2024-10-01 04:28![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
redthedragon
redthedragonToday I fucked my hands up real bad and had to kill some time waiting for my sleepy pills to kick in without making it miles worse by refusing to stop using said hands, so I watched the movie Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1976). (For a summary/primer, look here.). I tried to watch it with a friend, but he had to bow out early because it's a fucking brutally heavy movie and he wasn't prepared for that, even in spite of having been warned a few times and having some plans in place for what he was gonna do if the movie was more intense than he wanted. So I agreed to write my thoughts down somewhere else so I can give him the spoiler-free version (because much of my thoughts are on the philosophical points I was pulling out of the movie) and let him make his own conclusions. For reasons I think should be obvious, I'm not about to go talk about Salò of all things on tumblr lmfao
General warnings: Salò is a very bleak movie about a bunch of fascists raping, torturing, and murdering teenagers for their own amusement. Don't pass this point if you don't want to hear about (bot limited to) fascism, rape, cruelty in general, entitlement and weird ideas about bodies, general debasement, and shit and coprophilia. Some current events, probably, too, because it kept striking me as relevant for the modern day. Also, there will be spoilers.
A good chunk of this will just be me going "the movie says something" and then not elaborating much, which is because the movie doesnt say what it means outright because its not stupid. If this is obvious to you then that's great.
I. The movie has something to say about the 'veneer' of civilization being laid over the face of violnece and cruelty and general evil by using the ladies telling stories and making music to parallel and minimize the violence being done to people around them. The music in the film is almost entirely diegetic, which is a very interesting choice and works really well anyway. But the way the whole like 'hahaha and this is how i very excellently learned to be a whore!' stories are delivered from extravagantly made-up faces and women in very fancy clothing and set to music and essentially are just descriptions of rapes going on in the next room is doing something really interesting by providing us with two angles for the same (implied, in one case) violence but making one, like, palatable? acceptable? Conclusion: the appearance of society and culture are how we package violence as some sort of glamorous thing or otherwise make it appealing, palatable, acceptable, tolerable, etc.
II. I'm not Christian nor super familiar with Catholocism beyond the paintings but I'm under the impression the victim cast - who were frequently naked or dressed in white, and young, and very pretty - were meant to evoke the whole look of like christian saints, which ties into the whole circles-of-hell theming around the movie and the ban on religious behavior in the prison and the statues in the bathroom and stuff. This also makes sense because I guess they suffered like saints - to a point. But at the end of the movie, some of the cast - in mortal danger, and trying to escape it - instead offer up as tribute other fellow victims who have otherwise transgressed against the rules of their prison. Anyway I'll get to that later but I wanted to qualify things appropriately. Anyway this nudity and removal of the trappings of civil society is treated as sort of like. I guess a form of like, nobility? It's particularly interesting when compared with the actual acts of debasement the characters were frequently being forced into and how legitimatelyhard to watch it was twhen they'd finally crack. (Fascinatingly acted and scripted movie, ftr.)
III. This movie had a lot to say on the subjects of power, cruelty, and tyranny. Here are some of those things:
III. I. Power doesn't necessarily make you cruel, but in a world where the people in power are cruel, you have to be cruel to try to take power, so power favors the cruel (see: the blackshirts, the characters who turn on one another and join the blackshirts at the end of the movie, everything about the four rich men)
III. II. to hold oneself apart from other people and see others as merely commotdities to be used and toys to play with, while also being cruel and such, means you stop feeling genuine pleasure from things that may bring you joy, and to chase pleasure by doing incresaingly-depraved bullshit is stupid because the problem is not that you haven't done anything interesting enough but because you need to fix your heart (see: the bearded philosophical one of the rich men)
Plus: power makes you separate yourself and see others as merely commodities
Thus: power (or at least, universal tyrannical authority) is the enemy of pleasure?
III. III. People with power exist, but it is the collaborators they deputize with that power who legitimize the violence they do to people who aren't them. (see: all the libertine characters).
Plus an extra to this idea: cruel collaborators are rewarded, and collaborators who are cruel will seek out or be promoted to positions where they get to be cruel, but kind collaborators cannot exist, and will be destroyed because to stop collaborating would be to entirely lose power and invite retaliation (see: dead blackshirt and his dead Black girlfriend, the pianist who commits suicide)
III. IV. Not sure how to word this - ultimate power means that the people with no power are exctlusively commodities and the people with lesser power shared by those with power are commodities that must be treated with a little bit of fake deference as to their opinions, but those opinions are not imporatnt enough to save them if they step out of line. (See: the blackshirt getting shot for breaking the rules)
IV. The four torturer guys are, like, pathetically obsessed with each other's approval and opinion and are clearly vying for it over and over in a way that is just kind of sad, not cool or badass, and the way they enact their various tortures is alsi really like - almost sad and pathetic more than anything else. I personally bedlive this is a good way to depict fascists (pathetic and violent and more pathetic for their own legitimate violence, that is)
V. The sexual morals of this movie outside their use of rape as metaphor for rule dont sit quite right with me. Salò has a profoundly sex-negative cast and I can't really say I think there's any way to not have written this movie in a sex-negative-casting sort of way but I don't really like that the victims are all generally sexless beings but the villains are either debauched gay or bisexual men and their collaborators, debauched gay or bisexual men and the sex workers who they've hired to teach their victims to be better at sex. I also think it wouldve spoiled the message weirdly to have gone out of itsway to be sex-positive while also using rape as a metaphor for fascist rule. But i also particularly do not care for the positioning of gay men and sex workers on the side of fascism, because that's not correct and historically and currently dangerous.
VI. Incisive comment on fascism, in my opinion.
Cuts neatly to how I feel about watching the situation in Gaza. I feel like a collaborator :( Bodies are a commodity to the ruler and they will find any form of debasement they can to prove they can debase you, unless you are a collaborator, in which case you are kept carefully in line by the promise that you could always be a body instead.
VII. It's interesting that the characters are frequently given an appearance of dignity but themes of debasement are also common throughout the entire film so it makes sense - that allows us to see when the characters have 'recovered face' and therefore can be debased a second time.
VIII. God that movie was brutal.
IV. God that movie was hot. How the hell did they make their actors look like that? Half of them could've crawled out of a painting of St. Sebastien or something/
V. The film, frming, soundtrack, etc is a masterpiece. The cinematography is absolutely drop-dead gorgeous and in places looks like Baroque art. The audio is very sparse - it had to be entirely done in post - and the choice to leave hollow background noise instad of adding music places makes scenes where someone is like sobbing their heart out for three minutes straight really impactful! And I just adore the look of old film.
General warnings: Salò is a very bleak movie about a bunch of fascists raping, torturing, and murdering teenagers for their own amusement. Don't pass this point if you don't want to hear about (bot limited to) fascism, rape, cruelty in general, entitlement and weird ideas about bodies, general debasement, and shit and coprophilia. Some current events, probably, too, because it kept striking me as relevant for the modern day. Also, there will be spoilers.
A good chunk of this will just be me going "the movie says something" and then not elaborating much, which is because the movie doesnt say what it means outright because its not stupid. If this is obvious to you then that's great.
I. The movie has something to say about the 'veneer' of civilization being laid over the face of violnece and cruelty and general evil by using the ladies telling stories and making music to parallel and minimize the violence being done to people around them. The music in the film is almost entirely diegetic, which is a very interesting choice and works really well anyway. But the way the whole like 'hahaha and this is how i very excellently learned to be a whore!' stories are delivered from extravagantly made-up faces and women in very fancy clothing and set to music and essentially are just descriptions of rapes going on in the next room is doing something really interesting by providing us with two angles for the same (implied, in one case) violence but making one, like, palatable? acceptable? Conclusion: the appearance of society and culture are how we package violence as some sort of glamorous thing or otherwise make it appealing, palatable, acceptable, tolerable, etc.
II. I'm not Christian nor super familiar with Catholocism beyond the paintings but I'm under the impression the victim cast - who were frequently naked or dressed in white, and young, and very pretty - were meant to evoke the whole look of like christian saints, which ties into the whole circles-of-hell theming around the movie and the ban on religious behavior in the prison and the statues in the bathroom and stuff. This also makes sense because I guess they suffered like saints - to a point. But at the end of the movie, some of the cast - in mortal danger, and trying to escape it - instead offer up as tribute other fellow victims who have otherwise transgressed against the rules of their prison. Anyway I'll get to that later but I wanted to qualify things appropriately. Anyway this nudity and removal of the trappings of civil society is treated as sort of like. I guess a form of like, nobility? It's particularly interesting when compared with the actual acts of debasement the characters were frequently being forced into and how legitimatelyhard to watch it was twhen they'd finally crack. (Fascinatingly acted and scripted movie, ftr.)
III. This movie had a lot to say on the subjects of power, cruelty, and tyranny. Here are some of those things:
III. I. Power doesn't necessarily make you cruel, but in a world where the people in power are cruel, you have to be cruel to try to take power, so power favors the cruel (see: the blackshirts, the characters who turn on one another and join the blackshirts at the end of the movie, everything about the four rich men)
III. II. to hold oneself apart from other people and see others as merely commotdities to be used and toys to play with, while also being cruel and such, means you stop feeling genuine pleasure from things that may bring you joy, and to chase pleasure by doing incresaingly-depraved bullshit is stupid because the problem is not that you haven't done anything interesting enough but because you need to fix your heart (see: the bearded philosophical one of the rich men)
Plus: power makes you separate yourself and see others as merely commodities
Thus: power (or at least, universal tyrannical authority) is the enemy of pleasure?
III. III. People with power exist, but it is the collaborators they deputize with that power who legitimize the violence they do to people who aren't them. (see: all the libertine characters).
Plus an extra to this idea: cruel collaborators are rewarded, and collaborators who are cruel will seek out or be promoted to positions where they get to be cruel, but kind collaborators cannot exist, and will be destroyed because to stop collaborating would be to entirely lose power and invite retaliation (see: dead blackshirt and his dead Black girlfriend, the pianist who commits suicide)
III. IV. Not sure how to word this - ultimate power means that the people with no power are exctlusively commodities and the people with lesser power shared by those with power are commodities that must be treated with a little bit of fake deference as to their opinions, but those opinions are not imporatnt enough to save them if they step out of line. (See: the blackshirt getting shot for breaking the rules)
IV. The four torturer guys are, like, pathetically obsessed with each other's approval and opinion and are clearly vying for it over and over in a way that is just kind of sad, not cool or badass, and the way they enact their various tortures is alsi really like - almost sad and pathetic more than anything else. I personally bedlive this is a good way to depict fascists (pathetic and violent and more pathetic for their own legitimate violence, that is)
V. The sexual morals of this movie outside their use of rape as metaphor for rule dont sit quite right with me. Salò has a profoundly sex-negative cast and I can't really say I think there's any way to not have written this movie in a sex-negative-casting sort of way but I don't really like that the victims are all generally sexless beings but the villains are either debauched gay or bisexual men and their collaborators, debauched gay or bisexual men and the sex workers who they've hired to teach their victims to be better at sex. I also think it wouldve spoiled the message weirdly to have gone out of itsway to be sex-positive while also using rape as a metaphor for fascist rule. But i also particularly do not care for the positioning of gay men and sex workers on the side of fascism, because that's not correct and historically and currently dangerous.
VI. Incisive comment on fascism, in my opinion.
Cuts neatly to how I feel about watching the situation in Gaza. I feel like a collaborator :( Bodies are a commodity to the ruler and they will find any form of debasement they can to prove they can debase you, unless you are a collaborator, in which case you are kept carefully in line by the promise that you could always be a body instead.
VII. It's interesting that the characters are frequently given an appearance of dignity but themes of debasement are also common throughout the entire film so it makes sense - that allows us to see when the characters have 'recovered face' and therefore can be debased a second time.
VIII. God that movie was brutal.
IV. God that movie was hot. How the hell did they make their actors look like that? Half of them could've crawled out of a painting of St. Sebastien or something/
V. The film, frming, soundtrack, etc is a masterpiece. The cinematography is absolutely drop-dead gorgeous and in places looks like Baroque art. The audio is very sparse - it had to be entirely done in post - and the choice to leave hollow background noise instad of adding music places makes scenes where someone is like sobbing their heart out for three minutes straight really impactful! And I just adore the look of old film.
