"Young mafiosos are very active on TikTok"

Gangster films no longer hold any secrets for her.

She dissects them, such as series, but also video games and other content on the Internet that feature mafias around the world.

In Nice, a few kilometers from the border with Italy, where the term was born, university professor Manuela Bertone runs a particularly original “research incubator”: the Criminal Narrative Observatory.

This entity of the Interdisciplinary Narratives Cultures and Societies Laboratory (Licres) of the University Côte d'Azur even investigates.

With a question: How are the mafias told and how are they told?

During a symposium organized until this Friday evening,

went to meet this specialist according to whom things have evolved a lot between "old practices and recent codifications".

Coppola's "The Godfather" turns 50 this year.

You explain that this film marked a big change in the imagination of the representation of the mafias...

It is a poignant, intergenerational story, which paints the portrait of a dynamic organization, which evolves, anticipates, outside of Italy, and which above all laid the foundations for a certain starization of the environment.

Since then, the entire cultural industry has embarked on this theme and mafia organizations and their trafficking seem to be able to provide unlimited material for new productions.

We represent the Mafia in an ever more spectacular way, we sometimes desacralize it, with

, or we make it a seductive representation with beautiful and well-dressed characters.

There is something for every taste.

Whether you go to Netflix or elsewhere, you will find stories around Sicilian clans, yakuza in Japan or even Mexican cartels.

How do the main stakeholders react to this abundance of cultural offerings?

They are well aware of this permanent staging and, in a way, they participate in it.

We have the example of musical groups, often paid directly by mafia bosses, who recount the violence of clans.

It's their way of updating their story and sharing it with the world.

The mafia therefore influences the productions, but do the productions influence the mafia?

Yes, they also feed on what the culture sends back to them.

For example, in the Sicilian mafia,

has become a cult object and, during a trial at the assizes, some have begun to quote lines from the film.

A little further on, a Neapolitan Camorra boss has actually had a replica of the city of

built for himself .

Could some of the cultural productions that come out on the subject turn out to be worrying?

There are extremely violent video games, banned for those under 18 by the Pan European game information [PEGI], where you really put yourself in the shoes of a gang member, where you decide whether to use a gun or a Kalashnikov, and where we obviously commit crimes, homicides without any motive.

I went on the Internet to see the opinions of users and what is worrying is that there are only remarks on the aesthetics, on the mechanisms.

Nothing on the substance, the content.

No reflection on what is shown.

This nonchalance raises questions.

We have the impression that all this is normalized, that these images are part of a parallel reality.

But we don't necessarily come out unscathed, especially children in construction.

There is a dissemination of dubious cultural objects.

For his part, Roberto Saviano, the author of

, had said "ok" to make a film, a series, a play, but "basta" to release a video game.

He was criticized for not marketing his product to the end but told him that his work was a testimony, and not something destined to become playful.

Precisely concerning young audiences, are social networks used by the mafias?

The young offspring of certain clans are very active on TikTok, for example.

They update ancient myths with show-off narrative activities.

For example, I received a video where young Camorrists film themselves in a nightclub, show off their gigantic Rolexes on which they pour champagne.

The goal is to generate emulation and even to create vocations.

Communication is part of business.

A mafioso in his sixties has created a Facebook profile to film himself from prison, with moments of glory, of truth.

We have gone from omerta to self-affirmation.

There are a lot of media available and their media construction is facilitated.

interactions too.

There are indeed young mafiosos who comment on series, sometimes live during their broadcast,

That's to say ?

Sometimes they are not happy with the turn of the scenarios and they say so.

There is a kind of collaboration in the narrative.

But this is nothing new.

It happened in other ways.

And it even went further.

In their book

, Antonio Nicaso and Rosario Giovanni Scalia recount that the filming of The

was hampered.

Mafiosi were threatening.

They negotiated so that the word mafia would never be spoken.

Some are even visible on screen while others were part of the technical team.

One of them even coached Marlon Brando.

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