After Gabbi’s timely mention of The Sopranos today, I had to dig up the clip. I’d forgotten how detailed the discussion was. It’s a fascinating scene, in which mother Carmela defends traditional heteronormative values (though she would never call it that!) against the eggheads like us English profs who want to “queer” everything (click through to watch on YouTube):

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Herman Melville’s Billy Budd is discussed over dinner at Meadow’s new apartment. Episode Title: Eloise Air Date: 1 December 2002 IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0705242/?ref_=ttep_ep12 #HBO #TheSopranos

What surprised me, however, is that the effete Columbia kids who are Meadow Soprano’s new peer group don’t cite the new scholarship of the 2000s but the OG gender critique of Leslie Fiedler from his pathbreaking Love and Death in the American Novel (1966). Here’s Fiedler reflecting on the whole thing in an interview.

And of course Tony, who is surprising mellow about the whole thing, gets the last word.