Taboo Films

Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom

Kids

tw: everything bad you can possibly imagine

Ohhhhh boy. Greetings and I’m sorry in advance, dear reader. I appreciate you clicking on this blog post, even though it is no doubt emanating a rancid and unappealing aura—one that could only come from some truly depraved and despicable movies. As if the post-3-day-weekend return to work and the abominable humidity of a Texas September weren’t unbearable enough, this week I made the executive decision to watch two movies that have been sitting on my watchlist—intentionally ignored—for years now. These are merely two taboo movies, in a long human media history full of taboo movies, but these projects seemed particularly irredeemable on the surface, and my cinematic instincts were once again on point. But there’s this silly, somewhat unspoken competition amongst cinephiles—one that encourages and expects the viewing of certain “un-viewable” films to further one’s artistic education—and I seldom enjoy partaking in this competition. I’m attracted to men, so I know all about masochism (pause for 90s laugh track.) And I recognize that some taboo films may be worth exploring, and some taboo films may exist solely just to punish the audience. I use the term “taboo” to keep things succinct, but really these are just hard-to-watch films; a handful of which I’ve watched on this blog: A Clockwork Orange, Man Bites Dog, Pink Flamingos, and Love Actually, and I’ve even watched some taboo films that I’ve enjoyed like Tetsuo: The Iron Man, Oldboy, Red Rocket, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, & Her Lover, The Devils, Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story—which at least handle their tough-to-stomach themes in a manner that is compelling. And in addition to these taboo-for-the-sake-of-taboo movies, I’ve also explored films that handle some really rough, challenging subject matter—as in the film Vox Lux (school shootings), Outrage (rape), as well as the various affairs and injustices and murders and assaults and grotesqueries that have appeared in the numerous horror and noir and just plain shocking films that I’ve watched. (And to say nothing of all of the fucked up films and YouTube true crime rabbit holes I seek out regularly, outside of this blog…don’t worry, I see a therapist.) I say all of this to underscore my high tolerance for terrible content, my extreme curiosity for consuming art even if it’s controversial, and my dedication to simply watching as many movies as possible. You may call it masochistic, but I call it brave, and I have never felt more brave than I did this week, my dear reader, while watching these two famously gross, taboo films. This week’s theme could’ve also been called “Punishing Pictures” or “Is This Really Art” or “Movies that Smell Bad”, because I derived zero pleasure from experiencing these two cold, callous, convoluted, and controversial classics. They’re the kind of films that launched a million think-pieces and op-eds and terrified parents, the kind of films that I didn’t even bother searching for on any streaming service, or even my more-reputable pirating sites. (You know you’re in for a wild ride when you can’t even pirate a film off of EffedUpMovies.com.) I have had this double feature planned for months but have been afraid, quite frankly, and not my usual, thrilling-horror-movie fear but, a “am-I-gonna-puke” fear. Nevertheless, I persisted, and pressed play on these two taboo movies.

Up first I watched the crème de la crème of gross-out cinema, the peak of putrid political commentaries, one of the most meme-ified and referenced and oft-avoided films, even in the pretentious world of film nerds: this is Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1975 film Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom. Like many film freaks of my generation, I learned about this film from various “Scariest Films of All Time” lists, and through Bill Hader’s iconic Criterion Closet video, where he jokes that this would make a great date movie. It was only recently, however, that I learned more about the troubled but fascinating history of Pasolini, and the rage that fueled his final film. Salò has become like a campfire legend, with even the most distinguished critics and film fans avoiding it. In 2011, Roger Ebert wrote that he owned the film, but had never watched it. And as we become further enmeshed in a new age of fascism, this film that satirizes the terrors of fascism continues to pique the curiosity of all kinds of viewers. There are people who find beauty and worth in Pasolini’s most violently transgressive film, and there are people who deem it to be too disgusting and torturous to be of any value. Regardless, it is one of the most talked-about and fiercely-debated films of all time, not just for what occurs within the film, but what inspired it, and what happened to Pasolini because of it. But before we get into the controversies associated with this film, let’s discuss the film, itself. Inspired by the unfinished 1785 novel 120 Days of Sodom by the Marquis de Sade, Pasolini shifted the story’s setting: from the evil reign of King Louis the XIV in France to the evil reign of Nazism in World War II Italy. Salò transports us to the year 1944, where the fascist Nazi regime has completely overtaken Italy, and alongside idyllic bodies of water and gorgeous architecture, an oppressive military occupation grows. Four wealthy, corrupt libertines from the fascist Republic of Salò—known simply as the Duke, the Bishop, the Magistrate, and the President—all shake hands and solidify a sadistic plan, and force a handful of handsome young men to kidnap and deliver several teenage victims to a lavish, private villa. In this lawless, hellish estate, the four libertines have chosen nine teenage boys and nine teenage girls to be their slaves and playthings, and one of the men in charge declares, “Weak chained creatures destined for our pleasure… you are beyond the reach of any legality. No one on earth knows you're here. As far as everyone knows, you are dead.” And thus begins some of the most atrocious and appalling torture techniques ever put on film, separated into three acts: Circle of Mania, Circle of Shit, and Circle of Blood. Throughout each segment, four middle-aged female sex workers tell sordid tales from their past, as to inspire arousal among the crowd of pedophiles. As each story becomes more debaucherous and disturbing, the libertines take pleasure in molesting the mostly-naked cluster of victims, forcing them to perform humiliating acts, tripping the naked women acting as their waiters, mocking them before raping and scarring them. Typically when I watch my double features, I take extensive notes without taking my eyes off of the screen—my fingers typing with about 50% accuracy as I try to note important moments, unique quotes, and iconic imagery—but while I watched Salò, I barely took any notes, and I looked away from the screen whenever I could. Some of the abuse happens off screen, in other rooms we cannot see, but the majority of Salò’s sexual violence and psychological torture happens front-and-center, well-lit, brutally and impossible to be ignored. And yet, as messed up as it sounds, I couldn’t help laughing at some of it, because the absurdity of these scripted acts of cruelty are at times too ludicrous to suspend one’s disbelief. Some lines of dialogue were haunting enough to jolt me back into focus, as when one of the libertines says, “Nothing’s more contagious than evil”, but other lines made me outright chuckle, as when another libertine directs the storytelling sex worker to be more specific in her monologue, “For example, I know nothing of the size of your professor’s cock.” On paper, it is ridiculous to imagine, in practice, it is difficult to process. It is simultaneously the most juvenile and the most sophisticated depiction of “hell” that I’ve ever seen. People are raped, people are forced to eat human feces, people are tortured in ways I hadn’t witnessed before—and I’ve seen a lot of horror films. The grotesqueness of Salò is so excessive, that the intensity of each torture technique begins to lose all meaning at a certain point. Sex, violence, humiliation, all done for the sake of showing sex, violence, and humiliation, doesn’t maintain the terror it tries to uphold, even when a random consensual love connection is formed between two of the girls, even when one of the boys develops Stockholm Syndrome for one of the libertines. John Waters loves this film, so I should’ve known how gross it would be, but the portrayal of poop in this movie makes Divine herself seem like a saint with a completely normal appetite. I didn’t expect to enjoy the costuming and set design and cinematography of a film so steeped in vile imagery, and I certainly didn’t expect the funny, campy, gay hijinks that ensue, for better or worse. Salò feels un-rate-able, and it is borderline unwatchable, but randomly, I loved the final line of this film. I did not enjoy the experience of watching Salò, and I felt compelled to immediately delete my internet history afterwards, but I was, however, fascinated by the making of this film. There is much to be discussed about Pier Paolo Pasolini and his illustrious career, so I encourage you to do some research on your own if you’re curious, but I will tell you that, unsurprisingly, the director of Salò was a complicated man. He was openly gay, but had strong roots in Christian conservatism, and was a vocal advocate against abortion. But he was a staunch Marxist and Communist, a poet and a teacher, who was once indicted for “corruption of minors and obscene acts in public places”—although it’s unclear if these obscene acts went beyond “dancing.” He’s like a right-wing caricature of a European demon, but he was a real man with real, informed opinions, who made countless films that were beautiful, then made a disgusting movie like Salò. Pasolini was disturbed by the post-WWII effects on society—how property ownership and consumerism and productivity and the idea of a nuclear family were becoming more popular than more noble ambitions like humanism and poetry and revolution. Capitalism, and the consumption of junk food made with preservatives, particularly irked Pasolini, so his response was to make Salò—where individuals are shown consuming literal shit. He wasn’t subtle, but he was confidently kooky, and to his credit, he apparently made the set of this film as joyous and peaceful as possible. Actress Hélène Surgère described the mood on the set as “paradoxically jovial and immature” in spite of the content. In between shooting, the cast shared large meals of risotto and also played football games against the crew of Bernardo Bertoluccis Novecento, which was being filmed nearby. She also said that the movie was literally “made” in the editing room, and the filmmakers had no idea how grim of a movie it was until they saw the finished product at the premiere. Just three weeks before it premiered, though, Pasolini was horrifically murdered—he was run over several times with his own car, and so savagely beaten that his corpse was unrecognizable. Multiple bones were broken and his testicles were crushed by what appeared to have been a metal bar, and an autopsy revealed that his body had been partially burned with gasoline after his death. This vicious crime has been viewed as a Mafia-style revenge killing, one that was likely carried out by multiple people, though it still remains a mystery. Naturally, Salò was banned in nearly every country but the U.S. (lmao typical), not because of the depiction of coprophagia or vile scenes of torture, but because of its pornographic tendencies. Even the sketchy website I found this on, put up a content warning before it let me watch. Problematic as he was, Pasolini was a devoted arbiter of artistic exploration, and a vocal anti-fascist who really proved the wickedness of authoritarian greed, and those complicit with it, in this confrontational film.

I’m not sure if I can give as much credit to the creators behind tonight’s next movie—this is Larry Clark’s 1995 film Kids. Written by Harmony Korine—the patron saint of stinky cinema—when he was 19 years old, Kids follows another group of lawless libertines, only this time they’re teens and tweens on the mean streets of NYC. And if that idea alone makes your skin crawl, do not read ahead. We mostly follow the film’s antagonist: a scrawny, sweaty, janky-teethed, 16-year-old boy named Telly (Leo Fitzpatrick) over the course of one foul but typical day. We meet Telly as he is trying to convince an unnamed 12-year-old girl to have sex with him, and even though she repeatedly denies him, he eventually coerces her successfully. As if this weren’t deplorable enough, he then exits her bedroom, looks down the stairs, and spits over the railing to the bottom floor of this nice NYC apartment. He then meets up with his friend, Casper (Justin Pierce), who’s also a despicable, smelly, teenage boy, and the two help each other shoplift a 40 oz of beer. The two boys then spend the next several minutes—actually, the entire film—talking about pussy, drugs, and other general teenage boy concerns, with all of the clumsy confidence of children who are growing up far too quickly. The way they talk about girls is so disgusting, but Telly is particularly repugnant as he explains his desire to solely have sex with virgins. The two boys wander around aimlessly in the daylight—pissing anywhere they please, doing whippets, stealing money from their absentminded parents, degrading women, speaking in a blaccent while being racist and homophobic. I’m not joking when I say the most respectable thing they do in this entire movie is buy weed. We eventually cut to a group of girls—the foil to these foul creatures—who discuss similar subject matter like sex and drugs and partying. And while it is a bit jarring to see these young girls discuss the particulars of giving blowjobs, the way they speak is a welcome departure from how the boys speak. Two of the girls are Ruby and Jennie (Rosario Dawson and Chloe Sevigny, in their film debuts) and though they differ in sexual experience, the two bond over the same teenage bullshit. Jennie accompanies Ruby to the clinic to get tested, even though Jennie has only had sex once—with Telly. Ruby, who has been around the block quite a bit for a 17-year-old, tests negative for all STDs, but Jennie learns that she has HIV. This may have been a shocking plot point, if I hadn’t been forced to endure countless after school specials in health class that detailed this very scenario. The rest of the film follows Telly on his quest to fuck another virgin, and Jennie in her quest to track down Telly. I wish I could tell you that there was more to the plot than this. I wish I could tell you that Kids, in all of its sticky sensationalism, had as salient and prescient of a message as Salò. But it doesn’t. It’s just kiddie porn and misogyny, with a bad soundtrack and a horrendous vibe throughout. It feels as if this movie was made solely to strike fear into parents and to make the upper-class feel disgust and intrigue, ala Mugatu’s “Derelicte” campaign in Zoolander. Every so often the camera pans to street performers or cab drivers or more innocent children, perhaps to showcase the rich tapestry of cultures constantly on the move in New York, but this didn’t add one ounce of charm to this movie, it only highlighted the film’s desperation to seem “artistic” by juxtaposing the familiar with the crass. Kids is just 90 minutes of an evil version of McLovin, terrorizing and infecting the entire underage female population of this community, which just became tedious and never became interesting. Kids should’ve been titled “White Kids Calling Each Other the N-Word” or “Just Say No… to Watching this Movie.” It’s dull, it’s unoriginal, it’s the kind of movie where I was constantly checking how much time I had left to watch. I rejoiced when it finally ended, I reveled in my freedom, and I tried not to think of the 90 minutes of my life I’d never get back. I hated it so much that I refuse to spend as much time to writing about it as I did Salò. I’ll instead defer to feminist scholar bell hooks, who spoke extensively about this film in Cultural Criticism and Transformation: “Kids fascinated me as a film precisely because when you heard about it, it seemed like the perfect embodiment of the kind of postmodern, notions of journeying and dislocation and fragmentation and yet when you go to see it, it has simply such a conservative take on gender, on race, on the politics of HIV.” Even though Kids has built a substantial cult-following, for once, I am not alone in my disdain for a film. In the 30 years since its release, there has been further examination of the ethics of this film—particularly in regard to its treatment of its young, nonprofessional actors. Justin Pierce died by suicide in 2000, Harold Hunter died of a drug overdose in 2006, and in a 2021 interview, Hamilton Harris said he felt “exploited” by the film. And while I would typically at least give credit to the film’s “realism” and presumed authenticity, I have discovered in my research that Harmony Korine is just another rich nepo baby who isn’t even from New York, but the Bay Area of all places, lmao. The only enjoyable part of this week’s double feature-watching, was the moment I realized why I recognized the actor playing Telly—he plays the wannabe homeless art youth who ends up being rich Patricia Clarkson’s adult loser son on that one episode of Broad City. I certainly didn’t have a ball watching Salò, but I really hated Kids. I don’t think I’ve ever been more disgusted than when I observed Telly, too-open-mouthed making out with each of his victims, and mind you, I’d just watched a movie with 30 minutes worth of shit-eating Well. That’s certainly enough mental and physical illness for one week, so I’ll sign off for now and promise to get back to more respectable films next week. Ta-ta for now!