Sopranos

Dana Polan is Professor of Cinema Studies at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. He is the author of several books including Scenes of Instruction: The Beginnings of the U.S. Study of Film, Jane Campion, Pulp Fiction, and Power and Paranoia: History, Narrative, and the American Cinema, 1940–1950.

• Acknowledgments ixPrologue 11. The Sopranos on Screen 171. Watching The Sopranos 192. Eight Million Stories in the Naked City 323. Food for Thought 454. Living in the Moment 565. The Late Style of The Sopranos 636. Gaming The Sopranos 727. Getting High with The Sopranos 868. Qualifying "Quality TV" 989. "Honey, I'm Home" 10510. Against Interpretation 11311. New Jersey Dreaming 1332. The Sopranos in the Marketplace 14312. Tie-ins and Hangers-on 14613. Touring Postindustrialism 15514. Cashing In on the Game 16215. Cable and the Economics of Experimentation 17416. This Thing of Ours 194Notes 197Selected Bibliography 211Index 213

“Polan delimits an excellent set of features and motifs to analyze and, by and large, acquits himself well in his readings, as well as in their situation within the popular media.” - Charles J. Stivale, Criticism “As a case study of the modern media environment, with its focus on synergy and the extension of media product across the expanse of the controlling conglomerate's subsidiaries, as well as into the popular culture of its audience(s), The Sopranos is a thoughtful and intensive tour de force.” - Michael R. Frontani, Italian American Review “Rather than going along with the familiar judgment that The Sopranos stood above and apart from the usual run of mass-cultural fare, Polan reads it as continuous with both the traditions of genre television and the hierarchy-scrambling protocols of the postmodern condition. . . . Polan’s book is often insightful about the visual dimension of the Sopranos. . .” - Scott McLemee, Inside Higher Ed “An engaging and lucid account of the influential cultural status that HBO’s The Sopranos achieved by allowing diverse artistic and commercial interests to profitably converge in the postnetwork era. The book is distinctive in detailing not just how fans and critics animated the series, but also how HBO and the producers carefully crafted an epic narrative that would lead to a profitable ancillary afterlife. Dana Polan proves that close, careful narrative analysis can provide prescient insights about television’s increasingly sophisticated practices to which broader cultural and industrial accounts are blind.”-John Thornton Caldwell, author of Production Culture: Industrial Reflexivity and Critical Practice in Film and Television “As a case study of the modern media environment, with its focus on synergy and the extension of media product across the expanse of the controlling conglomerate's subsidiaries, as well as into the popular culture of its audience(s), The Sopranos is a thoughtful and intensive tour de force.” - Michael R. Frontani (Italian American Review) “Polan delimits an excellent set of features and motifs to analyze and, by and large, acquits himself well in his readings, as well as in their situation within the popular media.” - Charles J. Stivale (Criticism) “Rather than going along with the familiar judgment that The Sopranos stood above and apart from the usual run of mass-cultural fare, Polan reads it as continuous with both the traditions of genre television and the hierarchy-scrambling protocols of the postmodern condition. . . . Polan’s book is often insightful about the visual dimension of the Sopranos. . .” - Scott McLemee (Inside Higher Ed)