HBO’s “Sopranos” and the VT Massacre
by guest contributor Jenn Fang, originally published on Reappropriate
(Hat-tip to reader A.) Last night on HBO’s Sopranos, an episode entitled “Remember When” aired in which the character of Junior Soprano, who has been institutionalized, befriends a young, mentally-ill Asian American man named Carter Chong, and played by Ken Leung (Quill in X-Men: The Last Stand).
According to the Wikipedia write-up of this episode, Carter ultimately feels betrayed by Junior when Junior decides to take his meds, and attacks him.
In A.’s email, he writes:
The internet is already abuzz with the fact that last night’s episode of HBO’s “The Sopranos” featured a young, mentally disturbed Asian male with violent tendencies. People are drawing all sorts of ignorant “parallels” to the Virginia Tech massacre, all weighted on the fact that the character was an Asian male. If it had been a white male or a black male, of course there would be no such “comparisons” made.
Keep an eye on this story. The episode was written and filmed six months ago, and I guess the broadcast timing is unfortunately coincidental ONLY if the viewer connects ALL Asian males with ONE violent Asian male they’ve seen in the news. A lot of ignorance and racism is coming out from many just because of this one episode. Let’s address this.
Of course, this character has nothing to do with the Virginia Tech massacre last week, and Carter Chong couldn’t possibly be a reflection of Seung Cho; as A. points out, this episode was written and shot several months ago and only aired last night due to a coincidence of timing.
And yet, some viewers seem to insist that the episode and the shooting are related, as an eerie “not connected but I insist they are karmically related” kind of way. On the forum, “Television Without Pity”, one viewer summed up the subplot as ”young Asian man with severe anger management problems and a history of gunplay”, while another commented “[t]he Asian having deep seated aggression problems was just too spooky.” Gotta love how in that second quote, Carter Chong is “the” Asian. One viewer commented, “I think most of us, even with no direct link to the horrific shootings, felt a little uncomfortable watching tonight. Whether fiction or not it was reminiscent enough of what happened to serve as a memory cue for an event that is probably hard to stop thinking about even without direct reminders.” However, a fourth viewer wrote:
A member of my immediate family was taken from us this week in the VATech thing, and I debated on whether or not I wanted to watch Sopranos tonight (ultimately I did since I’m a grown man and can realize that this is fiction). I did find the young asian male to be terrifyingly similar to what I envisioned the man who murdered my cousin to be, so it did weird me out for most of the episode. I just kept telling myself that I was overreacting because it’s barely been a week, so this is one of those episodes I’ll probably have to wait a while to rewatch. I’m sure it was unintentional, just unfortunate timing.
Other than both Seung Cho and Carter Chong being Asian: what’s the connection? Oh yes: a racially Asian man with mental illness is automatically associated with violent mass shooting sprees because Asian craziness is a factor of one’s skin colour, whereas the countless depictions of White men with mental illness are non-threatening because White craziness has nothing to do with Whiteness.
Again we see the inability of mainstream america to distinguish between a person of colour’s race and his actions, be the actions positive or negative. Seeing one Black man dunk a basketball or rap a song is proof positive that all Black men are capable of such feats, and an example of one Korean American man who succumbed to the violent nature of his mental illness is evidence that all Asian Americans with mental illness will be Seung Cho re-incarnated. (Even more telling the conflation of a Korean American with a character who is ostensibly Chinese American). Such irrational connections are never made when the targets are White.
I don’t have to watch last night’s episode of The Sopranos to know that Carter Chong and the Virginia Tech Massacre are not related. But, of course, there are those who see one Asian face and think they’re seeing us all.
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of 
Mortimer wrote:
I don’t think the Sopranos episode and the VT shootings are karmically related, but there were several eerie parallels. Just parallels - not causalities. The character was asian, sure. But also, he was violent and paranoid. He also was irrationally angry with his father and was harangued by his parents to be more sociable at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). I don’t think anybody is looking at the VT events and the Sopranos episode and concluding that all asian men are violently paranoid and angry.
I do find it interesting that you haven’t seen the episode but have written an essay on it.
Posted 25 Apr 2007 at 9:51 pm ¶
B.G. wrote:
Mortimer, The purpose of Jenn Fang’s post was to analyze some of the viewer reactions to the show, it is not about the show itself. The fact that readers connected a shooter on a show with the VT shooters simply because they are Asian is unavoidably racist. How many white shooters have we seen on television so far? Why are they not all race representatives? Exercise some logic. The content of the post seems to not have sunk into your narrow mind.
Posted 26 Apr 2007 at 2:35 am ¶
B.G. wrote:
Besides, Cho’s character, or at least the media’s version of it, didn’t seem particularly different from almost any other school shooter we hear about (descriptives like “loner” were used, he was reticent and socially awkward). The way people have latched onto both the tv character and Cho’s Asian-ness is ridiculous.
Posted 26 Apr 2007 at 2:41 am ¶
SJ wrote:
I think the link people make between Seung Cho and Carter Chong cannot necessarily be called racism. The term implies intentional and malicious beliefs and actions towards a group of people (in this case Asians). Any social psychologist can tell you that part of the way human being function generally is by creating heuristic and symbolic short cuts in their memory that enable them to better understand the world around them. Unfortunately often these heuristics lead to stereotypes but they also play a productive role as a coping mechanism. With the events at VTech so fresh and traumatic on people’s minds I do not think it is fair to assume that anyone who saw similarities between these characters are racists…the heuristic process is often an unconscious one and it is likely that viewers used the Soprano’s character unconsciously to help cope with and understand what happened at VTech (even if that understanding is flawed, it creates comfort). I disagree that people would not have made this connection if it had been a white character, there were MANY other similarities between the characters and stories that could have enabled the connection to be made. Obviously because we live in a society where race/ethnicity matters this was one of the most obvious factors, but noticing this similarity does not by itself make a person racist. What about people who (Asian or no) identify with and feel empathy toward Seung Cho? Would you consider their seeing a similarity with the Soprano’s character racist?
Posted 26 Apr 2007 at 9:48 am ¶
bertie wrote:
Well said SJ. I definitely do not think its racist to make think of VT when watching the episode of the Soprano’s at issue. The show aired only days after the shootings.
I’m sure if the same showed aired after 911 and instead of an asian character there was an unstable, violence prone jihadist arab or persian character–or if the same show aired after the Oklahoma City bombings with a unstable violent militia movement red neck character–or if after columbine the show centered around a gothic kid, similar parallels would be made to those events.
Seeing the parallel is not the problem. Believing this fictional portrayal and real life single nut case represents all asian americans is the problem. As noone has made such comment on here, I see know reason to accuse folks of being racist.
Posted 27 Apr 2007 at 1:01 pm ¶
Robert wrote:
yes it was. Look at the song that is playing when the chinese guy attacks junior. Also they use a name of the Duke lacrose players father colin finnerty.
Posted 29 Apr 2007 at 8:50 am ¶
Robert wrote:
I think the mental institution was suppose to be in new Jersey. So why would they be playing take me home West Virgina, eventhough the shooting took place in Virgina.
Posted 29 Apr 2007 at 8:55 am ¶
James Briggs wrote:
For me the connection was made because he was from Michigan tech and Cho was from VT. Since both of them are very prestigious technical schools.
Posted 30 Apr 2007 at 3:26 pm ¶
Ben wrote:
Just a nit-pick Bertie, but I believe your example about a redneck militia character immediately after Oklahoma doesn’t work, because (if I remember correctly) in the direct aftermath it was initially assumed to be work of Muslim terrorists… Gonna see the episode myself before I comment on how close they are or aren’t.
Posted 08 May 2007 at 1:50 pm ¶