One erotic law, four libertines, ten servants, twenty teens and a remote castle constitute the film “Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom.” So, it is not hard to imagine that once “Salò” was set for production in 1975, its violence, eroticism and disregard for morality had earned a permanent place on many countries’ blacklists. Even today, American viewers can only watch it through the Criterion Collection (if you are a good citizen who never pirates).
Unfortunately, I am not. I watched it because of its notorious sex scenes, which seemed understandable at my age. It is just like in your adolescence, where you always ignore the “Warning, Must Be 18 to Enter” sign and browse those dubious random websites.
But such excitement quickly faded when the director Pier Paolo Pasolini suggested the setting of the Salò Republic, the Italian fascist reservation in the last eighteen months of World War II.
What was even more scary to me — who was assigned to ignorance and laziness at birth — was seeing countless symbols that I had to use my brain to process. There is a reference to Pasolini’s fellow countryman Dante and “Divine Comedy.” The four libertines, who presumably held fascist backgrounds, were titled as the Magistrate, the Duke (which also happened to be the name Mussolini himself took), the Bishop and the President, all representing the upper, governing class that controlled the working system of the fascist regime.
Thus, “Salò” is an ironic film in many ways from the beginning. For those who wish to see infamous sex scenes, Pasolini lectured them with Dante. For common Italians, Pasolini forced them back to think about the nation’s enduring fascist past. For those insane enjoyers of “Divine Comedy,” Pasolini depicted a journey with sinners, victims and bystanders — a pilgrimage toward the sober depravity that Dante and Virgil catalogued in their epics.
“ If I had known, I would never have gone on a trip with those two biggest nerds in history. Unfortunately, I did. If I had known, I would never have gone on a trip with those two biggest nerds in history. Unfortunately, I did. ”
For the one hour and 57 minutes of the film, I remained seated in pain, disgust, desire to go to the restroom, and ultimate shame for watching a whole film that feels like the offspring of depraved corner AO3 and Tumblr.
There is one scene that shone through my backache and disgust toward the end of the film. The four libertines take turns torturing and slaughtering teens; yet the audience watches this scene through a telescopic lens, as if we too are one of the libertines who was enjoying this overflowing violence. The audience saw the euphoric Duke juxtaposed with twisted faces of young victims and their chopped-off tongues. The audience, suddenly, was like God in the world as the four libertines thought they were. Or perhaps more like an unbridled beast dominated by the unspeakable curiosity, violence and eroticism deeply stewed within.
It is bad, disgusting and extremely unsettling. But I am not necessarily uncomfortable because I could not take any blood or naked bodies. I felt uncomfortable in the sense that I was being exposed to immorality that seemed to belong to me.
So, is this why “Salò” was so infamous, even though we got so many David Cronenberg’s and other disciples’ clones throughout history? Because we, the audience, can not take the VIP seat in sadism and voyeurism?
Like so many others, I love Friday night. It is an opportunity I get to feel the nature of the world and myself by simply ignoring all societal responsibilities that everyone tries to remind me of every day. Honestly, I felt the same effect Salò could theoretically produce. “Salò” is a film that serves as a resort to exercise the disgraceful ideas that are actually part of us: sex, BDSM, Total Power Exchange, violence, objectification and extremist ideology.
You might not believe it, since you are an excellent academic nerd who got into THE Claremont Colleges. But if they are not part of human nature, why are these ideas being invented in the first place? Did Homo Sapiens see those things from the fire?
So, I need to ask why again. Why is there even an incompatibility between our nature and our acceptance of it?
In my case, it is because of my own intangible yet omnipresent morality that I feel shame in seeing myself blatantly accept everything in the film that is condemned by 90 percent of people in the world.
It is the precise morality that encouraged me to donate 81 cents at CVS; it is the precise morality that made me resent the autocratic encroachment on civil liberty; it is also the precise morality that enslaved my body with discipline and, later, responsibility imposed by society.
Just imagine the world to be a magnificent prison, and society is the warden. Through rules and punishment, the intangible warden secretly indoctrinates us with proper expectations, routines and regulations that infiltrate the mechanics of our body and mind over time. We know that we should not steal anything or murder anyone for a prominent reason: We do not want to pay for an attorney or spend at least a decade in jail with no good food. When such coercion eventually redefines itself as a form of responsibility, we voluntarily take on the shackles that push us to strive to avoid any activities that will make friends, strangers or even ourselves question our fulfillment of societal expectations — being a citizen with morality.
Therefore, we, the audience, hated “Salò” because of the omnipresent warden who internalized us for so long to be a part of the principles of moral living. We resented “Salò” because of what it represented — the possibility of us becoming sadists that are commonly disregarded and punished by ethics and society. We loathed “Salò” because our potential dark nature was usurping the spot where morality originally occupied — a fear emerged from a disappearing sense of civility that defined us as human beings constructed by and participating in a society.
Thus, I do like “Salò” a lot, which you can certainly tell just by realizing how I was greatly influenced by Michel Foucault to write this column. If you can stomach people eating faux-human waste, you should watch it as well (you can even borrow my Criterion Blu-ray DVD).
Leslie Tong PO ’29 loves films and history. She didn’t win anything from the performative male contest but still claimed to be the most performative female in her year just by her passion for matcha and classical CDs.
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