PASOLINI AND THE BODY AS RESISTANCE

Abstract

The Italian poet and filmmaker, Pier Paolo Pasolini, was a great critic of his time, above all, of the capitalist system that tried to impose on the world a single model of life based on the consumption of goods. Through the so-called mass culture, this system managed to form the popular spirit, transforming everything into merchandise, including the human body. The Enlightenment, “civilized” world also revealed itself to be a world of barbarism, a world that involves and controls bodies and minds. These bodies co-opted by power are bodies without autonomy, without freedom. Pasolinian cinema presents movements that are attempts to distance itself and resist the developmentalism of the present, although this distancing takes place from and in view of the present itself. His films bring strong, brutal, critical scenes, but also small glimpses, dancing scenes, in which the bodies seem to break free of their chains, connecting again with their ancestry.