Abstract
Taking the founding principles of Abhinavagupta’s concept, rasadhvani, this paper defines the mysterious gastromythological code of The Godfather trilogy. I argue that, through an underlying Eucharistic code, gastromythology determines the rationale of ritualistic killings, and how they are represented in the mafia plotline of an otherwise conventional tragedy of an American family. Like The Godfather trilogy is critically taken as a constitutive whole, the gastromythological code of the series not only adds to symbolic value to the film but is, in fact, indispensable to understanding the psychology of the Corleone family and its associates. From the symbolism of the fishes in the message sent by Solozzo with Luca Brasi’s dead body, to the ominous oranges that precede the films’ tragic turning points, to the anorexia of Kay and Connie, to the dietary abstemiousness of Vito and Michael Corleone, to the several banquet scenes and the deadly cannoli, The Godfather trilogy and its hermeneutics are ruled by aesthetic rhythms and attitudes (rasadhvani) evoked by gastronomical metaphors.
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Notes
- 1.
In Act I, Sc II of The Tempest, Ariel sings the famous song to Ferdinand, while the latter is wandering in Prospero’s island, frantically looking for his father. The song is considered to be the source of the oft-used phrase “sea-change”.
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade.
But doth suffer a sea-change. (Shakespeare 88)
- 2.
As example of this can be found in Kalidasa’s Kumarasambhava, where the poetic effect on the listener or spectator is not on account of any one particular image but reverberations or rhythms caused by an amalgam of sounds, imagery, olfactory, gustatory and tactile effects: “These glances of the long-eyed maid that tremble like water lilies in the wind: did she borrow them from the does of the wood, or did the does borrow them from her? (Kumarasambhava 1.46)”. See Ingalls (1990, p. 155).
- 3.
Similar accounts of construction of the Italian American family and ethnicity around food can be found in DeSalvo (2004), where she connects food with the ancestral hunger located in the history of her family’s migration.
- 4.
- 5.
For writings by women authors on Italian American food culture see DeSalvo and Giunta (2002).
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Chatterjee, A.K. (2021). “Luca Brasi Sleeps with the Fishes”: The Gastromythology of The Godfather Trilogy. In: Malhotra, S., Sharma, K., Dogra, S. (eds) Food Culture Studies in India. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5254-0_8
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