Sopranos’ Waste Inc.: Rifiuti d’America tra Napoli e Newark

HBO award-sweeping drama series The Sopranos (1999-2007) achieved outstanding popularity among US audiences. Set within the “low-mimetic” modes of the Italian-American gangster story which encompasses the immigrant generational pattern, the narrative often verges on the grotesque, thus disclosing representations of social and emotional crisis. Signs of decline and depression are to be read everywhere in the series and are realistically conveyed by the underlying and multifarious presence of “Waste” meant both as garbage (“Waste Business” being one of New Jersey mobster Tony Soprano’s main activities) and cultural diminishment (with the decaying parable drawn by third- and fourth-generation Mafiosi who cannot help feeling dwarfed by the achievements of their fathers and Godfathers). The essay attempts to show how these two different yet interrelated aspects of “waste” are ingrained into Italian-American history and culture, and how to a certain extent their downward trajectory mirrors a condition of the United States at large.