Even botanical specimens can symbolize the mafia. Natale Gaggioli, a resourceful Sicilian photographer, once revealed that he always used to keep within reach one of those thick prickly pear leaves typical of the barren and menacing Sicilian countryside, and whenever he took a picture of a mafia victim he would place it by the corpse. Without the prickly pear the murder did not look like a mafia murder and, he claimed, nobody on the Continent would buy the picture (Lodato 1990: 8-9). Television sound tracks, too, have replaced the obsessive and limited Jew's harp—conventionally the musical correlative of the mafia—with an elaborate electronic clone vaguely reminiscent of the spaghetti western. Without such persuasive accompaniment the news would not sound real.

XREF: Connects to how media authenticity is manufactured through recognizable shorthand, similar to depictions of organized crime in film and news. SEED: A piece on how visual and audio clichés manufacture perceived authenticity in crime reporting could make a compelling essay.

Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Busi…, loc. 330