Commentary from Stanley Mieses,
On the Media's official Rupert-watcher

For commentator Stanley Mieses, the dog days of summer offer a chance to dog-ear his favorite publications. But lately, the magazines are all saying "what are you doing inside on a nice day like today?"

First there was the backpack. Then came Banana Republic with the rest of the outfit. Then the SUV arrived. And now, we have a whole vibrant, hot category of magazines celebrating the outdoors life and the thrill of adventure. There's "Outside," "Outdoor Explorer," "Disney Adventure," "Sports Afield," "National Geographic Explorer," "Hooked on the Outdoors," and "Blue." Some are produced by major publishers, some are independent ventures. "Outside," an independent title, is well over a decade old, while "Outdoor Explorer" -- from Times Mirror Magazines -- is making its debut this month. "National Geographic Explorer" is trading on its brand name for a monied, mature audience, while "Blue" looks yonder to the extreme sports of youth.

What these magazines have in common is that they succeed in exhausting me. Just thinking about this trend,

I'm having a very hard time getting a grip on what men are all about these days. The two hottest men's magazine categories are devoted to health and fitness and adventure and exploration. And yet, the facts tell us that Budweiser still sells more six-packs than the abdominizer, and there are more obese and out of shape men in America than at any time since sugar was refined. And on TV, commercials depicting men in increasingly feminized roles are aired jowl-by-cheek with the lifestyles of the buff and the ripped. So it's not clear whether gender-role insecurity is the impetus for this outdoors-magazine trend, or whether it's simply that modern explorer products and services are now sufficiently redundant and corporatized so that they make a market for a half-dozen periodicals. Or both. Or neither. I mean, what do men really want?

As a committed indoorsman, I find the whole trend in adventure and outdoors magazine bewildering. I come from an environment in New York City where camping refers to putting on a dress and singing Judy Garland songs. But the outdoors magazines also appeal to a certain kind of cross-dresser, too: the suit on the commodities trading floor who dreams of rafting down a Class 5 river in Chile, or the computer geek stuck behind the screen -- 24/7 -- who is liberated from virtual reality by the thought of rappelling impossibly vertical rock faces....in their label-out outdoors gear, of course. "Enthusiasm for the outdoors must be expressed in prime moments from life indoors," says the publisher's note in the premiere issue of "Hooked on the Outdoors." Whatever happened to sex?
No, in this milieu, everyone is off climbing. Climbing up. Rafting down. Trekking across. Filling spring break, long weekends, summer off with a variety of activities that challenge the individual and make orthopedic doctors wealthy. The thought of all these weekend explorers in the wilderness is a daunting one, most of all to true wilderness-oriented folks, not to mention flora and fauna, not accustomed to the plaintive call of the digital cell phone and the flattening footstep of the unbroken $500 Swiss-made xxxx boot.

Me? I'm going to maintain my stance as a true environmentalist and animal rights activist....I'm going to stay indoors this summer. I have all these magazines to read.
--------------------------------------------
Host Intro: The most critically acclaimed show of the past television season was HBO's "The Sopranos," the story of a northern New Jersey Mob boss struggling to reinvent himself for the modern age. Print ads for the series feature the line "if one family doesn't kill him the other one will." Pictured on one side of Tony Soprano is his crew of murderers and thieves, on the other side are members of his family. One group stares him down with steel eyed malice, and the hitmen are plenty mean looking themselves. The ad captures a core appeal of the show. It makes the psychologist that Tony visits and the mother who manipulates him as interesting as the wiseguys. HBO began rebroadcasting the series this week, and an episode will air each Wednesday throughout the summer. "On the Media's" Mike Pesca looks at a show which explores the facts, and the media fiction, of the Mafia.

MP: "The Sopranos," HBO's most highly watched series ever, has been praised by fans and critics for what "The New York Times" calls its "hyper-realism."

AX: (Gun Shots, screaming) "My foot! You shot me in the foot!...It happens."

MP: Assuming most viewers have never hijacked a truck, extorted money from a health insurance company, or murdered a competitor, why is it that it is seen as REAL? The reason is twofold...First, the sheer number of mob movies, mob TV shows, mob books and all manner of mob media is enough to explode the myth of omerta like a car bomb. The other reason is that the non-criminal portion of the show, which deals with mob boss Tony Soprano's domestic life, is so deeply rooted in the real world. And the major components of the real world for these characters are friends, family, religion and the mass media. If we, the transfixed viewer, can't get enough of the mob movies, Tony Soprano's crew takes their fascination one step further. They live it. One wise guy does an impression of Al Pacino in "The Godfather III." When another obsesses over writing the screenplay of his life, you can't help but think that it could wind up in an endless feedback loop as an episode of the very show you're watching:

AX: Christopher: "I love movies, you know? That smell in Blockbuster, that candy and carpet smell I get high off. You gonna let all this love and knowledge go to waste? My cousin Gregory's girlfriend Amy, the one who works for Tarentino says mob stories are always hot. I can make my mark."

MP: This self-reference is more than an inside joke. Series creator and executive producer David Chase says that a component of the current decline of the Mafia is that they're not only contending with the Nesses and Giuliani's of the world, but also the Scorscese's and Coppola's. The mob's image and obsession with image, has contributed to its downfall.

DC: "One of the main tenants of 'The Sopranos' is the influence of movies on quote unquote organized crime people, so we have this character named Christopher Molfisanti who's a young guy who has seen so many mob movies that he is confusing himself and his own life with the life that's portrayed in the movies. He feels he has no identity unless he's in the mass media."

MP: In researching the series Chase did talk to mob figures, or at least the guys behind the guys who claim to be mob figures, but he couldn't be sure who was on the level about being crooked. But one man who does know the ins and outs of mob life intimately is Gay Talese. His book Honor Thy Father along with Mario Puzo's The Godfather were the first authoritative books on American mob life. In researching the book Talese was offered an intimate glimpse into the private lives of several members of the Bonnano crime family, and is still in contact with them today.

GT: I was hanging around with them just about the time Mario Puzo's novel came out and when the film came out and when the American public so adored that film, a lot of the people in the Mafia really started imitating movie characters. And so today it isn't surprising that we have confusion as to fact or fiction, we have confusion as to whether news makes people or people make news.

MP: To some, this widespread popularity of the mob movie comes at a price. And the price is paid by the reputations of the vast majority of Italian Americans with no mob ties whatsoever.

AX: Ask any American to Describe an Italian American invariably he's gonna mention "The Godfather," "Goodfellas"...

Richard La Penna is active in the Italian American Anti Defamation lobby. He is also not a real person. He is a character on "The Sopranos," one who gives voice to a criticism of the show. "Hyper-realistic" remember.

AX: Italians against discrimination did a study and at its height the Mafia in this country had less than 5,000 members and yet that tiny insignificant fraction casts such a large shadow over 20 million hardworking Americans.

MP: Chase disagrees with his own character, quite strongly in fact. In portraying the Mafia, he says, there's no getting around that its members are Italian.

DC: The story of the struggle for power against the Gambino family happened in the real world and it wasn't called the Swenson family it was called the Gambino family and the participants was Paul Castellano it wasn't Paul Anderson and Sammy Gravano's name wasn't Sammy Entwhistle it was Sammy Gravano.

MP: Gay Talese's father was ashamed of the Mafia, ashamed of the aspersion it cast on all Italians, a subject Talese himself explored in his memoir Unto the Sons. But his notion of Mafia-themed media affecting perceptions of Italians is tinged with a kind of admiration for what the Mafia figure represents, or represented in this country.

GT: It's a man of a kind of virtue, a man of resolve, a guy who knows how to get things done, a Godfather figure, a Mafia Figure. A macho man in a time when men are so wimpy and society is so vast and bureaucracy seems to dominate our lives. Everything is impersonal; we are not connected as a nation; we are not affiliated in strong family ties any more; divorce is more prevalent than ever. But the Mafia and the Mafia family in the "Godfather" films presented loyalty, and while there was a lot of people getting rubbed out during that 2 or 3 hour production, still you have the desire for some of these values and I think that has an appeal.

MP: It is a conflict felt by many Italian Americans, drawing pride from a depiction of a family that you wouldn't want to emulate. During the San Genaro feast, a passionate celebration of all things Italian that takes place each year on the once mean streets of New York's Little Italy the most sought after items, after the zeppoles and cannolis, are T-shirts of "Goodfellas" and the "Godfather" movies. "Sopranos" memorabilia has already cropped up in the area. When someone walks out of that store wearing the likeness of these TV Italian-Americans who are influenced by past media depictions of Italian-Americans, you can see where the lines of identity begin to blur. You can also see Tony Soprano hijacking a shipment of the T-shirts, and giving them out to his crew as Christmas gifts.

Sopranos Theme

AX: Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in. Is that Pacino or is that Pacino!

On the Media's Mike Pesca.