Salo or the 120 days of Sodom

Salo or the 120 days of Sodom, by Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1975.

If you want to make films, you cannot ignore that masterpiece. Its visual richness matches the power of its purpose. It is a visual adaptation drawn from texts by Donatien de Sade, Roland Barthes, Pierre Klossowsky, Maurice Blanchot, Simone de Beauvoir, Philippe Sollers. Because of its abstractness, it is a most radical statement about hierarchical relationships of power, history, human nature, and cinema itself.

In an insular castle, notables of the republic of Salo, Lombardy, Italy, train a group of youth in a totalitarian spirit, and apply in the straightest manner an array of rules which sole aim is their own pleasure.

“Indeed, the true and only anarchy is power.”

The whole film takes place in a doubly enclosed space: the city of Salo is surrounded by water, representing the political isolation of the republic in its historical context; within the city, the castle is enclosed in a circular quickset hedge concretising the isolation of the youth out the outside world. The action is organised in three topical circles, directly drawn from Dante’s Divine Comedy. To this pitiless logic of the spatial and temporal structures, responds the no less straight social organisation of the group. The paradisiacal setting hosts an infernal action.

Strictly hierarchical, that organisation constitutes a structure as symmetrical and hermetically uniting than the neo-classical architecture of the place. Age and gender acting as discriminating factors, a rigorous parity reigns, giving each character their role and position in the hierarchy. The masters, the ‘notables’, call each other ‘Duke’, ‘Excellence’, ‘My Lord’, ‘President’. The symbolic order in Salo is an alliance of moral, military, socio-profesional and political regimes, namely nobility, middle class, church and political class. They are accompanied by four old women who have the double task to publicly tell them tales meant to stimulate their desires, than to make sure these desires are immediately and fully satisfied. The objects and instruments of these are eight young men and eight young women, carefully chosen amongst the population of the city. Eight soldiers enforce the law, and eight servants discretely provide material services.

The unity of the castle is founded on the law, written by the masters. Its aim is to systematise the training provided to the youth during their initiatory stay, ruled in its most minute details. Salo law equally applies to all, but it codifies the desires of the masters, therefore securing their double power, to use the body of the youth at their free will, and to punish them if they transgress the order that objectifies them, if they disobey the leaders they are the subjects of.

The population of the castle is a church, i.e. a religious assembly united by rituals replicating parts of the Christian liturgy to its own ends. All the activities apart from sleep are performed in common; eating, singing, listening to stories, and highly ritualised so as to coerce the individual to give up its critical distance and stick to the values of the group. Solitude and intimacy are repressed, as well as free sexuality, for they threaten the coherence of the flock, which symbolic order is based on the sacrifice of the child. “In the shadows of young girls in flower, they won’t believe their misfortune. They’re listening to the radio, they’re sipping tea. At the degree zero of freedom, they don’t know that middle class has never even hesitated to kill its sons”.

Pacific Black(mail) Box

The forum Pacific Black Box was not a disaster, but it had its frustrating bits.
More than a month after its end, I finally received news from Taloi Havini, the head of Pacificblackbox inc. Only because I asked via email. Georgia McRae, the spokesperson, kept silent.
Not only did Georgia not acknowledge my input as a technical assistant in the Pacific Black Box (PBB) blog, did Taloi and her leave Buka without even saying good bye to me (too busy again for these formalities?) after three weeks of silence, did Taloi question my attitude in a mail to Stephen Mori, who raised more than 20 000 aud for the PBB forum. I was kept out of the project the whole time I was asked to partake it. In spite of the massive amount of paperwork Taloi and Georgia spent day and night to produce, I never got more than the timetables for the two first days and the program of the opening ceremony in my hands. Maybe the paper was too dear a raw material to be spoilt on keeping a mere assistant informed.
I cannot quite understand, especially a posteriori, at the retrospective view of what happened, why Taloi insisted so much on having me there. I was obviously a pain in the arse for her, any initiative of mine was out of place, like, for instance when I taught youth how to use a computer during their free (unsupervised!!!) time. I ended up being handed as least and as menial tasks as possible, like plugging and unplugging cables, setting up and packing up the projector for the evening gatherings while Georgia and Taloi earned a well deserved rest in their bedroom; I hardly partook the elaboration of the final video during the second week.
In Sydney, we agreed, Taloi, Stephen and I, that I would document the forum and bring back a short documentary we'd show at the Mori Gallery. Then, once in transit in Cairns, Georgia and Taloi made clear that filming was not a priority in my agenda. I was already asking too many questions, raising too many objections that upset them both. Woops. Finally, once arrived in Buka, I was gently blackmailed to give up filming lest my colonialist point of view of occidental woman prevails; I had to sign the working agreement all the facilitators were served with, so that all the images recorded remain the exclusive property of the PBB. It was that or quitting.
Well, call me occidental and colonialist if you want, after all, even if my ancestors were colonised indigenous dudes, background doesn't make one immune to the culture they're exposed to. But then, these adjectives are not less applicable to Taloi, Georgia, and everyone who has embraced the occidental, e.g. the Australian way to lead and rule an indigenous society, than to me. Now, working along with communities and minorities is the most fundamental aspect of my work as a video-maker. I have never released images without the expressed agreement of the persons concerned. I felt and still feel offended by the amount of ignorance and distrust displayed by the PBB organisers towards my work. I regret the impossibility of any dialogue under the continuous pretext that they were too busy; I deplore the censorship upon my point of view as an outsider; I wonder about the ideological control of the images produced during and after the forum.

The actual Pacificblackbox inc. seems to be on stand-by. Their blog hasn't been updated for nearly four weeks, and "Comments on this blog are restricted to team members", you're gently told if you or anyone tries to leave a message.
I wish I was wrong and too impatient and emotional about it. But I am pessimistic about the posterity of this forum now. Please, someone, prove me I am in the wrong!