My thesis explores what I call the "Sopranos Experience," which draws upon both the historical conventions of the gangster genre as well as the aesthetics and economics of pay-cable television to complicate The Sopranos' (HBO, 1999-2007) psychological relationship with the 21st-century, neoliberal American audience. The Sopranos Experience explicates how wavering identifications and dis-identifications that develop for the spectator through the series' form and content draw the responsibility of an audience away from moral ultimatums that attempt to finalize their experience with the genre, and towards a more personal ethical entanglement with the characters and their socioeconomic anxieties and desires. The ethical entanglement highlighted by The Sopranos reveals an entanglement that has always existed for the gangster genre throughout its history that has been recognized, but not thoroughly explored by previous gangster scholarship. Because of the The Sopranos' psychotherapy story arc through Tony's (James Gandolfini) relationship with Dr. Melfi (Lorraine Bracco), psychoanalysis plays a key role in the Sopranos Experience. The serial form and narrowcasting develop a more in-depth psychological relationship between the spectator and the characters than seen in previous gangster genre films. Through the psychoanalytic theory of Jean Laplanche, I argue the spectator's closer relationship with the series not only results in the spectator's constitution of self through the fictional characters, but that this constitution of self extends into their lived, everyday experiences with others. In this discussion of the psychological connection between the spectator and the characters, their shared anxieties about and desires for socioeconomic stability in a neoliberal environment mobilizes the spectator's relationship not just with the series, but with others in their lives. In recognizing their atomized role in the viewership experience, The Sopranos allows the spectator to make ethical demands about their atomization and vulnerability in a neoliberal society. Because they can recognize the collective's similar situation, the spectator is situated to make larger demands about socioeconomic systems that atomize the individual.

Absent Presence: Women in American Gangster Narrative investigates women characters in American gangster narratives through the principal roles accorded to them. It argues that women in these texts function as an “absent presence,” by which I mean that they are a convention of the patriarchal gangster landscape and often with little import while at the same time they cultivate resistant strategies from within this backgrounded positioning. Whereas previous scholarly work on gangster texts has identified how women are characterized as stereotypes, this dissertation argues that women characters frequently employ the marginal positions to which they are relegated for empowering effect. This dissertation begins by surveying existing gangster scholarship. There is a preoccupation with male characters in this work, as is the case in most gangster texts themselves. This preoccupation is a result of several factors, such as defining the genre upon criteria that exclude women, promoting a male-centred canon as a result, and making assumptions about audience composition and taste that overlook women’s (and some women characters’) interest in gangster texts. Consequently, although the past decade saw women scholars bringing attention to female characters, research on male characters continues to dominate the field. My project thus fills this gap by not only examining the methods by which women characters navigate the male-dominated underworld but also including female-centred gangster narratives. Subsequent chapters focus on women’s predominant roles as mothers, molls, and wives as well as their infrequent role as female gangsters. The mother chapter demonstrates how the gangster’s mother deploys her effacement as an idealized figure in order to disguise her transgressive machinations (White Heat, The Sopranos). The moll chapter examines how this character’s presence as a reforming influence for the male criminal is integral to the earliest narratives. However, a shift to male relationships in mid- to late-1920s gangster texts transforms the moll’s status to that of a moderator (Underworld, The Great Gatsby). On the other hand, subsequent non-canonical texts feature molls as protagonists and illustrate the potential appeal of the gangster figure to women spectators (Three on a Match). Subsequently, the wife chapter explores texts that show presence is manifested in the wife’s cultivation of a traditional family image, while absence is evident in her exposure of this image as a façade via her husband’s activities (The Godfather, Goodfellas). In the following female gangster chapter, I examine how gender functions to render this rare character a literal absent presence such that she is inconceivable as a subject (Lady Scarface, Lady Gangster). Expanding upon this examination of gender, a final chapter on the African-American female gangster (in Set It Off and The Wire) explores how sexuality, race, and female—as well as “gangsta”—masculinity intersect to create this character’s simultaneous hypervisibility and invisibility. By examining women’s roles that often are overlooked in a male-dominated textual type and academic field, this dissertation draws scholarly attention to the ways that peripheral status can offer a stealthy locus for self-assertion.

Absent Presence: Women in American Gangster Narrative investigates women characters in American gangster narratives through the principal roles accorded to them. It argues that women in these texts function as an “absent presence,” by which I mean that they are a convention of the patriarchal gangster landscape and often with little import while at the same time they cultivate resistant strategies from within this backgrounded positioning. Whereas previous scholarly work on gangster texts has identified how women are characterized as stereotypes, this dissertation argues that women characters frequently employ the marginal positions to which they are relegated for empowering effect. This dissertation begins by surveying existing gangster scholarship. There is a preoccupation with male characters in this work, as is the case in most gangster texts themselves. This preoccupation is a result of several factors, such as defining the genre upon criteria that exclude women, promoting a male-centred canon as a result, and making assumptions about audience composition and taste that overlook women’s (and some women characters’) interest in gangster texts. Consequently, although the past decade saw women scholars bringing attention to female characters, research on male characters continues to dominate the field. My project thus fills this gap by not only examining the methods by which women characters navigate the male-dominated underworld but also including female-centred gangster narratives. Subsequent chapters focus on women’s predominant roles as mothers, molls, and wives as well as their infrequent role as female gangsters. The mother chapter demonstrates how the gangster’s mother deploys her effacement as an idealized figure in order to disguise her transgressive machinations (White Heat, The Sopranos). The moll chapter examines how this character’s presence as a reforming influence for the male criminal is integral to the earliest narratives. However, a shift to male relationships in mid- to late-1920s gangster texts transforms the moll’s status to that of a moderator (Underworld, The Great Gatsby). On the other hand, subsequent non-canonical texts feature molls as protagonists and illustrate the potential appeal of the gangster figure to women spectators (Three on a Match). Subsequently, the wife chapter explores texts that show presence is manifested in the wife’s cultivation of a traditional family image, while absence is evident in her exposure of this image as a façade via her husband’s activities (The Godfather, Goodfellas). In the following female gangster chapter, I examine how gender functions to render this rare character a literal absent presence such that she is inconceivable as a subject (Lady Scarface, Lady Gangster). Expanding upon this examination of gender, a final chapter on the African-American female gangster (in Set It Off and The Wire) explores how sexuality, race, and female—as well as “gangsta”—masculinity intersect to create this character’s simultaneous hypervisibility and invisibility. By examining women’s roles that often are overlooked in a male-dominated textual type and academic field, this dissertation draws scholarly attention to the ways that peripheral status can offer a stealthy locus for self-assertion.