'Sopranos' and its fans are criticized
The Philadelphia Inquirer
November 3, 2001
Author and cultural critic Camille Paglia skewered The Sopranos and the critics who have acclaimed it at a lecture at Penn Thursday night.
"They all act like Joey Buttafuoco. It's a travesty," said the professor of humanities and media studies at the University of the Arts. "It is a debased characterization of Italians."
As for the subplot of a mob boss seeing a psychiatrist, Paglia said she didn't believe it:
"There may be Italians who go to an analyst and there may be Italian women analysts, but I don't know any. No Italian I know wants to be seen as a victim."
Speaking at a lecture cosponsored by the National Italian American Foundation and the Kelly Writers House at Penn, Paglia described the media love-in with the HBO show as "overpraise of the show's pretense of heart." She characterized the New York critics as "full of designer Marxism" and "having no interest in the working class."