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Salo is Pasolini's
nightmare vision of bourgeois reason pursued to such an extreme that it
becomes a form of 'unreason'. This was the obsessive rationalisation, which,
for Pasolini comprised the 'unreality' of modern society. Salo is
Pasolini's attempt to 'lay bare the device' or "reveal the repressive and
dehumanising nature of modern hedonism and consumerism".12
Given Pasolini's avowed loathing of the latter Salo's coprophagy
seems a suitable metaphor for the wasteful nature of contemporary consumption.
Moreover, it could be said that the scenes of shit eating, predictably
followed by characters gagging and vomiting, are the text's most explicit
expressions of its overwhelming desire to somehow resist consumption or
to prove indigestible.
Salo's power
to wound or traumatise the spectator goes well beyond its 'unbearable'
representations
of atrocities; Pasolini displays an unwillingness or inability to explicate
both the motivations
for and the ramifications of what he represents. Indeed, how is it
possible to 'explain'
this form of 'unreason'? Salo is also resolute in its rejection
of
pat moral conclusions
or the possibility of catharsis: there is no 'progressive moment'
to be found in a
text which Deleuze labelled a "theorem of death".13
Pasolini was well
aware that Salo
was likely to be received with incomprehension, disbelief, or sheer
physical revulsion
but in his desperation to resist the repressive 'unreality' of modern
society it was a
risk that had to be taken: "Now as never before artists must create,
critics defend and
people support works so extreme that they become unacceptable
even to the broadest
minds".14
That such a clarion call to arms went largely unheeded
is, perhaps, not
surprising but the 'failure' of Pasolini's appeal should not obscure the
fact that Salo
is one of those rare texts whose power to disturb remains undiminished.
It is an exemplary
model of a transgressive text, that, in its extremity, is able to resist
commodification
and exists so far beyond recognisable limits that it cannot be readily
consumed.
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12 Greene, p. 208.
13 ibid, p. 199.
14 Pasolini, quoted in Greene, p.
209.
Filmography
The Damned, Luchino Visconti (Italy/Germany, 1969).
The Night Porter, Liliana Cavani (Italy, 1973).
Salo or The 120 Days of Sodom, Pier Paolo Pasolini (Italy/France,
1975).
