To Hell with Narrative: Inferno and Irony in Pasolini’s Salò

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article examines Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma. While the film has received copious critical attention, most interpretations either focus on the physical and sexual violence depicted on screen or read the film as a simple metaphor for capitalist consumer culture. This article engages with Pasolini’s oft-neglected journalistic Scritti corsari (Corsair writings) to demonstrate the complex and often problematic nature of his critiques of capitalism, fully present in Salò as well. My reading of irony in Salò at once offers an understanding of the role of Pasolini’s citations of other texts in the film, explores his relationship to the work of Dante and of Ezra Pound, and examines how Pasolini anticipates certain strands of radical negativity in queer theory, particularly in the work of Lee Edelman.