This second life of the acclaimed HBO series, which ran from 1999-2007, has been given further energy by the anticipation of The Many Saints of Newark, a prequel film co-written by Sopranos creator David Chase, originally scheduled for last month but postponed until September. The film stars Michael Gandolfini, son of the late Sopranos star James, as the young Tony Soprano.

Widely considered by critics to be one of the greatest television series of all time, a recurring question for fans of The Sopranos has revolved around Tony’s moral character.

“Is Tony Soprano a hero or a villain?” as Michael Imperioli asked in one of the first episodes of the podcast, to which Schirripa replied, “I think he’s both.” The fundamental tension of good and evil contained within the same man captivated audiences throughout the show, and is fundamental to its popularity.

“Tony Soprano,” Schirripa explains, “was the first lead character to be a bad guy who did bad things, yet the audience chose to root for him. He’s a murderer, he’s a drug dealer, he’s a thief, he cheats on his wife, he hits all the sins. Yet, for whatever reason, the audience likes him.”

Throughout the series, people who entered Tony’s orbit met their demise. A classic story plot is a man who makes a wager with the devil, but The Sopranos was the first series to get the audience to sympathise with the devil rather than the man. Throughout the series, Tony kills or orders the murders of a number of people: his best friend, the son of one of his close friends, his cousin, his nephew’s fiancé, and then his protégé nephew. Yet creator David Chase, in collaboration with the immense talent of actor James Gandolfini, got viewers to root for a monster. Tony is clearly not a hero. Instead, the question should be: “Is Tony a villain or a victim?”

Tony was the first mainstream television character to portray what villainy looked like from the point of view of the villain — and what we learned is that no one is the bad guy in their own story. He attempts to be a good father and, to a lesser extent, a good husband — and as reprehensible as Tony was, he was still a better man than his own father. During one of Tony’s sessions with his therapist Dr Melfi, he describes how “the belt was [father’s] favourite child development tool.”

These therapeutic sessions were an ingenious way of giving audience members an insight into the mind of a monster. Initially, Tony visited Dr Melfi because he suffered from panic attacks. Dr Melfi traced the origins of these attacks to a dormant memory: as a child, Tony secretly witnessed his gangster father chop off a guy’s finger for not paying off his gambling debts. Dr Melfi also discovered that when Tony was a child, his mother, Livia, threatened to stab his eye out with a fork. In another flashback scene, Tony’s father suggests to Livia that they relocate to Nevada. Livia loudly replies, within earshot of young Tony, that she would rather smother Tony and his sisters with a pillow than move.

Livia’s random explosions of rage cultivated inner turmoil in Tony. She would lose it over inconsequential mishaps and Tony felt like he had to avoid landmines. “You definitely don’t want to get her started,” he coolly says to Dr Melfi.

The American psychologist Thomas Achenbach made a distinction between “internalising” and “externalising” behaviours for how children cope with stress. Internalising symptoms include depression, social withdrawal and eating disorders; externalising symptoms include drug use, aggression and violence. Tony loved his mother so, as a child, could not carry out externalising behaviours. Instead, he responded to stress at home with internalising behaviours such as panic attacks and depression — a fact acknowledged by Dr Melfi in her explanation that “depression is rage turned inward.”

As an adult, Tony’s unacknowledged, barely contained rage against his mother was portrayed in a key scene early in the series. Today, it might be seen as a little too on-the-nose, but in 1999 its subtlety was novel for television. During the episode, Tony learns that Livia has difficulty with her phone’s answering machine. Later, Tony observes one of his employees having difficulty with an answering machine — just like Livia — and Tony beats him senseless. This is meant to indicate Tony’s true feelings about his mother, feelings he turns against himself or directs to other targets.

Tony’s panic attacks later serve as harbingers of fear or violence on the horizon. For example, in season two, Tony attempts to reintegrate Richie Aprile into his crew after Richie is released from prison. During a particularly heated conversation between them, Tony unconsciously realises that Richie will never be satisfied working for him, and that he will likely have to dispose of Richie. After their conversation, Tony suddenly experiences an attack and collapses.

A key reason Tony Soprano stopped having panic attacks was that he used his sessions with Dr Melfi as an avenue to relieve the stress and guilt he experienced from his violent actions. Therapy allowed him to feel better while continuing to be a violent criminal — but his conscience was never fully unperturbed. Throughout the series, it is implied that Tony is wracked with self-reproach from his criminal activities. There are two ways he can manage this guilt: by changing the actions that give rise to it, or by reinterpreting his actions so that they no longer produce guilt. Throughout the series, Dr Melfi tries, in an unbiased and nonjudgmental way, to guide Tony to change his actions. But often Tony’s sessions merely enabled him to justify himself and continue his criminal acts.

Gradually, thanks to therapy and medication, Tony’s panic attacks subside. But they resurface near the end of season five. Tony is playing golf with New York underboss Johnny Sacrimoni. Johnny says something that leads Tony to subconsciously realise that he has to do something horrible: murder his beloved cousin to prevent a bloody gang war. His body responds with extreme guilt and stress. He collapses.

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Yet armed with an  understanding of Tony’s origins, the viewer can’t help but feel for him. Of course, Tony is also presented as a relatable — a distant cousin to “likeable” — husband and father, under pressure at work with his employees, trying to fit in with his neighbours and caring for his elderly mother, despite her mistreatment of him. But is this enough to understand why the audience roots for such a reprehensible character?

One reason viewers might excuse Tony Soprano’s misdeeds is because we have sympathy for his plight. In fact, researchers at Harvard Business School and Northwestern University have suggested the existence of a “Virtuous Victim” effect, in which victims are seen as more moral than non-victims who have behaved in exactly the same way. People are inclined to positively evaluate those who have suffered. The audience understands that Tony had a terrible childhood, so when we see him do reprehensible things, such as commit violence or cheat on his wife, we find ways to excuse or downplay it.

More intriguingly, recent research suggests that Dark Triad personality traits — comprising narcissism (entitled self-importance), Machiavellianism (strategic exploitation and duplicity) and psychopathy (callousness and cynicism) — are highly correlated with victim-signalling. In other words, people with dark personalities are more likely to broadcast or feign their victimhood, perhaps to gain sympathy and other rewards, while also getting others to excuse their transgressions.

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Does Tony view himself as a victim? He does. In the pilot episode, Tony tells Dr. Melfi that he sees himself as a “sad clown, laughing on the outside and crying on the inside”. He characterises himself again as a “sad clown” in season four, but this time Dr Melfi is sceptical, replying “I’ve never seen it.” She explains that his wife, in a couple’s therapy session, also gave a very different perspective about Tony. Although Tony believes that he responds to inner sadness with outer humour and gregariousness, he in fact expresses his emotions with rage and compulsive eating. Tony views himself one way, but those closest see him as someone completely different.

Sprinkled throughout the show are other indicators that Tony believes he is a victim. In season four, his best friend from high school, Artie Bucco, is in the hospital after a suicide attempt. Tony visits and asks Artie to imagine Tony finding Artie dead, and then asks: “How am I supposed to feel?” He seeks pity from his suicidal friend.

In the following season Christopher, his nephew, accuses him of trying to seduce Adriana La Cerva, Christopher’s fiancé. He tells Tony that he knows Tony was in a car with Adriana alone at night, and that they were going to buy drugs together. Tony becomes enraged and shouts, “So what! I can’t relieve stress every once in a while? I don’t got enough f*****g problems?” Tony’s crew is holding Christopher down, and Tony has a gun in Christopher’s face. Even here, Tony pities himself, and urges Christopher to sympathise with his plight.

Tony is not a sad clown putting on a cheerful face. He wants people to sympathise with him, even as he inflicts violence on them. In a chilling scene, Tony beats up the college dropout son of his late friend Jackie Senior. Tony punches Jackie Junior and tells him: “All I ever did was tell your old man what a good kid you were, and all you do is f******g hurt me.”

By the final season, Tony is even more morally compromised and monstrous than he was at the beginning of the show. But he has fewer panic attacks. Does this mean his treatment was effective? Dr Melfi, in the penultimate episode of the series, terminates therapy with Tony. He responds with dismay: “I think what you’re doing is immoral.”

In The Sociopath Next Door, author and psychologist Martha Stout explained how some people weaponise pity to manipulate others: “More than admiration — more even than fear — pity from good people is carte blanche. When we pity, we are, at least for the moment, defenceless… All in all, I am sure if the devil existed, he would want us to feel very sorry for him.”

This is not the reaction I would have had five years ago, when I was serving in the military. I would have believed that race-conscious policies were clearly wrong. Back then, I still held the middle-class belief that hard work and education were the most important factors for getting ahead. But since graduating from Yale, I have learned that there are subtler, rarely discussed, aspects of social class.

According to Paul Fussell, author of Class: A Guide Through the American Status System, people at the bottom think social class is defined by how much money you have. The middle class, though, believe it’s not just about money. Equally important is education. But for the upper class, money and education aren’t enough. Upper-class people assign great importance to tastes, values and opinions.

I have observed these benchmarks first-hand, as I moved along the class ladder, adding one ingredient after the other. My mother, an immigrant from South Korea, was unable to care for me. I grew up in foster homes and broken homes; my first job at 15 was working as a dishwasher. In this milieu, we all indeed thought that money was what defined class. If you had it, or appeared to have it, you were rich. If you didn’t, you were broke. And we were broke. It seemed like all conversations eventually became about money — or the lack of it.

But during this time, I was also watching a lot of TV. I may have watched more TV from birth to age 17 than most upper-class Americans watch in their entire lives. The characters in these stories were better off than me. Furthermore, they were absolutely obsessed with college. The stress of applications, getting into the right schools, the possibility of going away and breaking up with high school sweethearts. I had the impression, observing these fictional characters, that money wasn’t the whole story. College was important, too.

But for me, not important enough. My home life was a mess, and, as a consequence, I was a terrible student. After graduating from high school in the bottom third of my class, I joined the military. There, I learned from actual, rather than fictional, people from middle-class backgrounds about the importance of education. Near the end of my enlistment, I decided to apply, still believing that merit, hard work and excellence should be prized more than anything.

The military, a more meritocratic institution than most, did not take race into account for positions or promotions. Perhaps surprisingly, non-whites and women who serve in the military report higher levels of job satisfaction and quality of life compared with white males. Perhaps less surprisingly, many people, including me, join the military in pursuit of a middle-class life. After my discharge, I was finally ready for college.

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When I arrived at Yale as an undergrad, I still had a middle-class mindset. Finally, I thought, I was going to be the first in my family to go to college. I’d walk around the idyllic campus thinking I had made it. But gradually, I learned that students were fluent in a language I could not speak. I felt like I was in another dimension. For example, I decided to join a writing team for an on-campus humour magazine. The theme for that month was “puberty”. In a brainstorming session for satirical headlines, I suggested: “Area male discovers porn goldmine in his front right pocket.”

The student editor raised an eyebrow. “Why does it have to be gendered?” he asked.

I was bewildered. What does “gendered” mean? No one in my hometown had ever used this word. No one in the military ever said it. I knew what “gender” was, of course, but why would anyone turn it into an adjective? I realised that there were aspects of social class that can’t be quantified or put on a resume. Throughout my college experience, I learned what some of these aspects were, such as which opinions were dominantly expressed on campus. First-generation students like me paid close attention to which views were met with praise and which were met with scorn. I learned the tastes and values of the group which I had not fully joined.

One such value was diversity. While money and education are tickets to the middle class, prizing diversity is a requirement to join the upper class. It’s part of what the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu referred to as cultural capital — tastes, vocabulary, awareness and mannerisms which give social advantages to those higher in the social hierarchy. This is why there is a divide among Asian-Americans about affirmative action.

Asian immigrants are the least likely to support it — like many older Americans, they believe obtaining a good education is the path to upward mobility and think race-conscious policies are harmful. In contrast, younger, native-born Asian-Americans are three times more likely to support affirmative action. The sociologists Jennifer Lee and Van C. Tran have found in their research that “Asian immigrants are least likely to support affirmative action. By contrast, Asians born in the US with parents who were also born here — the so-called later generation — are most likely to do so.” These younger Americans have learned that social mobility involves an additional ingredient: adopting the social mores of the upper class.

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Social mobility affects political orientation, too. In 1992, more than half of Asian-Americans voted for George H.W. Bush, but in 2012, only 26% voted for Mitt Romney, a similar number as voted for Donald Trump, suggesting that this is a generational change rather than related to the personality of the current president.

One characteristic of the older generation of Asian-Americans is their outsized role in owning and operating small businesses. For instance, in her book World On Fire, Yale Law professor Amy Chua notes that “In New York City, Koreans, less than 0.1% of the city’s population, owns 70% of the grocery stores, 85% of the produce stands, 80% of the nail salons, and 60% of the dry cleaners.”

Often, small business owners prefer low taxes; they tend to derive their social status from their effort and their earnings, and subsequently, they raise children who go on to college. This generation derives their social status through education and titles, and this upward social mobility of the younger generation also accounts in part for their recent political shift.

We have learned that it is not enough to have the same résumé as the group we aspire to join. We have to hold the same values as them — the same luxury beliefs, which are ideas and opinions that confer status on the upper class while often inflicting costs on the lower classes. Asian-Americans are now adopting the luxury beliefs of upper-middle class white American culture, which is an indicator of assimilation. But supporting race-conscious policies in elite universities will also create problems for future generations of working-class Asian-Americans, who would also like to ascend the American status hierarchy. Assimilation recapitulates entrenched class divisions.

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Ironically, in order to ascend in America, one must pledge fealty to beliefs that undermine the efforts of those they hope to leave behind. Indeed, Reihan Salam has observed that condemning the suspicious screening process of elite universities is viewed as déclassé. It marks one as an outsider. In contrast, vigorously agreeing with the race-conscious policies of Yale and Harvard indicates that one is an insider. It shows that one “gets it”— an indicator of cultural capital and one’s place in the social hierarchy. In other words, our reactions to the Justice Department’s decision reveals a lot about our social class. Or at least, the social class we aspire to join.

So I read these reports about possible discrimination against Asian-Americans at Yale and Harvard, and felt agnostic rather than irritated. I still think what they are doing is wrong — but now I am less sure. Still, I am unable to disentangle whether this uncertainty is because I have reasoned my way out of my previous belief, or because I have shifted my views in order to fit into this new social class I have long aspired to join. Did I truly change my mind, or am I simply conforming? Perhaps we would do well to ask ourselves this question more often.