Abstract
May 1968 meant for youth a turn in their ways of representing and acting. Likewise, it meant the complex transformation of cultural, political and economic discourses of which the representation of the divinity was not an exception. This article will describe how Bernardo Bertolucci and Pier Paolo Pasolini represented the divine figure in the context of the Italian 68. As a song by Francesco Guccini states, God is dead but the desire for his resurrection still exists. The analysis focuses on two short films from the collective film Amore e rabbia (1969): "Agonia" by Bertolucci and "The sequence of the fiore di carta" by Pasolini. The analysis shows that far from wishing and declaring divinity’s their death, both authors call into question the divine existence and its relevance in a world characterized by suffering and injustice as well as by solidarity and love. It is in the contradictory interstice between love and rage that the relationship of these directors with the divinity happens.
Highlights
In 1967, a Francesco Guccini’s song declared that «dio è morto»2
The analysis will focus on the forms through which Bertolucci and Pasolini expressed their personal relation with this phenomenon as aesthetic experience
The artwork interrupts the structures of power defamiliarizing us from an alienated society so that we can imagine the possibility of a different world, reconciled and redeemed
Summary
In 1967, a Francesco Guccini’s song declared that «dio è morto»2. this affirmation does not express only the disappearance of god but its desired transformation. The analysis will focus on the forms through which Bertolucci and Pasolini expressed their personal relation with this phenomenon as aesthetic experience. Throughout the analysis, the critical aesthetics of Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno about the artwork will be useful for analyzing the saturated phenomenon For these authors, the artwork interrupts the structures of power defamiliarizing us from an alienated society so that we can imagine the possibility of a different world, reconciled and redeemed. Phenomenology interlaces with the aesthetic potential of critical theory forming an aesthetico-political constellation that takes the personal relation with the saturated phenomenon as the analytical focus of the short films by Bertolucci and Pasolini. Facing the alleged death of god announced on May 68, Bertolucci and Pasolini represented their personal relationship with the saturated phenomenon opening the possibility to reencounter with the aesthetic potential of religion or the religious potential of aesthetics. By hollowing out the representation, it calls forth the figure and its presentation (Darstellung), it triggers the infinite process of the tangent that is a fundamental characteristic of the very notion of figure» (Didi-Huberman 2005: 153-154)
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