GARY INDIANA'S MEMOIR I Can't Give You Anything But Love left me with a keen wish to read more of his work, but his fiction (it looks like) leans toward noir mysteries, which I don't much care for. Turns out, though, that he has published a fair amount of non-fiction, including this, a short study of Pasolini's final film from the "BFI Modern Classics" series.
Salò, as its subtitle indicates, is an adaptation of the Marquis de Sade's novel about a small set of aristos doing whatever they feel like doing with a group of captives; as its title indicates, it is set in the last few month of the Fascist regime in Italy (the city of Salò was the regime's capital once it was forced out of Rome).
Indiana looks not only at the film's exploration of fascism's affinity with sadism, but also at how Pasolini detects the same affinity in the post-war neo-liberal order and consumer capitalism. Among the useful points: although what is going on in the palace the fascists have commandeered could be broadly described as an orgy, it has nothing to do with pleasure. Power is exercised entirely as a means of producing pain and humiliation.
Indiana's book brings to bear a deep familiarity with the film (as he also mentioned in I Can't Give You Anything But Love, owing to the particular circumstances of his life circa 1975, he saw the film almost every night for a month or so). He also brings to the party a variety of insights into Pasolini's life and career and an unfailingly engaging prose style. Salò is a hard film to watch out and not even all that easy to read about, but if you're looking for a strong short book about it, this is the one.
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