The Godfather films, aren’t only stories about criminals, they’re story about the world we live in: hierarchy pretending to be community, patriarchy pretending to be protection, capitalism pretending to be freedom, politicians pretending to be legitimate, family pretending to be love. It’s the #deathcult mythos in cinematic form.
They’re parables about how hierarchy rots everything it touches. Coppola and Puzo lay out a world where the mafia isn’t an aberration but a mirror of #mainstreaming power: patriarchal families, capitalist accumulation, politicians in pockets, and a state captured by private interests. It’s #deathcult logic wrapped in myth.
The Corleones aren’t only monsters from the shadows; they’re the real face of American power with the mask removed. Vito Corleone is an older, more honest version of the #neoliberal billionaire who buys judges today. The story’s “crime families” are stand-ins for competing capitalist blocks. The story is a metaphor for how power protects itself, how legitimacy is a costume, and how the violence of the system, hides behind talk of “family,” “business,” “respect,” and “tradition.”
The first two films critique the world we live in. The Corleones are the ideal neoliberal family: respectable veneer, violence underneath, public virtue, private brutality. A family built on the same contradictions that tear it apart. Quotes:
“It’s not personal, it’s strictly business.”
→ the neoliberal worldview: harm without responsibility.
“I’m going to make him an offer he can’t refuse.”
→ the essence of capitalist coercion: “choice” backed by threat.
“We’re bigger than U.S. Steel.”
→ capitalism’s real goal: monopoly masked as freedom.
“Just when I thought I was out…”
→ no exit from systems built on domination.
The films are showing us the mythology of the mainstreaming #deathcult. America as Mafia, Mafia as America.
The first film opens with a small man being crushed by the system: a father whose daughter is brutalized, and the courts shrug. This is how neoliberalism works: public services are defunded, fail, people are pushed into private “solutions.” Justice outsourced to a Don is no different from healthcare outsourced to a corporation: both sell you what should be a right. Vito’s “friendship” is the same as corporate “philanthropy”: a mask over structural violence.
The “family” keeps up appearances – the bourgeoisie’s favourite hobby – while patriarchal rot devours everyone inside. Connie is beaten by Carlo, but the family shrugs because patriarchal norms demand they stay out of a “private matter.” The same system that fetishizes “protecting our women” abandons them whenever protection would inconvenience male hierarchy. Its about too much control and not enough care.
Competition, crises, violence – the capitalist cycle, it is useful to see the mythology in #KISS terms, the Five Families aren’t criminals; they’re competing capitalist firms. Their war is a stand-in for economic crises. Clemenza even says these things happen “every ten years,” which is basically the capitalist business cycle.
The Tattaglias and Barzinis pushing heroin aren’t “more evil”, they’re simply the next stage of capitalism’s expansion, accumulation demanding new markets. Violence is “nothing personal,” which is how every predatory corporation sees the world.
Michael, capitalism’s golden child, was meant to be “legitimate” – a senator, a governor. A respectable front man to maintain the illusion. Instead, he becomes the perfect neoliberal mess: calm, disciplined, efficient, emotionally repressed, willing to destroy anyone to maintain order. He is the patriarchal son weaponized.
By the end of the first film, when he wipes out all rivals while standing in a church professing faith, we see the metaphor starkly: authoritarian capitalism, patriarchal religion, and state legitimacy all fused together. He “renounces Satan” while becoming the system itself.
Part II, sharpens the critique. We see young Vito’s rise in a world where feudalism is giving way to capitalism, one hierarchy composting into another. He kills Don Fanucci (feudal power) so he can build Genco Olive Oil (capitalist power). Same structure, new branding.
Meanwhile Michael, the more matured form of this system, expands the empire into Nevada, New York, Miami, Sicily, Cuba. It’s the globalisation arc. And like all global empires, it’s built on betrayal: Fredo’s betrayal (internal collapse), Kay’s rejection (patriarchal fragility exposed), Michael’s violence against his own (self-destruction inherent in all hierarchical systems). By killing Fredo “for the family,” Michael destroys the family. Capitalism works the same way: protecting profit destroys society.
And the ending is the #techcurn lesson: systems built on secrecy, power, and control always collapse inward, devouring the very people they claim to protect. Michael Corleone is neoliberalism in human form. Vito is the earlier, “nicer” version of the same system. And the people around them? Compost.
The Cuba revolution is the one moment where the system cracks – the #openweb moment of the film – where people try to reclaim the commons, break the hierarchy, stop being pawns.
