- Joined
- Jun 13, 2005
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You weren't supposed to root against him. He is very difficult to understand, and that's the point. It's hard to sympathize with him, but ultimately that is what the show asks you to do. It forces you to share a space with his frustration.It was "the point" to have one of the most annoying characters in television history? lol, please explain. What point did he serve besides bad television?
He wasn't even annoying in the "root against this guy" sense, he was cartoonishly annoying to the point it brought down the show.
He was a tragic character who embodied another facet of working class anger manifested through the lack of greater economic opportunity.
He wasn't someone who was made of the right stuff to be a dock worker, or to endure the increasingly hostile world collapsing in around that class of whites while urban decay spread outward from a burgeoning drug trade that got its footing in the projects; a social idea that concentrated blacks in the most impoverished areas of a city where ex-cons lived side by side with the innocent resulting in an environment of abject hopelessness that allowed these wolves to quickly dominate the landscape and ethnic culture by exploitation of the weak in the only truly successful business there-- the drug trade-- while the most decent people like Wallace were swallowed up by the ruthlessness of these most predatory individuals, or those determined to survive like Bodie.
Ziggy showed that ideas transcending money like "respect" aren't unique to African-American or gangland culture. It's philosophically Platonic: a person needs to feel like he has a function-- a meaningful role to play in his community and his world. A city with harpists, but no harps, is not a happy city. Everything in its right place. All of the Sobotka men reveal this desperation in a different way, and it dooms them:
He wasn't someone who was made of the right stuff to be a dock worker, or to endure the increasingly hostile world collapsing in around that class of whites while urban decay spread outward from a burgeoning drug trade that got its footing in the projects; a social idea that concentrated blacks in the most impoverished areas of a city where ex-cons lived side by side with the innocent resulting in an environment of abject hopelessness that allowed these wolves to quickly dominate the landscape and ethnic culture by exploitation of the weak in the only truly successful business there-- the drug trade-- while the most decent people like Wallace were swallowed up by the ruthlessness of these most predatory individuals, or those determined to survive like Bodie.
Ziggy showed that ideas transcending money like "respect" aren't unique to African-American or gangland culture. It's philosophically Platonic: a person needs to feel like he has a function-- a meaningful role to play in his community and his world. A city with harpists, but no harps, is not a happy city. Everything in its right place. All of the Sobotka men reveal this desperation in a different way, and it dooms them:
- Because work is scarce, Ziggy is deprived of respect, as men tend to be vicious to the weakest rung on the ladder, and that viciousness is proportional to the scarcity of resources. He's stuck in a blue-collar job when he's not a blue-collar guy. More importantly, because of this, he's also deprived of the means to get the hell out of there. He doesn't have a support network outside that world. He's kind of a fuckup, but that is where the cracks first start to show.
- Nicky is deprived of a family. He is made for the docks, but he is unable to move out of his parent's house. He can't start his family the way it needs to be started, and it strains his most important relationship (with the mother of his child).
- Frank is deprived of the ability to feed his people, and to do his work. He is made for the docks, but the docks aren't running.
Nothing.