Sat. 13 March 2010, NYC
I've begun rewatching the VERY HARD TO WATCH (fair warning!) Pasolini film Salò, or, 120 Days of Sodom, and I’ve been noticing some things in it. Here I would like to discuss what Pasolini as a gay intellectual and committed Communist might still have to say to us about the struggles for LGBT marriage and for LGBT inclusion in armed forces ‘service’ under a totalitarian system of consumerist-capitalism disguised as a 'tolerant' liberal-democratic one. But first, as is unavoidable when discussing this film, some background.
Based on the Marqius de Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom, Pasolini in Salò updates the historical context of that work to the last days of fascism in Italy, i.e. the dual title. After the Allied invasion of Italy in 1943 and the fall of Mussolini’s government in Rome, the fascists regrouped briefly around a rump government located at Salò, in northern Italy. Pasolini simultaneously adheres rather strictly to the actual structure of the de Sade book, which is comprised in parts of schematic notes because it was written in prison (not unlike so much of Gramsci’s work, mind you). Pasolini calls the respective sections of the film version ‘circles’ (girone) as in Dante’s “circles of Hell,” further tying French Enlightenment philosophical literature to Italian ‘high Catholic’ (if you will) philosophical literature, with his own synthetic analysis. Furthermore, Pasolini takes the opportunity to use all this as a basis to launch forth a devastating critique of Italian ‘neocapitalism,’ which is to say, the introduction of American-style consumerism in Italy after the war, particularly in the 1960s and ‘70s. (You can read more of his thoughts on that process in the translations at this blog, below-- but in a word, he called it "genocide").
The story itself is appalling, and the film, rather than sparing the viewer, plays a bunch of sly filmic tricks not only to gross the audience out, but also to make the viewer complicit in the action on the screen, much of which itself is voyeuristic. A stated goal of his was to make an ‘undigestible’ film, in part a response to the commercialization of his previous few films, the so-called Trilogy of Life('The Decameron', 'Canturbury Tales,' and '1001 Nights'), which he formally abjured in a piece I hope to post a translation of soon. That of course also gives an added kick to the anticonsumerist thrust of the piece (which is rendered even more hilarious in the context of all the screaming of ‘Mangia!’ done in the coprophagic scenes, etc). Pasolini’s rage and despair is in full view in this film, at the height of his formidable expressive and semiotic powers, and with less understanding of the work, one might find some relief mingled in with the rage and despair over Pasolini’s death that he never got far in a Trilogy of Death. (If memory serves, and for what it's worth, one of his next films was to be about Saint Paul in modern America.) However, this film particularly, and Pasolini’s thinking generally at the time of his murder, are as prescient as they are over-the-top, and with a better understanding of what he was trying to say and why, his murder can be considered nothing less than a direct counter-blow against humanity’s aspirations to be free from totalitarianism. Please, gentle reader, bear that in mind if you decide to brave an attempt to view this film, and by all means, turn it off if you have to. It is made to be effectively unendurable.
This is not all Pasolini’s fault-- the text he chose by which to say this thing, the one by de Sade, is in itself a scandal. de Sade, of course, was a cornerstone thinker of the French Enlightenment. Often perceived as a defender of aristocracy, because of his title and because of the absolute power and vicious tendencies (i.e. ‘sadism’) of his ‘protagonists,’ effective argument can nevertheless be made that de Sade was a founder of the general ideology upon which is based the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, which is to say, of a democratic republicanism whose powers are ‘checked and balanced’ by the rule of money. Sound familiar? Good. A nice summary of the debate may be found in the Peter Weiss play generally known as Marat/Sade, which you can find in both book and movie form. I suggest the film, it's a rollicking good time. Either way, definitely some critical insight there, to all this.
The gist of the story is that a small group of elite-ruler types procures a bunch of impoversihed adolescents, secures them in a remote location, and then collectively debauches, degrades, tortures, and ultimately kills them in a series of ‘sadistic’ orgies and other rituals ruled purely by the whims of the elite. This is a rich source of Pasolini’s semiotic work in Salò, because he class-consciously reassigns the roles to make clear who he thinks the various demographics are in his society and times, while stripping the story of none of the absolutism it was originally intended to advocate. Among other things, what that means is that the historical range and philosophical complexity of what Pasolini has attempted to, well, synthesize here, runs centuries in scope. He does it in two hours, in language enough of which most people can understand, on one level or another. No wonder he’s often considered one of the two or three most important thinkers Italy produced on the 20th century.
Anyway, on to some of my own observations on rewatching parts of this movie, which is to say, this is not a final or thorough analysis of any sort, just some notes, so, okay? Okay.
I find Salò remarkable for the uses to which Pasolini puts what we would now call ‘LGBT’ material. There is a lot of attention paid to gender and to gender transgression in this movie, and indeed much of that traces back not to Pasolini but to de Sade. For example, the positionality of gay males in the movie is invariably either as ruler, or as intended degradation of the victims (though, interestingly, not quite all the victims take it that way). de Sade’s agenda aside, one might readily wonder if that’s simple homophobia (which would have to be ‘internalized’ in Pasolini’s case, but he rather celebrated gayness all through his life and works, taking a lot of crap for it, so I think that would be a feeble argument), or else perhaps it's an expression of a phenomenon with us today, in which the ability to express homosexuality is in fact a privilege of the relatively well-off, one not enjoyed by most of the poor of the world, who are much more vulnerable to violence. Where de Sade saw pre-Darwinian justification of the rule of the ‘strong’ over the ‘weak,’ Pasolini instead seems to point to the class structure in which the modern LGBT-world, if you will, expresses its aspirations. The latter view would better fit with Pasolini's thoughts on the student uprisings of 1968, which were written earlier than when this film was made, and also I think point to the real gist of what Pasolini saw as the logical results of an LGBT movement modeling itself on the pursuit of 'consumer'-based rights in a society of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie: it would become a means by which capitalist hegemony might be both extended and projected, and by which interests that might otherwise oppose the regime for its flagrant ‘crimes against humanity’ would instead orient people towards seeing their interests as laying upward in the social hierarchy-- to become collusive in the system of oppression, in exchange for gaining a slightly better position within it, with no real power to alter its course or consequences.
I think of that one young male victim in Salò who decided he rather liked the Duke sliming on him, as it were-- unlike the President's 'bride.' The Duke's boy wasn't all like 'eww,' ya might say, he was more like, 'oh, daddy!' Was this victim merely opportunistic? But there are moments when he seems to truly offer and appreciate the reciprocation of man-man affection. Given the victim’s class origins, is this simply his first chance to express his inner feelings, and it's so nice that he’s willing to endure the circles of hell around him to get it? In fact, all of the guards go along with functional bisexuality, but they are not just victims, they are also perpetrators. Yet I wonder about the pure-victim sissy boy who isn't so victimized, at least for a time. What else might he possibly have seen, where all of his cohort only saw horror visited upon themselves. This makes me think of all sorts of things, everything from the whole ‘daddy-son’ nature of much contemporary urban gay culture, in which older men look for the cutest young ‘twinks’ their money can buy, and newly-arrived, pretty, young gay men seek out a ‘daddy’ that can secure for them a relatively upper-class lifestyle in exchange for affection rather than work. Stonewall was indeed a riot, but that was a long time ago, and there haven't been so many since-- let alone to the same effect.
It also makes me think of the LGBT movement’s strategy of equality via the ‘opportunity’ to ‘serve’ in the U.S. military, particularly given the routine atrocities that have partially come to light and partially been suppressed from public view, in the course of the Iraq War. Just what is LGBT-world fighting for the ‘equality’ to participate in, as perpetrators and not just victims? And in exchange for what, a chance to have one’s continued existence tolerated by sadistic and absolute rulers, in the midst of their untrammeled criminal debauches? Hmm.
Along those lines, on reviewing the film, I was struck by how much use is made of marriage ceremonies. Obviously and again, some of this goes back to de Sade, who had very definite and contrarian ideas about marriage, but did not oppose the institution as such (see for example Philosophy in the Bedroom). Nor am I frankly sure how much of the permutations Pasolini exhibits are his versus de Sade’s ideas, but Pasolini's presentation of marriage is nevertheless rigorous. First, we have a nonconsensual wedding of a boy victim and a girl victim, which they are forced to begin to consummate for an audience, until the rulers intervene for their own ends. The state forcing and interrupting marriages for its own pleasures? Then, there’s the scene where the male rulers all show up in high drag, and another victim boy is forced into a nonconsensual wedding with one of the rulers, in which the male victim is dressed as the bride and the male perpetrator as the groom. The wedding ‘feast’ becomes an amazing, multi-layered critique of marriage and consumerism within a system of arbitrary and total power, and of course, the nature of the fetish involved at that banquet leaves little doubt what the auteur(s) thought the whole thing tasted and smelled like.
Again, what is the predictable outcome of a fight for state-sanctioned LGBT marriage, in the context of a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie? Again, what is the nature of the table at which LGBT marriage would sit, and what depredations would it be willing to tolerate so long as it had a spot slightly above the atrocities? Marriage is particularly interesting for being undeniably and deeply a ritual of property transfer and holding. As a lifelong class-conscious radical and a partisan of the oppressed, I have to say that this time around, I was as struck by what Pasolini had to say with and about marriage, as I was last time I viewed Salò by what Pasolini had to say with and about the non-marriage, furtive, love-and-solidarity relationships people forged in order to attempt to survive their respective and collective ordeals. No doubt, I was prepared for that in part by the ‘gay marriage’ debate, and so was able to compare Pasolini’s two treatments of the ostensibly same relationship, with and without the sanction of the state representing the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. One may well wonder whether the comparison was intentionally or unintentionally prescient, but have a look (if you can bear it) and there it is.
Obviously, more can be drawn from Salò and compared to how things are a few generations further into the consumer-capitalist dictatorship Pasolini characterized as ‘a ruin of ruins.’ But tonight, I think it will suffice for various of my purposes to think aloud about what the film has to say to us today regarding that to which the LGBT agenda in the USA has effectively been reduced: marriage and military service. I will surely have more to say on this film, either specifically or integrated into other material, as I delve further into Pasolini’s thinking with two mission-critical tools I didn’t have ten to twelve years ago, when I first started paying attention to him: a commitment to the Communist cause, and some kind of functional fluency in Italian.
No comments:
Post a Comment