The f ine l ine between evil manipulator and self-centered attention seeker - A look at the actions of Livia Soprano in Season 1 of The Sopranos
Critics see the character of Livia Soprano as that of “an evil manipulator” . However, what we don’t see is an old woman, forced to live in a nursing home, trying hard not to be forgotten by her loved ones . She may be self-centered, and attention seeking, but she only acts the way and says the things she does to make everyone around her love and respect her.
Katz describes Livia as a “usual grande dame - as a lower-class, paranoid woman whose only joy is inflicting her own misery on others” When we are first introduced to Livia in Season 1, Episode 1 of The Sopranos , we see an old lady, living by herself, afraid to answer the door even to her own son. When she finally lets him in, and tells her about his friend, Artie, she replies by saying “he calls her [Artie’s mother] everyday”. Through this, she implies that she wants him to call her, just like his friend calls his mother. There is no sign of any malignant feelings she might have toward Tony. We simply see her as a mother, trying to get some attention from her son. She does not seem like someone, who by the end of the season would “take a “contract” out on her son” .
Joseph Walker says , “Livia’s every utterance, however casual, has the potential to disrupt Tony’s precarious sense of his selfhood. Her barbed “look who calls his mother,” or “oh, he knows everything,” addressing Tony in third person rather than second person, objectifying him as effectively as the scene in Melfi’s waiting room, symbolically fragmenting him into observer and observed .” However, seeing it from a different angle, when Tony calls Livia from Bada Bing!, her first comment on the phone (09:35) is, “look who calls his mother”, telling us that she feels so abandoned by her family that she is surprised when Tony calls her. She might even believe that this might have been caused by her comment to him about how Artie calls his mother everyday, and not because Tony actually wanted to talk to her .
When Livia find out the Tony is seeing a psychiatrist in Season 1 Episode 7, at first she doesn’t believe it. When she finally does accept it, her immediate response is that he goes to talk and complain about her. She says, “I gave my life to my children on a silver platter, and this is how he repays me.” This feeling is probably amplified by the fact that she has recently been put into a nursing home. This combined with the crying makes us empathetic towards her situation. This reinforces what she had earlier said in Episode 3, when talking to Uncle Junior and says (38:00), “I’m a babbling idiot. That’s why my son put me in a nursing home.” Through this we see that she isn’t concerned with the fact that her son has troubles, or that her friend needs her help. Instead she is more concerned with how she is impacted by the situation and her self-image.
Although critics think Livia is part of the conspiracy to have Tony killed, there are no direct signs leading to that. Whenever there is any talk of the business, either with Tony or with Junior, Livia always goes silent. She is never shown to have said anything that would lead the men to behave the way they do. Nochimson in her article, Waddya Lookin’ At?: Re-reading the Gangster Genre Through “The Sopranos” says, “Tony Soprano’s mother Livia (Nancy Marchand) conspires with his uncle Corrado “Junior” Soprano (Dominic Chianese) to have him [Tony] killed, they are operating (albeit confus- edly) within the imperatives of a gangland struggle for rule of the Northern New Jersey mob.” However, there is no real evidence of this . We never hear Livia utter the words . In fact, we even see her try to save him from Junior in episode 3, when Junior, frustrated with Christopher and Brendan says, “how far do I go before I light a freaking match under that hot-headed son of yours?” (37:12). She doesn’t want Junior to hurt Tony, but she doesn’t want to hurt Junior either. She tries to keep him happy saying, “maybe Christopher could use a little talking to, you know. The other one, Filoni? I don’t know .” However, if we look closely at Livia’s face when she says this, she looks hesitant. She doesn’t want Junior to kill him , but she would rather Brendan dies that Junior attacks Tony like he suggested earlier. Her response is to try to save Tony, but at the same time keep Junior happy. This also goes back to her need for love and attention, not just from Tony, but from Junior as well.
Many critics have decided that Livia was behind the “hit” put out on Tony. As Nochimson says, “In “The Sopranos,” Junior and Livia give each other permission to rid themselves of Tony with such minimalism that the audience is not sure what has transpired between them until the plans to kill Tony are put into action. The violence in the scenes in which an attempt is made on Tony’s life expresses their rage with such displacement that they are not even present.” Also, as walker states, “she knows how- and when- to not talk to people. Although Livia has become infamous as the mother who put out a hit on her own son, it is surely worth nothing that she never once utters such a command, or even suck a suggestion” . There is a reason why we never hear her say those words, or even suggest it. The only reason we might believe she is responsible is because she cherishes her friendship with Junior, and doesn’t want to blatantly disagree with him . She is silent because she knows that if she says anything, she would either hurt Tony, or hurt Junior’s feelings, which she believes will make him less likely to visit her.
Through the first season of The Sopranos, we see Livia as a mother seeking the attention of her family and friends, trying not to hurt anyone in the process. Although most people may see her as a power seeker, in reality, she is just a woman put into a nursing home by her son, trying to find her way back into her life, and fighting to stay in her friend’s life.