Journal articles on the topic 'Pasolini, Pier Paolo, 1922-1975'

Mit seinen vielgestaltigen künstlerischen Arbeiten und bemerkenswert aktuell gebliebenen kulturkritischen Schriften erfreut sich Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975) auch fast fünfzig Jahre nach seinem Tod ungebrochen hoher internationaler Aufmerksamkeit. Der vorliegende Beitrag profiliert die zentrale, gleichwohl zumeist unterschätzte Rolle des christlichen Glaubens für Pasolinis Leben und Werk, ungeachtet seiner Selbstbezeichnung als Atheist. Teils überblickshaft, teils in entfalteten Stichproben kommen dazu ausgewählte biographische Zeugnisse, literarische Arbeiten und Filme Pasolinis in den Blick, insbesondere seine beiden ihm sehr wichtigen, unrealisiert gebliebenen Filmprojekte „Der heilige Paulus“ und sein letztes Filmskript „Porno-Theo-Kolossal,“ der intendierte Schlussstein und die Summe seiner Regiearbeiten. Dabei wird die markante christologische Ader sichtbar, die nicht nur Pasolinis Oeuvre, sondern auch sein Leben tiefgreifend durchformt.

Pier Paolo Pasolini (1923–1975) fashioned poetry, prose, cinema, and theatrical works, and how he conceived of the sacred is more thoroughly understood in relation to his working biography. Two films, The Gospel According to St Matthew and La Ricotta, together with his tragedies, overwritten on the Greek plays The Eumenides and Medea are here in focus, indicating why Pasolini drew on Mircea Eliade’s method of integrating historical, phenomenological, and hermeneutical approaches. Declaring himself a Marxist, Pasolini did not accept Eliade’s theory in full, while the two concepts that most link him to Eliade are the latter’s ‘eternal return’ and ‘hierophanies’. Pasolini had grown up immersed in the natural world of Friuli, Northern Italy, and he considered hierophanies as an immanent manifestation of the sacred in nature. In doing this, he discovered both the immensity of the archaic peasant world and the cosmogonic matrix of his religion. Pasolini’s ontological vision of being led him to define the eternal return as the cyclical time of nature, the movement of life in respect of the inscrutable laws of the cosmos and the transcendent supernatural. Cyclical time meant death and resurrection and thus the possibility of regeneration, like a seed that dies to become a plant.

En este artículo vamos a abordar las similitudes entre dos obras de distintos autores del siglo XX: por un lado, San Manuel Bueno, mártir, del bilbaíno Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936) y, por otro, La aldea de Romàns, del italiano Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975). En ambas novelas, el protagonista es un sacerdote con ciertas dudas: en el caso de Unamuno (1931), acerca de la fe y la inmortalidad; en el caso de Pasolini (1949), estas dudas están más relacionadas con la sexualidad, aunque observamos de fondo temas políticos y sociales. Ambos títulos beben, a su vez, de Il santo, de Antonio Fogazzaro (1905), novela mucho más extensa que las anteriores. Aunque sabemos que Pasolini conocía a autores españoles como Juan Ramón Jiménez o Antonio Machado, no tenemos constancia de que hubiera leído a Unamuno.

This article re-evaluates Derek Jarman’s adaptation of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1979) based on archival research into the cinematic and historical intertexts that influenced the film. Specifically, it focuses on the impact of Pier Paolo Pasolini on Jarman’s aesthetics, particularly the Italian filmmaker’s last work: Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975). The article explores how Jarman used Pasolini’s work as a filter through which to frame his adaptation of Shakespeare’s play. In so doing, he produced a decidedly Pasolinian twist on The Tempest, which he explicitly referred to in his notes as “Shakespeare’s Salò.” Bridging the gap between the Renaissance and Jarman’s contemporary moment, Jarman’s film offers a meditation on ideas of captivity and captivation in The Tempest, which extends from the play and film’s literal representations of imprisonment to their exploration of the affective power of performance and spectacle.

This article considers how poetry features in Pasolini’s cinema. It argues that the manner in which Pasolini films poetry provides insight into his theory of an affinity between poetry and film, and into more general judgements concerning social reality. The article begins with an analysis of the final sequence of Salò (1975) where I argue that Ezra Pound’s poetry provides a soundtrack for the spectacle of torture in which the film’s libertines engage. Following this, I consider Pasolini’s 1965 text “The Cinema of Poetry” and use this text as a way of reading the role played by a copy of Rimbaud’s collected poems in Teorema ( Theorem, 1968). I then move to consider the relationship between oral recitation and text in Il decameron ( The Decameron, 1971) and Il fiore della mille e una notte ( The Arabian Nights, 1974). In doing this, I argue that one can observe a shift across these films whereby poetry and orality move from being a foundational moment for reciprocal community to being a vehicle for an ambiguous and violent fate. The article then considers the conspicuous presence of reading and writing within Salò before ending with a consideration of one scene towards the end of the film in which Pasolini appears to invest a recitation of the Gospel with a disruptive force that is otherwise lacking in his final film.

En el presente artículo se pretende realizar una lectura de fragmentos del film Saló o Los 120 Días de Sodoma (1975) de Pier Paolo Pasolini, desde una perspectivia foucaulteana. Básicamente, a partir del modo en que Michel Foucault perfiló el carácter crítico de su trabajo filosófico, buscaremos problematizar a la politicidad inherente a la producción de saberes respecto de “lo humano”, para lo cual nos enfocaremos en el film pasolineano.

Abstract: This is a memoir excerpt from Marcasciano, an activist for the rights of the trans community in Italy has been behind the civil rights and liberties achieved in the country during the 1970s. In this section, Marcasciano reflects on her experience as a member of the first generation of LGBTQIA activists in Italy, specifically her first time coming out in November of 1975 after the murder of Pier Paolo Pasolini.

In this interview, Roberto Chiesi talks about the personal and professional relationship between Pier Paolo Pasolini and Federico Fellini. He describes their experience with neorealism and how each of them moved past it to develop an original and unique cinematographic style. He focuses on specific elements of their cinema, such as the importance of the oneiric dimension and their conception of the sacred. Chiesi explains the central role civic involvement had in the work of Pasolini; his last movie Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma (Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom) (Pasolini 1975) is centred on the dramatic process of degradation caused by the new consumeristic ideology. Fellini, instead, was primarily concerned with the corruptive vulgarity of the new commercial television. Highlighting the importance of Pasolini and Fellini’s legacy, Chiesi concludes the interview by saying that the two artists had the foresight to imagine the dreadful long-term consequences the events of their time would produce, consequences we are experiencing in today’s society.

O artigo aborda a presença das imagens técnicas na produção do conhecimento, problematizando o uso do recurso da videogravação em pesquisa acadêmica. Vale-se, para tanto, da articulação das reflexões acerca da linguagem desenvolvidas por Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) e Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975) à análise da produção teórica e cinematográfica de Pier Paolo Pasolini. Constata-se que o universo cinematográfico oferece subsídios para a utilização da imagem técnica na pesquisa em ciências humanas, ensejando a criação de narrativas imagéticas.

When first released in 1975, Salò or the 120 Days of Sodom, directed by the already-notorious Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini, aroused instant controversy. As a framework for its plot, Salò took the infamous 500-page novel by the Marquis de Sade, 120 Days of Sodom. In de Sade’s novel, four libertines, President de Curval, the Duc de Blangis, Durcet and the Bishop of X, sign a contract whose main clause is commitment to breaking as many taboos as they can possibly think of. With sixteen youths, eight girls and eight boys, servants, guards and four procurers and ex-prostitutes, the libertines isolate themselves in a remote chateau to re-enact their every fantasy. Filming Salò, Pasolini’s goal was to remain faithful to Sade’s novel. The characters, events and structure of the story remain the same. The more controversial aspect of the film, however, was Pasolini’s idea of relocating Sade’s novel into the actual historical context of the fascist Republic of Salò. For Pasolini, the gesture of moving Sade to Salò was to draw an actual analogy between the fascism and sadism. For some critics, the parallel between fascism and sadism was unfortunate exactly because it presented fascism, a real and palpable phenomenon, as an abstraction (the way that Sade’s world functions).

Salò (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1975) fait image en même temps qu’il se transforme en histoire, au sens où Walter Benjamin affirme que l’image est « la dialectique à l’arrêt », c’est-à-dire que l’image historique, à un moment où « la vérité est chargée de temps jusqu’à en exploser », atteint le « maintenant » de sa lisibilité : elle ne pouvait être comprise plus tôt. L’auteur de cet article considère le « maintenant » de la France dans laquelle il vit comme chargé de violence fasciste jusqu’à en exploser. Il l’expose en une page. Puis il décrit l’usage, par le dernier Pasolini, du concept de « lisibilité », et son courage de chercher à vivre, non pas malgré mais contre tout, un moment impossible mais réel. Comme lui, et avec les mots de Romeo Castellucci, il espère, sans catharsis, voir « le tragique se poursui[vre] pour se dissiper ».

O presente artigo debruça-se sobre a obra Os Cento e Vinte Dias de Sodoma ou a Escola da Libertinagem (1785) de Marquês de Sade e o filme Salò ou Os Cento e Vinte Dias de Sodoma (1975) de Pier Paolo Pasolini. Na relação que se estabelece entre estes dois objectos artísticos, pretendemos reflectir acerca não só da ténue linha que separa o amor da morte, passando pela reflexão acerca do erotismo, do grotesco, até às transformações levadas a cabo pela sétima arte quando se propõe partir de uma obra literária como Os Cento e Vinte Dias de Sodoma ou a Escola da Libertinagem.

En el presente artículo pretende realizarse una exploración de carácter ontogénico para lograr desentrañar todos los significados que ha adquirido el mito de Sodoma en las reescrituras posteriores de carácter ficcional y la relación que este guarda con la construcción de personajes literarios y cinematográficos caracterizados como perpetradores de violencia de masas y con espacios históricos de perpetración como los Konzentrationslager. El punto de partida del análisis es el pasaje bíblico de la destrucción de la ciudad de Sodoma y el punto final es la obra de Milo Rau Die 120 Tage von Sodom (2017), producida a partir de la obra narrativa del Marqués de Sade Les Cent Vingt Journées de Sodome (1785) y de la película de Pier Paolo Pasolini Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma (1975), obras que surgen en momentos históricos determinados y son utilizadas para ejemplificar de manera metáforica algunos de los acontecimientos que tienen lugar en estos.

The Italian scholar and political leader Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) was an active opponent of the dictatorial government ruling his country before the 2nd World War. He was kept in prison for11 years, until his death, by the ruling Fascist Party and during that time he filled over 3,000 pages, writing about Linguistics, History and Philosophy. He was concerned with the duty of Italian progressive intellectuals to create a ‘common literary language’, accessible to the under-privileged Italian people, who until then had been excluded from culture. After the war, during the sixties of last century, a ‘common Italian language’ started developing, through the introduction of the 10-years long compulsory school and the increasing power of mass media: that language was not fit to become the common literary language of the Nation. The writer and movie director Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975), who in his novels gave voice to the sub-urban proletarians of the city of Rome, was highly unsatisfied with the new common language that was in the process of being established in the country. As for China, when the imperial system was abolished by the ‘Xinhai revolution’, in 1911, the belief became increasingly widespread among intellectuals that the rebirth of China had to be based in the global rejection of the Confucian tradition and that the ‘Báihuà’ (people’s language) should be adopted in literature, replacing the ‘Wényán’ (classical language), not accessible to the common people. Lu Xun and his colleagues eventually succeeded in their efforts of establishing the ‘Báihuà’ as the common literary language of China. Purpose of the paper is the comparison between the efforts exerted by these literati in creating a ‘common literary language’ in their respective countries.

Résumé Cet article s’intéresse à un mode de création théâtrale systématisé par les compagnies expérimentales italiennes de la « Génération 90 » au début du 21e siècle, que nous proposons d’appeler « projet multithéâtral » : l’artiste de théâtre conçoit la création comme un processus de longue ou moyenne durée, dans lequel il avance par étapes, en réalisant non seulement des spectacles, mais en se consacrant aussi à d’autres formats artistiques. Dans l’histoire des compagnies, la mise en oeuvre de cette méthode de travail correspond à l’affirmation de l’usage des technologies numériques du son et de la vision. À travers l’observation de deux exemples, le projet L’ospite (Le visiteur, 2003-2004), réalisé par la compagnie Motus de Daniela Nicolò et Enrico Casagrande, d’après Petrolio (Pétrole, 1972-1975) et Teorema (Théorème, 1968) de Pier Paolo Pasolini, et le projet Ada, cronaca familiare (Ada, chronique familiale, 2002-2006) réalisé par la compagnie Fanny & Alexander de Chiara Lagani et Luigi De Angelis d’après le roman de Vladimir Nabokov Ada or Ardor: a Family Chronicle (Ada ou l’ardeur, 1969), nous allons nous interroger sur les enjeux du « projet multithéâtral » par rapport à l’intermédialité numérique au théâtre.

Il 5 marzo del 1922 nasceva a Bologna Pier Paolo Pasolini e Cuadernos de Filología Italiana ha scelto di inaugurare con il suo nome il ritorno editoriale di una proposta monografica che da questo numero accompagnerà nuovamente le tradizionali sezioni di linguistica, letteratura e delle recensioni. Gli anniversari, si sa, possono essere momenti ambigui della riflessione e a volte convogliano su un dato autore attenzioni dal valore più mondano che intellettuale; il 2022, per giunta, ci ricorda che cento anni fa nascevano anche, solo per restare in ambito letterario, Beppe Fenoglio, Giorgio Manganelli, Luigi Meneghello e Luciano Bianciardi. Le ragioni della nostra scelta si fondano innanzitutto sulla capacità che Pasolini ha di interrogare ancora e sempre i nostri studenti, spesso stupiti nei loro primi approcci con l’autore che più di ogni altro, nella complessa costellazione del nostro Novecento, rinnova in ugual misura sconcerto e ammirazione in chi gli si avvicina per la prima volta, anche grazie o a causa del suo essere arcipelago di linguaggi e proposte. La sua esperienza artistica, per giunta, compressa in un trentennio vertiginoso, non può essere ascritta a una sola disciplina di studi e ciò ci pone automaticamente nella circostanza di aprire le maglie della nostra specializzazione ad altri sguardi e altri saperi. Vastità e complessità – e ben inteso, inciampi e contraddizioni – restano a buon conto caratteri essenziali della sua opera, eredità da coltivare e mettere in valore. Quasi cinquant’anni dopo la sua morte, pensiamo inoltre che sia possibile osservare la sua traiettoria consapevoli che ai significati della sua opera, per usare un’acuta analisi di Walter Siti (2005: 135), si è andato sovrapponendo il significante del «mito Pasolini». Non ignoriamo, del resto, che è a quel mito che spesso si avvicinano abbagliati altri giovani e altri artisti, ma ciò non ci esime, semmai ci incita, dal proseguire il lavoro ermeneutico, filologico e culturale che qui presentiamo.

Este artigo está voltado para uma reflexão acerca da transposição para o cinema, assinada pelo cineasta italiano Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1976), do clássico Édipo Rei, de Sófocles (496-406 a.C). Assim como viria a fazer com outro texto do teatro grego, Medéia, de Eurípedes, Pasolini direciona seu olhar sobre a produção teatral da Grécia Antiga para dela extrair elementos que serviram como referência de seus roteiros cinematográficos. Examinaremos, portanto, como se deu esta releitura – há quem prefira chamar de recriação – para a tela e quais os seus componentes. Veremos como se processa o diálogo entre teatro e sétima arte segundo um dos maiores e mais expressivos artistas italianos do século passado.

Après avoir été peint et décrit avec des traits plus pittoresques qu’objectifs par les premiers voyageurs et chercheurs qui traversaient les Alpes, mus tantôt par l’idée d’un primitivisme dont la difformité et la misère étaient l’expression la plus évidente, tantôt par la nostalgie du paradis perdu, le monde alpin a attiré le regard curieux des folkloristes à la recherche des survivances du passé, des anciennes coutumes, des proverbes et des objets disparus dans nombre de régions d’Europe. Au début du XXe siècle, Karl Felix Wolff (1913) s’inspire de la tradition des frères Grimm et collecte un nombre consistant de légendes ladines, avec l’objectif de redonner une nouvelle vie à un patrimoine voué à l’oubli. Tout comme les botanistes et les zoologues, les folkloristes voient le monde alpin comme un « merveilleux conservatoire » (Hertz 1913 : 177). Un des élèves les plus brillants de Durkheim, Robert Hertz, analyse finement ces « formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse » en étudiant le pèlerinage de Saint Besse, qui rassemble chaque année les populations de Cogne (Vallée d’Aoste) et du Val Soana (Piémont) dans un sanctuaire à la montagne situé à plus de 2000 mètres d’altitude. Après avoir observé et questionné la population locale s’adonnant à ce culte populaire, dont il complète l’analyse par des recherches bibliographiques, il rédige un article exemplaire (Hertz 1913) qui ouvre la voie à l’anthropologie alpine. Entre 1910 et 1920, Eugénie Goldstern mène ses enquêtes dans différentes régions de l’arc alpin à cheval entre la France, la Suisse et l’Italie : ses riches données de terrain lui permettent de réaliser le travail comparatif le plus complet qui ait été réalisé dans la région (Goldstern 2007). Une partie de sa recherche a été effectuée avec la supervision de l’un des fondateurs de l’anthropologie française et l’un des plus grands experts de folklore en Europe, Arnold Van Gennep. Pour ce dernier, le monde alpin constitue un espace de prédilection, mais aussi un terrain d’expérimentation et de validation de certaines hypothèses scientifiques. « Dans tous les pays de montagne, qui ont été bien étudiés du point de vue folklorique […] on constate que les hautes altitudes ne constituent pas un obstacle à la diffusion des coutumes. En Savoie, le report sur cartes des plus typiques d’entre elles montre une répartition nord-sud passant par-dessus les montagnes et les rivières et non pas conditionnée par elles » (Van Gennep 1990 : 30-31). L’objectif de Van Gennep est de comprendre de l’intérieur la « psychologie populaire », à savoir la complexité des faits sociaux et leur variation. Sa méthode consiste à « parler en égal avec un berger » (Van Gennep 1938 : 158), c’est-à-dire non pas tellement parler sa langue au sens propre, mais s’inscrire dans une logique d’échange actif pour accéder aux représentations de son interlocuteur. Quant aux nombreuses langues non officielles présentes sur le territoire, quand elles n’auraient pas une fonction de langue véhiculaire dans le cadre de l’enquête, elles ont été étudiées par les dialectologues, qui complétaient parfois leurs analyses des structures linguistiques avec des informations d’ordre ethnologique : les enseignements de Karl Jaberg et de Jakob Jud (1928) visaient à associer la langue à la civilisation (Wörter und Sachen). Dans le domaine des études sur les walsers, Paul Zinsli nous a légué une synthèse monumentale depuis la Suisse au Voralberg en passant par l’Italie du nord et le Liechtenstein (Zinsli 1976). Comme Van Gennep, Charles Joisten (1955, 1978, 1980) travaille sur les traditions populaires en réalisant la plus grande collecte de récits de croyance pour le monde alpin, entre les Hautes-Alpes et la Savoie. En 1973, il fonde la revue Le monde alpin et rhodanien (qui paraîtra de 1973 à 2006 en tant que revue, avant de devenir la collection thématique du Musée Dauphinois de Grenoble). Si dans l’après-guerre le monde alpin est encore toujours perçu d’une manière valorisante comme le reliquaire d’anciens us et coutumes, il est aussi soumis à la pensée évolutionniste qui le définit comme un monde arriéré parce que marginalisé. C’est dans cette contradiction que se situe l’intérêt que les anthropologues découvrent au sein du monde alpin : il est un observatoire privilégié à la fois du passé de l’humanité dont il ne reste aucune trace ailleurs en Europe et de la transition de la société traditionnelle à la société modernisée. En effet, au début des années 1960, pour de nombreux anthropologues britanniques partant à la découverte des vallées alpines le constat est flagrant : les mœurs ont changé rapidement, suite à la deuxième guerre mondiale. Cette mutation catalyse l’attention des chercheurs, notamment l’analyse des relations entre milieu physique et organisation sociale. Même les pionniers, s’ils s’intéressent aux survivances culturelles, ils se situent dans un axe dynamique : Honigmann (1964, 1970) entend démentir la théorie de la marginalité géographique et du conservatisme des populations alpines. Burns (1961, 1963) se propose d’illustrer la relation existant entre l’évolution socioculturelle d’une communauté et l’environnement. Le monde alpin est alors étudié à travers le prisme de l’écologie culturelle qui a pour but de déterminer dans quelle mesure les caractéristiques du milieu peuvent modeler les modes de subsistance et plus généralement les formes d’organisation sociale. Un changement important a lieu avec l’introduction du concept d’écosystème qui s’impose à partir des années 1960 auprès des anthropologues penchés sur les questions écologiques. C’est ainsi que le village alpin est analysé comme un écosystème, à savoir l’ensemble complexe et organisé, compréhensif d’une communauté biotique et du milieu dans lequel celle-ci évolue. Tel était l’objectif de départ de l’étude de John Friedl sur Kippel (1974), un village situé dans l’une des vallées des Alpes suisses que la communauté scientifique considérait parmi les plus traditionnelles. Mais à son arrivée, il découvre une réalité en pleine transformation qui l’oblige à recentrer son étude sur la mutation sociale et économique. Si le cas de Kippel est représentatif des changements des dernières décennies, les différences peuvent varier considérablement selon les régions ou selon les localités. Les recherches d’Arnold Niederer (1980) vont dans ce sens : il analyse les Alpes sous l’angle des mutations culturelles, par le biais d’une approche interculturelle et comparative de la Suisse à la France, à l’Italie, à l’Autriche et à la Slovénie. John Cole et Eric Wolf (1974) mettent l’accent sur la notion de communauté travaillée par des forces externes, en analysant, les deux communautés voisines de St. Felix et Tret, l’une de culture germanique, l’autre de culture romane, séparées par une frontière ethnique qui fait des deux villages deux modèles culturels distincts. Forts de leur bagage d’expériences accumulées dans les enquêtes de terrain auprès des sociétés primitives, les anthropologues de cette période savent analyser le fonctionnement social de ces petites communautés, mais leurs conclusions trop tributaires de leur terrain d’enquête exotique ne sont pas toujours à l’abri des généralisations. En outre, en abordant les communautés alpines, une réflexion sur l’anthropologie native ou de proximité se développe : le recours à la méthode ethnographique et au comparatisme permettent le rétablissement de la distance nécessaire entre l’observateur et l’observé, ainsi qu’une mise en perspective des phénomènes étudiés. Avec d’autres anthropologues comme Daniela Weinberg (1975) et Adriana Destro (1984), qui tout en étudiant des sociétés en pleine transformation en soulignent les éléments de continuité, nous nous dirigeons vers une remise en cause de la relation entre mutation démographique et mutation structurale de la communauté. Robert Netting (1976) crée le paradigme du village alpin, en menant une étude exemplaire sur le village de Törbel, qui correspondait à l’image canonique de la communauté de montagne qu’avait construite l’anthropologie alpine. Pier Paolo Viazzo (1989) critique ce modèle de la communauté alpine en insistant sur l’existence de cas emblématiques pouvant démontrer que d’autres villages étaient beaucoup moins isolés et marginaux que Törbel. Néanmoins, l’étude de Netting joue un rôle important dans le panorama de l’anthropologie alpine, car elle propose un nouvel éclairage sur les stratégies démographiques locales, considérées jusque-là primitives. En outre, sur le plan méthodologique, Netting désenclave l’anthropologie alpine en associant l’ethnographie aux recherches d’archives et à la démographie historique (Netting 1981) pour compléter les données de terrain. La description des interactions écologiques est devenue plus sophistiquée et la variable démographique devient cruciale, notamment la relation entre la capacité de réguler la consistance numérique d’une communauté et la stabilité des ressources locales. Berthoud (1967, 1972) identifie l’unité de l’aire alpine dans la spécificité du processus historique et des différentes trajectoires du développement culturel, tout en reconnaissant l’importance de l’environnement. C’est-à-dire qu’il démontre que le mode de production « traditionnel » observé dans les Alpes n’est pas déterminé par les contraintes du milieu, mais il dérive de la combinaison d’éléments institutionnels compatibles avec les conditions naturelles (1972 : 119-120). Berthoud et Kilani (1984) analysent l’équilibre entre tradition et modernité dans l’agriculture de montagne dans un contexte fortement influencé par le tourisme d’hiver. Dans une reconstruction et analyse des représentations de la montagne alpine depuis la moitié du XVIIIe siècle à nos jours, Kilani (1984) illustre comment la vision du monde alpin se dégrade entre 1850 et 1950, au fur et à mesure de son insertion dans la société globale dans la dégradation des conditions de vie : il explique ainsi la naissance dans l’imaginaire collectif d’une population primitive arriérée au cœur de l’Europe. Cependant, à une analyse comparative de l’habitat (Weiss 1959 : 274-296 ; Wolf 1962 ; Cole & Wolf 1974), de la dévolution patrimoniale (Bailey 1971 ; Lichtenberger 1975) ou de l’organisation des alpages (Arbos 1922 ; Parain 1969), le monde alpin se caractérise par une surprenante variation, difficilement modélisable. Les situations de contact sont multiples, ce qui est très évident sur le plan linguistique avec des frontières très fragmentées, mais de nombreuses autres frontières culturelles européennes traversent les Alpes, en faisant du monde alpin une entité plurielle, un réseau plus ou moins interconnecté de « upland communities » (Viazzo 1989), où les éléments culturels priment sur les contraintes liées à l’environnement. Aux alentours de 1990, la réflexion des anthropologues autour des traditions alpines, sous l’impulsion de la notion d’invention de la tradition, commence à s’orienter vers l’étude des phénomènes de revitalisation (Boissevain 1992), voire de relance de pratiques ayant subi une transformation ou une rupture dans la transmission. Cette thèse qui a alimenté un riche filon de recherches a pourtant été contestée par Jeremy MacClancy (1997) qui met en avant les éléments de continuité dans le culte de Saint Besse, presqu’un siècle après l’enquête de Robert Hertz. La question de la revitalisation et de la continuité reste donc ouverte et le débat se poursuit dans le cadre des discussions qui accompagnent l’inscription des traditions vivantes dans les listes du patrimoine culturel immatériel de l’humanité.

Pornography can appear as a staid genre with a rigid series of rules and representations, each video consisting of a specified number of liaisons and pre-designated sexual acts, but it is also a genre that has developed and focused its numerous activities. What was considered to be an arousing taboo in the 1970s would not, for example, be considered as such today. Anal sex, while once comparatively rare in pornographic films, is now commonplace, and, while once utterly unspoken in mainstream heterosexual culture it is now acknowledged and celebrated, even by female targeted films such as Brigit Jones’ Diary (Sharon Maguire, 2001). Pornography, however, has raised the stakes again. Hardcore is dependent on so called ‘nasty girls’ and most interviews with starlets focus on their ability to enjoy being ‘nasty’, to enjoy what are considered or labelled as ‘perverse’ manifestations of sexuality by the normalising discourses of dominant culture and society. While once a porn star merely had to enjoy – or pretend to enjoy – sucking cock, now it is expected her repertoire will include a wider range of activities. With anal sex, an event that transpires in most modern pornography, the site of penises – either singularly or in pairs – pushed into swollen sore assholes is a visual commonplace. In the 1980s and 1990s (when the representation of heterosexual anal sex became truly dominant in pornography) there was a recognizable process of sexual acts, between penetration of mouth, vagina, and asshole. Each penetration would be edited and between each take the male star would wipe down his penis. Until somebody in hardcore pornography developed the A-to-M, a.k.a ass-to-mouth aka A2M. In this move the male pulls his cock from the asshole of the female and then sticks it straight into her open mouth and down her throat without wiping it clean first. All of this is presented unmediated to the viewer, in one singular shot that follows the penis as it moves from one willing hole to the other (and the body must be understood as fragmented, it is a collection of zones and areas, in this instance orifices each with their own signifying practices, not a singular organic whole). Even assuming that the nubile starlet has had an enema to blast clean her rectum prior to filming there will still be microscopic traces of her shit and rectal mucus on his penis. Indeed the pleasure for the viewers is in the knowledge of the authenticity of the movement between ass and mouth, in the knowledge that there will be small flakes of shit stuck to her lips and teeth (a variant of the ass-to-mouth sees the penis being pulled from one starlet’s anus and inserted into another starlet’s gaping mouth, again in one unedited shot). Shit escapes simple ontology it is opposed to all manner of being, all manner of knowledge and of existence yet it is also intimately linked to self-presence and continuity. From earliest infancy we are encouraged not to engage with it, rather it is that which is to be flushed away immediately, it is everything about being human that is repulsive, rejected and denied. Shit escapes simple symbolism; it exists in its own discursive zone. While death may be similarly horrific to us, it is so because it is utterly unknown shit, however, horrifies precisely because it is known to us. Like death, shit makes us all equal, but shit is familiar, we know its fragrance, we know its texture, we know its colour, and – yes – deep down, repressed in our animal brain we know its taste. Its familiarity results because it is a part of us, yet it is no longer of us. In death the cadaver can be theorized as the body without a soul, without spirit, or without personality, but with shit humanity does not have this luxury, shit is the part of us that both defies and defines humanity. Shit is that which was us but is no longer, yet it never fully stops being part of us, it contains traces of our genetic material, pieces of our diet, even as it is flushed more is already being pushed down our intestine. Shit is substance and process. If the act of fucking is that which affirms vital existence against death, then introducing shit into the equation becomes utterly transgressive. Defecation and copulation are antithetical St Augustine’s recognition that we are born between piss and shit – inter faeces et urinam – understands the animistic nature of existence and sex as contaminated by sin, but he does not conflate the act of shitting and fucking as the same, his description is powerful precisely because they are not understood as the same. Introducing shit into sexual activity is culturally forbidden, genuine scatologists, coprophiles and shit fetishists are rare, and most keep their desires secret even from their closest companions. Even the few that confess to enjoying ‘brown showers’ do not admit to eating raw shit, either their own or that of somebody else. The practice is considered to be too dangerous, too unhealthy, and too disgusting. Even amongst the radical sexual communities many find that it stinks of excess, as if desires and fantasies had limits. In Pier Paolo Pasolini’s cinematic masterpiece Salo (1975) the quartet of libertines and their fellow explorers in unleashed lust – both the willing and the coerced – indulge in a vast coprophilic feast, but in this film the shit that is slathered over the bodies of the young charges and greedily scoffed down is not real. However there are a handful of directly scatological pornographic videos, often they depict people crouching down and shitting, the shit being rubbed on to nude bodies and eventually consumed. In some videos hungry mouths open directly under the puckering asshole, allowing the brown turd to plop directly onto the enthusiastic tongue and into the mouth. Cameras zoom in to show the shit-smeared lips and teeth. Like the image of ejaculation manifested in the cum-shot of mainstream hardcore pornography this sight is a vindication of the authenticity of the action. Such videos are watched by both fetishists and the curious – commonly teenage males trying to out shock each other. Unlike ‘traditional’ heterosexual hardcore pornography, which depicts explicit penetrative sex, scatology films rarely appear on the shelves of video stores and enthusiasts are compelled to search the dark bowels of pornography to find them. Yet the popularity of the ass-to-mouth sequence in hardcore suggests that there is an interest with such faecal taboo acts that may be more common that previously imagined. This is not to suggest that the audience who witness an ass-to-mouth scene want to go and eat shit, or want their partners to, but it does suggest that there is an interest in the transgressive potential of shit or the idea of shit on an erect penis. Watching these scenes the audience’s attention is drawn to the movement from the locus of defecation to that of consumption. Perhaps the visual pleasure lies in the degradation of the ‘nasty’ girl, in the knowledge that she can taste her own mucus and faecal matter. But if the pleasures are purely sadistic then these films fail, they do not (just) depict the starlets ‘suffering’ as they engage in these activities, in contrast, they are ‘normalised’ into the sexual conventions of the form. Hardcore pornography is about the depiction of literal excess; about multiple penis plunging into one asshole or one vagina (or even both) about orgies about the world’s biggest gang bangs and facials in which a dozen or more men shoot their genetic material onto the grinning faces of starlets as cum slathers their forehead, cheeks, chin, lips, and teeth. The sheer unremitting quantity becomes an object in itself. Nothing can ever be enough. This excess is also philosophical; all non-reproductive sexual activity belongs to the category of excess expenditure, where the unrestrained pursuit of pleasure becomes in itself both object choice and subject. Some would see such pornographic activities as anti-humanist, as cold, and as nihilistic, but such an interpretation fails. In watching these films, in seeing the penis move from asshole to mouth the audience are compelled by the authenticity of the gesture to read the starlet as human the ‘pleasure’ is in knowing that she can taste her own shit on some anonymous cock. Finally, she is smiling through its musky taste so we do not have to. Appendix / Sources / Notes / Parallel Text Throughout this paper I am referring only to pornographic material marketed to an audience who are identified or identify as heterosexual. These films may contain scenes with multiple males and females having sex at one time, however while there may be what the industry refers to as girl-on-girl action there will be no direct male-on-male contact (although often all that seperates two male penises is the paper thin wall of fleshy tissue between the vagina and anus). The socio-cultural history of heterosexual anal sex is a complex one, made more so because of its illicit and, in some jurisdictions, illegal status. It is safe to assume that many people have engaged in it even if they have not subsequently undertaken an active interest in it (statistics published in Exploring the Dimensions of Human Sexuality 2nd Edition suggest that 28% of male and 24% of female American college graduates and 21% of male and 13% of female high school graduates have experienced anal sex [377]). In hardcore pornography it is the male who penetrates the female, who presents her asshole for the viewer’s delectation. In personal sexual behaviour heterosexual males may also enjoy anal penetration from a female partner both in order to stimulate the sensitive tissue around the anus and to stilulate the prostate, but the representation of such activities is very rare in the mainstream of American hardcore porn. As inventer of gonzo porn John Stagliano commented when interviewed about his sexual proclivities in The Other Hollywood , “…you know, admitting that I really wanted to get fucked in the ass, and might really like it, is not necessarily a socially acceptable thing for a straight man” (587). Anal sex was most coherently radicalised by the Marquis de Sade, the master of sodomaniacal literature, who understood penetrating male / penetrated female anal sex as a way in which erotic pleasure/s could be divorced from any reproductive metanarrative. The scene in Brigit Jones’ Diary is made all the more strange because there is no mention of safe sex. There are, however, repeated references and representations of the size and shape of the heroine’s buttocks and her willingness to acquiesce to the evidentially dominant will of her ‘bad’ boyfriend the aptly named Daniel Cleaver. For more on heterosexual anal sex in cinema see my ‘Hot, Hard Cocks and Tight, Tight Unlubricated Assholes.Transgression, Sexual Ambiguity and ‘Perverse’ Pleasures in Serge Gainsbourg’s Je T’Aime Moi Non Plus’, in Senses of Cinema 30 (Jan.-March 2004). Hardcore pornography commonly means that which features a depiction of penetrative intercourse and the visual presentation of male ejaculation as a climax to a sequence. For more on the contemporary porn scene and the ‘nasty girl’ see Anthony Petkovich, The X Factory: Inside The American Hardcore Film Industry, which contains numerous interviews with porn starlets and industry insiders. While pornography is remembered for a number of key texts such as Deep Throat (Gerard Damiano, 1972) or Behind the Green Door (Jim & Artie Mitchell, 1972), these were shot and marketed as erotic narrative film and released theatrically (albeit to grindhouse and specialist cinemas). However since 1982 and the widespread availability of video – and more recently DVD – pornography has been produced almost exclusively for home consumption. The increasing demands of the consumer, combined with the accessablity of technology and cheap production costs of video when compared to film have led to a glut of available material. Now videos/DVDs are often released in series with absurdly self descriptive titles such as Anal Pounding, Lesbian Bukkake, and Pussy Party, most of which provide examples of the mise-en-scene of contemporary hardcore, specific ass to mouth series include Ass to Mouth (vol 1 – 15), Ass to Mouth CumShots (vol 1 – 5), Her First Ass to Mouth, From Her Ass to Her Mouth, From My Ass to My Mouth, A2M (vol 1 – 9), and no doubt many others. For more on hardcore pornography and its common themes and visual styles see Linda Williams, Hardcore. Wikipedia suggests that the director Max Hardcore was responsible for introducing the form in the early 1990s in his series Cherry Poppers. The act is now a staple of the form. (Note that while Wikipedia can not normally be considered an academic source the vagaries of the subject matter necessitate that research takes place where necessary). All pornographic positions and gestures have a nickname, industry shorthand, thus there are terms such as the DP (double penetration) or the reverse cowgirl. These names are no more or less shocking than the translations for sexual positions offered in ‘classic’ erotic guidebooks such as the Kama Sutra. This fragmented body is a result of the cinematic gaze of pornography. Lenses are able to zoom in and focus on the body, and especially the genitals, in minute detail and present the flesh enlarged to proportions that are impossible to see in actual sexual encounters. The body viewed under such scrutiny but devoid of singular organic plenitude echoes the body without organs of Deleuze and Guattari (in contrast some radical feminist writers such as Andrea Dworkin would merely interpret such images as reflecting the misogyny of male dominated discourse). For more on the psychological development of the infant and the construction of the clean and unclean see Julia Kristeva Powers of Horror. It should be noted that commonly those who enjoy enema play – klismaphiliacs – are not related to scatologists, and often draw a distinction between their play, which is seen as a process of cleansing, and scatologists’ play, which is understood to be a celebration of the physical shit itself. Salo has undergone numerous sanctions, been banned, scorned, and even been interpreted by some as a metaphor / allegory for the director’s subsequent murder. Such understandings and pseudo-explanations do not do justice to either the director or to his film and its radical engagement with de Sade’s literature. These videos always come from ‘elsewhere’ of course, never close to home, thus in Different Loving the authors note “the Germans seem to specialize in scat” (518). Correspondence concerning the infamous bestiality film Animal Farm (197?) in the journal Headpress (issues 15 and 16, 1998) suggested that the audience was made up from teenage males watching it as a rite of passage, rather than by true zoophiles. Those I have seen were on shock and ‘gross out’ Internet sites rather than pornographic sites. Disclaimer – I have no interest per se in scatology, but an ongoing interest with the vagaries of human thought, and desire in particular, necessarily involves exploring areas others turn their noses up at. References Brame, Gloria G., William D. Brame, and Jon Jacobs. Different Loving: The World of Dominance and Submission. London: Arrow, 1998. Greenberg, Jerrold S., Clint E. Bruess, and Debra W. Haffner. Exploring the Dimensions of Human Sexuality. 2nd Edition. London: James & Bartlett, 2004. Russ Kick, ed. Everything You Know about Sex Is Wrong. New York: Disinformation, 2006. Julia Kristeva. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia UP, 1982. McNeil, Legs, and Jennifer Osborne, with Peter Pavia. The Other Hollywood: The Uncensored Oral History of the Porn Film Industry. New York: Regan Books, HarperCollins, 2006. Petkovich, Anthony. The X Factory: Inside the American Hardcore Film Industry. Stockport: Critical Vision, 2001. Marquis de Sade. Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom, and Other Writings. London: Arrow, 1991. Sargeant, Jack. “Hot, Hard Cocks and Tight, Tight Unlubricated Assholes: Transgression, Sexual Ambiguity and ‘Perverse’ Pleasures in Serge Gainsbourg’s Je T’Aime Moi Non Plus.“ Senses of Cinema 30 (Jan.-March 2004). Wikipedia. “Ass to Mouth.” 15 Sep. 2006 http://en.wikipedia.org.wk/Ass_to_mouth>. Williams, Linda. Hardcore. London: Pandora Press, 1990. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Sargeant, Jack. "Filth and Sexual Excess: Some Brief Reflections on Popular Scatology." M/C Journal 9.5 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0610/03-sargeant.php>. APA Style Sargeant, J. (Nov. 2006) "Filth and Sexual Excess: Some Brief Reflections on Popular Scatology," M/C Journal, 9(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0610/03-sargeant.php>.