Bit of effort to find a tasteful graphic for this one..

Being old and middle-aged I was lucky enough (or perhaps in view of the film itself “unlucky enough” is more accurate) to see Salo when it was not banned in Australia. During the dark days of the Howard Regime of course a lot of films wowsers obviously could not understand got themselves banned after being available to see for decades. Every backward society goes through these phases, they even banned Last Tango in Paris in some places. After all if I am in government and I find something offensive then I must ban it from everyone according to my own moral and religious dictum’s, regardless of whether they actually agree with them (not)…

Salo is perhaps most appropriately about fascism (see above) and is one of those films that is both awful to watch and so full of metaphors and symbols you have to sit through it at least once if you are a serious student of films. The central characters are a duke, magistrate, bishop and president representing the four forms of authority and from this the films many themes about abuse of power develop.

The film has been greatly criticized for its scenes of torture and various cruelty; that’s if you just watch them out of context and are into finger pointing. When you consider that the Director Pier Paolo Pasolini himself was a prisoner of the Gestapo and tortured over two days during World War II, you kind of start to see he might be trying to say something by the set days of torture inflicted on the films victims. Clearly he had experienced the basest of human behavior first-hand and wanted to show to us warts and all what was never shown in the history books. Clearly he had experienced abusive power (in his case nazism) first hand and wanted to horrify us by what unchecked power can be capable of.

Another criticism of the film was that the victims were represented as teenagers (although the actors were clearly older), extremists of the type that ended up seeing the film banned even suggested it was child pornography! Perhaps they are unaware that teenagers engage in sexuality? (if you could call anything in Salo “Sex’) I suspect they really felt as I do that the film was even more yucky because it was happening to adolescents. I doubt however that the film would have had its terrible impact had Pasolini inflicted his torture upon old crones and people my age; its the very fact that the victims are so young and innocent that we feel greater pity rather than maybe morbid curiosity in our emotionally blunted culture.

I can not say that Salo is a great film achievement because it isn’t and there are many problems with the way certain themes are investigated. I tend to feel that films should enlighten and inform, that suggestion is films greater power rather than actual graphic depiction. But that’s just what I think personally and everyone should have the right to see this or any film if they choose, to make up their own mind what is and isn’t offensive.

The on again off again banning of Salo