Erminia

This exemplifies the point I was trying to make - that it's not enough for a
work of art to transform by imagination, as 'Life is Beautiful' does, nor is
it good enough for it to challenge traditional views on a subject, and I
think one could make a case for Benigni's film doing this although I don't
care to (i am certainly not defending it, the reverse).

We're entitled to assess the nature of the transformation, does it diminish
or expand us? how is it achieved? through suppression? willed ignorance?

We're also entitled to assess the nature of the challenge to a prevailing
wisdom? those of us who find that combination of egotism and cruelty not too
dissimilar to the practise of the Ancien Regime are not convinced that de
Sade represented a real interrogation of contemporary orthodoxy.

Thus far, I think we're in a loose agreement. A small point -
I think the reference to political correctness was out of place. When we
criticise the PC, it's for undue attention to the letter of the law. Those
who've been critical of de Sade are doing it out of a profound sense of
transgression of the spirit of the law - and, though no such law, in an
absolute sense, may exist, I think we have to act as if it does, if we want
to live in a humane society.

all the best

Geraldine



>Geraldine quoted the past discussion around "La vita e' bella", which I was
>attacking", as I still do,
>for using in a sentimentalized manner the setting of the Holocaust in the
>second part.
>
I , who object strongly to Benigni's use of history in a
>fantasized romantic way, I am prepared to accept Pasolini's film "Salo', or
>the 120 days of Sodoma". I find easier to cope with the violent and
>parodistic treatment
>made by Pasolini (who was a genius unlike Benigni, who is not) of the
>crimes
>in the puppet republic of Salo', than to
>digest Benigni's tasteless honeyed holliwoodian exploitation of Auschwitz.
>Benigni's tear-joker mode of directing does not use these painful  topics
>to
>accuse, but solely to make his point about education, fatherhood, love
>ect.(and win , in doing so, the sympathy and approval of the audience - and
>with it , of course, an Oscar) while Pasolini used De Sade's themes to
>accuse the fascist officers in Salo'. And matter of fact, he become after
>that even more unpopular than he ever was (strangely enough, he was
>assassinated only a few months later the film had been censored).
>
>For me it is more important Pasolini's act of accusation than Benigni's
>display of "good sentiments".
>I do no find him reliable as a narrator. I do find Pasolini , Dostoevskij,
>and De sade more reliable ones,
>since they expose in the first place themselves. They risk to be unpleasant
>and to disturb. They do not want to embellish our horrors.
>The massage is not necessarily : "Do imitate me, since I am naughty."
>Actually, could be the opposite.
>They often hurt with the dismisurate passions of their characters the
>limits
>of decency imposed by our social conventions.
>These are the cries of individuals fighting for their liberty; the problems
>here shifts from the sociological-historical to a metaphysical one. In
>Dostoevskij 's novels one finds the worse of society: assassinations,
>crimini passionali, rapes, madness, perversion.
>But he does that to condemn (by showing what it is like) both the
>individual
>seen as anarchical and egotistical, and society , which make people forget
>the links with other individuals by devoiding social interactions of every
>compassionate feelings for the others and force them to compete.
>
>Actually, I am convinced that one learns infinitely more from what is
>presented as
>morally unacceptable (since it makes inner good  nature revolt ).
>Pinocchio (the naughty boy who becomes a donkey and deserts school and runs
>away from home and abandon his poor old father teaches more to little
>Italian school children than all the positive heroes of the world.
>This is called negative dialectic Pinocchio is decent literature for
>children, even though he continuously misbehave.
>(It sets a model of how one should not be like - by showing how naughty
>children are inclined to be if let to their discretion-
>therefore it also shows the need of the cricket, the father, the mother,
>the
>school, the existence of the cat and the fox, of Mangiafuoco and of the
>land
>of the eternal playfulness, the all-devouring Whale, eccetera eccetera.)
>Pinocchio has nothing to do with supporting the
>bad reasons of nature (as Dom and Geraldine say).
>
>Can't De Sade be read in the same way? In the light of a negative
>dialectic?
>Be seen as quintessential of the theme of desperate loneliness, of the
>self-flagellating self, (Pinocchio is flagellated too when he becomes a
>donkey)?
>I wonder,
>(this is too long, I am trying to desert my duty of translating that
>novel....)
>
>Erminia

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