Dawson’s Creek mourned the “Gary Cooper type” nearly a year before The Sopranos
Aux Features great job internet
Let’s just say up top that we recognize Dawson’s Creek isn’t what you’d call a good show. The teens of the erstwhile WB drama—with their logorrhea, grad school vocabularies, and dramatic self-absorption—are insufferable to witness. The entire series, which ran from 1998 to 2003, seemed built around the idea that in order for young viewers to get to what they really wanted (Joey and Pacey together at last!), they first had to suffer through a great deal of characters whining and talking about the facts of their lives as though they were pieces of a plotline. The Sopranos, on the other hand, is a good show. Great even! Critically lauded, one of the shepherds of the golden age of television, etc etc. But, and it gives us no pleasure to report this, Dawson’s Creek may have a leg up on The Sopranos with regards to one thing (but one thing only): The teens of Capeside bemoaned the loss of American actor Gary Cooper and what he represented nearly a year before Tony did on The Sopranos.
In season one, episode eight of Dawson’s Creek, which aired on March 10, 1998, Dawson (James Van Der Beek) bemoans to his best friend and future love interest, Joey (Katie Holmes), the loss of a specific kind of good guy:
Joey: Dawson, Gary Cooper’s kind of a snoozer.
Dawson: Exactly. See, in the ’40s you could be a well-intentioned geek and still end up with the girl. Whatever happened to the standard Gary Cooper types? You know, likable but not too self-involved. Smart without being arrogant. I mean, come on. What happened to that guy?
The very first mention of Gary Cooper on The Sopranos (there was more than one) occurred nearly a year later in the series premiere, which aired on HBO on January 10, 1999. Tony (James Gandolfini) mentions Gary Cooper to Dr. Melfi (Lorraine Bracco) in their first therapy session:
Tony: Whatever happened to Gary Cooper? The strong, silent type. That was an American. He wasn’t in touch with his feelings. He just did what he had to do. See, what they didn’t know is that once they got Gary Cooper in touch with his feelings is that they wouldn’t be able to shut him up. And then it’s dysfunction this and dysfunction that! And dysfunction vaffancul’!
The notable difference, aside from the air dates, is that both characters miss the “Gary Cooper type” for distinct reasons. Intolerable “nice guy” Dawson is pained that his own brand of cloying romanticism and suffocating attention to the object of his affection, which he equates with Cooper, is not always rewarded. On the other hand, Tony, who grows increasingly uncomfortable in his session with Dr. Melfi, misses the days when men swallowed absolutely all of their emotions and killed people without feeling bad about it or having panic attacks or talking about their manipulative, abusive mothers.
Whereas the scene in Dawson’s Creek comes across as mere table setting for an episode about “good guys” versus “bad guys,” the scene from The Sopranos is electric, as so many between Tony and Dr. Melfi are, and exemplifies a compelling dynamic of the protagonist’s character: The harder he tries to hide his feelings, the more he tips his hand. While Dawson’s Creek may have gotten there first, it’s no surprise that the mafia boss gets the last word. It’s just too bad there was never a cross-over; silly as it is to imagine, we would have loved to see Tony dump Dawson’s body into the creek.
12 Comments
Gary Cooper was a Reagan type; he was a founding member of the red- and race-baiting Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals. Who cares about that type?
Which makes the fact that Cooper starred in High Noon, a film written by a blacklisted writer that serves as an allegory for the red scare, even more interesting.
It was also offered to John Wayne, who called it “The most un-American thing I’ve ever read.” He was so very wrong about that. Cooper was hesitant to take the role, but his career was on the wane and the part was too good to pass up.
And John Wayne’s subsequent film Rio Bravo (pretty good in its own right, honestly) was a deliberate insult to High Noon, being about a guy who refuses to let anyone else put themselves in danger helping him.
“He died!” – Sil
“Gary Cooper was gay?”
The episode that’s in is not good, but man that scene in the car is one of the funniest in the whole show. It’s so wonderfully absurd to watch Sil and Chris completely fail to understand Tony’s point.
The ‘Gary Cooper type’ was a cliche before either episode. When Tony Soprano wishes for that it codes him as a fundamentally banal and typical American male. In short, this is a depressingly lazy story: Two television shows each refer to a common popular landmark, wow
Laura, what you missed in your blockquote from The Sopranos, is that the reason Tony has an anxiety attack in the first place is because he really empathized with Dawson, and specifically that a nice young man like Dawson might not be the prize to the girls of the changing age, who clearly couldn’t value the “All American” qualities of a Dawson in an era of expanding globalization. This is all made clearer if you had posted his ranting monologue to Dr. Melfi from the previous episode about “what a fucking whooore [Joey] was for stepping out on a real stand-up guy like [Dawson]”. So the Gary Cooper dialogue is actually a direct reference to the episode you cited.
I’ve always found Gary Cooper a horribly wooden actor who drags down every movie he’s ever been in. He ruins some roles, like High Noon, less than others, but I just don’t get the accolades.But on a similar(?) note, I remember reading that Joe DiMaggio was confused when he heard Simon & Garfunkle sing “Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?”, as in his mind he hadn’t gone anywhere. He was right here. He’d never thought of himself as a metaphor.EDIT: I found an article about it.
Paul Simon, a Yankee superfan, told Fran Healy for MSG’s “The Game 365” that the line in the song came to him out of nowhere and that he never expected he would have to explain its meaning to DiMaggio himself.“I happened to be in a restaurant and there he was,” recalls Simon. “I gathered up my nerve to go over and introduce myself and say, ‘Hi, I’m the guy that wrote “Mrs. Robinson,” ’ and he said ‘Yeah, sit down . . . why’d you say that? I’m here, everyone knows I’m here.’ I said, ‘I don’t mean it that way — I mean, where are these great heroes now?’ He was flattered once he understood that it was meant to be flattering.”When Simon met Mickey Mantle on “The Dick Cavett Show,” the Mick asked him why he didn’t use his name instead of DiMaggio’s. “Wrong amount of syllables,” Simon told the Yankee star. –PageSix.com
Mostly what it makes clear to me is that Dawson and Tony had seen a very limited number of Gary Cooper movies.