Alberto Mayol (Santiago de Chile, 1976), writer, sociologist, political scientist and university academic, has spent years raising far-reaching theses in his books at a philosophical and statistical level, going through literature, semiology or the arts. With The 50 Laws of Power in The Godfather (Editorial Arpa), he dares to reflect conscientiously on power in today’s society, taking as a starting point both the “so well executed” novel by Mario Puzo and the film saga by Francis Ford Coppola, “a particularly surprising trilogy” that he has seen several times doing seminars and workshops in Chile.
In the book he repeats several times that we all inhabit power. However, we live in a time that tries to turn its back on it and says that this is impossible
Yes, it’s impossible. But we have convinced ourselves that it is necessary and that conviction is problematic because it takes away a lot of power from us. We stop having the survival discipline that power requires. The exercise of power requires understanding every day that you have to be much more attentive than usual. That you have less right to distraction and are always in more trouble than you think. So it’s very unpleasant. We live in a very hedonistic age, and power works poorly in that register. And we see it every day that we have authorities in the world who have resigned because they want to have a private life. In the past, it was known that if you signed this pact with politics, that private life had come to an end and from then on, you would most likely only know death. There was no other way. Today, with our current mentality, the possibility of having some personal autonomy, certain freedoms and rights seems attractive to us. The problem is that politics and power structures do not allow that. That is why we see on a daily basis how power takes its toll and leaves a trail of people who fall along the way because they were unable to understand that they were inhabiting a world that is much more complicated and unpleasant.
If Machiavelli wrote ‘The Prince’ to teach power to those who have it, with The Godfather Puzo and Coppola created an opus that teaches power to those who don’t have it to build from scratch
Machiavelli’s The Prince is a gift from Machiavelli to a prince, the heir of a family for which he had been imprisoned after offending her, and wanted to ingratiate himself with him to avoid being imprisoned again. It is an act of survival designed for someone who already has power and must maintain and increase that power. The problem is that all of us who have a normal life know that the problem of conserving power exists, but it is much more difficult to gain power without having it. On that scale of power, going from 0 to 1 is terrible and The Godfather tells us about the life of Vito Andolini, known as Vito Corleone, a person who has to flee because his father and brother have been murdered, and then they want to kill him. In the film it is added that they also murder his mother when she goes to ask that they not kill her son, he gets on a boat and arrives in New York without a family. So we see how this character is following his path and has an intelligence that allows him to go further than those who are executing things and that he can think of strategies that can make him grow much faster. Vito builds his own power resources. In addition, it seems clear to me that there are textual quotes in the book of the link between what Puzo is seeing and the work of Machiavelli.
It’s always been said that The Godfather is about the mafia, but really it’s about power, how it’s accumulated and managed…
The novel and the movies have several dimensions, that of the family, the problem of morality and immorality, patriarchal structures and all the distributions of power. Don Vito Corleone understands what his resources are. When they want to get him involved in the drug issue, he understands that he is going to lose his ability to articulate important judges and senators. But the world around him is changing and one of the most important dimensions is the permanent movement of the power structure, of who he has more and accumulates more and the small references to Vatican politics. Let’s not forget that in The Godfather 3 the thesis of the assassination of John Paul I is given and everything that this entails.
And it is clear that power always triumphs…
Power is an entity that really only exists when it becomes a verb. If power cannot then it is not power. Politics confuses us because we understand that someone who holds an important position has power, but that person has administrative power and it may not translate into real power. In today’s times that happens many times. Those who manage to stabilize a power that is weak have achieved a lot. Power is a position, a stamp, a stamp, but it is useless to manage social reality and everything indicates that it will continue like this for a long time on a global level.
He refers to Vito Corleone as a wise, rational being, in contrast to his older sons Sonny and Fredo. Deep down, Michael is the most similar but he’s not up to him either, right?
Vito has a kind of representation of a pure type. We see him being Vito Corleone himself for only 30 minutes, in the meetings he holds during his daughter’s wedding and there are no more. Then they attempt against him and he is no longer the same. We have seen the end of this hero in the first part, just before his decline. However, we managed to feel the presence of a metaphysical power. When power is very material it becomes a metaphysical entity and that entity makes the whole world revolve around power without the need for them to act. What we see from Vito Corleone is like witnessing a god for a few minutes except in his management. Possessed by his charge in the world, destined for it. On the other hand, his children are more or less capable, like any human being, but they don’t do perfect things. And even though Michael is very talented, as Tom Hagen tells him, ‘Maybe one day you can be like your father, but you’re not yet,’ and he doesn’t quite make it. Vito’s death and Michael’s reveal his kind of life. Vito dies playing with his grandson and it’s a death that has a certain beauty while Michael dies devastated.
And he notes that Coppola and Vito Corleone have a lot in common…
Francis Ford Coppola comes to read Mario Puzo as he reads thanks to his own story. He challenges the Hollywood studios and goes away for ten years to form his own project and takes the best directors. Until Hollywood gives up and lets them make the auteur cinema they wanted as long as they don’t contaminate the entire system with auteur cinema. That process is very similar to the negotiations of The Godfather and therefore it was a life experience for Coppola. They did not want Al Pacino or Marlon Brando and he was able to prevail.
In law number seven, he mentions that if a fool controls an empire, you can take that empire too, referring to that Hollywood full of beginners who are in power.
And it is a giant power with people who are very new to power structures and are easily tamed. Hollywood had a lot less power than we imagined. It was subjected to direct legislative censorship for three decades because it occurred to the political system that there should not be certain themes within the films. Hollywood was not able to defend that position and that is what Vito Corleone reads when he says that they can take a lot from these guys thanks to their knowledge of power and controlled the unions in Hollywood.
Vito’s conversation with Michael is essential when he tells him that he has always refused to be a puppet pulled by the strings of the powerful and that he thought that Michael could have become a senator or governor, which has not happened.
Vito Corleone saw opportunities in problems. And he was very upset that Michael was fighting for a country that is not his own. What Vito achieves is that he influences, without Michael’s knowledge, getting him decorated and he thinks he’s going to calm down and go back to New York. And it is what happens. However, he understands that this war hero son is very useful for his plan that at some point he wants to get out of crime and move into normal society in a preferential position. He was hoping that Michael, who had not been tainted by the mob, would take over the family once he cleared his way. Finally, it will not be possible. He buys the Vatican fund at the time of an economic crisis and believes that with this he is already out of dirty business, turns his family into a corporation but the path is not well done. That position is shaky, and it’s the story of The Godfather 3, a misstep tragedy.
Because of passion?
Yes, besides Sonny and Fredo, Michael is also passionate. He joins the mafia for the attack on his father and it affects him a lot to see him weak. He then thirsts for revenge when his Sicilian wife is killed and continues down a path in which those who want to harass him draw a response that he cannot control. He has a diabetic attack because of the bitterness of permanently living in a threatened world that makes him tired.
The temper that commands so much respect from Vito Corleone is surprising, a man who has known how to adapt and whose power also resides in seeking favors, not asking for them
That’s great because it vindicates something that is quite forgotten in contemporary society, which is the importance of favors. We live in societies that are well endowed with the idea of ??obtaining things and in the market society when you are given something for free you believe that you have obtained something for free and you have power. In the most archaic societies they understood the dynamics of power very well because it was playing face to face every day and the one who wins is the one who does the favor because their prestige structure is going to grow in the future. That is the power. Faced with this, Vito is very clear that efficiency is not as important as effectiveness.
The fact of the importance of keeping a secret stands out, something that is now unfeasible with social networks
Of course. Chinese President Xi Jinping made this devastating gesture against the former leader of the Chinese government last year and the truth is that this gesture was enormously obscenity and he did it secretly for the purposes of his country, where it was not communicated . It was an errand to the West. You have to know that the information should not go beyond what you need otherwise. Thus, we see a set of actions in favor of maintaining those secrets. It is essential to arrive at meetings without the other knowing what you are going to say and you knowing what the other is going to say. It has been very useful to me, not only because of my fleeting passage through politics, but also in my daily work activity, in those worlds of work that are very dense with palace disputes, power issues, untimely struggles… There are no coincidences , the straight line is giving you clear signals and it is worth it that nobody knows clearly what you are thinking. Now political actors leave a meeting and the first thing they do is call the closest journalists to report information, much of which is not convenient for them to report, practically committing suicide in that act and leaving it up to the journalists if they want to use it in their against or not
Who would you say is the most powerful character currently?
The one who is seeing the laws most clearly is Xi Jinping, without a doubt. He needed a war but he didn’t go to war. That brighter can not be. He has everyone playing and no one clearly knows what his agenda is. He knows that his power structure is far superior to that of the rest. He manages a very hierarchical structure. He is in a very expectant position and he is needed by many actors. He is taking control of many countries that one would not even imagine. The only country that does not have a strong relationship with China is Chile. Xi Jinping has been increasing his power systematically and today he is already attacking the most important threshold, which is the dollar.
And in Spain who pulls the strings?
I have been very surprised by the ability that Pedro Sánchez has had to support a legislature that seemed ephemeral at the beginning. I thought that this government was not going to have the organic capacity to do things, that it would be a government without political power. However, it has managed to build power. It has been a very successful government, as was Macron’s until this latest conflict. I think that Sánchez has managed to build a very important power and the other player who has also achieved it is Isabel Díaz Ayuso. She has had a great ability to read where to lean on in difficult times when she was having a hard time due to Covid. She understood that the bars were a major power and joined them, something that salvaged much of the power structure for her. These are the two names that have had the most structuring capacity and some wisdom even to solve problems.
