For years, Alberto Mayol (Santiago de Chile, 1976), writer, sociologist, political scientist and university academic, has been presenting far-reaching theses in his books in the philosophical and statistical fields, through literature, semiology or the arts. With Las 50 leyes del poder en ‘El Padrino’ (Arpa) he dares to reflect on power in today’s society, and takes as a starting point both the “so well executed” novel by Mario Puzo and the saga Francis Ford Coppola’s filmography, “a particularly amazing trilogy” that he has seen several times giving seminars and workshops.
In the book he repeats several times that we all inhabit power. However, we live in an era that pretends 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 this conviction is problematic, because we have a lot of power left. The exercise of power requires understanding every day that you have to be much more attentive than usual. We live in a very hedonistic age and power malfunctions in that register. There are authorities in the world who have given it up because they want to have a private life. In the past, it was known that if you signed this pact with politics, this private life was over and from here it is most likely that you would only know death. Today, the possibility of having some personal autonomy, freedoms and rights seems attractive to us. The problem is that politics and power structures do not allow it.
If Machiavelli wrote The Prince to teach how to administer power to those who have it, with The Godfather Puzo and Coppola created an opus that teaches how to build power from scratch to those who don’t have it.
The Prince of Machiavelli is a gift from the author to a prince, the heir of a family for which he had been taken after offending them, and he wanted to ingratiate himself to avoid being imprisoned again. It is a survival act designed for someone who already has power and needs to preserve and increase that power. The problem is that all people who have a normal life know that the problem of keeping power exists, but it is much more complicated to gain power without having it. On this scale of power, going from 0 to 1 is terrible. The Godfather narrates the life of Vito Andolini, known as Vito Corleone, a person who has to flee because his father and brother have been killed, and then they want to kill him. In the film it is added that they also kill his mother when she asks that her son not be killed, gets on a ship and arrives in New York without his family. So we see how this character makes his way and has an intelligence that allows him to go further than those who are running things and that he can think of strategies that can make him grow much faster. Vito builds his own power resources.
It has always been said that The Godfather is about the mafia, but in reality it is about power, how it is accumulated and administered…
The novel and the films have several dimensions, that of the family, the problem of what is moral and immoral, patriarchal structures and all distributions of power. Vito understands what his resources are. When they want to introduce him to the issue of drugs, he understands that he will lose his ability to articulate the 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, who has more and accumulates more, and the small references to Vatican politics. Let’s not forget that in El Padrí 3 the thesis of the assassination of John Paul I is given and all that entails.
And it is clear that power always wins
Politics makes us confused 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 age, this happens many times. Power is a position, a bell, a stamp, but it is not useful for managing social reality and everything indicates that it will continue like this for a long time.
He refers to Vito Corleone as a wise, rational being, in contrast to his older sons, Sonny and Fredo. Basically, Michael is the closest, but he’s not up to her either, right?
Vito has a sort of pure type representation. We only see him properly being Vito Corleone for 30 minutes, during the meetings he holds during his daughter’s wedding, and that’s it. Then they attack him and he is no longer the same. We saw the end of this hero in the first part, just before his decline. Nevertheless, we manage to feel the presence of a metaphysical power. What we see of Vito is like witnessing a god for a few minutes. Possessed by his position in the world, destined for this. Instead, their children are more or less capable, like any human being, but they don’t do things perfectly. The death of Vito and that of Michael reveal their kind of life. Vito dies playing with his grandson and it’s a death that has a certain beauty, while Michael dies devastated.
Find out that Coppola and Vito Corleone have a lot in common…
Coppola challenges the Hollywood studios, leaves for ten years to form his own project and takes the best directors with him. Until Hollywood gives up and lets them make the auteur cinema they wanted on the condition that they don’t contaminate the whole system. This process is very similar to the negotiations of The Godfather, and therefore it was a life experience for Coppola. They didn’t want Al Pacino or Marlon Brando, and he prevailed.
Who would you say is the most powerful character currently?
The one who is seeing the laws most clearly is Chinese President Xi Jinping. He needed a war, but he didn’t go to war. It couldn’t be more brilliant. He has them all playing and he knows his power structure is far superior to the rest.
And in Spain who moves the strings?
I was very surprised by Pedro Sánchez’s ability to endure a legislature that at its initial moment seemed to be of an ephemeral nature. I thought that this government would not 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. Sánchez has managed to build significant power, and the other player who has also managed to do so is Isabel Díaz Ayuso.
