Pier Paolo Pasolini: “Sex as a metaphor for power”

Abstract

The essay explores the question of the relationship between sex and power in the era of neocapitalism’s triumph and the formation of the consumeristic society in Pasolini’s two last works – the film Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, and the novel Oil (Petrolio). The likening of sex to the total consumeristic power is Pasolini’s contribution to the modern sociology and psychology, while his discovery of sex as a category of political power supports the same thesis Michel Foucault made a year later in his History of Sexuality: The Will to Knowledge, 1976.
The 1970s were the years of crisis and destruction of the traditional culture, replaced by the new models of consumerism, stimulated by sex. Stylistically and generically different, the film and the novel interact with each other, as both deal with power and sex. The essay considers the texts, paramount to understanding the “late-period Pasolini”: Tetis, Abdication of the Trilogy of Life, and Sex as a Metaphor for Power.