I took a shot at belly-gazing, po-mo grad students criticizing Todd Solondz before, but now they're after Tony Soprano! That's just disrespectful:
On male girth: ''Fatness is a signifier with many overlapping and even contradictory signifieds.'' On male behavior: ''Nearly all of Tony's 'business' relationships . . . are characterized by a phallocentric, linear representation of self.'' On female agency: ''Media self-reflexivity operates throughout, as well as being embedded right into the very form of, the 'Sopranos' text. Women play an important role in foregrounding these intertextual references.'' And my favorite, on female bodies: ''Speaking as a male viewer, I can't say that curse words are as pleasurable to hear as nudity is to see."