An Unlimited Memeiosis of The Godfather: Diachronic and Synchronic Observations of a Pervasive and Ubiquitous Meme

This chapter is informed by its author’s intent to offer and demonstrate a novel semio-memetic model for the interpretation of Italian signs in the periphery using Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972) as a prime example. After discussing ‘The Godfather meme’ this chapter moves beyond the constraints of the materiality of the original cultural artifact (where it originated, i.e., the Puzo text), suggesting that it has now surpassed the original idea and intent of the novel, evolved into a film trilogy, and reached its apotheosis via popular culture, where there is now a plethora of multimodal variations indexed to it. While it is true that The Godfather was and is an Italian American-based text, it has now achieved global multimodality going beyond its original ethnic connection to Italian and Italian American themes. The author concludes by stating that this text has achieved an influence usually reserved for religious and other canonical texts.