Review

Reviewed Work(s): The Godfather and American Culture: How the Corleones Became
"Our Gang" by Chris Messenger
Review by: Mary Ann Mannino
Source: MELUS , Autumn, 2003, Vol. 28, No. 3, Italian American Literature (Autumn,
2003), pp. 218-221
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of Society for the Study of the Multi-
Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS)

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3595274

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

Oxford University Press and Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the
United States (MELUS) are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
MELUS

This content downloaded from

193.49.96.14 on Tue, 23 Nov 2021 07:43:31 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
The Godfather and American Culture: How the
Corleones Became "Our Gang." Chris Messenger.
Albany: SUNY, 2002. 344 pages. $75 cloth; $25.95
paperback.

Chris Messenger's detailed analysis of Mario Puzo's immensely

popular 1969 novel, The Godfather, and Coppola's film adaptation
and subsequent sequels, insists that the Corleone family has
become part of American culture. Messenger supports his position
by acknowledging that the thirty million copies sold in the 1970s
made it the best-selling novel of the decade, and, well over thirty
years later, phrases from The Godfather have made their way into
our language. Messenger suggests that "I'll make him an offer he
can't refuse," "sleeps with the fishes," and "leave the gun take
the cannoli" are part of the American vernacular, the meaning
behind them easily understood by people not born when the movie
came out. Messenger believes that American men, in particular,
find in mob narratives, and especially in The Godfather, examples
of male control and authority which are no longer privileged in
society and, in fact, are threatened by a countemarrative which
suggests "we don't need aggressive patriarchal males anymore that
they are redundant and dangerous to the social organism" (295).
Still, Messenger argues that the strong images of family and of
order found in films draw many of us in and "speak our yearnings
and affiliations" (296). For Messenger, inspecting The Godfather's
influence on American culture is a way of opening up a discussion
of both the importance of popular fiction despite the panning it
receives from critiques of elite fiction and also of looking at what
so strong an acceptance of this text and the culture it presents tells
us about ourselves.
While suggesting that Americans are embracing the Corleones
and their culture in many areas, Messenger is not unaware that this

MELUS, Volume 28, Number 3 (Fall 2003)

This content downloaded from

193.49.96.14 on Tue, 23 Nov 2021 07:43:31 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
REVIEWS 219

attraction towards authority, family images, and business

encoded there must be accompanied in the reader's psych
adjustment in attitude toward the family business, murder
most people find repugnant. By creating murderers who lo
families and conceive of their occupations as ways to provi
those family members, Messenger suggests that Puzo fo
reader of his novel into several ambivalent positions.
In addition to the moral dilemma of cheering on "good"
ders, the rules that govern elite fiction are broken by Puzo,
Messenger, a critic of elite fiction, was not only engage
reading the book or watching the movies, but feels that th
became a site from which he has interrogated other works.
deal of Messenger's text explores his swing between disapp
of Puzo's low brow rhetorical maneuvering and being emot
engaged as the plot moves along with "good" murders. I
words, in examining The Godfather and its impact on A
culuture, Messenger found himself wanting both to tak
tanced critical stance and at the same time to enter into th
and suspend his disbelief. He has executed this comp
positioning extremely well, and in the process encoura
readers to delve more deeply into the text. He is not much
ested in judging Puzo and the text, showing, for example, t
is not Hemingway, or that in many ways the book fails to m
requirements of elite fiction because it does not conform t
and subsequently Moderism's insistence on "layered" fi
irony, the absence of sentiment, and disinterested critics.
ger is more interested in accepting the novel as a classic of
fiction and then exploring what that means. He wants to de
"what the Corleone hegemony reveals about Puzo's fictio
by extension American popular texts, their critics and
readers" (6).
In doing this, Messenger approaches the text from many differ-
ent perspectives, and this is where his critical study of one novel
becomes a discussion of the way popular fiction can colonize a
culture. Messenger looks at American culture at the time the book
and film entered the public domain only to discover it was a time
of enormous change and the shifting of long held paradigms. The
US was engaged in the Vietnam War, which divided many fami-
lies; the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was encroaching on the tradi-

This content downloaded from

193.49.96.14 on Tue, 23 Nov 2021 07:43:31 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
220 REVIEWS

tional power structure, as was the Women's Movement. Trad

ally accepted images of family and authority were being
tioned and in many areas abolished. Messenger suggests t
Godfather narrative was able to supply the idea of a "stron
benevolent father to take care of both family and an unimp
business life," something that had an emotional appeal to
segment of American society at the time (15). With thr
terrorism and a struggling economy Americans may fe
more insecure today, accounting for the continued longing
powerful father to take care of business and defeat enemies
continued presence in society of mob narratives such a
Sopranos.
Perhaps Messenger's most brilliant contribution to both cultural
studies and literary studies is his exploration of ways of reading
The Godfather narratives. He does not privilege one reading over
the other, but offers them, like a box of delicious chocolates, to
readers to savor. Part Two of his three-part study places Puzo in an
adversarial position to Bakhtin because Bakhtin values growth
through dialogue, but Puzo's text is about power and control which
is achieved through monologues. Messenger chooses three scenes
to demonstrate that the speech of Don Corleone is, in terms of
Roland Barthes, de-polarized speech. In other words, when the
Godfather speaks, there is no dialogue; his speech overpowers the
other. Messenger suggests that although Puzo at times allows a
competing rhetoric to challenge Don Corleone, Puzo always allows
the Don to trump the challenger and continue to hold onto his
power. Messenger suggests that this "orchestration and monologic
order is emblematic of a general popular fiction strategy to both
raise extremely important and emotional issues and then, having
aroused reader interest and sympathy, 'solve' the issues in a way
that privileges power and narrative drive" (90). This is a most
interesting assertion. Can we look at other popular fiction through
this window? Is popular fiction "popular" simply because it
presents us with images of authority so lacking in current societal
values? Do we really want the return of the strong male authority?
Messenger does not answer these questions, but his text raises
them, leaving the reader of this study with many broader issues to
ponder and with many possible ways to engage this text.

This content downloaded from

193.49.96.14 on Tue, 23 Nov 2021 07:43:31 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
REVIEWS 221

While claiming that "mob narrative is not code for 'Ita

American' and that the full richness of Italian American life is
presented in a literature that is now in full flowering," Messenge
does interrogate The Godfather narratives as ethnic fiction, readin
Puzo as an Italian American author (9). When reading in this way,
Messenger cites much of Don Corleone's speech as examples o
bella figura. His speech becomes a public performance. The Do
presents himself as prudent, patient, and always controlled. H
speech is indirect and subtle. He understands the rules of proper
behavior and those who wish to ask favors of him must also
understand and conform to this particular Italian American cod
There is no doubt that understanding the intricate operation
bella figura in Italian and Italian American social relations
creases the enjoyment with which the Godfather narratives
experienced. Messenger suggests that "Ethnic semiosis can co
plement other models" of reading (108).
Each chapter of Messenger's text complicates The Godfath
narrative and asks the reader to look at it in yet another way a
through another critical perspective. This kind of approach
usually limited to elite fiction. Messenger has chosen to look
popular fiction with the same intellectual rigor and I believe
elevated the category of popular fiction by so doing.
Chris Messenger's analysis of Mario Puzo's 1968 text, The
Godfather, Coppola's subsequent three films, and current m
television dramas such as The Sopranos insists that for America
men these narratives "speak our yearnings and affiliations"
that fact accounts for their popularity and their becoming
integral part of American culture (296).

Mary Ann Mannino

Temple Universtity

This content downloaded from

193.49.96.14 on Tue, 23 Nov 2021 07:43:31 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms