Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
Cinema
Que o cinema se tenha tornado antes de mais nada uma máquina de contar estórias, eis o
que não tinha sido realmente previsto. Logo no início do cinematógrafo, algumas
indicações ou declarações sugeriam o fato, é verdade, mas pouco tinham a ver com o
desenvolvimento que o fenômeno tomaria posteriormente. O encontro do cinema com a
narratividade é um grande fato que nada tinha de fatal, mas que tampouco é ocasional: é
um fato histórico e social, é um fato de civilização, um fato que por sua vez condiciona
a evolução posterior do filme enquanto realidade semiológica, um pouco de modo –
indireto e global mas eficiente – como as ocorrências de lingüística
“externa”(conquistas, colonizações, mudanças de língua...) influenciam o
funcionamento “interno” dos idiomas. No reino do cinema, todos os gêneros que não os
“narrativos” – o documentário, o filme técnico etc. – tornaram-se províncias marginais,
degraus por assim dizer, enquanto que o longa metragem de ficção romanesca, apontava
de modo cada vez mais claro a via real da expressão fílmica.
A preponderância meramente numérica e social não é o único fator; vem fortalecê-lo
uma consideração mais “interna”: os filmes não narrativos distinguem-se dos
“verdadeiros” filmes, basicamente, pela sua finalidade social e pelo conteúdo
substancial mais do que pelos “processos de linguagem”. As grandes figuras
fundamentais da semiologia do cinema – montagem, movimento de câmera, escala dos
planos, relações da imagem com a palavra, seqüências e outras unidades de grande
sintagmática... – são mais do que semelhantes nos “pequenos” filmes como nos
“grandes”. Nada indica que uma semiologia autônoma nos diversos gêneros não
narrativos seja possível senão como uma série de anotações descontínuas assinalando as
diferenças em relação aos filmes “habituais”. Abordar os filmes de ficção é portanto ir
mais depressa e mais direto ao cerne do problema. [pág. 113-4]
O cinema, sem dúvida nenhuma, não é uma língua, contrariamente ao que muitos
teóricos do cinema mudo afirmaram ou sugeriram(temas de “cine-língua”, do
“esperanto visual” etc.), [pág. 126] mas pode ser considerado como uma linguagem, na
medida em que ordena elementos significados no seio de combinações reguladas,
diferentes daquelas praticadas pelos nossos idiomas, e que tampouco decalcam os
conjuntos perceptivos oferecidos pela realidade. A manipulação fílmica transforma num
discurso o que poderia não ter sido senão o decalque visual da realidade. Partindo de
uma significação puramente analógica e contínua – a fotografia animada, o
cinematógrafo -, o cinema elaborou aos poucos, no decorrer de seu amadurecimento
diacrônico, alguns elementos de uma semiótica própria, que ficam dispersos e
fragmentários no meio das camadas amorfas da simples duplicação visual. [pág. 127]
Tese celisa
MARQUÊS DE SADE
Letícia Fernochi
RF
Texto caderno
Podemos dizer que Sade foi um homem de seu tempo. Apenas para se ter idéia,
durante o reinado de Luís XV, este soberano manifestou diversos comportamentos
libertinos, dedicando-se ao prazer pessoal e imediato, coisa que não era exceção
para a época. Mas o que havia em Sade que o fez tão maldito? Segundo Peixoto
(1979), Sade representava a crítica sobre a repressão aos instintos vitais do
homem. Não se pode esquecer que este autor tem um[pág.08] Texto caderno
intensidade as práticas sexuais vão ficando cada vez mais violentas ou “libertinas”,
como Sade prefere falar. No caso desta obra, é importante notar a seqüência e a
rotina em que os atos acontecem. Todo o regulamento do Castelo foi expresso em
longas páginas, que faz com que o leitor tenha uma idéia de como os libertinos
vivem e sentem, o prazer. Vale lembrar que o esperma e o sangue são
importantes fluídos que dão prazer intenso aos quatro libertinos e, no livro, a
todo o momento, estes são referenciados.
Outra forma especial de prazer narrado pelos libertinos trata-se da sodomia. Os
libertinos relatam ser a sodomia uma fonte intensa e inigualável de prazer, tanto
de forma insertiva quanto receptiva. Vale ressaltar que o sexo anal era uma forma
de sexo abominada pela Igreja. O importante para o libertino é fazer sentir prazer
de todas as formas possíveis, e a sodomia para Sade era uma das principais
formas de transgressão das normas, por isto ela era tão admirada, já que
representava a inversão da ordem reprodutiva da sexualidade. Logo, o libertino
prefere a sodomia por ser esta uma prática não voltada à reprodução; ela é uma
prática que transgride.
Para Deleuze (1973), por exemplo, o libertino fica excitado pela idéia do mal e não
apenas pelo objeto que se apresenta. Para este autor, o que permeia a obra de
Sade é a negação. A lei para Sade é de uma natureza segunda que “usurpa a
autêntica soberania” (idem, p.94). Mas para Lacan (apud DELEUZE, 1972, p.92),
“a lei é ao mesmo tempo que o desejo recalcado”. Para Sade, o prazer e a morte
[pág.11] Texto caderno
Nos ritos secretos de Sade, os libertinos flagelam, estupram e castram suas vítimas,
depois devoram os corpos e bebem o sangue. Como sacerdotes astecas, vivissecam,
extraindo o coração vivo. Produto da elegante aristocracia francesa, Sade
primitiviza sua própria cultura e a torna decadente. Mistura atos sexuais com
agressões e multilações para mostrar a brutalidade latente do sexo. Como em
Freud, o instituto sexual é amoral e egoísta. Em Juliette (1797), respondendo à
Julie de Rousseau, Sade diz da luxúria: “Ela exige, ela milita, ela tiraniza”. Sexo é
poder. Sexo e agressão fundem-se de tal modo que não apenas o sexo é assassino,
mas o assassinato é sexual. Uma mulher declara: “O assassinato é um ramo de
atividade erótica, uma de suas extravagância. O ser humano só atinge o paroxismo
final do prazer através de um acesso de raiva”. O orgasmo é uma explosão de
violência, “uma espécie de fúria”, mostrando a intenção da natureza de que “o
comportamento furioso”. [pág. 223] Personas Sexuais – Camille Paglia
Contra Cristo e Rousseau, Sade diz que a benevolência e “o que os tolos chamam
de humanidade” “nada têm a ver com a Natureza”, mas são “fruto da civilização
do medo”. [...] Sade descarta a caridade cristã e a igualdade e fraternidade de
Rousseau como ilusões sentimentais. Não há obrigações sociais ou morais para o
filósofo: “Ele está só no universo”. Devido à sua concentração romântica no ego, os
libertinos de Sade jamais permitem que o amor ou a amizade sobrevivam. A
lealdade é um pacto temporário entre conspiradores criminosos. [pág. 223]
Personas Sexuais – Camille Paglia
Para provar que a benevolência humana é uma teoria utópica contraditada pela
realidade, Sade monta um catálogo de atrocidades praticadas por toda cultura na
história, muitas vezes em nome da religião. [...] Surpreendentemente, a abolição da
lei civil e divina por Sade não conduz à anarquia. Os libertinos estabelecem suas
próprias estruturas rigorosas, a hierarquia natural de fortes e fracos, senhores e
escravos. Quer na Associação dos Amigos do Crime em Juliette, que na vasta
Escola de Libertinagem de Cento e vinte dias de Sodoma, os libertinos de Sade se
organizam em unidades sociais autônomas. Emitem prospectos e estatutos,
projetam ambientes arquitetônicos, e arrebanham suas vítimas em classes e
subclasses eróticas. Como colônias de formigas, secretam sistema. Essas coisas em
Sade vêm do Iluminismo apolíneo. Como sexualista dionisíaco, ele abole a grande
cadeia do ser, mergulhando o homem no grande continuum da natureza, mas não
pode livrar-se do hierarquismo intelectual de sua época. A identidade dos
libertinos precede seu agrupamento cooperativo para a devassidão. A
personalidade de Sade é dura e impermeável – ou seja, apolínea. Não há mistérios
ou ambigüidades, porque nada é deixado ao inconsciente, cujas mais perversas
fantasias se esvaziam na fria luz da consciência. Em Sade, a personalidade
apolínea é mergulhada em esgoto dionisíaco, mas emerge limpa e intacta. [pág.
224] Personas Sexuais – Camille Paglia
Os libertinos de Sade muitas vezes são bissexuais. Homens de aparência mole anseiam
por sodomia passiva. [pág. 224]
A masculinidade das mulheres de Sade às vezes é anatômica. Madame de
Champville, de Cento e vinte dias de Sodoma, e a bela freira madame de Volmar,
de Juliette, têm clítores de dez centímetros. [pág. 225] Personas Sexuais – Camille
Paglia
Sade põe o corpo humano no reino dos esquartejamentos dionisíaco, desprezado pelo
Apolo de Ésquilo como o lar ctônico das Fúrias. As torturas inventadas pelos libertinos
são daquelas que pulverizam a forma, que encontrei em Homero e Eurípedes. Os
libertinos obliteram avidamente os contornos formais do corpo, rasgando, furando,
arranhando, cegando, estropiando, retalhando, queimando, derretendo. A tolerância dos
leitores às bárbaras fantasias de Sade pode variar. [pág. 226] Personas Sexuais –
Camille Paglia
Sade concebe papéis e faz experiências com audácia romântica. Em Cento e vinte dias
de Sodoma, o presidente Curval explora outra variação: “A fim de combinar incesto,
adultério, sodomia e sacrilégio, ele enraba a filha casada com uma hóstia”. Sade
acrescenta ao seu ensopado afrontas ao sagrado. De novo: “Um sodomita notório, a fim
de cometer esse crime juntamente com os de incesto, assassinato, estupro, sacrilégio e
adultério, primeiro enfia uma hóstia no cu, depois faz-se enrabar pelo filho, estupra a
filha casada e mata a sobrinha.” O orgiasta é intelectual e contorcionista, um Laocoonte
enroscado em seus proliferantes desejos. [pág. 227] Personas Sexuais – Camille Paglia
Sade substitui as relações sociais por sexuais. [pág. 227] Personas Sexuais –
Camille Paglia
Mas ele difere dos mais passivos românticos ao fazer a identidade brotar da ação,
para libertino e vítima igualmente. Um origina o ato, o outro sofre-o. O contexto de
identidade sadiana é dramatúrgico. Há sempre tableauxe “espetáculos
dramáticos” de corpos entrelaçados, dos quais as pessoas fazem espirituosos
julgamentos estéticos. A teatralidade é berrante no sadomasoquismo moderno,
com seus trajes, adereços e roteiros. O sadomasoquismo, como sugeri, é um
sintoma de sede cultural de hierarquia. A religião é mal dirigida quando relaxa seu
ritualismo. A imaginação anseia por subordinação, e irá buscá-la em outra parte.
Sade, um filósofo que expulsa a Igreja de seu universo, termina fazendo do sexo
uma nova religião. Seu pródigo ritualismo sexual dramatiza o hierarquismo
natural do sexo - um hierarquismo que nada tem a ver com o costume social, pois
as mulheres podem ser senhoras e os homens escravos. O sadomasoquismo é
friamente formal, uma expressão condensada da estrutura biológica da
experiência sexual. Em todo orgasmo há dominação ou rendição, sempre abertas
aos dois sexos,em grupos, pares ou sozinhos. Richard Tristman me disse: “Toda
sexualidade implica certo grau de teatro”. O sexo contém um elemento do abstrato
e transpersonal, que só o sadomasoquismo reconhece sem rodeios. Tristman
continuou: “Todas as relações sexuais envolvem relações de dominação. O desejo
de igualdade nas mulheres é provavelmente uma manifestação atenuada do desejo
de dominar”. Saudado nos anos 60 como um libertador sexual, Sade é na verdade
o mais erudito documentador da sujeição do sexo a ordens hierárquicas. [pág. 229]
Personas Sexuais – Camille Paglia
O diretor de teatro de 120 dias de Sodoma é homem, mas na obra de Sade como
um todo as mulheres não sofrem mais abusos que os homens. Sade e Blake
concedem às mulheres a liberdade sexual dos homens. Embora cultue suas grandes
libertinas, ele detesta a mulher procriativa. Mulheres grávidas são torturadas,
forçadas a abortar, ou esmagadas juntas em rodas de ferro. [pág. 230] Personas
Sexuais – Camille Paglia
Sade acha o corpo feminino menos bonito que o masculino. Comparem um homem
e uma mulher nus: “Serão obrigados a concluir que a mulher é simplesmente o
homem numa forma extraordinariamente degradada”. Simone de Beauvoir e
Barthes relacionam a desvalorização do corpo feminino por Sade à sua fome
homossexual de sodomia. Mas o simbolismo sexual é maior que os hábitos
privados. A sodomia é o protesto racional de Sade contra a natureza criadora
incansavelmente abundante. [...]A sodomia é imaginada como entrada ritual no
submundo, simbolizado pelas entranhas do homem. [pág. 232] Personas Sexuais –
Camille Paglia
Jane Harrison diz: “O homem não pode escapar do fato de que nasceu da mulher, mas
pode, e se for sábio o fará assim que chegar à virilidade, executar cerimônias de
libertação e purgação.” A obsessiva sodomia de Sade é um ritual de libertação para
fugir ao poder materno. [pág. 232] Personas Sexuais – Camille Paglia
Por isso Sade alternadamente celebra e vilifica a mulher. Dá a suas libertinas
intelectuais outra prerrogativa masculina, desafiando a realidade: a paixão pelas
atrocidades sexuais. [pág. 233] Personas Sexuais – Camille Paglia
Baudelaire e Swinburne enfatizam sua dívida com Sade, que prefigura de várias formas
a sensibilidade decadente. Ele descobre beleza no horrível e revoltante. Como os
imperadores romanos, justapõe artificialidade e sofisticaçã com barbarismo ctônico.
Seus libertinos são “indiferentes a tudo que é simples e lugar-comum”, uma expressão
decadentista. Os libertinos estão sempre auto-emparedados, uma claustrofobia
decadentista. [pág. 233] Personas Sexuais – Camille Paglia
Livro revela...
Segundo Eliane, Sade acabou preso, passando nada menos que 39 anos, com algumas
interrupções, nos presídios e manicômios judiciais. “Sade foi um homem que não
acreditava em Deus. Para ele, só existia o corpo, as sensações do corpo e tudo aquilo
que o corpo do libertino pode proporcionar em termos de prazer, sem a preocupação de
causar ou não algum mal ao outro. Daí que a filosofia de vida do Marquês de Sade vai
pregar a violência sexual, a dor no corpo do parceiro”. O primeiro livro de Sade, Os 120
dias de Sodoma, ainda sem tradução no Brasil, conta a história dos quatro maiores
libertinos da França, que se encontram num castelo, no alto de uma montanha.
Levam para lá 50 súditos, desde lindas ninfetas até homens e mulheres velhos,
caquéticos, com os corpos deformados, que vão fazer uma série de experiências
sexuais durante 120 dias. Com essa obra, Sade se propôs a apresentar o que
denominou de “as 600 paixões sexuais que existem no mundo”, divididas em
quatro partes: as simples, as complexas, as criminosas e as assassinas.
“Devo-lhe adiantar que as simples não são nada simples. São paixões que não têm nada
a ver com aquilo que chamamos de sexualidade normal. Mexem com excrementos, com
a urina e com todo tipo de matéria que o corpo produz. Com isso, pode-se imaginar
como são as classes criminosas e assassinas”, explica Eliane. Tudo é válido no universo
de Sade, contanto que dê prazer ao personagem, que se entrega às mais diversas práticas
sexuais, desde a zoofilia até a homossexualidade e ao incesto.
No entanto, ela acentua que a literatura de Sade, apesar de toda a crueldade e violência
sexual, está longe de ser pornográfica. “Todo autor que desvenda algum elemento que
faz parte de nossa humanidade está falando alguma coisa importante. É claro que seria
formidável se todos eles só falassem sobre o lado bom do homem”, opina a professora.
Sade talvez foi o escritor que tenha mais falado de crueldade e violência em seus textos.
Mas com certeza não foi ele quem as inventou. A crueldade está desde sempre na cena
real e história da humanidade.
“É claro que não se pode condenar, nem edulcorar livros como os de Sade, mas afirmar
seu valor transgressivo como forma de conhecimento”, prega a professora Eliane. .
PASOLINI
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A Mad Dream
Pier Paolo Pasolini's own notes on him film Salò
Pasolini was trenchant when discussing Salò. Below are two pieces in which he
introduces and then annotates his film, paying particular attention to its relationship to
Sade's novel and to Italian fascism. The first, a 'Foreword', was written in 1974, a few
months before filming began. The date of the second is unclear, but appears to have
been written later. Both pieces are reproduced from an English-language press book (in
the collection of James Ferman) issued, it seems, in Italy to accompany the release of
the film. (Both pieces have been lightly edited.) There is no record of any translator in
the press book.
Foreword
This film is a cinematographic transposition of Sade's novel The 120 Days of Sodom. I
should like to say that I have been absolutely faithful to the psychology of the characters
and their actions, and that I have added nothing of my own. Even the structure of the
story line is identical, although obviously it is very synthetised. To make this synthesis I
resorted to an idea Sade certainly had in mind - Dante's Inferno. I was thus able to
reduce in a Dantesque way certain deeds, certain speeches, certain days from the whole
immense catalogue of Sade. There is a kind of 'Anti-Inferno' (the Antechamber of Hell)
followed by three infernal 'Circles': 'The Circle of Madness'; 'The Circle of Shit', and
'The Circle of Blood'. Consequently, the Story-Tellers who, in Sade's novel, are four,
are three in my film, the fourth having become a virtuoso - she accompanies the tales of
the three others on the piano.
Despite my absolute fidelity to Sade's text, I have however introduced an absolutely
new element: the action instead of taking place in eighteenth-century France, takes
place practically in our own time, in Salò, around 1944, to be exact.
This means that the entire film with its unheard-of atrocities which are almost
unmentionable, is presented as an immense sadistic metaphor of what was the Nazi-
Fascist 'dissociation' from its 'crimes against humanity'. Curval, Blangis, Durcet, the
Bishop - Sade's characters (who are clearly SS men in civilian dress) behave exactly
with their victims as the Nazi-Fascists did with theirs. They considered them as objects
and destroyed automatically all possibility of human relationship with them.
This does not mean that I make all that explicit in the film. No, I repeat again, I have not
added a single word to what the characters in Sade have to say nor have I added a single
detail to the acts they commit. The only points of reference to the 20th century are the
way they dress, comport themselves, and the houses in which they live.
Naturally there is some disproportion between the four protagonists of Sade turned into
Nazi-Fascists and actual Nazi-Fascists who are historically true. There are differences in
psychology and ideology. Differences and also some incoherence. But this accentuates
the visionary mood, the unreal nightmare quality of the film. This film is a mad dream,
which does not explain what happened in the world during the 40s. A dream which is all
the more logical in its whole when it's the least in its details.
In addition to being anarchic what best characterises power - any power - is its natural
capacity to turn human bodies into objects. Nazi-Fascist repression excelled in this.
Another link with Sade's work is the acceptance/non-acceptance of the philosophy and
culture of the period. Just as Sade's protagonists accepted the method - at least mental or
linguistic - of the philosophy of the Enlightened Age without accepting all the reality
which produced it, so do those of the Fascist Republic accept Fascist ideology beyond
all reality. Their language is in fact their comportment (exactly like the Sade
protagonists) and the language of their comportment obeys rules which are much more
complex and profound than those of an ideology. The vocabulary of torture has only a
formal relation with the ideological reasons which drive men to torture. Nonetheless
with the characters in my film, although what counts is their sub-verbal language, their
words also have a great importance. Besides their verbiage is rather wordy. But such
wordy verbiage is important in two senses: firstly it is part of the presentation, being a
'text' of Sade's, that is being what the characters think of themselves and what they do;
and, secondly, it is part of the ideology of the film, given that the characters who quote
anachronistically Klossowsky and Blanchot are also called upon to give the message I
have established and organised for this film: anarchy of power, inexistence of history,
circularity (non-psychological not even in the psychoanalytic sense) between
executioners and victims, an institution anterior to a reality which can only be economic
(the rest, that is, the superstructure, being a dream or a nightmare).
'Veiled' reconstruction of Nazi ceremonial ways (its nudity, its military simplicity at the
same time decadent, its ostentations and icy vitality, its discipline functioning like an
artificial harmony between authority and obedience, etc.
Ironic corrective to all this through a humour which may explode suddenly in details of
a sinister and admitted comic nature. Thanks to which suddenly everything vacillates
and is presented as not true and not crude, exactly because of the theatrical satanism of
self-awareness itself. It is in this sense that the direction will be expressed in the editing.
It is there that will be produced the mix between the serious and the impossibility of
being serious, between a sinister, bloody Thanatos and curate Bauba (Bauba was a
Greek divinity of liberating laughter or better: obscene and liberating laughter).
In every shot it can be said I set myself the problem of driving the spectator to feeling
intolerant and immediately afterwards relieving him of that feeling.
http://zakka.dk/euroscreenwriters/interviews/pier_paolo_pasolini.htm
http://www.bfi.org.uk/features/salo/
Salò or The 120 Days of Sodom
"Pier Paolo Pasolini did not live to see the storms of controversy and scandal that were
whipped up around Salò or The 120 Days of Sodom (Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma,
1975), his adaptation of the Marquis de Sade. Until recently, the uncut film had never
received a certification in the UK and is banned in a number of other countries.
However, the BBFC have now - for the first time - granted an 18 certificate to the uncut
version, for both theatrical screenings and for a DVD / VHS release.
In advance of the BBFC's decision, on 29 and 30 September 2000, the bfi and ICA held
a conference, at which Salò was screened, in order to debate the issues the film raises. Is
it a credible study of Italian fascism? Do its infamous scenes of torture and sexual
violence amount to more than spectacle or pornography? These questions and others
were discussed at the ICA by a range of academics, writers and artists, among them Neil
Bartlett, Jake Chapman, Jenny Diski, former director of the BBFC James Ferman, and
Gary Indiana, author of a book on Salò in the bfi Modern Classics series.
To prepare the ground for the conference and to begin to put Salò in context, this site
makes available detailed information about the film's censorship history; some
comments made by Pasolini himself as well as a contemporary analysis of the film;
extracts from Gary Indiana's book and an interview with him.
The material here has been compiled by Rob White, editor of the bfi Modern Classics
series and co-organiser of the Salò conference. He would like to record his gratitude to
Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, Craig Lapper of the BBFC for responses to queries, and
particularly to James Ferman who most generously made his archives available for this
project.
A Mad Dream
Pasolini was trenchant when discussing Salò. Below are two pieces in which he
introduces and then annotates his film, paying particular attention to its relationship to
Sade's novel and to Italian fascism. The first, a 'Foreword', was written in 1974, a few
months before filming began. The date of the second is unclear, but appears to have
been written later. Both pieces are reproduced from an English-language press book (in
the collection of James Ferman) issued, it seems, in Italy to accompany the release of
the film. (Both pieces have been lightly edited.) There is no record of any translator in
the press book.
Foreword
This film is a cinematographic transposition of Sade's novel The 120 Days of Sodom. I
should like to say that I have been absolutely faithful to the psychology of the characters
and their actions, and that I have added nothing of my own. Even the structure of the
story line is identical, although obviously it is very synthetised. To make this synthesis I
resorted to an idea Sade certainly had in mind - Dante's Inferno. I was thus able to
reduce in a Dantesque way certain deeds, certain speeches, certain days from the whole
immense catalogue of Sade. There is a kind of 'Anti-Inferno' (the Antechamber of Hell)
followed by three infernal 'Circles': 'The Circle of Madness'; 'The Circle of Shit', and
'The Circle of Blood'. Consequently, the Story-Tellers who, in Sade's novel, are four,
are three in my film, the fourth having become a virtuoso - she accompanies the tales of
the three others on the piano.
This means that the entire film with its unheard-of atrocities which are almost
unmentionable, is presented as an immense sadistic metaphor of what was the Nazi-
Fascist 'dissociation' from its 'crimes against humanity'. Curval, Blangis, Durcet, the
Bishop - Sade's characters (who are clearly SS men in civilian dress) behave exactly
with their victims as the Nazi-Fascists did with theirs. They considered them as objects
and destroyed automatically all possibility of human relationship with them.
This does not mean that I make all that explicit in the film. No, I repeat again, I have not
added a single word to what the characters in Sade have to say nor have I added a single
detail to the acts they commit. The only points of reference to the 20th century are the
way they dress, comport themselves, and the houses in which they live.
Naturally there is some disproportion between the four protagonists of Sade turned into
Nazi-Fascists and actual Nazi-Fascists who are historically true. There are differences in
psychology and ideology. Differences and also some incoherence. But this accentuates
the visionary mood, the unreal nightmare quality of the film. This film is a mad dream,
which does not explain what happened in the world during the 40s. A dream which is all
the more logical in its whole when it's the least in its details.
Practical reason says that during the Republic of Salò it would have been particularly
easy given the atmosphere to organise, as Sade's protagonists did, a huge orgy in a villa
guarded by SS men. Sade says explicitly in a phrase, less famous than so many others,
that nothing is more profoundly anarchic than power - any power. To my knowledge
there has never been in Europe any power as anarchic as that of the Republic of Salò: it
was the most petty excess functioning as government. What applies to all power was
especially clear in this one.
In addition to being anarchic what best characterises power - any power - is its natural
capacity to turn human bodies into objects. Nazi-Fascist repression excelled in this.
Another link with Sade's work is the acceptance/non-acceptance of the philosophy and
culture of the period. Just as Sade's protagonists accepted the method - at least mental or
linguistic - of the philosophy of the Enlightened Age without accepting all the reality
which produced it, so do those of the Fascist Republic accept Fascist ideology beyond
all reality. Their language is in fact their comportment (exactly like the Sade
protagonists) and the language of their comportment obeys rules which are much more
complex and profound than those of an ideology. The vocabulary of torture has only a
formal relation with the ideological reasons which drive men to torture. Nonetheless
with the characters in my film, although what counts is their sub-verbal language, their
words also have a great importance. Besides their verbiage is rather wordy. But such
wordy verbiage is important in two senses: firstly it is part of the presentation, being a
'text' of Sade's, that is being what the characters think of themselves and what they do;
and, secondly, it is part of the ideology of the film, given that the characters who quote
anachronistically Klossowsky and Blanchot are also called upon to give the message I
have established and organised for this film: anarchy of power, inexistence of history,
circularity (non-psychological not even in the psychoanalytic sense) between
executioners and victims, an institution anterior to a reality which can only be economic
(the rest, that is, the superstructure, being a dream or a nightmare).
We should not confuse ideology with message, nor message with meaning. The
message belongs in part - that of logic - to ideology, and in the other part - that of
irreason - to meaning. The logical message is almost always evil, lying, hypocritical
even when very sincere. Who could doubt my sincerity when I say that the message of
Salò is the denunciation of the anarchy of power and the inexistence of history?
Nonetheless put this way such a message is evil, lying, hypocritical, that is logical in the
sense of that same logic which finds that power is not at all anarchic and which believes
that history does exist. The part of the message which belongs to the meaning of the
film is immensely more real because it also includes all that the author does not know,
that is, the boundlessness of his own social, historical restrictions. But such a message
can't be delivered. It can only be left to silence and to the text. What finally now is the
meaning of a work? It is its form. The message therefore is formalistic; and precisely
for that reason, loaded infinitely with all possible content provided it is coherent - in the
structural sense.
In every shot it can be said I set myself the problem of driving the spectator to feeling
intolerant and immediately afterwards relieving him of that feeling.
Salò: an assessment
When Salò was originally submitted to the BBFC, it seemed as if the UK distributors
might be prosecuted. Geoffrey Nowell-Smith prepared this expert witness defence of
the film:
Early in 1978, when it looked not only as if Salò would be banned in Britain but that the
company distributing it would actually be prosecuted, I was asked to put on paper some
thughts about the film which might be useful to the defence if the case ever came to
trial. It was not a film I liked - I still don't - but it did not seem to me pornographic. Nor
did it seem to me likely to 'deprave and corrupt', to use the curious phrase of the
Obscene Publications Act. If anything it was liable to make people want to throw up. It
was, possibly, obscene, but only in a rather special sense. It was cruel and perverse but
the cruelty and perversion were a challenge, not an indulgence. Times have changed
since I wrote down my reasons why I did not think it should be banned. It may be that
people are less easily shocked and can take Salò in their stride. I hope this is not the
case. Pasolini made this film in order to disturb people, in order to make them face up to
something he felt they were unwilling to confront but was nevertheless real and
unescapable, the relationship between sex, death and power. In this respect times have
not changed. Ours is a highly sex-conscious culture which nevertheless displays a panic
fear of the darker and more dangerous side of sexuality. Indeed the more liberal the
culture becomes the greater the panic in the face of what is feared to lie on the other
side. Salò faces up to that other side and that is the reason why it deserves to be seen.
Pasolini's Salò
Pasolini's Salò is a disturbing but not necessarily particularly shocking film, and in
many ways decidedly anti-erotic. In terms of its author it shows a certain continuity
with the rest of his work in that themes are brought out into the open here which were
latent in some of his other films, but it also marks a sharp, if provisional, turn towards
the death forces against those of life and love celebrated elsewhere in his work.
Pasolini's immediately preceding film, The Arabian Nights, was the last of a trilogy of
films, based on medieval literary sources, which celebrated life, vitality and instinctual
sexuality. Salò approaches sexuality entirely from its darker side and appears to
represent a calculated break with its immediate predecessor (though not with the
author's work as a whole); and it was to have been followed, according to report, by
films which would escape from the nightmare atmosphere fashioned in it. Unfortunately
the author did not live to make any more films. If he had it might be easier to see the
present film in its full context, as a stage in a trajectory exploring the instinctual forces
regarded by the author as governing human life and variously expressed, perverted and
repressed in different historical and social circumstances.
I can understand Salò being found shocking by people with no knowledge of Pasolini's
earlier work, or again by people with no experience of 'X' films or whose experience of
erotic films is of a jolly (if occasionally perverted) romp. Salò, however, is absolutely
not an erotic film in the 'blue movie' tradition. Its theme is not erotic pleasure as such
but the perversion and subordination of love relationships to those of power. What
makes the film disturbing, as I shall argue later, is the way it plays on the audience's
uncertainties as to the boundaries separating normality and perversion, pleasure and
distaste. However, unlike earlier films, such as for example Theorem (1968) with its
affirmation of the positive, subversive value of homosexuality, Salò makes no claims on
behalf of what it shows. The subversion of accepted sexual patterns is presented as
almost entirely negative - with the proviso that a challenge is thrown out to members of
the audience as to where exactly they, consciously or unconsciously, would draw the
line between what attracts and what, inevitably, repels.
The film is set in the last days of Fascist rule in Italy, in a period when fascism had
ceased to be either popularly supported or politically viable, and when Mussolini's
puppet republic was sustained only by German arms and the fanaticism of the Fascist
'hierarchs'. It is significant - and the point would not be lost on an Italian audience - that
the only place-names mentioned in the film are Salò itself (headquarters of the puppet
republic) and Marzabotto (site of a notorious wartime massacre by the Nazi occupying
forces).
The film thus situates its subject matter firmly in relation to Fascist political power - not
so as to claim an historical connection between fascism and sexual orgies but rather to
propose an analogy between two forms of 'anarchy of power', political and sexual. Just
as fascism and Nazism can be seen as a form of the use of force and violence
unconstrained by Law and thus as an anarchy of the powerful against their victims, so
the world of the Marquis de Sade is seen as an anarchy of violence in sexual relations.
But just as fascism is not really anarchy, because freedom to infringe the law is reserved
to a small class at the expense of the rest, so the Sadian orgy is not an expression of
freedom either but takes the form of a brutal tyranny. Whereas in his previous films
Pasolini had attacked sexual conformity, here he considers - and rejects - the breakdown
of sexual norms in a context where the breakdown of normal constraints is not part of a
social and sexual revolution but simply the imposition, by a corrupt minority, on
unwilling victims, of its own impotence and perversion.
As the credits of the film make clear, Salò is an adaptation of Sade's notorious book The
120 Days of Sodom. It is important, however, to signal a major difference between the
two works. Sade's novel is about pleasure, albeit inextricably connected with power and
with death; Pasolini's film is almost exclusively about power, death and degradation,
and hardly about pleasure at all. In Sade's writing cruelty and the death wish appear as a
component of sexual pleasure, and when the pleasures of life are exhausted the supreme
pleasure - the supreme orgasm - comes in receiving and administering death. In Salò
everything turns on relations of power and the exercise of this power is shown in a pure
state. The fact that the instruments of power are the body or its organs seems at times
almost irrelevant. The holders of power in the film are shown as incapable of a direct
experience of sexual pleasure and as sexually impotent (at least in the sense of being
unable to make love). Male sexuality is represented in terms of the power of the penis,
seen either as a weapon of assault or as an emblem of abstract phallic potency. Female
sexuality and capacity for pleasure are totally denied and at any sign of their appearance
are instantly suppressed. The stories told by the procuresses to excite the company
contain no suggestion of there being any pleasure in it for the women themselves, while
the pleasure described for the men is solely that of displaying or exercising their own
force or of humiliating others. No woman is ever shown as choosing her own pleasure
(except for two girl victims, who sleep with each other and are threatened with
punishment, and a servant girl who sleeps with a guard and is shot on the spot). No men
except the executioners have a right to choose their pleasures and even for the
executioners bodily pleasure is masturbatory at best. More often 'pleasure' consists in
acting out fantasies whereby others are degraded, punished or tortured.
The Audience
It may be asked at this point what is the purpose of a work of art whose intention and
effect are to produce distaste at its own spectacle (which Salò undoubtedly does for a lot
of the time, not only because of the content but also because of the structure of
viewing). It can be responded that elements of distaste, displeasure, and even disgust,
have been part of the functioning of art at many points in history. Not only satirists and
moralists (Juvenal in the Roman empire, Swift in the 18th century) have played on these
elements, but there is a sense of unredeemed horror in much of classical tragedy and in
passages of Dante's Inferno (on which Salò is overtly modelled - especially in the
division of the action of the film into 'Circles'). In painting the infernal visions of
Hieronymous Bosch (15th century) are not merely grotesque but violently and
purposefully distasteful. Salò, however, is singularly unrelenting in its pursuit of a
hideousness redeemed only by an elegance of form. The only uplifting moments in the
film are deaths - the soldier and the black girl, the procuress who plays the piano - since
death is the only possible rebellion and the only possible release.
I would contend that the purpose of the film's makers was indeed to produce a vision of
hell, playing on a movement of alternating attraction and repulsion already intrinsic to
such visions but intensified in the film by virtue of its choice of subject matter. It may
seem surprising to invoke the Christian tradition here, in relation to a film such as Salò,
but it should be remembered that religion and the Church remained very important for
Pasolini even after he ceased to be a practising Catholic and his work is often sustained
by religious themes and a religious sensibility (most notably in The Gospel according to
Matthew, 1964). Within the Christian artistic tradition hell is represented not just a place
'out there', a site of unimaginable torments the vision of which is sufficient to terrify
people into keeping to the strait and narrow. It also represents something already
present within the soul. The power of Dante's Inferno lies in the fact that the sins for
which the characters are being punished are all sins which they are shown as having
chosen and desired to commit, so that readers of the book are put in a position where
they can identify with the sinner and with the ambition to commit the sin as well as with
the justice which punishes them. Deprived of its formal religious armature, a similar
conception can be found lurking not far below the surface of Salò - a conception of an
art which explores and exploits the will to sin in the process of bringing judgement to
bear on it. In lay terms what is at stake is the recognition (not always easy to make) of
the existence of perverse desire as latent everywhere, though expressed only in certain
individuals and under certain social conditions. What makes the film disturbing is not
that it provides an outlet for such desires but that it constantly frustrates desire.
Conclusion
Viewing of Salò was not intended by the makers to be a pleasant experience and in
practice most spectators do find it positively unpleasant - not because it is unequivocally
repulsive (though it sometimes is), but because the repulsion is balanced against
elements of attraction, whether normal or perverse. The fact that the film is disturbing in
a deliberately unpleasant way does not seem to me an argument for not allowing it to be
shown. Art - and film is no exception - has always contained elements that disturb
rather than console, that frustrate rather than satisfy. If the subject matter of Salò is to be
allowed to be spoken of at all, it must necessarily be disturbing. For it not to be so is
indeed to pander to pornography.
31 January 1978
Geoffrey Nowell-Smith is the editor of The Oxford History of World Cinema. His study
of L'avventura is published in the bfi Film Classics series.
I was twenty-seven when I first saw Pasolini's Salò. I worked nights at the popcorn
concession of the Westland Twins, a Laemmle theatre in Westwood specialising in
foreign films of the 'mature romance' variety. A friend managed The Pico, an art cinema
in the Fairfax District. It was autumn, 1977. I got off work at 10.30. I usually drove
home to Los Angeles, stopping at The Pico, where Salò ran that season as a midnight
movie. (Actually, I think it was an eleven o'clock midnight movie.) That's how I
happened to see this film, or parts of it, almost every night for two months.
I have a terribly spotty memory. This has served me pretty well as a writer, since I have
to fill the yawning gaps between what I truly remember with whatever my imagination
suggests 'must have happened'. I remember that melancholy period of my life in time-
stained flickers, a slide show of faces and landscapes across a paling light. I was twenty-
seven, but I think of myself then as 'pre-conscious'. The world was just beginning to
emerge as something separate from the muck of my private anxieties. I went to the
movies all the time. I believed that the emotions projected in films and dramatised in
popular songs were the same emotions I had. I felt tremendous nostalgia for a history I
didn't possess, for loves I'd never experienced, for bitter lessons I'd never learned.
One of the few places where you could get a drink after a certain hour was a Silver Lake
bar called The Headquarters, an S&M club where police impersonators in uniform
mingled with dowdier slaves and masters in dog collars and trouserless chaps. (Leather
had had its major effulgence much earlier in Los Angeles, celebrated in the classic
fistfucking porno, LA Plays Itself, and in movies by Wakefield Poole. By the late 70s
the hardcore raunch scene was more happening in New York and San Francisco.) There
were also the One Way, The Detour, The Spike, a constellation of more conventional
gay bars at the nether end of East Hollywood. The punk scene was in full mood swing.
One of the only boutiques on now-famous Melrose Boulevard was a tiny storefront
called Tokyo Rose, where you could buy pre-ripped T-shirts festooned with safety pins.
During the day, I worked at Legal Aid in Watts. A dispiriting job. I dealt with seriously
damaged, desperately poor people who lived in rotting bungalows where rats routinely
fell through crumbling ceilings into their breakfast cereal. I lived in a somewhat sinister
apartment hotel on Wilshire (The Bryson, where Stephen Frears shot The Grifters many
years later, simulating its mid-70s desuetude - when I lived there, Fred MacMurray was
the silent partner in the building's ownership) full of insomniacs, drifters, madmen, a
kind of Chelsea West: the night clerk was a preoperative transsexual named Stephanie.
It was a time of compulsive, almost mechanical sleeping around that felt good for a few
moments here and there. I had two jobs, and about two hours at the end of the night to
pick someone up in a bar. Whatever followed that took at least two more hours,
depending on the drive time, so I suppose in that faraway autumn of 1977 I got an
average of three hours sleep a night. That was my life, and Salò became for two months
a logical part of it, another little patch of soft, crumbly alienation and waking dream.
Salò is one of those rare works of art that really achieves shock value. Aesthetic shock
does have a salutary value, and it's always amusing to read the outpourings of some
cultural wastebasket decrying an artist who deploys shock 'for the sake of shock', as if to
qualify as a work of art, a work of art has to be something other than a work of art - a
tutorial in cherished homilies, an affirmation of quotidian values, and so on. I don't
think art has anything to do with morality and it shouldn't: I should be able to kill
everybody I don't like in a novel and get away with it, rape a twelve-year-old and piss
on my father's grave. It's not my job to tell anybody that these things are 'wrong'. It's my
job to show that these things happen, period.
Certain works yank the rug from under the meticulously planted furniture of middle-
class morality and the aesthetic torpor that decorates it. John Waters's Pink Flamingos,
Jean Rouch's Les Maîtres fous, Georges Franju's Le Sang des Betês, Andy Warhol's
Blue Movie, anything by Hershel Gordon Lewis, scattered moments in the films of
Kenneth Anger, Jack Smith, Jonas Mekas - well, you can make your own list of things
that lifted the top of your head off. I'm not sure that anyone is obliged to 'like' works of
art that fall into this category, or that 'liking' them is ever entirely the point, though
critics, quite often, mistake the celebration of the ghastly as an 'indictment of
contemporary malaise', etc. - in other words, they can only like something if it can be
bent to reflect their own moral certainties.
One way that Salò differs from the unabashedly perverse epiphanies of the cinema of
shock is in its pedantic moralism, which might have ruined it if the 'shock' part didn't so
thoroughly overwhelm the moralism. There is something absurdly winning about
Pasolini's explanation of the shit-eating in Salò as a commentary on processed foods,
and the fact that Pasolini was being sincere when he said it. And if you think about it,
his interpretation is essentially reasonable, though it's hardly the first thing a viewer
thinks when watching a roomful of people gobbling their own turds.
14
Salò eliminates a great deal of what makes The 120 Days the fantastic tale that it is.
Sade enumerates sexual acts that are physically impossible, gives his protagonists
organs that would properly belong to mules, and depicts tortures from which the victims
miraculously recover in order to be tortured again. Salò condenses this mayhem to
credible proportions, rendering Sade's decadent Salon as a sort of homicidal boarding
school.
The film's point of view is problematised from the outset. The only protagonists with
whom we might 'identify' are monstrosities, and the only 'look' that approximates that of
the viewer is the occasional, inexpressive gaze of a child-victim caught in unexpected
close-up. While the victims are utterly expendable, the outrages perpetrated on them are
pedagogical. They will 'learn' abjection from their captors, who initiate them into the
process of their own annihilation. However, it is also implied that ordinary fascism has
already trained them in passivity and infantile obedience to authority. We view the film
while imagining the victims' state of mind, at the same time we are denied access to it.
We see that the libertines will do nothing that corresponds to any normative code of
behaviour; that everything will end in massacre; that the narrative is a self-consuming
artifact that begins at zero and ends at zero. We anticipate its cruelties, in a sense look
forward to them, as to the satisfactory completion of a necessary rite. Salò engages
voyeurism rather than empathy, and attempts to turn voyeurism back on itself with
various distancing devices.
After the ritual of the forthcoming days is established, the film becomes a cycle of
routines, performed nightly in the same proscenium. Signora Vaccari, in her private
suite, consults her oval make-up mirror and adjusts her diaphanous off-the-shoulder
dress. This garment, a gauzy and obtrusive double triangle of piled chiffon decorated
with big flower-like appliqués of black acetate that stick out from it like poison quills,
acquires its own visual personality over several scenes in which Vaccari moves about
the Orgy Room in highly stylised, balletic swoops and swanning gestures. She tosses on
a cape-like black boa, studies herself in the oval mirror on the wardrobe door (which, as
it swings shut, reflects the other mirror), and then descends to the Orgy Room. The
bright, bluish light of the staircase, reflected on the glistening surface of a long table in
the centre of the hall arranged parallel to the left and right walls, echoes the design of
the film's opening shot; the long shot used each time a courtesan descends at story hour
renders the staircase as a kind of vaginal chute that delivers the grotesque. The Orgy
Room's architecture, its burnished colours, geometric Art Deco sconces, globe
chandeliers, 'conversation areas', symmetrical doors leading off to unknown parts of the
villa, becomes an imprint, eventually so familiar that the shifting groups of bodies
contained in it are shuffled like figments in a dream, their mutations scarcely perceived
by the viewer. The long shots that predominate in these scenes produce frustration, a
kind of 'anti-porno' fuzziness around the sexual acts - gropings, rubbings, etc. - that
transpire during the narrations. The standard perspectival framing of the hall has a
miniaturising effect on the people inside it.
On this first occasion the victims are clothed, in light-blue outfits resembling school
uniforms. Some sit at the feet of the libertines, others on chairs at either side of them,
flanked by the fuckers, whose enormous members are usually obvious from the way
their pants are photographed. The guards are also present, and the 'wives', at the
periphery of the action. Vaccari's stories recount her precocious corruption in childhood.
She commences with the story of a teacher who taught her to masturbate him. Although
Curval interrupts to fault Vaccari's first story for its lack of specific details, none of the
courtesans' subsequent tales is any more closely descriptive than the first: they all
suggest more or less arbitrary bits snipped out of the relevant sections in Sade, in
keeping with the metonymic inclination of the movie. The punctum, in each case, is the
sexual act at the heart of the story and its assumed effect on the audience within the film
as well as the audience beyond the frame.
I must mention again an important difference between Sade and Pasolini: the prodigious
excitements aroused by the (exhaustingly long-winded) stories in The 120 Days are
given an almost pleasureless cast in Salò. The libertines experience arousal almost
exclusively as a species of rage - and, curiously, at other times as an incitement to
peculiarly coquettish ways of acting out. There is, of course, nothing tender or romantic
in Sade; but there is, in everything, selfish pleasure. Pasolini's heroes appear to
experience their own depravity as an unassuagable irritant, no less than their victims'
experience of submission. This has to do with the stiff way that the actors have been
directed, the stifling lack of exuberance in their 'evil'. But it owes something too to
Pasolini's determination to implicate the viewer in this 'evil' while denying us the guilty
pleasure of viewing it head-on.
RW: Salò was made in 1975, the year, as you point out in the book, of Jaws. Clearly
cinema has moved on and in retrospect it's clear that Salò was a swansong of some kind.
Does it seem dated to you now?
GI: Salò doesn't seem dated to me, probably because there weren't imitations of it, and
a lot of what it shows is still upsetting to people. Also, the film is a period film, and
elaborately stylised, so it doesn't date the way a contemporary drama, slice-of-life sort
of film automatically dates as society evolves. As there isn't any realism in Salò its
reality hasn't become superannuated. It's hard to endorse the idea that cinema has moved
on. There isn't a single predominating tendency in cinema now. I would guess however
that some of the tics of 60s and 70s auteur cinema like Pasolini's might annoy a
contemporary audience: holding the camera a really long time on an extra's face,
messing up sight lines, that sort of thing. I probably overstated the importance of Jaws
in the book. I would guess that Star Wars had an even more baleful influence on things.
Incidentally, I just saw a film called Deep Blue Sea that makes Jaws, intellectually
speaking, look like The Age of Louis XIV.
RW: Pasolini's murder prevented him making films that might have qualified Salò, or
revealed more fully its relationship to his earlier work. Is this a problem?
GI: The problem is only there in the sense that Pasolini's murder and this particular film
were so readily linked, and eclipsed the rest of Pasolini's work, in a certain journalistic
kind of discussion. Salò is a satire of consumer society and perfectly consistent with
Pasolini's other films and his polemical writings. What he saw as an extreme spiritual
crisis in modern society demanded this particular form, and these extremely unnerving
images.
RW: The murder also had the effect of linking Salò to extreme gay sexual behaviour.
But is Salò a gay film? Is it specifically tied to the mid-70s, the time of Mapplethorpe,
Fassbinder, Foucault?
GI: Salò has a lot of homoerotic imagery and shows numerous homosexual acts - I'm
not sure what a 'gay' film is, what I think of as a 'gay' film would be something by
Almodovar, an intelligent person whose work doesn't interest me at all. Certainly you
can find things in common between Pasolini, Mapplethorpe, Fassbinder, and Foucault,
an exploration of subject matter considered 'extreme' by conventionally minded people,
but if we speak of the 70s (and I dislike this kind of decade-ism, though like everyone
I'm guilty of it), remember that everyone was testing the edges of acceptable content, in
films as disparate as Caligula and The Eyes of Laura Mars. Some of that exploration
reflected a deep questioning of normative sexual behavior and other values and some of
it was strictly about fashion.
RW: The relationship of Salò to Italian fascism has been questioned, and it does seem
like the link is made quite perfunctorily. To what extent do you see the film as relating
to the historical phenomenon of fascism?
GI: What's depicted in the film is a situation of total control over certain individuals by
other individuals. These controlling individuals represent the apparatus of the state:
clergy, banking, etc. In Salò the model of totalitarianism has been given a kind of
desublimated lubricity that's never found in totalitarian regimes, which are invariably
puritanical. Yet the appeal of fascism is an erotic one, and Pasolini wanted to show this
as an explicit thing, the power to control another person's body, to use it sexually while
destroying it, to get sexual pleasure from another person's suffering. Salò tries to explain
fascism as this physical expression of the will to power, and to lure the viewer into
complicity by showing a lot of stunningly gorgeous, naked teenagers. So we become
accomplices to this horror by virtue of our own desire to keep looking, to keep cruising
these adorable kids.
RW: Opposition to the censorship of Salò has often concentrated on the extent to which
the film makes us face up to fascism or to other, more contemporary abuses of power.
Do you agree with this? And, in any case, does Salò need to be justified in this way?
GI: I think the censorship really is based on puritanical phobias rather than any
conscious attempt to stifle a critique of fascism. Fascism is in the bloodstream of a
certain kind of moralist, but the main thing is this silly idea that people shouldn't look at
naked bodies, depictions of sex, etcetera, etecetera, because it's 'harmful', and behind
that is the question, harmful to what? I don't think Salò, or any other film, should have
to justify itself by having an agenda of social criticism. There is nothing wrong with
pornography. I don't happen to even agree that it's harmful to children. Most censorship
efforts today claim to be protecting children. If people cared about children, they would
look into child labor at Nike factories in China, or the places in Mexico where Disney
has its costumes fabricated by children earning thirty cents an hour.
RW: Your writing deals fairly unblinkingly with violence, including sexual violence,
and yet is also full of social conscience of a kind (radical, leftwing, antimainstream) that
Pasolini displayed too. Do you see any parallels?
GI: I couldn't possibly compare myself to Pasolini. I'm not anywhere near as prolific,
I'm not the kind of artist who is all over the map, continually producing things. I rather
envy the situation of artists and writers in Europe, where, if you're a novelist or a film-
maker and write a play, the play gets published in a nice edition by a small press, in
America you can forget about that. Very, very few American writers are treated as
serious artists in the European manner, and the ones who are have been around for fifty
years, queening it over the rest of us. Very few American writers ever get to see a
uniform edition of their work, or have all their work in print. Publishers simply do not
support writers on the basis of their literary worth, it's all about money, period. Even if
your editors believe in what you do very strongly, they have a bottom line that they're
more responsible to than they are to you.
I don't really think of my own work in terms of 'radical, leftwing, antimainstream', this
is how other people characterise it. (I am also routinely accused of having a grotesque
imagination, usually for describing things I find in the newspaper.) I think a certain way
quite naturally and my sympathies have always been with the unfortunate, I have that in
common with Pasolini. On the other hand, I would never resort to the kind of faux-
naiveté you find in a lot of Pasolini's work, I could never carry that off and anyway I
don't like it. And I think I have a much better sense of humour than he did, I'm not at all
taken with Pasolini's 'bawdy' side: as I said in the book, it usually looks bogus. I admire
Pasolini's humanity and I certainly would feel lucky to achieve in my life one-tenth of
what he did, but I am, quite sincerely, allergic to the grandiosity of the artist-as-public-
conscience as well as the artist-as-pop-star, these are roles that require a certain degree
of self-delusion and a great deal of relentless self-promotion.
RW: You say in the book that writing it, and rewatching the film for it, made you
change your mind about Salò. How, finally, would you assess it?
GI: Actually, I said that watching all of Pasolini's movies again after some years, I
changed my opinion about some of them, but in fact Salò seemed very much the same
as when I first saw it: if there were such a thing as an ugly jewel, or an ugly butterfly,
that would be the way to describe it. It's one of the few films that really burns a hole in
the medium, that you can't really categorise or reduce to a schematic; it's just a very
weird and arresting picture, and somehow more like a great painting than a great movie,
like Uccello's Profanation of the Host or Géricault's Raft of the Medusa. I think its
analysis of consumer society has become an absolutely standard one, which is to say,
one that many thinking people accept as valid, but if this analysis were present to us all
the time, in the bald terms Pasolini presents it in, we would simply go mad and be
unable to do anything about anything. So it reflects a spiritual and intellectual impasse
that Pasolini might have found his way out of, had he lived; now that I think of it, it
does catch the spirit of that particular time, the suffocation of the mid-70s, the dead
utopian hopes, the pointless fucking around.
Gary Indiana has been described by the Guardian as "one of the most important
chroniclers of the American psyche". "One reads Mr. Indiana's ... work with
astonishment at his talent" (New York Times). Born in 1950 in New England he now
lives in New York and Los Angeles. After two collections of short stories, Scar Tissue
(1987) and White Trash Boulevard (1988), he published his first novel, Horse Crazy, in
1988, followed by Gone Tomorrow (1993), Rent Boy (1994) and a pair of books about
'true crimes', Resentment: A Comedy (1997), based on the trials of Lyle and Erik
Menendez, and Three Month Fever: The Andrew Cunanan Story (1999). From 1985 to
1988 he was Art Critic for the Village Voice, and a collection of his critical writing, Let
It Bleed: Essays 1985-1995, was published in 1996. His play Roy Cohn/Jack Smith was
filmed by Jill Godmillow in 1994. He has acted in more than 20 films and played The
Voice of the Radio in Neil Bartlett's London production of Genet's Splendid's. He is
currently working on a new novel, Depraved Indifference, due out next year. He will
pay a rare visit to London to attend the BFI/ICA conference on Salo on 29 and 30
September.
This is an updated version of an article that first appeared on the bfi website in August
2000.
Salò had its first screening in Britain at the Old Compton Street cinema club in 1977. It
was shown in its full uncut version without a certificate from the BBFC. After a few
days, the cinema was raided by the police, who confiscated the print and threatened
action against the cinema owners under the offence of common law indecency. The
cinema appealed, explaining that the film was screened uncut only after taking advice
from the then Secretary of the BBFC, James Ferman.
Salò had originally been submitted to the BBFC by United Artists in January 1976,
when it was refused a certificate on the legal grounds of gross indecency. Gross
indecency was defined in British law as 'anything which an ordinary decent man or
woman would find to be shocking, disgusting and revolting', or, which 'offended against
recognised standards of propriety'. Unlike the Obscene Publications Act - which at that
stage did not apply to films - gross indecency allowed for no defence of artistic or
cultural merit to be mounted on the film's behalf. Furthermore, there was no
requirement to consider the film - or the film's purpose - as a whole. If any part of the
film was indecent then the whole film was illegal. The only way in which the Board
could remedy such a problem was through extensive cutting to remove any possible
elements of 'indecency'. United Artists assumed that cuts would make the film
acceptable, but James Ferman had argued that editing would 'destroy the film's purpose
by making the horrors less revolting, and therefore more acceptable'. Ferman did not
feel that the film should be cut, describing Salò as 'one of the most disturbing films ever
to be seen by the Board, yet its purpose is deeply serious... it is quite certainly shocking,
disgusting and revolting - even in the legal sense - but it is meant to be. It wants us to be
appalled at the atrocities of which human nature is capable when absolute power is
wielded corruptly'.
Clearly, this film was very different from Pasolini's 'trilogy of life' and sexual liberation
which had preceded it (The Decameron, The Canterbury Tales, and The Arabian
Nights), and United Artists sold the rights on to Cinecenta, who were advised by
Ferman to show the film without a certificate, on a club basis, so that it could be seen
uncut as Pasolini had intended. The police prosecution was an embarrassment, and
Ferman intervened and spoke to the Deputy DPP.
By that time the campaign to bring films within the scope of the Obscene Publications
Act, which was led by Ferman, had borne fruit in the Criminal Law Act 1977, and the
indecency charges were dropped. The film could now be considered as a whole, as
could its cultural and artistic value. Nonetheless, it was made clear to Ferman that
charges might still be brought under the 'deprave and corrupt' test of the Obscene
Publications Act if the film were to be shown uncut. Ferman therefore agreed to take
advice from two distinguished QCs and to assist in the editing of a club version. In
1979, the DPP agreed that proceedings need not be taken against this reduced version.
The cut version prepared by James Ferman for club screenings lost nearly six minutes
of footage, removing - amongst other things - the coprophagia, the extreme violence at
the end of the film, and certain elements of homosexual behaviour that were believed to
be vulnerable to prosecution. It also added an on-screen prologue to legally 'explain' the
context of Mussolini's regime at Salò and the writings of the Marquis de Sade. This
version was shown at club cinemas throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s and
became a regular feature at the Scala Club Cinema in King's Cross, where it often
screened on double bills with Pasolini's Porcile (classified 'X' uncut by the BBFC). The
club version was, however, never formally submitted to the BBFC for classification,
presumably because there was by that stage no commercial benefit in considering a
wider theatrical release.
By the early 1990s the only surviving print of this edited version was almost
unwatchable and badly damaged, as the apologies in the Scala's programme notes from
1990 onwards attest. Possibly the last screening of the cut version was at the Electric
Cinema in 1993. The uncut version of the film resurfaced at the NFT in 1996 as part of
the bfi's Pasolini retrospective, coinciding with the publication of The Passion of Pier
Paolo Pasolini by Sam Rohdie. The print provided to the NFT in 1996 was the full
version, on loan from the Fondo Pier Paolo Pasolini, and this may have been the first
time this version had been seen in the UK since the NFT's Pasolini season in 1982. The
1996 NFT screening was certainly the last public screening of Salò in the UK until late
in 2000 when the film was revived in a new print by the bfi.
In September 2000, the bfi unveiled its new, uncut print of Salò at a two day conference
at the ICA in London. The conference coincided with the publication of a bfi Modern
Classic on the film by Gary Indiana and preceded a proposed resubmission of the film
to the BBFC. The conference included two screenings of the film, a series of talks about
Salò and a general panel discussion. Participants in the conference included James
Ferman, former Director of the BBFC, Sam Rodhie, David Forgacs, and Gary Indiana.
Salò was formally resubmitted to the BBFC by the bfi in October 2000. This submission
came shortly after the BBFC had published a new set of classification guidelines, in
September 2000, themselves the result of a major process of public consultation. The
Board had stated in its News Release when launching these guidelines that the BBFC
would no longer intervene with material for adult viewing unless the material in
question was either illegal or genuinely likely to be harmful.
The Board was satisfied that Salò was neither illegal nor harmful within the terms of its
new guidelines and therefore agreed to classify the film '18' uncut for cinema exhibition
on 16 November 2000. The film had been viewed by a number of examiners at the
Board, as well as by the Board's Director, Robin Duval, and its President, Andreas
Whittam Smith. The film was subsequently submitted for video classification by the bfi
and was awarded an '18' uncut certificate for video and DVD release soon after on 19
December 2000.
In reaching the decision to pass Salò '18' uncut, the BBFC considered that although the
film was undeniably - and intentionally - shocking, it did not contain anything that
would 'deprave and corrupt' viewers - the basic test of the Obscene Publications Act. In
fact, Salò's purpose and its likely effect on viewers seemed to be quite the opposite. In
the Board's view, the film depicted its events in a cold, detached and ritualised style,
deliberately removing any hint of titillation. The film also mirrored de Sade's verbose
literary style, alienating the viewer through its repetitions. Although the film contained
many disturbing scenes, the Board agreed that its intention was to deliberately shock
and appal audiences at the evil of fascism and to vividly illustrate the idea that 'absolute
power corrupts absolutely'. Much like James Ferman in the 1970s, the BBFC agreed
that any attempt to cut the film would undermine the director's purpose by making the
film less shocking, the events depicted more palatable, and therefore less effective.
Although the film was suggestive of many horrors, the Board noted that most of its on
screen violence was in fact relatively muted and shown in long shot or extreme long
shot. There were no lingering close ups and the film's climactic death scenes could even
be said to appear technically unconvincing by modern standards.
The Board was conscious that although the film had been considered potentially
'indecent' at law in 1976, the protection now granted by the Obscene Publications Act
(extended to cover film in 1977) made Salò less problematic in 2000. The Obscene
Publications Act requires that any film should be considered as a whole and that its
more difficult scenes should not be considered in isolation. Given Salò's serious
purpose, and its avoidance of titilatory or pornographic content, the Board concluded
that the film could not be considered obscene within the meaning of the Act, nor
regarded as harmful to viewers.
The Board also considered that, ultimately, Salò, is a film of limited appeal and is
unlikely to ever receive widespread distribution. Those people who chose to view the
film would, because of its notoriety, be aware of its contents. Nonetheless, the Board
did recognise the public's desire for more detailed consumer advice, also highlighted by
the recent public consultation exercise, and the consumer advice issued for Salò drew
clear attention to the content of the film: "Contains strong violence, sexual violence and
scenes of torture and degradation".
After the BBFC had classified the film, Salò was screened at the ICA, NFT and a
number of regional film theatres. The print remains available for hire from the bfi,
although the easy availability of the video and DVD version - released in 2001 - has
probably done more to make Salò accessible to a wider audience. Ironically, before the
BBFC agreed to classify the film for video and DVD release, copies of the deleted
Region 1 DVD of the film were changing hands for up to £300.00 on ebay. From 2001,
by contrast, the film would be available on video and DVD in the UK from any outlet
for a far more modest outlay. Almost inevitably, Salò appeared late in 2001 on the Film
Four channel, introduced by Mark Kermode. The screening was accompanied by a half
hour documentary on the film, 'Salò - Fade to Black', featuring behind-the-scenes
footage of Pasolini working on set.
Salò has for many years been available in France where it continues to play
occasionally at Parisian art cinemas (French certificate '16' uncut). Until recently, it was
also widely available on video in France (notably from the Virgin Megastore on the
Champs Elysees). On its original 1970s release in France, however, Salò was rated 'X'
and confined - along with Ai No Corrida - to limited screenings in Paris porn cinemas
(similar to the recent situation with Baise-Moi).
Salò has also been available uncut on video in Italy (where legal action was originally
taken against it in the mid 1970s), uncut on video in Germany, and in a strangely
trimmed version in Holland (with, amongst other things, some of the whipping
reduced). In Denmark and Austria where there is no adult film censorship, Salò is a de
facto '16' uncut. In a notable example of Nordic liberalism, Salò was passed '15' uncut in
Sweden as early as 1976, a decision that the Swedish Censors commented caused 'some
surprise' with the public. This was particularly so given the Swedes traditionally hard
line attitude on violence (which contrasts with their famously liberal attitude to sex).
Across the border, Salò fared less well in Finland, where it was originally refused a
release in 1976. Nonetheless, in 1984 the Finish Film Archive were granted permission
for the film to be shown to persons over 18 at two special screenings at the Film
Archive cinema. A subsequent submission by Universal Artists for general release in
1985 was unsurprisingly unsuccessful and the film remained banned in Finland until
2001 when adult film censorship was finally abolished.
In the former Eastern Bloc countries, the fall of communism has led to an almost
complete end to censorship. In one amusing example during 1999, Salò played in a
Czech drive in theatre, billed on posters around Prague as 'Pasolini's controversial
historical drama'. Salò had become a date movie for the first - and probably only - time
in its history.
Salò has also been released on video in the US in an uncut, unrated version, also briefly
being made available by Criterion on DVD in 1999. The DVD was withdrawn shortly
after release although stories vary as to whether this was due to a botch over rights or
the film's content. Given the film's long availability on video in the States it seems that
the former is more likely. Interestingly, Salò's censorship record in the US is not as
unblemished as this might suggest, largely as a result of the arbitrary enforcement of
'local community standards'. A copy of the video was seized from the Pink Pyramid gay
bookshop in Cincinnati in 1994, although the case was subsequently thrown out on a
technicality. The US 'Video Retriever' guide to this day recommends 'discretion' when
ordering this title.
The most recent banning of Salò appears to be in Australia. Salò was first banned in
Australia in 1976 and was refused classification a number of times after that. In 1993
the ban was finally overturned but this led to a number of awkward questions being
asked in Parliament about the Office of Film and Literature Classification's decision.
After an amendment to Australian law in 1996, Salò was reviewed again and its
classification withdrawn in 1998.
Finally, it is interesting to note that in the UK, Salò has historically often been screened
under the title Pasolini's 120 Days of Sodom. The BBFC's record for the 1976 film
reject and the 1991 satellite TV reject both list the film as 120 Days of Sodom (see the
BBFC website for details). Like the earlier 'Trilogy of Life', until 2000 Salò had only
been made available in the UK in a dubbed English language version and never under
the on-screen title Salò. The 1996 NFT screenings of the uncut version were, however,
Italian language with subtitles and correctly titled Salò, as were the 2000 cinema and
2001 video and DVD releases.
Craig Lapper is Chief Assistant (Policy) at the British Board of Film Classification. He
has also written pieces on the censorship history of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (for
the Universal DVD release) and Straw Dogs (for the Freemantle DVD release).
Prologue
Salò, a small town on Lake Garda, was the last place in Italy where Mussolini held
power. He had been deposed in the summer of 1943 and then rescued by the Nazis from
his prison north of Rome to escape the advancing Allied armies. With the help of
German and Fascist troops, he set up a new puppet Republic - the Fascist Republic of
Salò - and during the eighteen months that it lasted, over 72,000 people were killed, a
further 40,000 were mutilated, and yet another 40,000 deported to the German
concentration camps.
In the whole of Italian history, no period can equal the wave of concentrated sadism
perpetrated in northern Italy during the last year and a half of World War II. Some of
these deeds were the work of eighteen year-old boys, rounded up as conscripts to serve
with the Fascists. In one horrifying massacre at Marzabotto, these boys were forced to
help in the butchering of 2,000 inhabitants, including 53 other youths hanged for failing
to report for this compulsory service. On other occasions, civilians were tortured,
women and children sexually defiled and killed.
The names 'Salò' and 'Marzabotto' are instantly recognisable to all Italians. They
symbolise the horror of this, their last civil war, the last time a truly evil government
ruled in any part of Italy. For - what was to be his final film, Pier Paolo Pasolini chose
the actual scenes of these atrocities - the region where he himself had grown up - as the
setting for a denunciation of the corrupt use of power.
For his plot, he chose de Sade's novel The 120 Days of Sodom, in which four libertines
order the rounding up of innocent young victims for an orgy of debauchery. In Pasolini's
film, sexual brutality becomes a metaphor for political brutality, as four wartime
Fascists act out these eighteenth-century fantasies with the help of four procuresses. In
the ceremonies they perform, no speech has been added to what de Sade's characters
say, and no detail to the acts they commit. Pasolini has simply transferred the action
from eighteenth-century France to the 1944 Republic of Salò.
He uses, too, some of the imagery of Dante's Inferno, with its terrible Circles of Hell,
where those who had done violence to man and God included the blasphemers and the
sodomites. For Pasolini, there was, too, the violence of dehumanised sex, of the
exploitation and degradation of the human body, which he felt to be at the heart of
Fascism. In one circle of Dante's Hell, as in Pasolini's film, the sufferers are immersed
in excrement to await their fate. In Italy, such imagery is traditionally associated with
the degradation of the body and the spirit.
Pasolini's horror at this unbridled use of power is one the distributors of this film believe
we all share. They regret that the version you are about to see has had some of its most
extreme moments eliminated. The Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions has
stated that if the full version were shown again in the United Kingdom, the exhibitor
might risk prosecution. It is to avoid this that the film has been re-edited, but we hope
that Pasolini's final testament survives.
Epilogue
It would be naive to think that what happened in Salò will never happen again. Murder
and torture are still practised in secret in many parts of the world - and the families of
the victims, as well as many of the collaborators, will have to live with the memory of
these atrocities.
GÊNERO
Insistindo sobre a nocividade da repressão sexual, vendo “em todos os fatores que são
nocivos para a vida sexual, que reprimem sua atividade e deslocam seus objetivos”, os
fatores patogênicos principais das “neuroses atuais” (neurastenia no sentido “restrito” e
neurose de angústia), ele parece adotar principalmente o ponto de vista dos sexólogos
sobre os efeitos mórbidos apenas da privação sexual. Mas é para chegar a isso: não é a
privação sexual e seu paliativo masturbatório, não é a sexualidade consciente de si
mesma, mas a atividade fantasística sexual, com a qual se obtém satisfação e que desvia
da realidade, que é aí um fator patogênico. A masturbação ou satisfações semelhantes
vinculam-se à atividade auto-erótica da primeira infância. Em virtude desses vínculos
e do fato de essa atividade auto-erótica se sustentar com uma atividade fantasística que
“eleva o objeto sexual a um grau de excelência que não é fácil encontrar na
realidade”(Freud, 1908ª, p. 43), essa regressão da vida sexual às suas formas infantis
pode parecer patogênica. [pág. 14-5] A psicopatologia da vida sexual – Catherine
Desprats-Pequignot
Se o século XIX se preocupa com a licença sexual e a esmaga, no século XVIII
floresceu toda uma literatura erótica, e, em suas Confissões, Rousseau presta um
testemunho sem qualquer vergonha de sua sexualidade. A repressão e a culpabilização
“médica” da sexualidade, e particularmente da masturbação, que se desenvolvem na
perspectiva das idéias de Tissot no decorrer do século XVIII, atêm-se à idéia de que o
instinto sexual seria um vetor de anomalias. Na masturbação vê-se a finalidade do
instinto. É citada como origem das piores doenças, e é por isso que nela se fala nos
manuais de higiene e saúde. NO final do século XIX, começa-se a recolocar seriamente
em questão as acusações de qualquer natureza contra a masturbação: ela se torna um
sintoma e não um motivo de perturbações. O início do século não dispõe de
contracepção segura, as doenças venéreas grassam(blenorragia, sífilis): o sexo é vivido
como local de todos os pecados, de todos os perigos. A “moral sexual civilizada”, ou
seja, a moral burguesa, define o contexto do exercício lícito da sexualidade. E. Zola dá o
tom que provoca consenso: “...O homem e a mulher só estão decerto aqui embaixo para
fazer crianças e matam a vida no dia em que não mais fazem o que é necessário para
fazê-las. [pág. 16] A psicopatologia da vida sexual – Catherine Desprats-Pequignot
O que torna revolucionárias essas novas posições e continua a provocar escândalo é que
ele argumentou sua concepção da sexualidade em sua relação com o inconsciente,
vinculando desse modo, pela primeira vez, a concepção do inconsciente, os sintomas e a
sexualidade. Freud mostra a sexualidade consciente embasada e ordenada por uma vida
libidinal insconsciente, e o sujeito consciente, “senhor de si”, conduzido por uma
determinação inconsciente radical co-extensiva ao sexual. A ruptura de concepção que a
psicanálise opera deve-se a essa articulação fundamental entre uma subjetividade
dividida (Spaltung: divisão do sujeito com ele mesmo) e o campo sexual. É aí, ontem
como hoje, que aquilo que ela ressalta foi e continua sendo inaceitável. É
principalmente sobre esse ponto essencial que a psicanálise se separa radicalmente da
sexologia ou da psiquiatria. [pág. 20-1] A psicopatologia da vida sexual – Catherine
Desprats-Pequignot
“Cada um de nós ultrapassa aqui ou lá, em sua própria vida sexual, as fronteiras
estreitas do que é normal”, escreve Freud, e ele ressalta “a falta de limites determinados
nos quais encerrar a vida sexual dita normal”(1905, p. 35). J. Lacan constata da mesma
maneira: “No homem, as manifestações da função caracterizam-se por uma desordem
eminente. Não há nada que se adapte” e diz, a respeito do amor genital: “Seria um
processo natural? Não se trataria apenas, ao contrário, de uma série de aproximações
culturais que só podem ser realizadas em certos casos?”[1953-4,p. 159]
G. Lanteri-Laura não parece levar isso em consideração. Vê em Freud um
“neomoralismo”: Através de seu caminho, a ciência ensinava que o normal era o acesso
ao estágio genital e, desse modo, o heterossexualismo banal encontrava-se garantido por
um saber sub-repticiamente admitido por todos. A sexologia seria apenas a formulação
simplificada e normal dessa evolução do pensamento freudiano ou mais exatamente
dessa deformação que garantiu tão bem sua difusão na ideologia contemporânea.
[pág.26] A psicopatologia da vida sexual – Catherine Desprats-Pequignot
A teoria das pulsões é, “por assim dizer, nossa mitologia”, dizia Freud em 1932. Essa
teoria, central na elaboração metapsicológica freudiana, opõe, em primeiro lugar, na
primeira tópica, pulsões sexuais e pulsões de autoconservação e depois menciona, no
segundo tópico, a articulação conflitual entre pulsões de vida(pulsões sexuais e pulsões
de autoconservação) e pulsões de destruição e de morte(por estas Freud esclarece
principalmente os problemas colocados pelo sadismo e pelo masoquismo). [pág. 30-1]
A psicopatologia da vida sexual – Catherine Desprats-Pequignot
Se algumas zonas do corpo ditas “zonas erógenas” são fontes privilegiadas das
pulsões ditas parciais, Freud chegará a dizer que o corpo inteiro(externo e interno)
é uma zona erógena, ou seja, investido libidinalmente. Para a psicanálise, portanto,
o corpo não se reduz ao “soma” e a processos biológicos – com relação aos quais
ela afirma até todo o peso, em algumas de suas perturbações, da ordem
psicossexual. [pág. 31] A psicopatologia da vida sexual – Catherine Desprats-
Pequignot
Com a teoria das pulsões sexuais, Freud abre o caminho à concepção segundo a qual a
sexualidade dos humanos não está numa relação objetivável e natural com uma
finalidade biológica de reprodução da espécie, mas numa relação subjetiva, social e
lingüística com uma finalidade inconsciente de satisfação das pulsões. O campo do
pulsional sexual revela-se desse modo co-extensivo no ser humano à constituição e à
determinação da vida psíquica, vida psíquica da qual Freud destaca a divisão (Spaltung)
irredutível com a conceitualização do inconsciente. [pág. 32] A psicopatologia da vida
sexual – Catherine Desprats-Pequignot
Representação de desejo e escolha de objetos – A criação de desejo do objeto “seio”
tenta preencher a perda constitutiva do “desejar”. Nesse sentido, é possível dizer que o
objeto “seio” é o primeiro da série dos objetos substitutivos fantasiados ou reais,
parciais ou totais(o corpo, uma pessoa) que virão ao longo de toda a vida “colonizar” o
lugar vazio dessa perda, apresentar-se no lugar do objeto primordial perdido, o único
que poderia proporcionar satisfação pulsional completa, que traria justamente, assim, a
extinção do desejo. Se o objeto da pulsão é “aquilo em que ou por meio do que a pulsão
pode alcançar seu objetivo”(Freud, 1915), é portanto em função do desejo que esse
objeto é investido com um objetivo de satisfação. Em si mesmo o objeto da pulsão é
portanto indiferente. Freud sublinha: “Não é necessariamente um objeto estranho, mas
igualmente uma parte do próprio corpo. Pode ser substituído à vontade ao longo de
todos os destinos conhecidos pela pulsão. [pág. 43] A psicopatologia da vida sexual –
Catherine Desprats-Pequignot
A diferença entre a neurose e a saúde só concerne à vida desperta num e outro caso e
desaparece nos sonhos noturnos[...] o homem saudável possui também em sua vida
psíquica aquilo que torna possível a formação de sonhos e dos sintomas[...]também se
entrega a recalcamentos [...]. O homem saudável é portanto um neurótico em potencial
[...] sua vida pretensamente saudável é penetrada de uma multidão de sintomas,
insignificantes, é verdade, e de pouca importância prática. [Freud, 1916-7, p. 489]
Os desejos formadores de sonhos “são em geral de natureza perversa, incestuosa ou
revelam uma hostilidade insuspeita com relação às pessoas próximas ou amadas”. E
prossegue:
Ora, como todos os homens têm esses sonhos perversos, incestuosos, cruéis, como
todos esses sonhos não constituem conseqüentemente o monopólio dos neuróticos,
estamos autorizados a concluir que se deve ver nisso o modo de desenvolvimento
normal e que os neuróticos só apresentam ampliado e aumentado, o que a análise dos
sonhos nos revela igualmente no homem como boa saúde. [363-4][pág. 69]
Cada ser humano vem assumir um lugar que, desde antes de seu nascimento, lhe é
designado pelo desejo dos pais e o situa no mundo como menino ou menina. Não é raro
o desejo dos pais(explícito e/ou inconsciente) e o sexo anatômico e civil não
coincidirem. A história psicossexual do sujeito carregará sua marca mais ou menos
importante, mas a maioria dos humanos nem por isso recolocam em questão, pelo
menos conscientemente, a correspondência entre seu sexo e sua identidade sexual. Em
compensação, alguns sujeitos recusam de modo explícito o sexo e a identidade civil que
lhes coube em virtude da inadequação destes à convicção que têm de serem homens ou
mulheres. Os chamados transexuais colocam dessa maneira em toda a sua radicalidade a
questão da posição subjetiva da identidade sexual. [pág. 74] A psicopatologia da vida
sexual – Catherine Desprats-Pequignot
A convicção, a certeza do transexual de ser, como diz Stoller, “uma mulher num corpo
de homem” (ou inversamente), não deixa de fazer ressoar a questão neurótica histérica:
O que é ser uma mulher? Ou esta: quem sou, um homem ou uma mulher? Porém o
neurótico que se identifica inconscientemente em seus sonhos ou em seus
comportamentos com uma figura do outro sexo, como Dora(Freud, 1905), que se
identificava com seu pai e com M. K...., não apresenta por isso a convicção do
transexual e não questiona seu sexo ou sua identidade sexuada. Em compensação,
coloca a questão do que mantém juntos o sexo e o significante: O que é o sexo dito
feminino? Essa é uma das questões colocadas por Dora. Assim, na situação em que o
neurótico se coloca e coloca a questão da identificação simbólica, o transexual, pode-se
dizer, a escamoteia: ele “confunde o órgão real com o significante.” [J. Lacan][pág. 78]
A psicopatologia da vida sexual – Catherine Desprats-Pequignot
O que diríamos pertencer não à neurose, mas à perversão, é o fato de o sujeito não
conseguir ou não conseguir mais ser desejante e encontrar “em corpo” gozo a não ser
que certas condições sejam sempre e precisamente satisfeitas. Aí não se trata mais de
uma questão de preferência ou de jogo, mas de necessidade, de coerção. Desse modo, o
que faz uma perversão desses traços perversos no amor “é o fato de que, de repente, o
sujeito só consiga entrar no campo do desejo por essa única porta”.[pág. 86] A
psicopatologia da vida sexual – Catherine Desprats-Pequignot
Pode-se entender dessa maneira as questões sobre “o gozo do outro” que muitos
amantes se colocam após o ato sexual, tendo esgotado todos os recursos de sua
“disposição perversa”: será que correu tudo bem, será que o outro gozou de fato?
Será que se soube ser um bom parceiro? Aí está uma das diferenças entre a
posição neurótica e a posição perversa. O pervertido não se coloca a questão sobre
o gozo do parceiro reduzido à posição de instrumento colocado a serviço do saber
sobre o “gozo do outro”, do qual se prevalece. [pág. 88] A psicopatologia da vida
sexual – Catherine Desprats-Pequignot
O terceiro é a obra do Marquês de Sade, em que a sexualidade aparece pela primeira vez
– sob a forma de uma ficção de caráter fortemente político – como um instituto próprio
da condição humana, independente da religião e da moralidade, e suficientemente
crucial para determinar por si mesmo a carreira dos sujeitos sociais(de forma ativa ou
passiva). E o quarto, finalmente, é a da constituição ao longo do século XVIII das
primeiras formulações sistemáticas de uma economia política, ou seja, de uma teoria da
reprodução coletiva da espécie humana. A fisiocracia, considerada comumente como a
primeira de tais fórmulas, enfatizava particularmente a preeminência da produção
“natural” a partir da terra – a agricultura. [...] No caso de Sade e da fisiocracia, a ruptura
atinge a qualidade físico-moral da condição humana, seja pela ênfase nas condições
“naturais” da reprodução coletiva(e seu propociamento político), seja pela ênfase na
condição hedonista, “não reprodutivo”(antes mesmo destrutiva), do desejo (e sua
revolucionária apologia): “Français, encore um effort...”. [A SEXUALIDADE NAS
CIENCIAS SOCIAS: LEITURA CRÍTICA DAS CONVENÇÕES.Luis Fernando Dias
Duarte. pág. 44-5]
A ênfase da sexualidade como uma montagem tem como correlato o destaque conferido
ao conceito de pulsão( e de pulsão sexual) como sendo o que talvez melhor expresse a
originalidade do pensamento de Freud nesse terreno. O conceito de Triebe (pulsão) é
forjado exatamente para dar conta do caráter não instintivo da sexualidade humana, de
sua plasticidade, de suas múltiplas, contingentes e mutantes feições. [PSICANÁLISE E
SEXUALIDADE: CRÍTICA E NORMALIZAÇÃO. Inês Loureiro pág. 86]
Mas como explicar então a trajetória das representações audiovisuais que, em muitos
casos, antecipa-se a definições jurídicas co-legais? Na contramão destas tendências, e
em sintonia com pesquisadoras que de alguma maneira vêm chamando a atenção para a
especificidade dos significados que circulam em meios de comunicação de massa como
o cinema e a TV, este trabalho pretende sugerir que, de maneiras em geral imprevistas e
não planejadas, ao captar, expressar de maneiras diferentes e difundir representações, os
meios de comunicação participam ativamente de processos de mudança e da construção
social de significados. [SOCIOLOGIA, PESQUISA DE MERCADO E
SEXUALIDADE NA MIDIA: AUDIENCIAS X IMAGENS. Esther Império
Hamburger, Heloisa Buarque de Almeida. pág. 131]
As fantasias do reverendo inglês são uma boa metáfora para começar a pensar nas
fantasias corporais entretidas em nossas e em outras sociedades. De fato, em todas as
sociedades humanas, o corpo é desfigurado e re-configurado para adequar-se a fantasias
socialmente compartilhadas, isto é, às convenções sociais vigentes.O que recentemente
passamos a chamar de “mutilações genitais” são só uma pequena parte dessas re-
configurações que afetam o corpo e a alma daqueles que as experimentam.
[FANTASIAS CORPORAIS. Mariza Correa. pág. 175]
Com Sade nós descemos a uma espécie de abismo do horror, abismo do horror que
devemos conhecer, que é, além disso, um dever particular da filosofia – pelo menos
da filosofia que eu represento – colocar em questão, esclarecer e tornar conhecido,
mas não, eu diria, de uma maneira geral. Eu sou bibliotecário; é claro que não
colocaria os livros de Sade à disposição de meus leitores sem determinadas
formalidades. Mas uma vez cumpridas tais formalidades – a autorização do
encarregado e as demais precauções – acredito que, para qualquer um que queira
ir ao fundo do que significa o homem, a leitura de Sade não é apenas
recomendável, mas também indispensável(Pauvert,1957: 56)[ OS PERIGOS DA
LITERATURA: EROTISMO, CENSURA E TRANSGRESSÃO. Eliane Robert
Moraes.pág. 226]
Sade disse e repetiu ao longo de toda a sua obra que desejava conhecer o ser
humano na sua totalidade, avançando sem medo sobre territórios perigosos, nos
quais seus contemporâneos iluministas não ousavam pisar. Para ele, tratava-se de
“revelar a verdade por completo”, o que implicava abrir mão de todo e qualquer
preconceito para ampliar as possibilidades de entendimento do homem, levando
em conta suas fantasias mais secretas, cruéis e inconfessáveis. “A filosofia deve
dizer tudo”, reitera a personagem principal de Histoire de Juliette(Sade, 1998:
582)
Quais seriam , vale perguntar, os perigos subjacentes a esse “tudo dizer”? Que tipo
de subversão esse tipo de literatura – que interroga o homem a partir de
transgressões fundamentais, como o incesto, a tortura e o assassinato- propõe para
quem a lê? Ou, colocando a pergunta de outra forma: que ordem de ameaças aos
indivíduos e à sociedade pode se ocultar em uma obra que manipula
representações do mal, tal como a ficção de Sade, ou mesmo a de Bataille? [OS
PERIGOS DA LITERATURA: EROTISMO, CENSURA E TRANSGRESSÃO.
Eliane Robert Moraes.pág. 227]
As idéias de Bataille parecem apontar para uma terceira margem desse debate.
Para o autor de L’erotisme, os livros que expressam o mal não se justificam por
uma simples ausência moral, mas sim por expressarem uma “hipermoral”. Trata-
se de uma literatura que busca “descobrir na criação artística aquilo que a
realidade recusa”, operando uma espécie de “ruptura com o mundo” e
conseqüentemente com as exigências sociais de ordem ética e moral. Sua visada
última seria a de “despertar, de colocar em jogo propriamente dito, virtualidades
ainda insuspeitas”(Bataille, 1979: 171 e 180).
Ao realizar uma tal exploração fora das dimensões éticas ou morais, os autores
desses livros – que têm em Sade um de seus representantes mais ilustres – abrem
mão de todo e qualquer escrúpulo da tradição humanista para discorrer sobre
tudo aquilo que nega os princípios desse mesmo humanismo. Para tanto, eles se
impõem a tarefa de ouvir a voz dos algozes, considerando seus motivos, e até
mesmo a sua falta de motivos, de forma a construir o que Bataille chama de
“cumplicidade no conhecimento do mal”.
Da mesma forma, essa adesão à hipermoral estaria na base do desafio que a ficção
sadiana não cessa de propor ao leitor, na tentativa de estabelecer com ele uma
“comunicação intensa”. Ou seja, para que essa ordem de conhecimento possa ser
reconhecida, já que ela se legitima no ato da leitura, é necessária a cumplicidade de
um sujeito que não olha o mal como estranho, como alteridade, mas sim como uma
possibilidade que o concerne. O leitor assume, nesse caso, uma parceria com o
escritor. [OS PERIGOS DA LITERATURA: EROTISMO, CENSURA E
TRANSGRESSÃO. Eliane Robert Moraes.pág. 231]
Este foi também o caso, prossegue Foucault, das numerosas perversões catalogadas por
psiquiatras, médicos e outros profissionais. Estas formas diversas de aberração sexual
foram ao mesmo tempo abertas à exibição pública e transformadas em princípios de
classificação da conduta, da personalidade e da auto-identidade individuais. O propósito
não era terminar com as perversões, mas atribuir-lhes “uma realidade analítica, visível e
permanente”; elas foram “implantadas nos corpos, furtivamente introduzidas em modos
de conduta indignos”. Por isso, na legislação pré-moderna, a sodomia era definida como
um ato proibido, mas não era uma qualidade ou um padrão de comportamento de um
indivíduo. No entanto, o homossexual do século XIX tornou-se “um personagem, um
superado, um registro de caso”, assim como “um tipo de vida, uma forma de vida, uma
morfologia”. “Não devemos imaginar”, nas palavras de Foucault,
Que todas estas coisas anteriormente toleradas chamassem a atenção e recebessem uma
designação pejorativa quando a época acabava de outorgar um papel regulador ao único
tipo de sexualidade capaz de reproduzir o poder do trabalho e a forma da família... Foi
através do isolamento, da intensificação e da consolidação das sexualidades periféricas
que as relações de poder vinculadas ao sexo e ao prazer se espalharam e multiplicaram,
avaliaram o corpo e penetraram nos modos de conduta.
[...]
O sexo tornou-se de fato o ponto principal de um confessionário moderno. Segundo
Foucault, o confessionário católico foi sempre um meio de controle da vida sexual dos
fiéis. Envolvia muito mais que apenas as indiscrições sexuais, e tanto o padre quanto o
penitente interpretavam a confissão de tais pequenos delitos em termos de uma ampla
estrutura ética. Como parte da Contra-Reforma, a Igreja tornou-se mais insistente em
relação à confissão regular, e todo o processo foi intensificado. Não apenas os atos mas
também os pensamentos, as fantasias e todos os detalhes relacionados ao sexo deveriam
ser trazidos à tona e examinados.[pág. 29] A TRANSFORMAÇÃO DA INTIMIDADE
– Anthony Giddens
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