The Sopranos’s Queer Reveal

The most surprising moment in the six-season run of HBO’s The Sopranos doesn’t begin with Tony (James Gandolfini) in the therapist’s chair or with a gun in hand. It doesn’t begin with Carmela (Edie Falco) or Janice (Aida Turturro), or even Meadow Soprano (Jamie Lynn-Sigler). It begins with Meadow’s college boyfriend, Finn DeTrolio (Will Janowitz). An unremarkable dentistry major, Finn is unfamiliar with the Mafia, and clearly uneasy about his proximity to it. Still, he takes an easy job at a mob-run construction site when Tony offers it. We watch through his eyes: he pulls into the parking lot, hardhat in hand, when he looks to the car parked next to him. Inside is a male, middle-aged security guard who is clearly in the throes of being—ahem—orally pleasured by an unseen partner. But when the anonymous lover lifts their head, making inadvertent eye contact with the flustered DeTrolio, it’s none other than Vito Spatafore (Joseph Gannascoli), a capo in Tony Soprano’s crew who is married with two children.¹ Vito makes coded threats to Finn, and offers him baseball tickets in a move that feels uneasily like both a come-on and a bribe. Then, it’s dropped until the next season. The audience is left to wonder if it will ever come up again, and what will happen to Vito if it does. Until that moment, he had been a relatively minor character, peripheral to the action and often present in the background. But having sex with the security guard made him central to what I consider the show’s closest examination of masculinity, modernity, and the ordering of the moral universe of the characters. 

Vito’s sexuality is revealed to the main characters—most relevant for him, to Tony and to Phil Leotardo (Frank Vincent)—later, by degrees. You get the sense that, had they learned it all at once, it would have been too much for their minds to cope with. First as a rumor, after he was spotted by acquaintances at a gay bar, then through interviewing a supposed mistress, then the final nail in the coffin: Finn’s testimony of what he saw in that parking lot. But for the audience, the revelation is a sudden shock. It is worth noting that the use of gay sex as something shocking in itself is not…wildly progressive. The show’s creator, David Chase, is a straight man from New Jersey and therefore probably not the best candidate to handle the nuances of queer identity and homophobia. That being said, Vito himself, if he were a real person, would not know much about the intricacies of queer politics, either. And, not for nothing, as a gay man, I loved this plotline, and relish the delicious fact that straight fans of the show who idolized its cool and dominant masculinity had to deal with deep discomfort for a few episodes. Queerness and queer people had, so far, existed only ditsantly and rheotircally on the show. The mafia-affiliated characters are all, of course, vociferously homophobic, and make gay sex the object of jokes and sleights in everyday conversation. Queerness is, foremost, a threat to masculinity and to masculine hegemony for them. Notably, their disgust and horror mounts visibly when they learn from Finn that Vito was “catching, not pitching” in the parking lot.² They are all also loudly, if shallowly, committed to Catholicism, and make protests about the sinful nature of same-sex relations. But the fact that we know all of the characters are homophobic is not all that makes this reveal surprising. It also seems to slam the characters, who have been living in the past, face-first into modern American life. Vito is even wearing a 50s-style bowling shirt during this scene– a costume piece that wouldn’t look out of place in the slick mid-century setting of Goodfellas. This sartorial choice asks the viewer to consider the common image of the gangster in media, one firmly situated in the mob’s heyday of the ’50s through ’70s, in contrast with the examination of queerness that feels thoroughly modern. 

This plotline signaled a rupture from the show’s general treatment of modernity. The show had always been interested in the opposition between the Old World rules and customs of La Cosa Nostra and the late twentieth and early twenty-first century mores the mafiosi are forced to live with the rest of the time. In many ways, our characters had stood, bewildered and comically incongruous, amidst a changing American society, but not truly in it. As if to drive this point home, during the unfolding of this plotline with Vito, two of Tony’s crew attempt to shake down a Starbucks-like business for a weekly envelope. They find that any such protection money would have to be cleared with corporate first.³ These two events taken in conjunction show how not only is the cultural and ideological world becoming unrecognizable to them, the economic structures that allowed for the rise of the mafia are changing, as well. They live, blissfully, in an imagined past where, in addition to corporations like Starbucks not existing, patriarchy is unchallenged, ethnic groups don’t mix, honor is a quotidian concept, and men don’t even perform oral sex on women for fear that it would contaminate their heterosexuality (see the episode that cemented my love for the show: season 1, episode 9⁴). The fracturing of Tony’s psyche that drives the whole series seems to come, in part, from the fact that he’s dimly aware that he doesn’t live in this past. He tells Dr. Melfi (Lorraine Bracco) in his first session: “It’s good to be in something from the ground floor. I came too late for that and I know. But lately, I’m getting the feeling that I came in at the end. The best is over.”⁵ The world is changing, and maybe even leaving people like him behind, and that is unbearable to him. Vito doesn’t just represent the intrusion of modernity by having gay sex—which would be a crisis for his co-workers in and of itself—he also engages with modern gay culture. In “Mr. and Mrs. John Sacrimoni Request,” he is spotted dancing with two different men at a leather bar, complete with chaps and black leather vest.⁶ This is recounted later as him “holding hands with a guy in nipple rings” while wearing “a motorcycle outfit—like the guy in the Village People.”⁷ Chris, in recounting this story to Tony and his officers, reaches for what is probably the only gay cultural touchstone accessible to him, which is, in itself, already pretty out of date.

Of course, being gay is not really modern. That is, gay people are not a recent invention. In fact, the exposure of Vito’s gayness threatens the social fabric of the mafia specifically because it draws attention to the homosociality, and indeed the same-sex erotic behavior, that exists historically and currently in their lifestyle. Dr. Melfi points out that “A lot of [Tony’s] circle have done jail time. They can’t be strangers to male-male sexual contact.”⁸ Tony knows it goes beyond prison, and says “Let’s be honest with ourselves: we all know Vito’s not the first.” Gay mafiosi are not the only crack in the imagined, idealized past. It is revealed to Tony that he is not the only mobster who struggles with panic attacks, anxiety, and depression. His own father, the uber he-man, had them, too. Christopher’s father, the fabled Dickie Moltisanti, is revealed late in the show to have been a heavy drug user. The vaunted masculine values of ruggedness and control were never a given.⁹ Mob members kiss on the cheek, embrace, and declare loudly that they love each other throughout the show. (Silvio Dante (Steven van Zandt) even asks Tony about Vito after his outing: “Are you going to kiss him on both cheeks?”) Both their masculine (and violent) work and their rampant heterosexual infidelity and sexual objectification of women shields them from any aspersions. Yet, Vito was as violent as the rest of them: he was the one to pull the trigger on Meadow’s ex-boyfriend, Jackie Aprile, Jr. (Jason Cerbone)¹⁰, and demanded someone be killed as payback for severely beating his brother.¹¹ He also participated in ritual sexual behavior, like the keeping of a goomar, and bragging to his fellow mobsters that he was “this close” to getting Chris’s girlfriend Adriana La Cerva (Drea de Matteo) to “suck his… braciole.”¹² If he can seem exactly like the rest of them, the implicit logic goes, and he can be gay, then anyone can. The same man in the bowling shirt can be, on the weekends, the man in the leather daddy outfit. The idea that gay men are not immediately identifiable as an other, and that sexual roles can be porous and fluid, throws their worldview and even their self-concept into disarray. If Vito can be gay, could their other friends, or their brothers, or their sons? Could they themselves? 

His sexuality also forces introspection for Tony. The rank-and-file of his crew all express, in their own way, complete shame and hatred. Paulie (the recently departed and deeply missed Tony Sirico) is deeply disgusted and “feel[s] like [he’s] been stabbed in the heart”; Chris (Michael Imperioli) says it would be “an honor” to kill Vito and cut his penis off, while Bobby Baccalieri (Steve Schirrippa), in a character-epitomizing moment, declares in his best tough-guy voice that “We can’t have him here in our social club anymore, that much I do know,” before immediately demuring with a good-natured “Yeah…I don’t know.¹³ Besides the typically meek Bobby, the only other person to express any ambivalence about whether Vito deserves to die is Patsy Parisi (Dan Grimaldi), who says “Basically, I could care less,” when he first hears the rumors. He is immediately met with homophobic suspicion: “Maybe you’re a flambé,” Paulie accuses. In light of the facts that they are afraid of being accused themselves, that Bobby is clearly performing outrage (and not doing a very good job) and that Patsy doesn’t care, it calls into question whether all their reactions are performative. Are they genuinely, viscerally disgusted by gayness? Or is this an instinctive clinging to a social more?¹⁴ Still, Tony doesn’t give in to the initial demands to take him out, looking uneasy and citing the fact that Vito has children. However, Phil Leotardo, the prickly Lupertazzi family boss with whom the Soprano crew has an uneasy alliance, has personal stake in this revelation: Vito is married to his cousin, and Leotardo demands blood for the family’s humiliation. 

Tony ultimately talks through the decision in therapy. After some questioning from Dr. Melfi, he admits that he enjoys The L Word (although that clearly has more to do with his own sexual gratification than anything else) and ultimately, that he just doesn’t care that much what “consenting adults” do “behind closed doors.” He throws in a token mention of being “a strict Catholic,” and gets comically paranoid that Dr. Melfi might think he’s had gay sex, but it’s clear that he feels fondness for Vito. While there would be plenty of pushback for letting him live, at the end of the day, Spatafore is loyal, ambitious, and “his best earner”—the greatest thing you can be for your boss.¹⁵ As is often the case with Tony, there is a strong cognitive dissonance between his two halves: the mobster and the man. The ethical code of the mafia, with all its justifications of violence and retrograde thinking, prescribes a clear course of action (although even that is complicated by the most pressing issue any boss can face: maximizing profits). The ethical code of a modern man (one whose liberal daughter is working at the South Bronx Law Center as this plotline unfolds) prescribes the opposite. And Tony, in a moment of moral clarity that becomes rarer as the show goes on, feels aligned with the latter. He knows, on some fundamental level, that hating someone for being gay is wrong: “Something inside me says ‘God bless… Who gives a shit?’”¹⁶That is not a stunning moral victory, to be sure, but a pleasant surprise for the viewer nonetheless. While he’s obviously not what we’d call an ally, and he expresses racist, sexist, and queerphobic views throughout the series, this shows that they are not deeply held, violent beliefs, but a vague sense of tribalism and chauvinism inculcated by his environment. But, in some ways, this makes all that follows worse. If Tony were sincerely homophobic, he would at least be acting consistently with his beliefs. There wouldn’t be such an aching sense of moral emptiness. 

Vito disappears, knowing he’s been found out. In his absence, Tony emphasizes to his men that whether or not to kill him is his decision alone, that Vito is dedicated and a good earner, and (correctly) predicts that he’d get more money out of him if he returned, while condemning those who want him gone as loving “the high drama” and looking for an excuse to whack someone. His second-in-command Silvio Dante warns him this might spur his soldiers to insubordination or even withholding money.¹⁷

It might be helpful to note here that this plotline is ripped from the headlines. Joseph Gannascoli pitched the arc for his character after reading the book Murder Machine, which recounts the exploits of a Canarsie, Brooklyn-based mob associate named Vito Arena, who robbed stores with his gay lover. Co-author of Murder Machine Jerry Capeci says of Arena “I don’t know if I’d say he was openly gay, but everyone knew that he was gay.”¹⁸

This laissez-faire attitude is a far cry from what happens to Vito. After he runs away, he finds himself in a small New Hampshire town¹⁹, gets a job working construction, and starts dating a diner owner, who he calls a slur and pushes away the first time he attempts a kiss, saying “Sometimes you tell a lie so long, you don’t know when to stop.”²⁰ A lot of people didn’t care for this plotline. According to George de Stephano, the author of “A Finook in the Crew: Vito Spatafore, the Sopranos, and the Queering of the Mafia Genre,” “the reaction from some viewers was that they were more horrified by this narrative turn in The Sopranos than they were by a lot of the killing and the murders and the pretty extreme violence that was typical of the show.”²¹ And according to a Sopranos fan interviewed in Mel Magazine, “some people still talk about how that completely turned them off from the show.²² While most of this reaction can probably be chalked up to homophobia, there is also the fact the “Johnny Cakes,” the episode where most of Vito’s relationship with the diner owner transpires, has a perversely lighthearted, New England vibe that feels more Gilmore Girls than HBO. Personally, I think the fact that the love story is a rare moment of sweetness for the show (in addition to probably angling for a GLAAD Award, which they got in 2007) stops the plotline from treating Vito—and gay men who might have seen themselves in him—with total callousness. And if the show can linger on psychoanalysis, cunnilingus, food poisoning-induced dream sequences and the letters of Abelard and Heloise, I think the viewers can hang on through a few scenes of antiquing and men making out in meadows. 

Despite the genuine connection between Vito and his new boyfriend, he hates the boredom, the antiquing, and the tiresome physical labor, and he returns to New Jersey.²³ He reunites with his wife and kids, claiming that his sexual behavior was caused by an adverse reaction to medication, tells his children an outlandish lie about being a spy to explain his absence, and offers to buy Tony off: $200,000 to forget this happened and protect him from retribution. Tony is tempted to take it, and makes plans to move Vito to Atlantic City, but he eventually tires of fighting Phil Leotardo on the issue. He starts making plans to have him killed instead. As he makes the call, he scowls, angrily gesticulating and trying in varied, half-hearted ways to justify the choice: “You have to pick your battles”; “It’s Vito’s own fault: he should have stayed wherever the fuck he was”; “If he wanted to pursue that lifestyle, he should have done it quietly” (which, as Silvio points out, he did). He assigns the hit to the mobster who had the biggest problem with Vito’s sexuality, but says it as though it were a punishment.²⁴

This choice also affects Meadow, since it was her boyfriend who set these events in motion. While Chris tells Finn that there will be no repercussions for Vito, save being asked to go to therapy, Finn knows something is going to happen. Finn calls Meadow a hypocrite for claiming to be a crusader for social justice while defending her father and his associates, who are about to visit some unknown but horrific punishment on a man just for being gay. Finn represented a path away from her father and his lifestyle, and the crisis presented by Vito drives a wedge between them. Conflicts like this with “outsiders,” as well as witnessing (what she sees as) injustices done to Johnny Sacrimoni (Vincent Curatola) and other incarcerated criminals, pushes Meadow back into her father’s orbit. She ends the series in a serious relationship with Patsy Parisi’s son, and her career path as a lawyer could potentially position her adjacent to the Mafia for the rest of her life. Meadow’s moral compromise shows that mobsters are not the only ones who have to make the choice between their family and the values of the rest of the world. And, in this case, it seems she chooses her father over any empathy she feels for Vito. The Mafia and its backward moral code are a black hole that sucks in everyone in its vicinity. 

Leotardo beats Tony to the punch: he ambushes Vito in a motel room and watches as two associates duct tape his mouth and beat him to death. In case there was any ambiguity about why they killed him, they also sodomize him with a pool cue.²⁵ Viewers might feel a cringe of implicit homophobia on the part of the creators: why linger on this violent act of hatred? However, this brutality is part of a larger project: The Sopranos never, ever shies away from the brutality of violence of all kinds. Deaths are not allowed to be quick or clean or ethically cut-and dry. Each murder is brutal, lingering and disastrous. Oh, you like tough guys? David Chase seems to ask. Well, this is what tough guys do. This is the devastation they cause. Further, we are not allowed to forget the toll his death takes on his family—we see Vito’s young children reading the news story about his death, scarcely old enough to sound out the words but nonetheless understanding that he met a terrible end.²⁶

The choice to diverge from the source material is clearly purposeful. Though of course, cases like a New Jersey boss of the de Cavalcante family, John D’Amato, who was killed by one of his own soldiers for being bisexual, confirm that this is a fairly realistic end to his arc.²⁷ For one thing, David Chase clearly liked to kill off characters, and the prolonged argument over whacking Vito furthered the conflict between the New Jersey and New York families that catalyzed most of the action of season 6b. On a thematic level, it enhances the tragic nature of Tony’s character. Throughout season 6a, Tony feels a new lease on life (due to a near-fatal shooting at the end of the previous season) that gives him temporary clarity, which occasionally almost passes for a state of zen. When he spends the second half of the season tormenting his sister, forcing Bobby to kill someone for the first time, being cruel and antisemitic to his associate Hesh, killing his nephew Chris, and considering offing Paulie for no particular reason, it feels even worse knowing that this wasn’t inevitable, and that genuine growth seemed momentarily within his reach. And Tony’s complete moral degradation feels related to what happened with Vito. It’s as if this saga underlined to him that clarity and personal growth don’t guarantee better outcomes. He examined his biases, he didn’t want to be violent, he tried—and still a man ended up beaten to death with his children at home. Even with good intentions, Tony is still in the Mafia—violence is going to occur, and things that are morally repugnant are going to be normalized. And the one act of change Tony would never, ever consider is leaving the Mafia. So he embraces his decline instead. 

It calls to mind the discomfort viewers felt during earlier plotlines, like Dr. Melfi withholding the fact that she’d been raped to prevent Tony from killing her assailant.²⁸ Dr. Melfi resisted the urge to play God with her rapist’s life, Tony restrained his violent impulses—and as a result, justice wasn’t done. In the case of Vito’s death, Tony expressed a desire not to be violent. And still, something unjust happened. Something horrible, in fact. The viewer feels a deep sense of hopelessness. What’s the point? Right choice, wrong choice, somehow the outcome always sucks. There is a sense of humor to this plotline until the very end, which serves to make Vito’s eventual murder all the more chilling. This sense isn’t just derived from the incongruity of Tony and his coworkers having to deal with an issue that feels so far removed from their frame of reference: there is a deep absurdity to watching characters so far removed from what you or I would call ethical behavior attempt to make moral sense of their world. Maybe Tony fully breaks bad at the end of the show because he realizes, as the viewer does, that any attempt at a bespoke system of values is futile. 

1. “Unidentified Black Males.” The Sopranos, created by David Chase, season 5 episode 9, Chase Films, Brad Grey Television, and HBO Entertainment, 2004.
2. “Live Free or Die.” The Sopranos, created by David Chase, season 6 episode 6, Chase Films, Brad Grey Television, and HBO Entertainment, 2006.
3. “Johnny Cakes.” The Sopranos, created by David Chase, season 6 episode 8, Chase Films, Brad Grey Television, and HBO Entertainment, 2006.
4. “Boca.” The Sopranos, created by David Chase, season 1 episode 9, Chase Films, Brad Grey Television, and HBO Entertainment, 1999.
5. ““Pilot.” The Sopranos, created by David Chase, season 1 episode 1, Chase Films, Brad Grey Television, and HBO Entertainment, 1999.
6. “Mr. and Mrs. John Sacrimoni Request.” The Sopranos, created by David Chase, season 6 episode 5, Chase Films, Brad Grey Television, and HBO Entertainment, 2006.
7. “Live Free or Die.” The Sopranos, created by David Chase, season 6 episode 6, Chase Films, Brad Grey Television, and HBO Entertainment, 2006.
8. “Live Free or Die.” The Sopranos, created by David Chase, season 6 episode 6, Chase Films, Brad Grey Television, and HBO Entertainment, 2006.
9. “Live Free or Die.” The Sopranos, created by David Chase, season 6 episode 6, Chase Films, Brad Grey Television, and HBO Entertainment, 2006.
10. “Army of One.” The Sopranos, created by David Chase, season 3 episode 13, Chase Films, Brad Grey Television, and HBO Entertainment, 2001.
11. “Another Toothpick.” The Sopranos, created by David Chase, season 3 episode 5, Chase Films, Brad Grey Television, and HBO Entertainment, 2001.
12. “Irregular Around the Margins.” The Sopranos, created by David Chase, season 5 episode 5, Chase Films, Brad Grey Television, and HBO Entertainment, 2004.
13. “Live Free or Die.” The Sopranos, created by David Chase, season 6 episode 6, Chase Films, Brad Grey Television, and HBO Entertainment, 2006.
14. “Live Free or Die.” The Sopranos, created by David Chase, season 6 episode 6, Chase Films, Brad Grey Television, and HBO Entertainment, 2006.
15. “Live Free or Die.” The Sopranos, created by David Chase, season 6 episode 6, Chase Films, Brad Grey Television, and HBO Entertainment, 2006.
16. “Live Free or Die.” The Sopranos, created by David Chase, season 6 episode 6, Chase Films, Brad Grey Television, and HBO Entertainment, 2006.
17. “Live Free or Die.” The Sopranos, created by David Chase, season 6 episode 6, Chase Films, Brad Grey Television, and HBO Entertainment, 2006.
18. VanHooker, Brian. “An Oral History of ‘Johnny Cakes,’ Vito’s Love Story on The Sopranos.” Mel Magazine, 2021. https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/oral-history-johnny-cakes-sopranos-vito-gay.
19. “Live Free or Die.” The Sopranos, created by David Chase, season 6 episode 6, Chase Films, Brad Grey Television, and HBO Entertainment, 2006.
20. “Johnny Cakes.” The Sopranos, created by David Chase, season 6 episode 8, Chase Films, Brad Grey Television, and HBO Entertainment, 2006.
21. VanHooker, Brian. “An Oral History of ‘Johnny Cakes,’ Vito’s Love Story on The Sopranos.” Mel Magazine, 2021. https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/oral-history-johnny-cakes-sopranos-vito-gay.
22. VanHooker, Brian. “An Oral History of ‘Johnny Cakes,’ Vito’s Love Story on The Sopranos.” Mel Magazine, 2021. https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/oral-history-johnny-cakes-sopranos-vito-gay.
23. “Moe n’ Joe.” The Sopranos, created by David Chase, season 6 episode 10, Chase Films, Brad Grey Television, and HBO Entertainment, 2006.
24. “Cold Stones.” The Sopranos, created by David Chase, season 6 episode 11, Chase Films, Brad Grey Television, and HBO Entertainment, 2006.
25. “Cold Stones.” The Sopranos, created by David Chase, season 6 episode 11, Chase Films, Brad Grey Television, and HBO Entertainment, 2006.
26. “Cold Stones.” The Sopranos, created by David Chase, season 6 episode 11, Chase Films, Brad Grey Television, and HBO Entertainment, 2006.
27. Younge, Gary. “Mafia Boss Rubbed Out ‘For Being Gay’.” The Guardian, 1 May 2003. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/may/02/usa.garyyounge.
28. “Employee of the Month.” The Sopranos, created by David Chase, season 3 episode 4, Chase Films, Brad Grey Television, and HBO Entertainment, 2001.