As I go to press, I read that yet another COVID variant, currently spiking in Europe and Asia, may be headed our way: DA.2, aka “Deltacron.” We can only hope that, if it does come to pass, it doesn’t lead to a major surge.

In the interim, however, what about what I like to call “The Godfather Virus”?

As I related in my last blog, the Puzo and Coppola film collaboration – the equivalent of a Penn & Teller trick – i.e., they made Italian culture forever synonymous with crime – is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. And in case you didn’t know it, just look around: The Godfather virus is everywhere – at your local CVS or Walgreens (TIME and LIFE Magazines (“special issues”) to daily, unending Godfather articles via on-line sources such as Yahoo, Bing, Google, etc.

One truly does feel like David (both the Biblical one and Michelangelo’s) going up against Goliath.

Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times was even given a two-page spread on February 23rd, complete with color photos and a list of “50 Ways To Love the Masterpiece.” His piece was more trivia than serious criticism; it featured tidbits such as the use of oranges in the film (they telegraph death) to naming actors who were initially considered for the role of Don Vito Corleone (Laurence Olivier, Burt Lancaster, Anthony Quinn, et. al.) So much for deep thoughts.

One item Roeper missed is that filmmaker Sergio Leone, a hot product at the time via his popular spaghetti westerns, turned down an offer to direct The Godfather.  He said (correctly) that it glorified mafiosi.

(Incidentally, this is in keeping with the difference with which Italians and Italian Americans view the characters: Italians, who know the true brutality of the mafia in Sicily, see them for what they are – pariahs; Italian Americans, treated as pariahs themselves in America, see the Corleone clan as an extension of their own nice Italian families!).

Roeper also made zero mention of how the film resurrected, and institutionalized, a crude 19th century view of Italians as a lawless and amoral people – a stereotype now so ingrained that a majority of people simply accept it as fact.

A few months earlier, however, Roeper spent an entire paragraph in his review of the film Licorice Pizza to castigate a white character who had less than five minutes of screen time. His crime? He spoke with a mock-Asian accent. Ah, so!

A sure-fire way to combat The Godfather Virus is to use our precious freedom of speech, right? But, not so fast.

Just as the film has built a cultural “Berlin Wall” against Italian Americans in Hollywood, newspaper editors and reporters have internalized this prejudice as well. Other than my colleagues John Mancini and Rosario Iaconis making recent breakthroughs in Metro New York’s  Newsday and The Daily News (a letter to the editor and an Op-Ed, respectively), any attempts to challenge the film’s masterpiece status have either been blunted or ignored.

I myself did manage to have an Op-Ed published in the Daily Herald, which I shared in my last blog, but that was a suburban newspaper chain. Other pieces I submitted to the major newspapers in my home city of Chicago, the Tribune and Sun-Times, never saw the light of day.

And a ZOOM interview with myself and Rosario on NPR’s “Pop Culture Happy Hour” last July has also mysteriously not been broadcast. The producers of it keep giving us the run-around as to when it will air, if ever.

My take? I think they interviewed us just for craps-and-giggles; that is, they probably expected two “Guidos” on the other end and wanted to put us in our place. When they encountered two well-spoken (aka “normal”) Italian Americans, they didn’t know what to do.  Once again, the issue of “real” Italians vs. “reel” Italians became palpable. -BDC