Advice for Godfathers -- Mimetic Theory and Literary Study

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Date Posted: 13:50:46 02/05/08 Tue
Author: CS Holden
Subject: Advice for Godfathers

I hate to keep posting about traces of Girard in movies I've seen, but it helps me just to kind of get my mind around the theory. And if there's ever been a movie about ritual, desire, violence, sacrifice, rivalry, and prohibition, it's "The Godfather."

Lately, I've been trying to fit in a few minutes of Godfather time every day, and this morning over eggs and bacon I heard Michael Corleone say to Frank Pentangeli, "My father taught me many things in this room. He taught me to keep your friends close, and your enemies closer." What advice! Especially since Mikey is talking to a man who is jealous of his a) closeness to his father, b) current status in the mob world, and c) his relationship with a great rival of Pentangeli's, Hyman Roth. (If you want more layers, Mikey knows Pentangeli is the one who tried to assassinate him, because Mikey refused to kill another of Pentangeli's rivals, the Rosetta Brothers. Ironically, in true Goneril-Regan fashion, Mikey lies to Pentangeli, telling him that he is only getting closer to Roth because he is Mikey's rival, when in fact it is in this case Pentangeli who is trying to usurp mediator Mikey.)

As for Mikey's relationship with Roth, there's an interesting moment regarding prohibition and ritual. Just before the talk with Pentangeli, Mikey visits Roth in Miami. The subject is not too far descended from wergild. Mikey tells Roth that "There's going to be more bloodshed," but that he doesn't want to start a war. He says he plans to kill Pentangeli for trying to assassinate him, but that this act of violence must not be reciprocated beyond that. In other words, the mob's ritual of covert killing must be prohibited to keep the alleged peace, and that prohibition can only be broken if it is ritualized (i.e., let's all get together, and agree as a group that So-and-So has to go, and do it in such-and-such a way at such-and-such a time).

Incidentally, when Michael at the end of the movie (SPOILER ALERT) has to kill his brother, he prohibits it for a long time, until their mother dies. And this whole process of killing and prohibiting, and killing some more, began in Mikey's reign with the execution of the heads of the Five Families at the end of the first film. (Fun fact: while that ritual of mass murder was happening, Mikey was in a church, implicated in a very different kind of ritual.)

One last thing: The legacy of mob violence stretches back so far that no one ever knows who started it. That initial act of violence has both threatened and sustained these families for centuries, which is why they scoff when the government tries to put an end to it. It makes me think about Israel and Palestine. There's a moment in the first movie where one of Michael's elders tells him that there hasn't been an all-out war in something like ten years, and that it's a good thing to have a big purging massacre every once in a while, just to keep things proper.

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Replies:

Re: Advice for Godfathers -- Katelyn R., 13:22:05 02/08/08 Fri