Gomorrah, Part Two

The second part of Roberto Saviano’s Gomorrah delves into the mythos underlying not only the Camorra, but also the mythos underlying Saviano’s own resistance of the mafia. Saviano refers to the archetypal Don Peppino Diana and a young, female schoolteacher, both people in Camorra-owned southern Italy who defied and made declarations against the mafia. Saviano repeatedly calls on the power of “the word” as he brings his account to a close, detailing a visit to the grave of Pier Paolo Pasolini and invoking his 1974 “I Know” political speech. Saviano’s travelling to Pasolini’s grave, along with his accounts of Don Peppino Diana and other defiant figures, calls forth the power of a resistant Italy, a space of inspiration. In this way, Saviano waxes Romantic. The Camorra likewise delves into history, art, and film. One of the most striking lines of Part Two is in the chapter “Hollywood”: “It’s not the movie world that scans the criminal world for the most interesting behavior. The exact opposite is true” (250). The Camorra is not only the direct offspring of fierce economic competition and class inequality, but Hollywood. Saviano reveals an Italy built from inaccurate representations of inaccurate representations, simulacrum. The Camorra is hyper-real and much of its power seems embedded in that pure mythos of The Godfather, Goodfellas, Scarface, and Tarantino. Saviano also speaks of the real, the dead, both human and ecological, that result from this potent mixture of the economic and filmic hyper-real, systems with no basis in reality that destroy the real and tangible.