Title Page
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Origins and Organization
Honor
Rituals and Symbols
Appearance
Names
Myth
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the Authors
Made Men
Made Men
Mafia Culture and the Power of
Symbols, Rituals, and Myth
Antonio Nicaso and Marcel Danesi
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Nicaso, Antonio.
Mafia culture and the power of symbols, rituals, and myth / Antonio Nicaso and Marcel Danesi.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4422-2226-7 (cloth : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-1-4422-2227-4 (electronic)
1. Mafia. 2. Organized crime. I. Danesi, Marcel, 1964- II. Title.
HV6441.N534 2013
364.106—dc23
2013006239
TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Printed in the United States of America
Acknowledgments
We would like to express our sincere gratitude for the excellent research conducted for this book by a group of students at the University of Toronto: Mariana Bockarova, Lorraine Bryers, Crow Campbell,
Stacy Costa, Sophia Chadwick, and Francesca Marcoccia. Without their painstaking search for relevant information and insightful observations on the facts collected, we would not have been able to bring this book to fruition. Needless to say, any infelicities that this book contains are our sole responsibility. Last but not least, we wish to thank our family members for putting up with us during the writing process. Lucia, Antonella, Massimo, and Emily, this book is dedicated to you.
Introduction
The Italian American crime reporter Nicholas Pileggi is widely known for his book Wise Guys, which he adapted into the screenplay Goodfellas in 1990. Wise Guys is about small-time thugs who take part in a robbery for the Mob to gain status within it. Pileggi scripted the fictional events from real-life ones he had come across as a crime reporter. These had evoked rebuke and shock. The book and movie had the opposite effect. They helped spread an image of the modern-day Mafioso as a lethal but nonetheless principled gangster, a “goodfella,” who lived by a code of honor, unlike common street thugs.
That glorified image was forged in American popular culture in the 1930s, when many movies showcased the “wise guys” and the exciting and honorable lifestyle they seemed to lead. This image was spread even further after Mario Puzo published his novel The Godfather (1969), also based on real-life events. The novel was adapted into a blockbuster movie in 1972, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, becoming one of the most popular and acclaimed films in Hollywood history. The Godfather portrays a New York City Mafia family fighting for power over other underworld families. What especially caught America’s attention, and stirred its admiration, was the traditional sense of family that the Mafiosi in the movie seemed to possess. America was in the throes of a “postmodern” mind-set in the early 1970s, a worldview that challenged, and continues to challenge, traditional moral and family structures. Although the movie may have had the intent of portraying the heinous nature of Mafiosi, people saw in them something appealing. No matter how brutal the mobsters were, at the very least, they espoused the principle of the family as a fundamental social institution. Puzo shared an Academy Award with Coppola for his screenplay. He won another Academy Award with Coppola for the sequel, The Godfather, Part II (1974). And he cowrote the screenplay with Coppola for the third film in the series, The Godfather, Part III (1990).
The myth of mobsters as “goodfellas” and “family and honorable men,” created by the movies, has been further entrenched by such television series as The Sopranos. But the truth is that the Mob is a ruthless organization. Its concept of the family is a twisted one. But it is difficult to see through the myth when it is being constantly showcased by the mass media. The goal of this book is to deconstruct this myth. We will do so by looking critically and factually at the origin and meaning of the code of honor (called omertà in Italian), at its attendant symbols and rituals, and at the lifestyle that it demands. The “wise guy” is, as the mobsters themselves characterize him, a “made man,” who is inducted into a criminal family, often by turning his back on his real family, through arcane pseudo-religious rituals, oaths, and symbols that purportedly transform him into a new man.
Although many of the facts, events, and themes in this book can be found scattered throughout the vast literature on organized crime, no coherent treatment exists of how symbolism, ritual, and myth, more than money and power, sustain and fuel Mafia culture. We have written this book because we firmly believe that the best line of attack against the Mafia, and any powerful criminal organization, is to demystify the image of the gangster as a man of honor. Perhaps the best weapon against the Mafia, or at least against the lure that it holds for young people, is to expose its code of honor as something that is largely fictitious and self-serving. One of the authors of this book is a Mafia historian and an organized crime expert (Nicaso); the other is an anthropologist and linguist (Danesi).
The term Mafia is now used as a general moniker for any underworld criminal organization that displays the same kind of organizational structure as the original Sicilian Mafia. The latter probably originated from a band of outlaws who saw in violence an opportunity for social advancement, when Sicily was ruled by such outsiders as the Bourbons. The gangsters were feared and, thus, respected by landlords, who took advantage of their presence for their own ends, namely, to maintain control over their own domains. Later on, the outlaws gained unofficial control of part of western Sicily in the 1800s, increasingly extorting the very peasants they claimed to protect. By the end of the century, similar bands of outlaws and misfits started emerging and operating in other parts of southern Italy. This led to the establishment of the Camorra in Naples and the ’Ndrangheta (known at the time as picciotteria) in Calabria. In the late 1800s, many gangsters migrated to America. At first, the mobsters simply continued carrying out the same kinds of extortion practices they had left behind in Italy. Prohibition in the 1920s, however, turned the tide for the American Mafia, which took advantage of the situation by turning to bootlegging. At around the same time, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini ruthlessly opposed low-level Mafiosi in Sicily, jailing them and exiling them en masse. Many fled to the United States and eventually became leaders of Cosa Nostra, the name given to the Mafia in America, bolstering its ranks and allowing it to grow considerably in power and reach.
Since the end of World War II, the Mafia in Italy and America has under
gone major changes. Its rural base of operation has been moved into urban areas. It has now migrated to online culture. But will it survive? Are more ruthless criminal gangs sprouting up throughout the global village to take its place? We do not entertain these questions directly. Rather, we look at organized criminal culture in general, attempting to explain why it has such a powerful hold on people. Our goal, as mentioned, is to discredit this culture, wherever and however it exists, in the hope that it will deter young people from joining it.
A myriad of books, essays, movies, television documentaries, and Internet sites exist on the Mafia and other criminal organizations. All tell a part of a gruesome and frightening story. Ours is a story as well—a story that seeks to decode the symbols, rituals, and myths that organized criminals use to ensure their continuity. It is a story that has rarely been told in this way, but that we believe is nonetheless important to tell.
Chapter 1
Origins and Organization
Like art and politics, gangsterism is a very important avenue of assimilation into society.
—E. L. Doctorow (b. 1931)
Released by Hollywood in 1931, Little Caesar was a movie adaptation of the crime novel of the same name, written by American author William R. Burnett in 1929. It made a star of actor Edward G. Robinson in the role of the vicious gangster Cesare Bandello, nicknamed “Rico.” The way Rico looked, walked, and talked sculpted the mobster persona into the American popular imagination. Rico became the prototype of the “wise guy,” a ruthless mobster with street savvy and gritty toughness, but who nonetheless lives by a code of honor. The movie was fiction, but its characters were fashioned after real-life criminals. They jumped off the screen, shaping people’s perceptions of Mafiosi as underdogs and tenacious defenders of ethical principles. Hollywood and the Mafia made perfect partners. They still do. Hollywood created the wise guy, fashioning him after the real-life furbo (Italian for “clever man”). The success of Little Caesar made it clear that the movies and criminal culture had formed a dynamic partnership, transforming petty and vicious criminals into larger-than-life figures who lived by a moral code that many feel has been lost in the modern world.
Because of the numerous gangster movies that followed in the 1930s, a myth surfaced in America, making ersatz heroes out of real gangsters. “Scarface” Al Capone, Charles “Lucky” Luciano, and others were brutal thugs, but they became overnight celebrities as interest in the criminals themselves was spread by the movies, perhaps because the movies and the wise guys themselves represented something buried deep in the American psyche. As writer Robert Warshow perceptively writes,
The experience of the gangster as an experience of art is universal to Americans. There is almost nothing we understand better or react to more readily or with quicker intelligence. In ways that we do not easily or willingly define, the gangster speaks for us, expressing that part of the American psyche [that] rejects the qualities and the demands of modern life, which rejects “Americanism” itself.[1]
Why is the wise guy so alluring? The number of research studies on the social conditions that purportedly lead to gang membership is staggering, as are the theories put forth to explain the allure of criminal lifestyles. Socioeconomic variables, a latent “violence instinct” in modern-day people, and other factors are commonly enlisted by researchers in an attempt to come to grips with the phenomenon of gangs. In our view, these only capture a small part of the truth, since socioeconomic factors, for example, seem to play increasingly diminishing roles today in attracting young people to join gangs. If one looks more closely at the lifestyle of the gangsters, it becomes quite obvious that gangsterism is, as Warshow suggests, a form of art that is performed both in real life and on the silver screen. That is what makes it so appealing and attractive. The art form feeds reality, and, vice versa, reality feeds the art form. From Little Caesar to The Godfather and The Sopranos, gangsterism is portrayed as being more than what it really is—cold-blooded criminality. The Mafiosi know this and have thus adapted accordingly.
Actually, the Mafia has survived through a strategic deployment of art and fiction. It has always portrayed itself as an “honorable society” that lives by a code appropriately called omertà. With this code, murder becomes divine justice; violence, sacred battle; betrayal, sacrilege. Without it, murder would just be gutless homicide; violence, brutal savagery; and betrayal, a banal sellout. Fiction is what allows the Mafia to endure—both the fiction created by the Mafiosi themselves to legitimize their lives and the fiction created by Hollywood and the media. Without these two kinds of fictions, the perception of gangsterism as an art form would dissipate and its lure would be easily excised from the realm of popular culture. Fiction is the main reason why police crusades against the Mafia have proven largely ineffectual in defeating it. Fiction is what allows the gangsters to keep the show going on the stage of life, so to speak.
The first and most basic line of attack against the Mafia is to demystify it, exposing it for what it is—a group of criminals who have fashioned a mystique for themselves based on a code of honor. Once the code is cracked and the mystique is out of the bag, it will evanesce. The history of random street gangs shows that they are generally fleeting, losing their appeal as members age. But organized criminal societies persist because of the strategy of omertà. The code is what binds and keeps members together, attracts new ones, and thus ensures the historical continuity of these societies.[2]
The Origins of the Mafia
In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the main protagonists, Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet, meet and fall madly in love, but they are doomed from the outset, because they belong to warring families. Just the mention of either Montague or Capulet evokes hostile reactions from the opposite side. In the second act, Juliet tells Romeo that a name is a meaningless thing and that she loves the person who bears the name Montague, not the Montague name itself and not the Montague family. She asks, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” But Juliet’s thought is just the wishful thinking of a young girl in love. A name is everything, since it brings into existence something that would otherwise go unnoticed. The names used by criminal groups are no exception to this rule.
The term Mafia refers in its original use to a specific type of secret criminal society in Sicily. Criminal groups stemming from the Mafia operate in other countries, going under various names.[3] The term Mafia is now being used as a generic name for criminal organizations, whether Sicilian or not. It has become a metaphor for organized criminal societies. As Mafia historian John Dickie aptly puts it,
“Mafia” is now one of a long list of words—like “pizza,” “spaghetti,” “opera,” and “disaster”—that Italian has given to many other languages across the world. It is commonly applied to criminals far beyond Sicily and the United States, which are the places where the Mafia in the strict sense is based. “Mafia” has become an umbrella label for a whole world panoply of gangs.[4]
There was a time when no one ever wanted to pronounce the name of Mafia in Sicily, fearing reprisals and dreading the evil omens that the name was thought to beget. But with the showcasing of Mafiosi on the screen, the term has come to imply something different, even in Italy itself. It has come to symbolize an alternative glorified lifestyle.
Creating an appropriate name is the first step in establishing any criminal group, since it gives the group a sense of identity and distinctiveness. The name Mafia is not a word native to the Italian language or the Sicilian dialect. According to a popular legend, the word was coined as an acronym during the Sicilian Vespers, an uprising of Sicilians against the French Capetian House of Anjou headed by the despotic Charles I of Sicily on March 30, 1282. It stood for “Morte Alla Francia, Italia Anela” (“Death to France, Italy Cries”). This origin of the term is now largely discredited by historians. The best guess is that the word came into the Sicilian language through an Arabic slang word, mahyas (“exaggerated boasting”), ma
rfud (“rejected”), or ma fi (“It doesn’t exist”). The latter word is probably the most likely source of the term Mafia, since the Mafia has always denied its existence publicly. In a comprehensive work on the origins of the term, Pasquale Natella claims that the word derives from a Semito-Hamitic source, maf, which meant beauty, perfection, and bravery. Natella alleges that the word, modified to Mafia in Sicily, may have existed since antiquity and spread throughout the Middle East, reaching Sicily through settlements.[5]
Whatever its origins, the word penetrated the Sicilian language after an 1863 play by Giuseppe Rizzotto and Gaetano Mosca entitled I mafiusi di la Vicaria (“The Mafiosi of the Vicaria”). The word mafiusi is never mentioned in the actual play, but it was in the title because the audience members understood the allusion implicitly. The word Mafia appears a few years later in an 1868 dictionary, where it is revealingly defined as “the actions, deeds, and words of someone who tries to act like a wise guy.”[6] As sociologist Diego Gambetta concludes, the term Mafia was a largely fictitious word, “loosely inspired by the real thing,” that “can be said to have created the phenomenon.”[7] It is, in other words, a classic case of what psychologists call confabulation, or the creation of false notions that become believable after the fact, gaining credibility over time. People at the time knew that organized criminal gangs existed, but they were not identified as distinctive. The Sicilian name mafiusu was probably being bandied about to provide a name for the gangs, since they espoused a code of secrecy that was consistent with Sicilian culture.[8]
Made Men Page 1
