Marlon Brando: Views vi

Somehow, people in America seem to believe that it is ideology that moves reality. Reality just happens. It does not give a damn about you and will run you over.

Marlon Brando in the Godfather. I must have watched this movie 20 or 30 times. It's an sbsolutely gorgeous movie with a chiaroscuro that expresses the good and the evil in people. Light and dark. When Don Carleone puts pieces of fruit into his mouth to scare the little boy, I was reminded of the scene in the Iliad when Hector puts on his armor and his child starts to cry.

Marlon expresses the anti-establishment's values. Curiously enough, they are the same values as the establishment. Family values. The Don loves his family. He is the protector of his family. He cares for his children. He is constantly worrying about Michael, Fredo, and Sonny. He wants Michael to get out of this world of crime.

To use the mafia as a symbol of Marxism's war against capitalism is a curious endeavor. The mafia is an intensely capitalistic enterprise with a structure that is based on Roman power. I never quite understood Francis Ford Coppola's Marxism. I've also always assumed that George Lucas was a closet Fascist. Even the relatively new Lord of the Rings movies seem somewhat Fascist to me. Tolkien was someone who saw Fascism as a great threat that must be countered by Christian power. In the end though, Christianity may turn more Fascist.

Perhaps I am misunderstanding Coppola. Maybe he is just taking capiltalism to its logical conclusion.

The film begins with Marlon Brando listening to an Italian-American man describe the rape of his daughter and her "loss of honor." The "loss of honor" must be paid by death of the rapists. Marlon Brando listens and he pets a cat while listening. The cat is his phallus. His finger, I believe, is at the part of the brain that ignites emotional memories. He is repressing those. He is trying to think of a just punishment for the crime.

The film pits Anglo-American-Jewish power against European power. European power is certainly more Marxist than American power, but the Europeans in general are extremely elitist people. This is rather curious in the modern world. After all, jouissance comes from rock and roll. The geniuses of Europe are rather severed off from democratic culture. There is discontinuity rather than continuity. Europe, in many ways, is a fellaheen culture. The aging culture of Europe may express itself in terms of cultural pedophilia, etc.

Anyway, the Godfather, presumably, is asked to kill a White Anglo Saxon Protestant. That is the sacrifice that is required. What he does do later is to cut the favorite horse's head of a Jewish Hollywood mogul. Castration transferrence.