Leave the Gun. Take the Cannoli: A Perspective on Traumatic Injury in The Godfather

Abstract

Introduction: The Godfather is one of the most popular American movies of all time. The aims of this study are to describe the morbidity and mortality portrayed in The Godfather with a thorough video review.Methods: In this descriptive study, The Godfather was viewed for incidents of traumatic mechanisms. On-screen traumatic mechanisms were documented by time in the movie. Characters that died during the film were evaluated for type of mechanism and cause of death. Comparisons by timing and gender were made with Chi-Square tests, using an ? = 0.05.Results: There were 24 incidents of on-screen traumatic mechanisms for 21 unique characters. A total of 22/24(92%) of the mechanisms involved male characters whereas 2/24(8%) of the mechanisms involved female characters (p<0.001). There were 7/24(29%) incidents of a traumatic mechanism in the first half of the film with 17/24(71%) incidents of a traumatic mechanism in the second half of the film (p=0.03). A Chi-square test showed a higher proportion of deaths in the second half of the film (p=0.01). A total of 17/18(94%) of the mortalities involved male characters whereas 1/18(6%) of the mortalities involved a female character (p<0.001). Penetrating injury was the cause of 67% of the deaths. Blunt injury was the cause of 17% of the deaths.Conclusions: There are gender differences in the characters that suffer a traumatic mechanism and death in The Godfather. A majority of injuries are penetrating in mechanism, and are more deadly in the second half of the film.

Keywords

• historia de la medicina
• películas
• traumatismos
• violencia
• heridas y lesiones