CONTENT WARNING: DISCUSSIONS OF MISOGYNY, VIOLENCE, RACISM
It’s hard to sum up any character from The Sopranos with a short description. That’s the best thing about the show — its characters are so cohesive a part of their dramatic setting and so clearly defined by their roles in their narrative and social contexts, but they never feel like broad archetypes or anything less than fully developed individuals with their own complex psychologies. For the sake of argument, though, I’m going to sum up a character from The Sopranos in a sentence anyway: Johnny Sack is the man Tony Soprano imagines when he thinks of himself.
The tragedy of Tony Soprano is, Tony is smart enough to see the destructive contradictions between the macho, antisocial values of his mafia environment, and the emotional demands of being a good husband and father who lives up to the American values of family and business ownership Tony takes so much pride in embodying. Tony has the emotional intelligence to see how any positive change he makes to himself will require him to overcome the attitudes and behaviors he was raised with and have allowed him to succeed in that environment, and reconcile his personality and values with the realities of 21st century American society; but every time Tony reaches a crisis point, he rejects the idea of changing as an offense to his honor and manhood, and then vents his emotional turmoil out on the people around him. Tony will never change because he has embraced a worldview where the only emotional reaction allowed to him is responding to every perceived slight with belligerent machismo and dominating everyone around him into compliance. Tony’s entire sense of self and success, both personal and professional, are inseparable from Tony’s belief he embodies a moral code and traditional values, which he expects everyone else to live up to out of obligation to him and his status.
Tony recognizes his son, A.J., doesn’t have the personality or emotional callousness to succeed as a made guy, and more than once Tony frets about how he’s not able to help his son find a path in life he can succeed at. Tony never actually tries to do those things, though: the only path in life other than mafioso Tony can imagine for A.J. is going into the military, and Tony’s idea of supporting his son’s interests and hobbies is to call A.J. a loser and an embarrassment, and maybe a fag depending on how angry Tony is. When Tony’s lieutenant, Vito, is outed as homosexual, it doesn’t take much effort from Tony’s psychologist, Dr. Melfi, to get Tony to admit he doesn’t actually have a problem with homosexuality other than that’s how he’s supposed to feel; at more than one point, Tony tries floating the idea to his crew that Vito being gay isn’t a big deal and they should just get over it. His capos flatly reject the suggestion as insulting to their manhood, and that’s all it takes for Tony to give up and retreat back to his old homophobic machismo, and reject Vito as an embarrassment for making the crew look weak and feminine.
There’s one character in particular who makes Tony’s flaws stand out in comparison: John Sacrimoni, aka Johnny Sack, the New York mafioso whose orbit crosses with Tony’s more and more frequently over The Soprano‘s final seasons. Soprano and Sacrimoni are both poised to rise up the ladder of the mafia heirarchy as their superiors grow old and die; both start the story as underbosses for the New Jersey and New York families, respectively, which means both of them are the supervisors and middle managers who handle the dirty details of running a crime syndicate without letting all of the corruption, ego, and fragile pride cause the whole thing to collapse in a storm of violence and retribution. Superficially, Johnny Sack isn’t very different from Tony Soprano: a mafia subcommander, neck deep in corruption, racketeering, prostitution, drugs, and murder; a violent man who proudly dominates his environment with masculine authority. Sacrimoni is just as proud as Tony is about his honor, too, and he extends that honor to his family just as much as Tony does; he almost starts a gang war after one of Tony’s subordinates makes a tasteless joke about Mrs. Sack’s weight.
This is the point where Johnny Sack truly starts to stand out as a character with a unique perspective and, more importantly, as an example of someone who has managed to find a middle ground between his Old World code of honor and the demands of being a modern husband, father, and boss — something Tony spends the whole show insisting he wants to achieve for himself, but always refuses to do.
The differences between the Tony and Johnny only start to become clear once Tony tries to calm his New York counterpart down and get Johnny to accept the slight against his honor without demanding satisfaction. Tony assumes the problem with the joke is it was an insult to Johnny Sack’s position and masculinity for a subordinate to talk about his wife like she was a regular hooer; but that’s not the case at all. Tony tries to commiserate with the usual chummy, tough guy misogyny and over-the-top machismo Tony always uses to break the ice whenever another mafioso acts offended over some slight against one of his women, but when Tony tries to use that approach on Sacrimoni he encounters a problem he is completely unprepared to deal with: Johnny Sack respects his wife, and is insulted on her behalf.
If it were any other mafia captain, it wouldn’t take much effort on Tony’s part to smooth things over; something as trivial as someone calling another man’s wife ugly and fat could be dealt with quickly and without much mess, as soon as the appearance of honor was satisfied with the usual exchange of tough guy bluster and over-the-top threats before they all hug it out and make crude jokes about each other’s mistresses. It’s a ritual the characters repeat throughout the show, one designed to keep all the competing male egos in check by letting everyone involved feel like they got their way without having to carry out the threats of violence they casually throw at each other. Johnny Sack is no less bullheaded about the situation, and his reaction to the slight is just as patriarchal as any other mafioso in Tony’s orbit. Yet Johnny Sack’s sense of masculine pride and patrician honor turns out to be very different from Tony’s, and from the rest of the mafiosos around him’s. Someone like Tony or Paulie would take a joke about their wife as an insult against themselves, and the matter to be settled would be one of men reestablishing their positions in the hierarchy of power. That’s what Tony expects to be dealing with when he tries to placate Johnny Sack, so you can imagine his surprise when he instead encounters a man of equal status, whose concerns he can’t dismiss, standing up for his wife and pushing back against Tony’s casual misogyny for being hurtful and undermining his wife’s self-image.
There are a lot of shocking scenes in The Sopranos, but the scene above still manages to be more off-putting and unexpected than most of the sudden outbursts of violence Tony always stirs up around him. Not because it’s loud or confrontational, but because it’s quiet and vulnerable. It’s not just hearing the tough guy Johnny Sack scold one of his peers for not respecting how hard his wife has struggled with weight gain after two pregnancies, or hearing him say he finds his wife beautiful; it’s his emotional vulnerability when he says it. Tony says lots of things about how much he loves his wife, Carmella, and thinks she’s beautiful, but he’s never genuine about it; he only ever brings it up to browbeat his subordinates back into their place, or while shouting at Carmella about how she doesn’t appreciate how good she’s got it with a husband like him. Most of all, Tony never makes himself vulnerable when he discusses his emotions, except for the rare times Dr. Melfi manages to get him to drop the macho act and examine himself honestly; but that usually ends with Tony beating someone up for the discomfort he feels about it. Tony never demands his peers respect his wife or his family by telling them they need to respect their feelings; he yells, “THIS IS HOW I FEEL!” and then demands everyone else defer to him out of respect for his authority.
Compare that to Johnny Sack. Once Sacrimoni starts talking about his wife, all of the bluster and macho attitude go away to reveal something the other adult characters on The Sopranos devote all of their energy to avoiding: emotional honesty. As soon as Johnny starts talking about his wife, it’s obvious how much he loves her. Really, truly loves her. When Johnny describes how hard Ginny works to lose weight, he tears up thinking about how hard it is for her; instead of demanding satisfaction for a slight against his male honor, Johnny feels compelled to demand satisfaction for his wife and makes it clear he is only acting as a proxy on her behalf — as a man, a husband, and a father — and his terms for letting the matter go include making sure the rest of the men around him understand how their attitudes towards women are hurtful and destructive, and he won’t accept their casual disrespect anymore. It’s also noteworthy how despite his dogmatic understanding of the mafia code and its Old World history, Johnny Sack is much less of a traditionalist than Tony Soprano is (or claims to be). Tony chases away every man his daughter shows any interest in, and constantly threatens to stop indulging his family by not doing what a real man does and smacking them around. It’s hard to even imagine Johnny Sack threatening to go Old School on his wife or children, let alone doing it, and unlike Tony he is more than willing to accept the men his daughters choose for themselves; the most intense conflict Johnny Sack has over the matter of his daughters’ sex life is chiding his future son-in-law for calling him “John” instead of “Dad”.
It’s not even the joke itself that pushes Sacrimoni into demanding one of Tony’s men get whacked — he only starts demanding Ralphie’s head because Ralphie keeps intruding into his life when he’s clearly not wanted and keeps provoking the situation by refusing to acknowledge how Johnny Sack feels, or follow his orders as a capo. Johnny Sack doesn’t do what Tony would do; Tony would rage and threaten and make sure everyone knew no matter what the issue appeared to be, the real problem was the disruption of “the way things are” and how conflicts cause inconvenience and threaten profits. In contrast to Tony, Johnny stands up for all of the things the other mafiosos around him claim are the only things that motivate them: duty, honor, family, loyalty. Just as Johnny is openly offended by the way his male peers and subordinates talk about and treat the women in their lives, he’s openly hurt his peers are so eager to abandon their supposed principles for the sake of convenience and money.
That’s another thing that makes Johnny Sack stand out; Tony and his crew only stand by their “code” and “traditions” as a way to project dominance over people and threaten them into compliance, and to justify everything they do as self-explanatory and above the need for justification. Johnny, on the other hand, sees the mafia code as a set of principles which men in his position — and Tony’s — are supposed to live up to and embody as the condition for their authority and position. If Tony found out Ralphie had ripped him off on a deal, he would shout a lot about his honor and the disrespect done to him but in the end it would be all about the money and making sure he got his cut due to him as an important person. For Johnny Sack, the money is a secondary issue, if it’s an issue at all; unlike Tony, Sacrimoni seems to recognize he’s got it pretty good in life and would never make the kind of spectacle of himself Tony does whenever he starts ranting about how hard life is for him from the comfort of his two-story suburban McMansion.
It’s not about the money to John; he gets offended when his peers bring the topic of money into the discussion, and not just because money is only brought up to pressure him into keeping quiet and accepting the humiliation he has put himself through trying to get the people around him to acknowledge his feelings and respect him like they say they do. Johnny Sack’s problem with the situation is, people who swore the same oaths he did and whom he trusts as friends and colleagues are going behind his back and treating him like a troublemaker because he is disappointed in them for showing contempt for the values they claim to justify everything they do.
The more the differences in Johnny Sack’s and Tony Soprano’s personalities and management style become clear, another difference between them starts to stand out. In almost every situation, Johnny Sack proves to be not just a better man but a better mafioso and crime boss than Tony, in just as many ways. He’s better at managing people than Tony, he’s better at keeping business running smoothly, and he’s better at containing the violence that’s always waiting to happen while still giving everyone involved enough satisfaction to hold alliances together. Whenever Tony says he wants to negotiate or reach common ground, he usually has no such intentions; even when he does, he only gets involved if he feels like he has a personal stake in the matter and will get something out of it, and he usually has to be shamed into even getting to that point. Tony would spend the whole time complaining about how having to compromise or give ground is an insult to his masculine pride. Not Johnny Sack though; unlike Tony, Johnny holds people to their code out of a sense of responsibility as a boss and enforcer of the traditions they all swore oaths to uphold no matter how much it costs them. Johnny bears the stress and personal indignities of managing a business as a matter of duty out of his responsibility to live up to his position; unlike Tony, Johnny is able to show his disappointment and anger without losing control, and is willing to set aside his personal pride when it’s the best course of action. Even when Johnny Sack is plotting to overthrow the head of his family and take his place, it’s a matter of honor and duty he is willing to make a noble sacrifice to carry out without rationalizing away the realities of what he is doing.
It’s not a coincidence Johnny Sack is the only mafioso in The Sopranos who seems even the least bit secure in his self-image and his position in life, whether as a Siciliano, a businessman, or in his masculinity. If the story of Tony Soprano is a tragedy, then it’s the sad, underwhelming pathos of a 21st century American man who has succeeded at everything but who still needs to mythologize himself as a suburban Hercules whose tragic flaw is his inability to contain his pure, overwhelming masculine qualities in the face of a world turned weak and womanly. Just like Hercules and Achilles, Tony can’t help but succumbing to his manly pride and anger and leaves a trail of destruction and violence behind him, a testosterone-powered rage machine that crushes everyone around it into compliance until they snap under the pressure. Hercules and Achilles were demigods and legends, though; Tony Soprano is just an angry guy who keeps finding reasons to blame everyone and everything else for his inability to find satisfaction and meaning in his own existence. Tony may think he’s Virgil braving the depths of the Inferno, but in truth he’s Walter Mitty with a bad attitude and no good excuse for retreating into fantasy.
Johnny Sack doesn’t see himself that way, though, and his fate in the story reflects that. At the end of The Sopranos, Tony has come out on top by doing things his way; after provoking a gang war between the New York and New Jersey families, Tony finally manages to eliminate the leader of the enemy faction and win the war. Even if Tony does get shot after the camera cuts to black in the show’s famously ambiguous final scene, he goes out in a way befitting a mob boss with his honor and reputation intact; if The Sopranos ends with Tony’s death, then he dies a martyr and a hero to his fellows.
Not Johnny Sack, though. Sacrimoni follows his principles and familial obligations until the very end, and he responds to every crisis of conscience by swallowing his personal pride and holding himself to his obligations, even if it means falling on his sword. And fall on his sword he does: after being put on trial for RICO charges, Johnny Sack accepts a plea deal and breaks his oaths when he allocutes to the existence of the mafia in court; not to protect himself, but to protect his family after the FBI threatens to indict them on trumped-up charges in retaliation against him.
Tony Soprano punishes the world for not recognizing his heroic qualities and failing to be worthy of him, whereas John Sacrimoni endures the pain and personal indignities he suffers as a matter of principle. Unlike Tony, Johnny Sack never gives into self-pity or punishes someone below him because he doesn’t feel like the world appreciates him enough, and he never hides how he feels behind Tony’s macho, too-cool-for-school posturing. Johnny is open about how he feels, and he will tell people he does not feel emotionally supported without shame or hesitation. No matter how much it bothers him and makes him question whom he should trust to stand behind him, he endures the escalating friction between himself and his peers and refuses to compromise his beliefs, or his duty to stand up for his family, even as the people around him grow more hostile and condescending towards him for being unmanly. As per usual, Tony tries to understand Sacrimoni’s perspective; just like with Vito, Tony empathizes with Johnny enough to get angry with his peers for not respecting Sacrimoni’s feelings and hiding their own insecurities with empty bluster. Tony even seems on the verge of realizing on an emotional level he and his fellows are wallowing in poisonous attitudes that hurt them almost as much as everyone else. At the end of the day, though, he’s still Tony Soprano; by the time Johnny Sack pleads guilty and is sentenced to life in prison, Tony shows just as much disgust and contempt as the rest towards what they see as Sacrimoni’s womanly displays of cowardice and moral degeneracy. Johnny Sack follows his code of masculine honor and stands up for his family out of patriarchal duty, and in return he is destined to find himself secluded in a convent when his male peers reject him for feminizing them by association. Too bad for them: unlike every other male character on The Sopranos, when Johnny Sack closes his eyes at night he’s never frightened by the thought he might not be a real man.
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