Editor's Note: Jane Mills wishes to note the superb contribution to discussion of Salo by Professor Catherine Lumby when the film screened at the Randwick Ritz as part of an earlier extensive season of Pasolini's films supported by Cinema Reborn. ***********************************
Introduction to Pasolini’s Salò, or the 120 days of Sodom (1975) by Associate Professor Jane Mills at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas, Dendy Cinema, 29 August 2026
I know of no work of art as shocking as Pasolini’s Salò.
Murder, torture, sexual abuse are all depicted.
Most shocking of all is the depiction of absolute power and its abuse:
Abuse by for libertines -- an aristocrat, a bishop, a magistrate and a high financier, representing the State, the Church, the Law and Big Business. Their power underpinned by a network of informers and collaborators. Their victims reduced to commodities, owned and disposed at whim.
[Were Pasolini making the film today, would he, I wonder, have included a media magnate?]
Salò is shocking –and dangerous – not only because of what it tells but how it tells. So many dangerous ideas inform how it was made.
· Pasolini uses the classic writings of the Marquis de Sade and Dante to create a dark allegory to critique fascism, capitalist consumerism, and absolute power.
· His sets display elegant art deco décor and avant garde artwork – art that the Nazis banned as decadent— to highlight the ugly brutality of the libertines.
· The film’s creative cinematography positions audiences not as the victims (which might invite us to empathise with them), but as the abusers,- thereby making us, the audience, collaborators.
These are dangerous ideas, pushing filmmaking ideas to their limits.
But even more dangerous than Pasolini’s ideas opposing fascism and neoliberal consumerist economics, are these ideas themselves. De Sade’s sadomasochism shows how power reduces the human body to a commodity. Neo-capitalist consumerism requires the brutal destruction, enslavement, and extermination of indigenous and traditional societies – i.e. what Pasolini called “anthropological genocide.”
These dangerous ideas aren’t why the film was persistently banned in Australia. But before outlining the Australian history of censoring Salò, let’s remind purselves that in 1966, the Roman Catholic Church abolished its Index of Forbidden Books and Films. It shifted its philosophy from enforced institutional censorship to trusting the mature moral conscience of individual believers.
Not so Australian governments. Our Film Classification Board might state: “adults should be able to read, hear, see and play what they want.” But on this, it doesn’t deliver.
The film was released in 1975 – three days after Pasolini was tortured and murdered. In 1976 Australia banned it. A year later. No one could buy, sell, import, exhibit or see it – it offended, was obscene.
In 1993, it was unbanned. The classifiers deemed it: “a serious work of art pursuing a serious political purpose.” The sky didn’t fall in, but in the mid ’90s, “reason began to slumber, and monsters gathered.” A revised classification code now ordained artistic merit was no longer permissible as a major defense.
And in 1998, Salò was re-banned.
In 2010 it was unbanned. Salò received a R18+ rating. Which should mean anyone over the age of 18 can see it. More on this later.
The censors’ language justifying the bans often makes no sense.
1. You should know the Classification Board does NOT ban or censor, it only “classifies.” However, one of the categories is RC, meaning ‘Refused Classification.’ This means it can’t be sold, hired, advertised, distributed, or shown publicly without potentially incurring a fine of up to $825,000 and/or 10 years’ imprisonment.
I’m no English language scholar. But I can spot a euphemism when I see one. And as George Orwell wrote: “political language has to consist largely of euphemism…and sheer cloudy vagueness to make brutal actions sound acceptable.”
2. Obscene supposedly means “to cause or give offence.” To offend means: “saying or doing something rude, upsetting or embarrassing.” It also means: “to go against a law, duty, or standard.”
· Hopefully, fascism does go against our laws.
· I also hope it goes against the moral standard to which most Australians adhere.
But this is an entirely circular argument: You “offend” by going against a law, duty or standard by going against a law, duty or standard. And Logic 101 teaches that using the conclusion of an argument as its own premise, is a logical fallacy. More evidence, I suggest, of what happens when reason slumbers.
3. As to the “revolting fetishes” of which you're about to see plenty.
Are audiences –are you– really going to rush home afterwards to eat poo and ask your partner to wee on you? And if you do? I should care –let alone mind?
(Pasolini’s recipe incidentally: melted Swiss chocolate, condensed milk, broken biscuits and marmalade. And a mixture of weak tea and apple juice for the pee.)
4. Then there’s “artistic intent”: I am completely certain Pasolini had no intention of ‘offending.’ His intentions were to shock, disgust, revolt Or, as he put it: “to awaken a slumbering society and remind audiences of past horrors.”
These horrors were Salò, the puppet Nazi state that ruled most of Italy from September 1943 to April 1945. Pasolini applies “obscenity” metaphorically to the absence of the rule of law under fascism.
5. As for the film’s offensive “cruelty with high impact”? Can the impact for seeing it even approach the actual impact during the 17 months of Salò?
· The 9,000 Jews and 30,000 political opponents, partisans and workers arrested and deported?
· 90% of whom who died in Nazi extermination camps?
· The 70,000 civilians and resistance members killed in reprisal massacres by German and Italian Republic forces?
6. Lastly, that R18+ ruling: Adults can now only see Salò as a home video package, containing contextualizing material – such as essays and documentaries. (Don’t get me wrong, the documentaries and essays with the Criterion BluRay are excellent.) But this patronizing attitude sincerely offends me. Since when has adult education been mandatory in Australia?
Similarly Cinema Screenings are permitted at festivals only if contextualizing critical analysis is provided. I, ladies and Gtntlement, am your mandatory adult education! This ruling contributes yet more “cloudy vagueness” aiming make censoring actions censorship acceptable.
~~~<<>>~~~
When I saw Salò again recently (for the third time), the film awakened me not just to past horrors but to present horrors.
The film’s arguably comic ‘beautiful bum contest’, evoked television reality shows where contestants willingly participate in their own commodification. And the film’s absurdist weddings reminded me of ‘Married at First Sight.’
They’re perfect examples of Pasolini’s notion of anthropological genocide which he defined as “a form of destruction that homogenizes society and destroys authentic human relationships by turning the human body itself into a marketable commodity.”
And how could I not think of:
· the absence of the rule of law in today’s internment camps and occupied territories,
· current leaders remaining in power despite arrest warrants for committing genocide and other war crimes?
· a President actively renaming art centres and campaigning to disable the International Criminal Court?
To my amazement, for the first time, I also saw some tenderness and protest, even some hope.
Now, this is NOT what Pasolini intended. He intended to shock us from our complacent, complicit slumbers while powerholders abuse with impunity.
I recently likened Salò’s relationship with Australian Classification Board to game of ping pong. I regret making this comparison. Censorship is not a game.
Salò awakens audiences to the dangerous idea that in a world fearful of ideas, the biggest threat to democracy is not the portrayal of violence and evil, but the silencing of those who express dangerous ideas like accountability, freedom, equality.
This is a film that’s unwatchable and must be watched.
