The New York Corleone family wants to acquire a casino licence in Nevada, and a senator, who sits on the relevant committee, pays Michael Corleone a visit, accompanied by his wife. He wants a kickback to allow the New York scum to set up shop in Nevada, he tells Michael in not so many words but with an overdose of disdain. The Godfather is deeply offended, and not only doesn't give in to the senator's blackmail but tells the senator he expects that the licence fees be waived.

The movie moves on and we later encounter the senator waking up in a bed in a brothel. There's a young hussy by his side, lying in a pool of blood... the bed linen is all drenched in blood. The senator is shocked and dumbstruck. Suddenly a number of men burst into the room; among them there's the Godfather's consigliere, the family lawyer. They reassure the senator that everything's gonna be okay, they're gonna take care of everything, no need to worry: the girl's got no family. They want him to understand that he's not gonna get into any sort of trouble.

But the shock in his eyes that shook him to the core, won't leave him. Then he recognises the consigliere and ... He figures out in no time that he's got screwed. And there's no way out.

"It's just a movie," some good or well-meaning people could tell me.

"Yeah," I'd answer. "It's just a movie... it's just a movie..."

New Pro-Life Group

I See Life, set up by a number of young people of different ages united by love and respect for all human life from fertilisation onwards, wants to give a voice to the voiceless and strength to the vulnerable.

The group's name emerged from an ambition to inspire youth, as well as to support, educate and empower young people to be advocates for life. Its purpose: to create a platform for youths to freely  voice opinions on what being pro-life.

The group was launched a couple of weeks back, on 8 May, and received an impressive response from pro-life youths who felt the need for a youth organisation championing this position.

The group has a Facebook page (I See Life), an Instagram account (iseelife.mt) and an email address [email protected].

Clearly, there isn't much truth in the assertion that all youth want a quick passport to Hormone Republic or Cannabisland. There's a sizeable chunk of the youth market that wants stability, love and respect.

When ?i?ek overflows into your life: an autobiographical anecdote

(And it's not because it took place in a car)

As she sat pensively in the front passenger seat while I drove, my teenage daughter decided to talk to me about a recent assignment their English teacher gave them: the analysis of Act I Scene V of Romeo and Juliet. Now, I was more or less her age when we studied Romeo and Juliet at school, under a brilliant teacher whom we aptly nicknamed "Shakespeare", but I had to admit I couldn't exactly remember all the scenes' details. She absolved me promptly and invited me to zero in on that moment when Juliet (who is one year older than her, 14) and Romeo (who is 19) fall in love with each other.

First of all, she opined, it was creepy for a 19-year-old to even entertain the idea of engaging in amorous discourse with a 14-year-old. Secondly, she was utterly outraged that these two teenagers fell in love without even discussing the fundamental questions.

Hearing those words, I was about to lose control of the vehicle. "Fundamental questions?! What fundamental questions?!"

Yes, she said. Such as their respective families' socio-economic background, whether they sleep with the window open or closed, what they want to achieve in life, how many children they want, and so on.

Now I do understand that kids nowadays are exposed to a lot more stuff than we were in our time, but wasn't this a bit too much? As I was about to investigate which YouTube channel she got all these ideas from, it occurred to me that, one, Romeo and Juliet did not need to ask about their respective family backgrounds because they belonged to the same socio-economic bracket and they knew it. And two, for the first time in my life I had to ask myself the supposedly obvious question: what the heck was the socio-economic bracket the star-cross'd lovers hailed from?

They clearly weren't aristocrats. But they were wealthy. So they must have come from the merchant classes, as Italy was then an enormously wealthy place teeming with merchants. And possibly the Montagues and the Capulets were competitors in the same market, which would explain their mutual hostility. The historical Montecchi (the "Montagues") were negotiatores, big-scale merchants. For the Capulets, Shakespeare must have resorted to poetic licence by implying what place they occupied in society.

Had the two teenagers been more mature, they could have convinced their families that their marriage would mean a business merger. One can extrapolate as much from the Friar Laurence's lines spoken at their clandestine (but legitimate) wedding: "For this alliance may so happy prove/To turn your households' rancour to pure love" (2.3.91-92). For wasn't he a Franciscan, and - as historians have established - didn't modern free-market economic theory begin with the first disciples of Saint Francis and with the Franciscan theologians?

Be that as it may, I shared my hypothesis with my daughter, and she listened attentively. "They didn't need to take long to fall in love: they were young, beautiful and came from identical socio-economic backgrounds. So they fell in love, but because of supervening circumstances, possibly dictated by free-market competition, they committed suicide."

And this is when it happened! This is when ?i?ek raised his ugly head and intruded into our conversation! Unable to resist the comparison, I added, "It's not like the Titanic story."

Now when my daughter was still eight years old, for some reason, she had wanted to watch that movie, but her mother, obviously, forbade it. She still hasn't watched it, but somehow she knows the storyline. So when I quoted ?i?ek, she understood the point.

Slavoj ?i?ek argues that the third-class passenger played by Leonardo di Caprio in Titanic had to die because he represents the working class being exploited by a pampered, capricious and bored (or depressed) bourgeoisie, represented by the first-class passenger girl he falls in love with. There can be no real love between the working class and the bourgeoisie; there can only be exploitation. Once the working-class boy brings joy back to the bourgeois girl, she no longer needs him, and - Deus ex machina - the cruise liner hits an iceberg and sinks. He conveniently drowns and she is thus free to go back, morally guiltless, to her privileged, bourgeois life and eventual happiness.

So I compared the Titanic story as explained by ?i?ek and Romeo and Juliet as I saw it through my intuition.

By then, we had reached our destination and that was that.

However, later that evening, I googled my intuition and found that, as usual, somebody else had already thought something similar. Indeed, an actor who runs a blog had reached the same conclusion about the Montagues and the Capulets, namely that they were wealthy merchant families.

When you consider that Shakespeare was writing for a Protestant public, at a time when Roman Catholics were persecuted, it makes you wonder why he referred to a Catholic monastic order that had been expelled by Henry VIII generations before. There's always more to Shakespeare than meets the eye. We watch or read Shakespeare with our contemporary eyes, but in reality his political world no longer exists. What has not changed is the psychology which exudes from his plays: his personality analysis remains valid. His political analysis, though, necessitates the constant aid of the intelligent  and knowledgeable historian. 

My Personal Video Library (13)

Franco Zeffirelli's 1968 Romeo and Juliet is and forever will remain one of my favourite movies. Not only for the beauteous Olivia Hussy who's exceptional in her portrayal of virginal yet emotional and at once hard-headed innocence embodied in Juliet, but mostly for Zeffirelli's choice of narrative pace and ability at conveying visual poetry. And then, of course, for Nino Rota's haunting motif which keeps reminding us that never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo.

Maltese Quirks (13)

I'm beginning to feel like Penelope. The Ulysses I'm waiting for is an incarnation of Common Sense.

While I wait, I weave a theory. Speaking in Maltese in Malta is - ironically - more European than speaking in (affected, broken, or - though this is rare - proper) English.

But like Penelope, every morning I undo the weaving of the previous night, and keep waiting.