Art, Science and Politics

Power and sexuality in Pasolini’s Salò

In this essay I am going to focus on the relation between power and sexuality in the film Salò or
the One hundred and twenty days of Sodom. The use that Pasolini does of sexuality to express
the structure, consequences and results not of power itself, but fascist power. And this is not
only because the four men that have planned all that occurs on this movie are fascists, but is also
because the infinite references made it by Pier Paolo Pasolini to relate what happens in the film
with what happened at the fascist period of Italy. One example of that is the title of the movie,
referring to the Republic of Salò, presided by Mussolini since 1944, and more examples will be
seen throughout the essay.

Some details

The film, published in 1975, takes place in Marzabotto (fictional Salò’s Republic), where the
Waffen-SS perpetrated a massacre against the civilian population in 1944 1. is divided by four
acts, the same that splits The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, and that are the Anteinferno,
the Circle of Manias, the Circle of Shit and finally the Circle of Blood. Apparently this is
because Pasolini wants to introduce the spectator the idea that the history which is going to
watch is happening in the inferno, and it will probably handle some of the sins which appear in
the mentioned poetic work of Dante. Another literature work referred on Pasolini’s Salò is the
One hundred and twenty days of Sodom, by the Marquis de Sade, which name is also presented
on the title of the movie itself.
The needed explanation for this second appeal is the content, which sexuality scheme will be
used by Pasolini to structure his movie, so it is going to be seen during the description of the
keys of each film’s act.

Anteinferno

Because of that, during the beginning, we can see the kidnapping of eighteen people (nine of
them are men, and the rest are women) who will become the sexual and sadly slaves and victims
of the four men who have planned their sequestration: the President, the Magistrate, the Bishop
and the Duke. Every each of them considers itself as a fascist, and it is interesting to highlight
that the President shows a “perverted” face that doesn’t end here.

1
Duncan, G. (n.d.). Massacres and atrocities of world war II. [online] Available at:
http://members.iinet.net.au/~gduncan/massacres_axis.html#Italy [Accessed 10 Dec. 2016].
Once they have carried out this firstly actions, they will transport their victims to a Palace in
Marzabotto, where they will explain to them the regulation and the laws that can not be
contradicted or resisted. Death will be found in these cases.
The eighteen people have to live in a little regime of total submission to the sexual desires of the
fascists in so explicit ways.

The scenes that give life to this first chapter are interpretable as the ascension to power of
fascism, the instants after the outset of the terror.

The Circle of Manias

After the establishment of the regime, we start to be able to watch how it is supposed to work.
The prostitutes who accompanied the fascist and collaborated with them on the kidnapping of
the eighteen people begin to tell a story in order to awake the sexual desire of the four men, and
all they have announced before is exposed in a practical way, always as violations or abuse with
the kidnapped people.

All of this is the settlement and the demonstration of the fascist power, and the very explicit
sample of it is the assassination of a girl, showing the death body to the rest as a form of
knowing which the future of someone who breaks the law is. Also is produced a gradual
devaluation on a psychological layer of victim people in the Palace, in scenes like the one where
we can see them eating meat like dogs in front of the fascists. In addition, most of the victims
are seen naked in the central room where they meet with the responsible prostitute.

“To see that others do not enjoy it, it is what gives me joy, to provoke the worst
humiliations derives the power to say oneself: Well looked at, I am happier than the scoundrel
that is called people. Wherever men are equal and there is no difference, there will be no
happiness.”

So far, everything we have been able to see is how the sexuality abuse and violation, with
sadomasochist forms, has the effect and result of a power relation.

The Circle of Shit

After viewing every “sexual slave” naked, we can see how this psychological devaluation
continues through the new responsible prostitute, who is only valued by her bottom.

The particularity of this chapter is based in two scenes: first, when the eating of faeces is
introduced, as if the scene of the prostitute’s bottom was a premonition. That starts principally
by a victim being obligated to eat excrement through the imperative of the Duke, and continues
mainly with a banquet of the same thing, but now is from every slave. And the second great
scene is when fascists devise a game which tries to choose someone by them and to kill him.
The singularity also is that the picking will be through the seeing of their bottoms and the
deciding which the best is. Then we can observe arbitrariness, again terrorism and
dehumanization reflected on just one quote:

“How could you imagine that we were going to kill you? Do not you know that we
wanted to kill you thousands of times to the limits of eternity, if eternity had limits?”.

Maybe for the spectator is surprising to watch that the election system that fascists use in the
described scene is democratic between them, even is inclusive with the President (the
assassination of the kid he has chosen would be his responsibility in required case). But at the
end, a fascist state is just a very number limited democracy.

Finally, in the Circle of Shit we can also see a few thoughts made and told by the fascists, like
that one:

"There is something more monstrous than the act of the sodomite, and it is the act of the
executioner. [...] The act of the sodomite has the advantage of being repeated thousands of
times. [...] One can also find a way to reiterate the act of the executioner."

In many ways we can also understand by this quote, what the Bishop tries to say is that the
fascism can find more than one way to demonstrate itself.

The Circle of Blood

At last, the first scene of this ending chapter is the main which helps to understand that maybe
everything falls on the prostitutes’ backs. That is because fascists organize a wedding and these
women have to make enjoy everyone after realize people are all sad. To this we must add the
others responsibilities of the prostitutes (collaborate, rule and tell stories). Maybe used by
Pasolini as a metaphor to say that in fascism the society degenerates.

In this direction, we can see the concept of treason on following scene, when every victim
betrays their partners just to cheat death, arriving to a collaborator man who raises his fist like a
Partisan before Bishop kill him. Maybe we can see this as a way of saying that it is possible to
see some “communists” collaborating with the fascism, like Bombacci (cofounder of the
Communist Party of Italy who collaborated with Mussolini) did.

Ending, the torture, mutilation and humiliation fill the screen while sounds a voice that recites a
poem from Ezra Pound, a propagandist of Mussolini and Salò’s Republic 2, completing the film
2
García Calero, J. (2011). Ezra Pound, el traidor era un espia. La Vanguardia [online] Available
at: http://www.abc.es/20110507/cultura/abcp-ezra-pound-traidor-espia-20110507.html
[Accessed 10 Dec. 2016].
with a scene where we can see two collaborators of fascists dancing and talking about
banalities, knowing that behind them there are people being tortured. Like it was a critique
about the indifference or a reference to the cold blood of the commanders of fascism.

Other Details

Once treated much of the crux of the film, it can not be overlooked the following reflection
made by the Duke:

“We Fascists are the only true anarchists, naturally, once we're masters of the state. In
fact, the one true anarchy is that of power.”

It is possible to interpret this sentence. On one hand, we have the coherence of it in the film
inasmuch as the fascists have the power in the Palace, there is established a regime of
arbitrariness, concept that could be similar as anarchy. But on the other hand, maybe Pasolini
wanted to make a comparison between anarchism and fascism. Both of them, for example, call
themselves revolutionary syndicalists, but this is staying on the surface. It is also compulsory to
know the syndicalist influences on the Verona Manifesto that gave way to the Salò’s Republic in
social issues3.

Another question is the stylistic facts of the film, where we can find symmetry in most planes of
it, and the equality between every plane and its contra-plane. In addition, many times we can see
dispositions between the characters that mark their power position. Also, there is a repeated
presence of the number four. Fascists are four, their daughters either so, the same case with the
chapters and with the number of discourses that told every prostitute 4.

Some comments and conclusions

In my opinion, there is a tendency which has not changed over the years, based on the
psychological analysis of fascism, and that is for me a formal way to study that phenomenon.
However, what we need to understand fascism is not a formal method to stay in appearance, but
a way to go to the essence of the issue. The formal structure of fascism, that is, ideology,
psychological variables, political institutions, it can not be understood without the class factor,
or the economy context if class is not considered an academic layer. And Pasolini’s film is
another twist about the attempt to analyze fascism like a kind of madness, arbitrariness of the
human being or something nonsensical. How it is possible that every commander of the Salò’s
3
Pugliese, G. (2001). Italian Fascism and Anti-Fascism: A Critical Anthology. Manchester,
United Kingdom: Manchester University Press.
4
Saez Villarino, A. (2015). Saló, o los 120 días de Sodoma (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1975). EAM
Cinema Magazine [online] Available at: http://www.elantepenultimomohicano.com/2015/08/salo-
o-los-120-dias-de-sodoma.html [Accessed 10 Dec. 2016].
Republic did what they did? Because they were defending their own interests to the edge.
Opposite interests between other countries and between other social classes, so they adopted the
discourse they needed to reach that before applied it.

In conclusion, this is not a film about fascism, but about a great idea of mixing the work of
Marquis de Sade and Dante Alighieri to show how the power moves within sexuality and vice
versa. Maybe the last stage of the power itself would be the unfolding of the sexuality, in point
of fact, and taking the quote of the Duke about the anarchism.