> His actions are brutal, his treatment of other people is generally horrendous, he > destroys other families to enrich his own, and his monstrosity is represented by his > own grotesquely overweight body. My guess is that my body weight is greater than James Gandolfini (the actor who plays Tony Soprano). I trust you don't mean to suggest that all of us is this weight class, or greater, are representative of "monsters." Examples such as Santa Claus, and characters played by people like John Candy, John Belushi, John Goodman and Chris Farley suggest otherwise this co-relation between body weight and evil. What is so evil about Tony Soprano? He treats his family better than most husbands and fathers I met when I used to do security work. The violence he inflicts is always for the sake of "business" (everyone who goes into "business" with Tony Soprano know and accept the risks). He doesn't go out into the streets of New Jersey and beat-up innocent people who have no relation to him. And, overall, his moral code is on a higher level than a good many politicians and company executives. You never see him "downsize" his business for the sake increasing his profits. He doesn't fire his employees on a whim. He doesn't go to war with another "family" (let's call it, say, Yugoslavia), killing thousands, because he wants to control it. Nor does he bully others for similar reasons. In fact, he is quite content to let others do what they may, as long as it doesn't infringe on his own territory. Yet we don't begrudge American presidents for such reasons (but we may be offended by what they do with his willies) nor capitalists who overcharge us, companies that embezzle or banks that accumulate into the billions through inflated interest and "service charges." Anyone else would be viewed as a "thief." Meanwhile, Tony Soprano trying to collect $60,000 in a gambling debt is peanuts by comparison, and certainly not theft. Why is he the "evil" one? Politicians and capitalists have killed and robbed far, far more people than a fictional character such as Tony Soprano. But the movies can only make American presidents evil by making them rapists (Absolute Power). And capitalists can only be seen as evil by making them blatant thieves and murderers. This exaggerated protrayal makes them so unreal, that the real macoys look like angels by comparison. Meanwhile Tony Soprano looks like a cream-puff compared with his real-life contemporaries. How did he become "the most 'zeitgeist' evil hero of our time"? ---- Screen-L is sponsored by the Telecommunication & Film Dept., the University of Alabama: http://www.tcf.ua.edu