990.

Goodfellas, dir. M. Scorcese, 1990.

The Sopranos, created by D. Chase, 1999-2007.

“The Sopranos” (pilot), airdate January 10, 1999, dir. D. Chase.

“46 Long”, airdate January 17, 1999, dir. D. Attias.

“The Legend of Tennessee Moltisanti”, airdate February 28, dir. T. Van Patten.

“Whitecaps”, airdate December 8, 2002, dir. J. Patterson.

“Made in America” (final), airdate June 10, 2007, dir. D. Chase.

The end of the world as we know it. A review of two films.

The end of the world is nigh! Well, at least it is at the cinema at the moment with the post-apocalyptic offerings of The Road and The Book of Eli. The characters of both films are survivors of cataclysmic events which have left their respective worlds barren, desolate and lawless; only the rule of survival remains. Peopled by cannibals and the desperate, they make their way along the road, overcoming obstacles and threats on their way to an ultimate destination, where it is hoped things will be better.

Having read Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, from which The Road is adapted, I had reservations over whether director John Hillcoat could replicate the sheer lyricism of the novel. The film is good, and Viggo Mortensen’s depiction of ‘the man’ is superb, however, the film doesn’t match up to the art of the novel.

It was always going to be a great challenge to any director who took up the task of adapting McCarthy’s work. His prose is bleak, halting and trudging, and mirrors the journey along the road both tragically and beautifully, and cleverly captures the reader with a lyrical sublimity, which seems difficult to accurately render on film.

The only director who could have realised such a vision – and forgiving his average remake of Hitchcock’s Psycho – would perhaps have been Gus Vant Sant. By using a combination of conventional and non-conventional techniques, he may have achieved a similar award winning result as he did with Elephant, a winner of the Palme d’Or.

A great strength of The Road was the outstanding cinematography of Javier Aguirresarobe. Eschewing the use of CGI, stock footage from Hurricane Katrina, images of bloody tracks in the snow from the Kosovo Conflict, and real locations of abandoned highways, and bleak and wasted landscapes, were used to more immediate effect in creating the post-apocalyptic mise-en-scene. I read in a separate review that this can perhaps be read that apocalypse is potentially with us presently, and if not careful, we could well find ourselves in similar circumstances.

In The Book of Eli, the story takes a more action-oriented approach, with breathtaking moments of cleanly choreographed bloody fight scenes, which are supported by great editing. The first fight is shot with Eli (Denzel Washington) in silhouette as he takes out an entire gang of highway robbers with precise and deadly strokes from his large knife.

Making his way west, Eli stops at a local town under the influence of Carnegie (Gary Oldman), who is searching the country high and low for the titular book – the last of its kind. It just so happens that Eli is carrying the book, which he reads from every day. Blamed for the atrocities that caused ‘the flash’ thirty years ago, all the books of its kind were destroyed in the wake of the war. Carnegie is obsessed over gaining possession of the book, which he calls a powerful weapon, so that he can influence and be worshiped. He lacks the right words and ideas, however, which he knows can be found in the book.

The film is a decent effort by directors the Hughes brothers, but suffers from two major flaws. Firstly, the introduction of Mila Kunis as a sidekick forces Eli into expository dialogue, which had been avoided in Gary Whitta’s screenplay. She is perhaps also miscast, making you wonder what a fashion model is doing roughing it on the road.

Whilst the cinematography was great overall, the use of CGI seemed out of harmony with the rest of the mise-en-scene. The digital composites stuck out rather than dissolving into the screen.

The greatest problem, however, is the film’s ending. There is a moment towards the end which provides a logical spot for ending the film, however, for whatever the reason it continues into a final act. Rather than tie off hanging story threads, it confuses with illogical plot developments.

Regardless of the negatives mentioned above, both films are above the blockbuster standard, and give great opportunity to experience the post-apocalyptic genre film from two different directorial viewpoints.