ABSTRACT
The value of textualist approaches needs to be stressed because the proper relationship between anthropology, ethnography, and mass media remains a matter of contention. Anthropological interest in popular movies began with Margaret Mead and her colleagues during the Second World War under the rubric of the Study of Culture at a Distance and the Columbia University Research on Contemporary Cultures project. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book. The book explores the overwhelmingly popular film TheGodfather, truly a movie worthy of the term “myth” in the sense developed here: a narrative that explores key cultural contradictions. Drawing on cross-cultural explorations of historical consciousness and the anthropology of time, it argues that the film suggests a view of the present as made up not just of hegemonic and resistant masculinity models, but of multiple, coexisting, miscommunicating temporalities.
