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The Inversion of Norm in the Screen Representation of Power

EDN: dlokpx

Abstract

The film “Saló, or the 120 Days of Sodom” is a complex and complicated work in which Pier Paolo Pasolini explores the phenomenon of power as an integral part of human nature. Interpreting the work of Donatien Alphonse François de Sade “The 120 days of Sodom, or the School of debauchery”, the director attacks the concepts of blessing and goodness and shows how hypocritical can human nature be, how much one tends to delude himself in wishful thinking.
In this paper, “Saló, or the 120 Days of Sodom” is considered as an author's statement on the postmodern image of power. At the intersection of the psychoanalytic and the post-structuralist discourses, power is shown as a focus of psychopathological formations in human civilization and culture. The law becomes a kind of vehicle of perverse tendencies in modern society, which is the inversion of the norm. Pasolini explicates the mechanisms of power, subordination and repression underlying interpersonal relations. The law does not prevent the power from arbitrary rule, as far as the power itself makes laws in order to subject the limits to the process of transgression. The phenomenon of the postmodern image of power lies in the fact that a person, under the guise of individual freedom, unconsciously submits to the sadistic machinery of the law.
Human body is the main object of power. Enslaving sexuality, seeking to depersonalize and suppress any bodily dynamics, the power structures pursue the homogenization of the society under the sign of legal grounds. The article focuses on the fact that perversion in Pasolini's interpretation is not a departure from the norm, but, in a way, its basis. Perversion is constitutive for the concept of norm.
As a result of the study, it was concluded that power is the depersonalizing, anonymous potential of the law, while the law itself is a product of sadistic psychopathology. The evil that lies at the root of power is that sacred foreboding which is at the heart of human identity.

About the Author

V. А. Akimov
S.A. Gerasimov Russian State University of Cinematography ( VGIK)
Russian Federation

2nd year Post-graduate student



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For citations:


Akimov V.А. The Inversion of Norm in the Screen Representation of Power. Vestnik VGIK. 2022;14(4(54)):126-138. (In Russ.) EDN: dlokpx

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ISSN 2074-0832 (Print)
ISSN 2713-2471 (Online)