You know what? Italians, especially Sicilians, have every right in the world to be angry at "Mafia" being used as an aesthetic - or worse, a joke.

There was a time when Palermo, a city of ~650,000 people, had 400 mafia-related murders per year. Most Sicilians know victims.

Hell, my wife's family is from near Siracusa, and her uncle was killed in a drive by shooting because he looked like someone who they thought had turned state's witness.
So it's kinda personal, too.

The actual Cosa Nostra wasn't like The Godfather. It was way more like Al Qaeda.

We are talking about people who machine-gunned and blew up magistrates, police chiefs, and judges, who dissolved children in acid, who didn't give a single fuck about innocent bystanders, ever.

Every Sicilian I know has 3 reactions to the mafia: revulsion, hatred, grief.

The good news is that Cosa Nostra is as weak today as it has never been before - used to be a time when the feelings associated with the mafia were fear and resignation. That has improved. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/22/mafia-godfathers-sicily-palermo-italy

Well, things have improved in Sicily; in Campania and Calabria, the Camorra and 'Ndrangheta are more powerful than ever, having filled the vacuum the defeated Cosa Nostra left behind, because nobody was gonna leave a business alone which creates profits of $50 billion a year.

And frankly, yeah, what needs to happen around the world is that education has to supplant media romanticisation; people have learnt that "the West" is basically a history of genocide, now they need to learn that the mafia wasn't about gentlemen wearing fancy suits.

The fucking damage Coppola did with those movies, man.

And here is the reason why Italians are mad at Americans, inculding ItAms, for the romanticisation of the Mafia:

The US government may be putty in the hands of billionaires and corporations, but the power of its institutions is nonetheless immense.

Not so in Sicily.

When we think of cartels basically running entire cities, regions, or even countries, we think of Latin America: but the fact is that secret societies/organised crime families have long held a power in southern Italy that is comparable if not greater than the state's.

So the average Italian American, let alone the average US citizen, could choose not to have any dealings with the Mafia.

Sicilians did NOT have that luxury, any more than you can choose not to pay taxes. Cosa nostra was EVERYWHERE. Really, think living under ISIS.