THE SACRED SELF: AUTOGENESIS

AND CREATION IN PASOLINI’S CINEMA

Colleen Ryan-Scheutz*

This article examines Pasolini’s auteurism from the perspective of self-reference. Departing
from a semiotics-based categorization that adheres to the general linguistic categories of
syntax, semantics, and pragmatics, the author studies Pasolini’s real (notebook, documentary-
style) and mythic (narrative) film appearances to show how he used the self as a means of
signifying and capturing the genuine human subjects, ideals, and settings he found sacred.
Pasolini’s physical presence allowed him to directly substantiate the poetic and ideological
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associations he made with authentic modes of living and to show himself immersed in their
realities, both as creator and fruit of their vitality.
Questo articolo esamina l’autorialità di Pasolini dalla prospettiva dell’autoreferenzialità. Partendo da
una categorizzazione basata sulla semiotica che aderisce alle categorie linguistiche generali della sin-
tassi, della semantica e della pragmatica, l’autrice studia le apparizioni di Pasolini nei suoi film: siano
esse reali (appunti, stile documentario) o mitiche (narrative), per mostrare come l’autore utilizzasse il
proprio io come un mezzo per catturare e significare i soggetti, gli ideali, gli ambienti umani genuini che
egli considerava sacri. La propria presenza fisica permetteva a Pasolini di sostanziare direttamente la
sua poetica e le sue associazioni ideologiche con modi di vivere autentici e di mostrare se stesso immer-
so nelle loro realtà, sia come creatore che come frutto della loro vitalità.

F ew Italian auteurs have been so present in their own cinema as was Pier Paolo
Pasolini, meaning that he either appeared as an actor or as himself in several of
his films. A director’s presence can, of course, be felt in different ways. Recurring im-
ages, leitmotifs, emblematic filming techniques, or regular collaborations with a par-
ticular actor, actress, or composer are just a few of the ways in which we recognize
auteurs, and many such thematic and/or stylistic qualities are easily identifiable in Pa-
solini’s cinema. But why, we might ask, is Pasolini so often there «in the flesh»? It is
clear that Pasolini’s film roles have significance beyond the occasional witty and self-
reflexive gesture, and that there is more than vanity to be discerned from his practice
of self-representation.1 What is unique in the case of Pasolini’s auteurism is not just
the fact or frequency of his physical presence, but that he used the «self» as a means
of signifying and capturing the genuine human subjects, ideals, and settings he found
sacred.

* Colleen Ryan-Scheutz, Department of French and Italian, 642 Ballantine Hall, Indiana University,
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 (usa). E-mail: ryancm@indiana.edu
1 Robert Gordon, Forms of Subjectivity, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1996, p. 2. The author aptly
states: «Were it simply a question of quantity, however, were Pasolini’s art no more than the indulgence of
an unrepressed narcissist, there would be scant interest in a study of this kind. Instead, his work offers an
extraordinarily fertile and dense example of how subjectivities are built on something other and something
far more complex than merely saying ‘I’.»
 90 colleen ryan-scheutz

Forms of self-reference
Pasolini had two main kinds of film roles. First were the «real» ones, in which he lit-
erally played himself, Pier Paolo Pasolini the intellectual, the interviewer, the socio-
cultural observer and commentator: Sopraluoghi in Palestina (1963), Comizi d’amore
(1964), Appunti per un film sull’India (1968), Appunti per un’Orestiade africana (1970). He
also gave himself fictional or «mythic» roles in three separate works of literary
adaptation: the High Priest in Edipo re (1967), the Artist in Il Decameron (1971), and the
Author in I racconti di Canterbury (1972).
Pasolini’s «being» in the film texts is consonant with his «being» in an array of other
art forms. He drew hundreds self-portraits and wrote autobiographically throughout
his poetic collections and narrative works (Atti impuri, Amado mio), at times even nam-
ing himself (see «Frammento alla morte», La Divina Mimesis), or indirectly naming
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main characters Pietro or Paolo after himself (Teorema, San Paolo).1 In the case of
cinema, Robert Gordon sees Pasolini’s self-reference as belonging to two primary
categories, the first of which he calls self-representation, whether in direct instances
(Pasolini’s appearances) or indirect examples of «autobiographical self-portraiture»
(people or things that allude to his life or presence).2 Gordon’s second category is that
of archetypal figuration, indicating the people, places and things that emphasize mul-
tiplicity and fragmentation in Pasolini’s subjectivity, rather than a single or unified
voice.3
While Gordon’s framework captures many important dimensions of Pasolini’s self-
reference in cinema, a semiotics-based categorization that adheres to the general
linguistic categories of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics is even better suited for
understanding the author’s film appearances. In this tripartite approach to analysis,
the syntactic aspect of self-reference refers to the formal sign-image of the self; the
semantic aspect indicates the significance of the self as sign; and the pragmatic aspect
pertains to the particular context in which the self, as sign, acts or appears.4 This or-
ganization cross-cuts Gordon’s categories of «self-representation», «veiled autobio-
graphical portraiture», and «archetypal figurations» in different ways while stressing
the importance of context in the author’s film roles because, beyond constituting a
self-portrait, Pasolini’s body onscreen is also a sign with numerous possible signifieds.
And the fact that Pasolini in the film continuously refers to Pasolini outside of the film

1 Pier Paolo Pasolini, Bestemmia. Tutte le poesie, Milano, Garzanti, 1995, pp. 578-581.
2 Robert Gordon, Forms of Subjectivity, cit., p. 196. Gordon’s work provides an extremely rich and com-
prehensive discussion of Pasolini’s expressions of self hood and subjectivity across various artistic genres. I
am greatly indebted to Professor Gordon for this work, particularly his chapters on cinema. They helped
clarify and further my thinking on Pasolini’s film roles and the meaning of self-reference in his works. See
also Pasolini’s Strategies of Self-Construction in Zygmunt Baranski, ed., Pasolini Old and New. Surveys and
Studies. Dublin, Four Courts Press, 1996, pp. 41-76.
3 Robert Gordon, Forms of Subjectivity, cit., pp. 196-204.
4 This tripartite approach to analysis is based on Scheutz (1996) who uses Morris’ (1938) semiotic triad
to distinguish three forms of self-reference for symbols, sentences, and theories. Though this categoriza-
tion is related to the Peircian triad of iconic, indexical, and symbolic signs (e.g., icons are construed as self-
referential symbols for a given interpretation function), it is different in its aim to distinguish different forms
of referring and self-referring signifiers based on their semiotic roles.
 autogenesis and creation in pasolini ’ s cinema 91
impels us to consider him as a signifier whose different semiotic aspects and cultural
characteristics generate a complex meaning that can be formed at multiple levels si-
multaneously.
This article concentrates less on the mechanics of Pasolini’s endless and fluid forms
of subjectivity and more on their meaning in terms of his practice of using the self
in his ongoing search for the sacred.1 Whereas Gordon emphasizes the multiplicity
and the movement of forms not only across genres but also across elements (lan-
guage, style, metaphor, technique, intertextuality, etc.) within a single genre, my goal
is to illuminate the qualities, complexities, and consequences of the self-referential
practices at work by focusing on those filmic instances where syntactic, semantic, and
pragmatic self-reference co-occur.
Generally speaking, of the three kinds of self-reference at play where Pasolini’s film
roles are concerned, syntactic self-reference is the most immediate kind. Pasolini’s
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face, body, and voice constitute specific signs and signifiers in each of the films in
which they occur. They are the shapes, forms, or physical properties of the self, and
without these formal aspects, all other self-referential elements would almost always
automatically fall into semantic categories of metaphor, analogy, metonymy, and al-
lusion. For example, the symbolic crow in Uccellacci e uccellini is, of course, the left-
wing intellectual from the postwar epoch with declining revolutionary hope. But the
character has a different set of formal properties – voice and physical appearance –
from Pasolini and, therefore, can only refer to Pasolini semantically. However, in the
films in which Pasolini appears, the semantic and pragmatic forms of self-reference
develop from the «formal» property of the self as sign. In other words, Pasolini’s phys-
ical presence first and directly establishes the self as a primary subject. Whether on-
location, interviewing locals for his «film-notes,» or embedded in the film and dis-
guised as a priest (Edipo re), Pasolini-the-artist is a sign and, as such, integral to the
film’s structural and thematic coherence.
Semantic self-reference can be direct or indirect. In its direct form, Pasolini’s image
generally signifies the intellectual or artist-figure. However, there are many instances
of indirect semantic self-reference for which Pasolini as icon-sign is not present. This
most notably occurs through the themes, motifs, objects, or actors who, in varied and
nuanced ways, allude to Pasolini’s biographical origins, to his love for rustic, subal-
tern, and marginal populations, and his denunciations of inauthentic cultural hege-
mony. The close-up of Pasolini’s published screenplay Mamma Roma and the recita-
tion of his «Un solo rudere» by the film director in La ricotta, and the guest’s reading
of Rimbaud in Teorema are other examples of indirect semantic self-reference.2 These
people, objects, and ideas are linguistic signs that refer to Pasolini. They have ex-
tremely valid and effective analogical functions, but they do not include any formal
properties of the «self.»

1 For a thorough discussion of Pasolini’s poetics of the sacred, in which life, the self, and cultural
authenticity were central, see Colleen Ryan-Scheutz, Sex, the Self, and the Sacred. Women in the Cinema of
Pier Paolo Pasolini, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2007.
2 Pasolini credited high school professor and poet Antonio Rinaldi with introducing him to Rimbaud.
See Nico Naldini, Pasolini. Una vita, Torino, Einaudi, 1989, p. 18. See also Pier Paolo Pasolini, Divina
(La) Mimesis, Torino, Einaudi, 1993, p. 16.
 92 colleen ryan-scheutz
Pragmatic self reference in these films has to do with the specific contexts (time,
place, situation) in which Pasolini’s image is portrayed. The time of the filming, for
one, refers both to a specific point in the author’s life and to world events that his role
and actions advert. The localities and geographical places in which Pasolini makes his
films also contribute to pragmatic self-references in that they exemplify the authentic
versus inauthentic cultures that he consistently contrasted during his career – lower
class peoples in marginal or slum settings, religious rituals and ceremonial festivities
in ancient or barbarian communities, or the landscapes of Morocco, India, Africa, and
medieval Naples, just to name a few.1 All such locations and their humble inhabitants
bespeak Pasolini’s personal and ideological affinity for the sources of innocence and
otherness he deemed sacred. They embody the vitality and genuineness he associat-
ed with past modes that had not been flattened or co-opted by neocapitalism, and
they reflect his longing to see and feel himself a part of them.
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Another fundamental source of pragmatic self-reference in Pasolni’s cinema is the

direct questions he asks within certain films, particularly the documentary or note-
book ones, that not only engage the pro-filmic characters in his expression of self-
hood but also the audience.2 For example, in Comizi d’amore (1964), questions such as
«How do homosexuals make you feel?» or «Do women have the same freedom
(sexual) as men?» contribute to the overall context of self-reference and self-explo-
ration in his films. Similarly, a question such as «How could I represent the most major
transformation in society, that of the Furies from Erinyes into Eumenides?» in Appunti
per un’Orestiade africana points to the primary thematic of passion versus reason that
infiltrated all of his works. Even the unstated yet poetic and ideological question
underpinning all of his films – «How can I salvage the sacred?» – or «How can I re-
cover a sense of cultural authenticity among the faces and places of today’s world?»
refer continuously to Pasolini’s desire for genuine human interactions and his civic
mandate to denounce homogeneity and oppression.
Pragmatic self-reference offers the most wide-ranging and informative key to un-
derstanding how Pasolini continuously creates the «self», both internal and external
to the film. These examples reveal a method of filmmaking in which the artist
configures the self in a text. It is a way of seeing himself, fashioning himself, and ar-
ticulating what he stands for emotionally and politically. It is a form of autogenesis in
which the Pasolini is both creator and creation. One thing is certain: by literally
throwing himself into the thick of his film texts, Pasolini expressed himself by him-
self, and referred to himself as could no other sign in his works.3
In retrospect, Pasolini’s quite literally being in so many of his films also granted his
film theories from the mid sixties a more material dimension. For instance, with re-

1 See also Robert Gordon, Forms of Subjectivity, cit., pp. 197-200.

2 For a full analysis of the spectator’s role in Pasolini’s subjectivity, see Robert Gordon, Forms of Sub-
jectivity, cit., pp. 251-263.
3 Robert Gordon, Forms of Subjectivity, cit., p. 2. «He uses the textuality of his work or the semiosis of
his multiform interventions,» says Gordon, «in order to embody himself, to project himself into, rather than
onto forms of expression.» The prepositional distinction between «onto» and «into» in this observation is
crucial with respect to cinema because with this as premise, the screen image cannot be limited to the func-
tion of a Lacanian mirror-object, establishing a relationship between character and viewer and either align-
ing or distinguishing their identities therein.
 autogenesis and creation in pasolini ’ s cinema 93
spect to his notion of cinema as the «written language of reality» (Osservazioni sul pi-
ano sequenza), wherein human actions were the signs of reality in one’s everyday life,
Pasolini elected himself the «agent of reality» in certain films, contributing his own
self and all of its corporeal truth.1 Thus, through his body, his words, and his actions,
he not only partook in a larger reality, but he also became the master of his existence,
creating a role for himself prior to the film, developing and «living» the role during
the film, and then ending and granting meaning to that same role through editing and
releasing a final product.2
In Nuove questioni linguistiche Pasolini lamented the loss of original and diversified
dialects to the overly homologous and technocratic language of capitalism that had
become the first «national language» in Italy: «In the bosom of this new linguistic real-
ity, the aim of the struggle of the man of letters will be linguistic expressiveness, which
will radically coincide with the liberty of man with respect to his mechanization.»3 One
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way to privilege the expressive power of signs in language was to create a «cinema of
poetry.» In his essay of the same title, Pasolini theorized a distinction between auteur
cinema, like that of Antonioni or Bertolucci, and Hollywood cinema and mainstream
films, which he categorized as cinema of prose.4 He opposed the two «languages» in
light of their functionality (prose) versus expressivity (poetry). The cinema of prose,
he argued, used images (image-signs or imsegni) for communication along a linear and
highly predictable line of thinking. By contrast, the cinema of poetry used imsegni to
express thoughts, ideas, and less physically tangible notions, and therefore involved
more complex and potentially more subjective cognitive processes.5
Pasolini maintained that a cinema of poetry offered a suitable alternative to the
constraints of literary/functional languages and perhaps an ideal venue for self-ex-
pression, since by its very nature it broke with codes or existed «beyond/without»
them. «[…] While literary languages base their poetry on the institutionalized prem-
ise of usable instrumentalized languages, the common possession of all speakers,» he
wrote, «cinematographic languages seem to be founded on nothing at all: they do not

1 Teresa De Lauretis, Alice Doesn’t. Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema, Bloomington, Indiana University
Press, 1984, p. 49. «Pasolini’s often quoted slogan, “cinema is the language of reality”, was in part provoca-
tively outrageous, in part very earnestly asserted. […] For Pasolini human action, human intervention in
the real is the first and foremost expression of men, their primary ‘language’, primary not (or not just) in
the sense of originary or pre-historic, but primary to the extent that it encompasses all other ‘languages’ –
verbal, gestural, iconic, musical, etc.». See also Pier Paolo Pasolini, Empirismo eretico, Milano, Garzanti,
1991, pp. 198-226 and Heretical Empiricism, Louise K. Barnett, Ben Lawton, trans., Bloomington, Indiana
University Press, 1988, pp. 197-222.
n.b. For all future references to the essays in Empirismo eretico I will the English translation by Barnett
and Lawton signaled as «he ».
2 In Osservazioni sul piano sequenza Pasolini theorized that death constituted a human being’s final ges-
ture, after which others could finally make meaning of his or her life. He then likened the editing process
in cinema to death, for it was at this moment that a sense of finality, order, and meaning could be bestowed
upon a given character’s actions and existence. See he , cit., pp. 233-237.
3 See he , cit., pp. 3-22. 4 See he , cit., pp. 167-186.
5 See Giuliana Bruno, Heresies. The Body of Pasolini’s Semiotics, «Cinema Journal», 30, 3, 1991, p. 33.
«Pasolini’s imsegno can be acknowledged as a sharing the theoretical direction of Peirce’s triad of signs: icon-
ic, indexical, and symbolic. […] For both Peirce and Pasolini, objects are functions, resultants of the dy-
namics of experience. When Pasolini says that res sunt nomina he speaks of res as texts that trigger ‘semio-
sis,’ as semiotic systems that demand deciphering. The attitude that was generally mistaken for an ontology,
on the contrary is aligned with Peirce’s approach to interpretation as grounded in praxis.»
 94 colleen ryan-scheutz
have as a real premise any communicative language.»1 In the cinema of poetry, there-
fore, one could be one’s own origins, one’s initial sign for reference and, ultimately,
one’s initial meaning. In this way, the self became self-generating.
As a subject-in-the-making – sui generic, anecdotal, and never truly complete – Pa-
solini’s «being there» in flesh and spirit also celebrated corporality and action. The hu-
man body and the body politic, we know, were thematic constants in Pasolini’s opus,
from his civic poetry of the fifties through some of what became his final composi-
tions such as Salò and also the posthumous Petrolio. «It is the body that is the «scene
of writing» in Pasolini, according to Bruno. «The body constitutes a reserve, an
archive that informs the decoding of images – the locus where signification makes its
mark, embodying the social process and historicity.»2
If indeed his theory and practice of filmmaking were informed by such physicali-
ty, and the body could mirror the social processes that take place, then Pasolini’s film
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roles amount to more than a «mystical aspiration to textual transubstantiation.»3

They become material proof of this transubstantiation instead. As a result, Pasolini
did not have to rely on other human beings to perpetuate his life or convey his desire
for regeneration. Rather, single-handedly and quite subjectively, he could design and
achieve the renewal of the self as subject and (re)create worlds – different peoples,
time frames, spaces, and settings – that not only recognized the sacred but also fos-
tered its longevity.
For Pasolini, the body was more than a storehouse of knowledge for decoding re-
ality; it was a storehouse of memories and desires that helped the author encode and
give life to images (including those of himself ) to be worked out by others. The
body was also the site of endless contradiction, representing pleasure as well as pain,
and acting as a metaphor for historical truths, such as the individual life and the po-
litical organization of Italy. Through the body, Pasolini continually transgressed ac-
cepted codes, whether in his personal life or in cinema, and whether by eschewing
the cinema of prose or by being the first to show full frontal male nudity. Moreover,
by employing his own body in these films, he showed himself literally in relation to
such conventionality and transgression. Any examples of transgression and, there-
fore, destabilization, immediately oblige the viewer to start over – to effect a return
to origins as far as the hermeneutic process is concerned, so as to review what was
said or shown, and then re-contextualize the situation with Pasolini as an integral
part of it.4
Pasolini’s appearances in cinema were the result of his desire for the sacred; and the
different forms of self reference in which he engaged were all a means to this end. He
put himself into the text, as if on the front line, as a loaded and highly expressive sign
to proactively counter the homologizing forces of Italy’s newfound neocapitalist cul-
ture. Self-reference thus became the discursive operation through which he, as male

1 he , cit., p. 167.
2 Giuliana Bruno, art. cit., p. 37. For a discussion on the centrality of the body – human and political
– see Millicent Marcus, Writing with Bodies, in Filmmaking by the Book. Italian Cinema and Literary
Adaptation, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993, pp. 136-155.
3 Robert Gordon, Forms of Subjectivity, cit., pp. 2-3.
4 For important insights on the significance of Pasolini’s body on screen, see Antonino Repetto, Invito
al cinema di Pasolini, Milano, Mursia, 1998, pp. 139-143.
 autogenesis and creation in pasolini ’ s cinema 95
and homosexual, could preserve the vital notions of origins, innocence, and regener-
ation that were so intrinsic to his life and to his work. Self-reference also constituted
the «sacred» methodology through which he proved the notion of «self» to be the fruit
of one’s creative endeavors and inextricable from the work of art and its meaning.

Real roles
Pasolini employed many first-hand journalistic techniques for the information gath-
ering and social commentary of his documentary-style films. He conducted sponta-
neous street interviews, held planned meetings and discussion sessions, and added
voice-over commentary to his images. These films, with the exception of Comizi
d’amore, a work in the tradition of cinema verité, were not necessarily intended as au-
tonomous works. Rather they were conceived each time as visual note-taking for a
feature-length, non-documentary film. For this reason, they elucidate Pasolini’s dia-
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logic thought processes as filmmaker and show that he envisioned himself as con-
stituent of the work-in progress and that he directly engaged with the people and
places of interest.1
The «meta-language» resulting from the presence of the body and voice of the au-
thor helps to situate the self within a specific historical context from which to build a
notion of reality.2 These roles typify an approach to filmmaking that sees creation as
an ongoing and renewable process, and in which the subject (whether person or
place) has the potential to come to life in new contexts. So Pasolini’s presence in the
«location hunting» or «notebook» films shows his film idea and the self in utero – in
the process of developing, of becoming. One can know the current status of the sub-
ject and observe/interpret its relationship with the entities that surround it, but one
cannot be completely sure what the subject will become and/or if indeed it will have
another filmic form or «life.»
In particular, the two notebook films or Appunti projects comprised a dynamic, in-
termediary, and evolving art form, unique precisely because they stimulated the view-
er to participate in the filmmaker’s creative, regenerative process. As Pasolini main-
tained in the case of the reader of screenplays (a textual form that suggests evolution
and becoming, as was the case of the «visual notes» preceding these films), the view-
er of the Appunti had to project forward in his mind to imagine the text’s potential for
transformation – for its becoming something else.3 Within such works, Pasolini was
one among innumerable signs in reality of a «rich, provisional texture.»4 His image
was not only an icon and indexical – denoting exactly what he was and communicat-
ing «I»(first-person, singular subject) status there and then – but also a symbol allud-
ing to what he himself might become in the later work of fiction stemming from the
notebook film. As an essential element of the work-in-progress, Pasolini showed his
autogenesis and furthered the self-referential practices already seen in other com-
pleted, narrative films.

1 The notion of a dialogue as intrinsic to the process comes from Robert Gordon, Forms of Subjectiv-
ity, cit., p. 197.
2 The notion of a resultant meta-language comes from Robert Gordon, Forms of Subjectivity, cit., p. 197.
3 See The Screenplay as a ‘Structure That Wants to Be Another Structure’ in he , cit., pp. 187-196.
4 See Robert Gordon, Forms of Subjectivity, cit., pp. 255-256.
 96 colleen ryan-scheutz
Taking the two Appunti films as examples, it becomes evident that Pasolini’s actions
internal to the films were more or less consonant with his roles, aims, and mandate
as filmmaker external to the films – explorer, observer, interviewer, commentator, po-
et, and admirer. Through his processes in these provisional works of seeking and con-
templating individual elements for the key moments of his future films, he showed
himself not only as a «maker» of films but also as a discoverer of characters and cre-
ator of meanings. The centrality of his role as motor and maker, was as important as
the unadulterated and highly expressive faces and places he chose to capture.
The two notebook films have similar structural and thematic formulas that em-
phasize the author’s creative processes and aim to portray human integrity and vital-
ity on screen. Among the most direct and efficacious of these techniques: a hypo-
thetical narrative tone; the «ricerca di personaggi»; the involvement of native peoples
in generating ideas for the future film; and the ‘open end’ or focus on a future trans-
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formation that concludes each work.1

In Appunti per un film sull’India, the final funeral scene ties together the fictional hy-
pothesis with which Pasolini began (the sacrificial death of the maharajah) with his
ideological assessment: «Un occidentale che va in India ha tutto ma in realtà non dà
niente. L’India, invece, che non ha nulla, in realtà dà tutto. Ma che cosa?»2 Beyond
clinching his work with a positive statement about a marginal and underprivileged
member of the international community, this statement also weaves the notion of
self into the ideological foundation of the film. For Pasolini is indeed the Westerner
who «has it all,» until he gets to India and has nothing to offer. India, instead, as im-
poverished as it is, reveals a wealth of cultural authenticity that the West has lost. The
key term here, is the verb «to give» – to provide, to present, to generate, to revitalize,
even if in the simplest of conditions. Only the poet, by immersing himself in the thick
of the very reality he explores, can remedy this spiritual gap between the «haves» and
«have nots» of the world.
Through his presence as interviewer, ‘voice,’ and commentator, the formal prop-
erties of Pasolini’s being, along with the semantic properties of his own marginal-
ization, mix into the pragmatic fold of the time and place of filming: a vast country
on the border of history and pre-history as it wades the waters of political independ-
ence and must surmount problems of tremendous inequality. One era is ending and
a new one is beginning, and Pasolini, through an artistic hypothesis, has placed him-
self in the center of events, as a connecting element and pivot point in the creation of
new life.
Appunti per un’Orestiade africana contains an array of parallel structural and the-
matic elements that emphasize the ideas of life and regeneration as seen in Appunti
per un film sull’India. The leitmotifs of conception and development are readily dis-
cernible once again in Pasolini’s hypothetical tone and technique of searching for
characters, which mix the richness of Africa’s spiritual culture with his own creative
capacities as poet, artist, and filmmaker. The overarching political theme is also one
of transformation and the future of democracy, since many African nations in 1970
had recently gained independence and were establishing new governments. He ends
this film on a note that conveys a similar message optimism with regard to the col-

1 See Robert Gordon, Strategies, art. cit., pp. 62-67. 2 pc i, p. 1072.

 autogenesis and creation in pasolini ’ s cinema 97
lective good. «Here are the last notes for a conclusion», says Pasolini, making refer-
ence to a new world in which the people may decide their own fate, while still pre-
serving their original cultural origins.
Pasolini’s adaptation of a classic, mythical text for a «real» and contemporary
political context elucidates his emotional and ideological proximity to the subjects
(people and places) of his work. Semantically, Appunti per un’Orestiade africana picks
up previous references to the self in terms of «blackness», «color», and «diversity» that
one can trace back in Pasolini’s bibliography throughout the decade, whether in films,
poems, or narrative compositions. Think of his poem «Africa» or the segment in La
rabbia in which he states, «the world (of the sixties) has a new problem to face; the
problem is called Color.»1 And color is but one source of social marginalization
within local as well as world communities that Pasolini viewed on the same plane
with his own alienating experiences as unorthodox Marxist and homosexual.
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One might be inclined to consider Pasolini’s practice of self-reference across all his
films in the same binary fashion: the personal-poetic context in which it was made
versus the communal-political one. However, reflecting on the notebook films alone,
one sees that these contexts were interdependent. For example, Appunti per un film sul-
l’India was made between Edipo re and Teorema – that is, between Pasolini’s «overt»
autobiography and his theorem about desecrated family culture in the sixties. Politi-
cally, Appunti per un film sull’India came out just prior to the student movements in
Italy and throughout Europe. Clearly, a bit of revolutionary fire still persisted in the
author, particularly with respect to Third World nations, and despite the fact that Italy
seemed disinterested in preserving its own authentic roots.
Created in the context of the post-era of student revolutions and heated left-wing
uprisings across Europe, Appunti per un’Orestiade africana reflected Pasolini’s waning
hope of being able to recover something sacred. Literally living out his exhortation
from earlier in that decade: «Africa! unica mia / alternativa», Pasolini endeavored to
show how even Africa would have to make a conscious decision to embrace its myth-
ic roots, in order to recover its original and genuine modes of existence.2 The more
personal context of Pasolini’s filmography places Appunti per un’Orestiade africana
between Medea and the Trilogy of Life films. More specifically, just after the regal but
disfigured Medea shouted: «Niente è più possible ormai!», Pasolini made Appunti per
un’Orestiade africana about the potentially positive transformation of an ancient,
instinctive culture into a successfully democratic one. The African film was then
followed by Il Decameron which, despite its debauchery, celebrated the vibrant and
uninhibited lifestyles of local inhabitants in medieval Naples.

Mythic roles
While to some extent the personal was always political for Pasolini (and vice versa),
his appearances and utterances within a given film constituted a particular context for
self-reference that often stood in contrast to the «real» context in which Pasolini ex-

1 Ivi, p. 371. «Scoppia un nuovo problema nel mondo. Si chiama Colore. / Si chiama Colore, la nuova
estensione del mondo.»
2 This is the last line of Frammento alla morte (1960). See Pier Paolo Pasolini, Bestemmia, cit., p. 581.
 98 colleen ryan-scheutz
isted outside the film. This distinction is best illustrated by his fictional roles in three
works that he made between 1967 and 1972.
Pasolini’s mythic roles present somewhat more complex models of self-reference,
for when he suddenly appears, one can no longer consider him a separate entity with
regard to his characters and stories. In the case of fictional films, he is at once the
external force driving relations between the people and places in the film and an
internal force carrying out, or designing by his own actions, relationships with and
between filmic elements. He is one of the characters and thus is simultaneously «I»-
Pasolini and «I»-the character. Embedded in this way, he becomes a constituent part
of each film, because without his presence, the individual scene and the final product
would have been very different.
Contrary to the notebook films that show Pasolini in the process of evoking a sacred
past in light of modern day dilemmas, the fictional, mythic roles show Pasolini im-
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mersed in an ancient setting, to which he has returned – in both flesh and spirit – to
recapture a lost vitality and to create and partake of a renewed civic spirit. As David
Ward (quoting Zanzotto) asserts, Pasolini uses the past as «a metaphor for a new be-
ginning, a ‘first dawn.’»1 It is from this past that he derives the revolutionary energy
necessary to confront the contending forces of passion and ideology in his work. And
by reclaiming the past in this way, he encapsulates, in the broadest of terms, his hope
for the future of the individual and the nation.
In Edipo re, Pasolini appears as the High Priest and capitalizes on the foundational
tale of incest and corruption to represent the interdependence of private and public
integrity. The presence of his body combines an indirect reference to the self as Oedi-
pal subject with the communal mandate of a priest to suggest an array of possible
meanings. Gordon interprets Pasolini’s decisive appearance in this film as an example
of meta-cinematic discourse, referring to cinema as a means of connecting the past
and the present. Gordon’s observation touches on the pragmatic implications of Pa-
solini’s presence in Edipo re in that Pasolini places himself at «the centre of a trans-
formative and figural interaction between the past and the present».2 But while there
is no doubt that the author places himself at the juncture of two time frames, in re-
ality there are two separate contexts to consider because the self exists contempora-
neously inside and outside the film.
These two frames of pragmatic self-reference are at once autonomous and interre-
lated. The one is internal to the film and involves Pasolini as the priest character and
public mediator during the devastation of Thebes. The other is external to the film
and involves Pasolini as autobiographer, leftist intellectual, and artist in 1967. Within
the film, Pasolini exists as a marginal character who is nonetheless a central player in
society. He is a social mediator, hence, a privileged subject who can speak openly with
the king. This internal context, of course, simultaneously mirrors the external one.
In so far as Pasolini is a contemporary intellectual cloaked in archaic guise, he repre-
sents the poet as mediator between the king and the commoners, between knowl-

1 «Infinitely far back and always in the future.» See David Ward, A Poetics of Resistance. Narrative and
the Writings of Pier Paolo Pasolini, Madison, N. J., Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1995, p. 126. Ward
cites Andrea Zanzotto, Pedagogy in Pier Paolo Pasolini. The Poetics of Heresy, Beverly Allen, ed., Saratoga
Springs, Anma, 1984, p. 41. 2 Robert Gordon, Forms of Subjectivity, cit., p. 197.
 autogenesis and creation in pasolini ’ s cinema 99
edge and ignorance, and between the past and the present, both in the restricted con-
text of Thebes (pre-Edipo government vs. Edipo government) and in general. This in-
tellectual-as-bridge metaphor extends further still, for his appearance and role con-
nect two texts and two authors and hence two distant time periods in reality and two
corrupt societies.
Outside the film, the contexts of self-reference are somewhat different. One con-
cerns Pasolini’s life at that particular point in his career, and another, the status of Italy
as a nation growing ever more steadfast in its consumerist values. The external con-
texts, therefore, might be distinguished as personal versus public. At a personal level,
we are in the era following his relatively concentrated phase of dramaturgic and semi-
ological writing. It was also the period following Uccellacci e uccellini, which marked
the death of Marxism, and of the two short features La terra vista dalla luna and Che
cosa sono le nuvole?, which, although not without their own poignancy, were comic in-
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terludes celebrating Totò and Ninetto. Furthermore, Pasolini made Edipo re as he was
conceptualizing and preparing for Teorema, another sexual metaphor with mythical
and spiritual dimensions.
Alternatively, the immediate political context external to the film was the thresh-
old of the dawn of Sessantotto era throughout Europe. As capitalist/consumerist
ideals ran rampant, and as the Marxist notion of revolution seemed dead (now that it
was in the hands of the bourgeois student population), Pasolini’s faith in Italians’ abil-
ity to recognize authenticity and live with an «eye» for the sacred continued its steady
and rapid decline. The plague of Thebes was a grand metaphor for the spiritual degra-
dation in Italy, and the Priest an elected (intellectual-spiritual) figure who could de-
nounce it.
Oedipus Rex, being the Ur-text of modern psychoanalysis, added yet other dimen-
sions to the various forms of self-reference at play. A very introspective level of self-
reference is implied by Pasolini’s decision to examine his life by making this overtly
autobiographical film. Furthermore, the choice of Citti for the part of Edipo mixes
the archetype of the subproletarian male (the by-now-iconographic figure of Accat-
tone) with myriad references to Pasolini’s own life, starting with his birth in Bologna,
his humble, rural origins, which centered on his mother, and the primary cultural
clash between the mother’s and father’s worlds.1
By having the Priest be the first to use words from the Sophoclean original, Pasolini
himself opens the metaphoric path to origins and authentic beginnings. His discourse
formulates a plea and contains reverential phrases that allude to sacred gestures such
as restoring life («give us life once again») and healing («find a remedy for us»). While
these instances could easily be dismissed as yet another example of poetic narcissism,
wherein Pasolini configures the self-subject as a martyr suffering at the hand of, but
also for, the good of others, Pasolini would lead us to believe that he played the Priest
for lack of better options.2 Yet, in the same breath he also states that presence was
purposeful. By virtue of his own formal properties (body and voice) as author, he
could introduce the other or «original» author, i.e. Sophocles, and in this way also as-

1 For a complete discussion of the maternal and paternal spheres in Pasolini’s life and poetic, see Ryan-
Scheutz, Susanna Pasolini and the Female Universe, op. cit., pp. 14-44.
2 Marisa Rusconi, Pier Paolo Pasolini e l’autobiografia, «Sipario», 22, 258, 1967, p. 27.
 100 colleen ryan-scheutz
sert his own primary, active, and genuine role in rediscovering and preserving that
which is authentic and good.1
But why did Pasolini not play the central role of Edipo instead, or even in addition
to his role as Priest? Pasolini was very often the subject of his own works—however,
usually by means of semantic techniques that sustained autobiography via citation,
metaphor, or allusion, not direct iconographic representation. No matter how fa-
mous or widely read he became, he preferred to remain that voice from the margins,
or that dynamic force on the very line of contention between the margins and the
center of society. He did not so much long to be the central subject of his films, so
much as a pivotal, regenerative force breathing life into characters and their actions
in order to confront, in a direct and visual fashion, the profane with the sacred.
In Il Decameron, Pasolini provided a more explicit interpretative key for his screen
role: his physical presence represented ideology through his conscious awareness of
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it– not only aesthetically but also physically.2 This time, by being in the text – in the
thick of the action that comprises the «reality» of this film – he made the Artist (but
also Pier Paolo Pasolini in particular) an integral part of the cultural thesis and sacred
ideology being conveyed. And nowhere is his body per se more suitably exposed, than
in this film that highlights frontal nudity and uninhibited sexuality for the first time.
The syntactic and semantic significance of his role as Artist within his own artwork
seems self-evident. However, as in Edipo re, the pragmatics of his self-reference split be-
tween two separate, yet interdependent frameworks, rendering the semantic dimen-
sion even richer. Unlike the Appunti films, for instance, where it was not always easy, or
even possible to distinguish between Pasolini-the-filmmaker internal to certain notes
and Pasolini-the-filmmaker external to the whole film, in Il Decameron, we are impelled
to view his fictional role in contrast or relation to his reality as artist beyond the film.3
In the Decameron, Pasolini plays a medieval master of the figurative arts. The se-
mantics of this choice, however, extend beyond the internal narrative, since Giotto
was, in real life, one of his own beloved masters. He attempts an ounce of modesty
by making himself «Giotto’s best pupil,» but in reality Pasolini is the Artist tout court,
with all of the creative or intellectual associations that the image might carry.4 «Pa-
solini», therefore, literally present in carne e ossa, refers continually to the unmasked
and omnipresent Artist external to the film.5
Giotto observes, contemplates, paints, and dreams. He has been commissioned to
create an enormous triptych painting in the church of Santa Chiara in Naples, de-
picting transcendent images of events from the Scriptures. Yet he draws inspiration

1 Ivi, pp. 26-27. See also Maurizio Viano, A Certain Realism. Making Use of Pasolini’s Film Theory and
Practice, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1993, pp. 175-176.
2 Nico Naldini, op. cit., p. 351. «Cosa significa la mia presenza nel Decameron? Significa aver ideologiz-
zato l’opera attraverso la coscienza di essa: coscienza non puramente estetica, ma, attraverso il veicolo della
fisicità, cioè di tutto il mio modo di esserci, totale.»
3 The fact that the fictional Giotto of Boccaccio’s original actually refers to the real master Giotto grants
the interplay between myth and reality another level of meaning, beyond that of Pasolini representing
Giotto’s disciple or the Artist.
4 For all practical purposes, he is Giotto, so I will refer to Pasolini-the-Artist in Il Decameron as «Giotto.»
5 Pasolini used the expression «in carne e ossa» to describe his direct relationship with the reader of Petro-
lio. See Pier Paolo Pasolini, Letter a Alberto Moravia, in Petrolio, Torino, Einaudi, 1992, pp. 544-555. See
also Robert Gordon, Forms of Subjectivity, cit., p. 2.
 autogenesis and creation in pasolini ’ s cinema 101
for his art not from study and prayer, but from the common people. Their stories of
carnal instinct and desire, mixed with paradoxical instances of reasoning according to
a nascent merchant mentality, somehow inspire Giotto’s sublime masterpiece. His
dual stance with respect to the people – he is marginal to them, yet works side by side
with them – and the contamination of registers that results from their interactions,
if only in his mind and creative spirit, reveals a common mandate for Pasolini, inter-
nal and external to the text.
The masterpiece is a triptych with only two images painted on it. Though shown
subtly and briefly, the blank third panel rouses the viewer to consider the artwork’s
significance as well as the Artist’s motivation for «completing» it in this fashion.1 As
the film’s finale, the unfinished tableau functions as a meta-reference to the creative
process that never concludes completely. Hence, the final product, in so far as it is a
reflection of its author, is also a subject continuously «in-the-making.» Therefore,
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through his body and actions, Pasolini-the-Artist within the text generates his own vi-
tality and comprises the crucial connector between the self, the work of art, and the
other or audience. By subscribing to the basic tenets of the «open text» with his final
action (simultaneously the work of the Artist internal and external to the film), Pa-
solini expresses hope in his Italians’ ability to recognize authenticity at different lev-
els, whether in the «pure» people of Naples and their spontaneous actions, or the sub-
limity of the Artist and the whole process of creation.2
In I racconti di Canterbury, Pasolini continued to experiment with his intricate prac-
tice of self-reference in cinema, and it comes as no surprise to see syntactic, seman-
tic, and pragmatic instances of self-reference cleverly interwoven throughout the
film. I racconti di Canterbury depicts the Pasolinian self once again as the product of a
rich set of relations between authors, historical circumstances, and texts, and Pasoli-
ni’s intermittent role as writer within the film connotes this fragmented and multi-
faceted approach to creating one’s self in art. Once again, he assumes the role of the
Artist, this time Chaucer, who is composing narrative within the film text. Hence, the
formal properties of self-reference immediately lend themselves to interpretations
that center on his role as intellectual in relation to his society and in relation to the
subjects he observes or imagines as he writes. The force of these two separate yet in-
terconnected contexts – Italy in 1972 and medieval England – lies precisely in how the
two frames of reference join to formulate the author’s subjectivity both factually, as
icon and agent, and figuratively, as an expression of class conscience, corporality (sex-
uality), and artistic creation.3

1 See Ben Lawton’s landmark analysis of the Artist and artworks in Theory and Praxis in Pasolini’s Trilo-
gy of Life: Decameron, «Quarterly Review of Film Studies», 2, 4, 1977, pp. 395-417. See also Ben Lawton,
The Storyteller’s Art. Pasolini’s «Decameron» (1971), in Modern European Filmmakers and the Art of Adaptation.,
Andrew Horton, Joan Magretta, eds., New York, Ungar, 1980, pp. 182-202.
2 Millicent Marcus comments on the ideological nature of the film’s inconclusiveness and the audience’s
role therein: «The Decameron, however, cannot be about the art of storytelling without also being about the
creation of a public capable of appreciating that art.» See An Allegory of Form. Literary Self-Consciousness in
The Decameron, Saratoga, CA, Anma Libri, 1979, p. 9.
3 One assumes Pasolini-Chaucer has been inspired to write by the stories told by the Canterbury pilgrims
(we see him initially in town among some of the commoners who appear in his tales) and by the many books
in his study. It is important to note that, of these books, Pasolini-Chaucer takes Boccaccio’s Decameron in
hand. Though it is not far-fetched to interpret the mere possession of this volume as an expression of Bloo-
 102 colleen ryan-scheutz
Though Pasolini did not appear in Il fiore delle Mille e una notte, he originally in-
tended to have a small part in it. He conceived a very realistic and didactic role for
himself, which contaminated the notions of myth and reality more than ever before,
and implicated him directly in the crossroads of homosexuality and creation. Ac-
cording to the original screenplay, Pasolini was to appear as himself in modern
clothes, to introduce the third component of his Trilogy, which would have allowed
him to engage in and directly embody the subject of homosexuality. As Repetto
states, his direct intervention here would have signified the most shocking of the var-
ious autobiographical frames thus far.1 It would have had a completely different effect
from his in-person investigation of attitudes about homosexuality in Comizi d’amore
because his presence would have anchored the whole work to the subjective realm of
Pasolini and autobiography.
In the conclusion, Pasolini had scripted himself as meeting with four male teens
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who had just finished masturbating together. He tells them that the ideological
thrust of his entire Trilogy of Life lies in its conscious refusal of Western hypocrisy,
and then he kisses each on the mouth. The episode, though concise, signals several
self-referential dimensions. First, Pasolini-the-pedagogue identifies several ‘innocent’
or uninhibitedly expressive youths to whom he can divulge his lessons about social
diversity. Second, Pasolini-the-political being states that his work is intended to be
transgressive, or at least an alternative to bourgeois hegemony. Third, Pasolini-the-
homosexual kisses the boys, recalling not only the earlier episode of the gay poet
Sium within the film, but also the ‘fatti di Ramuscello’ that caused Pasolini’s expul-
sion from Friuli in 1949.2 Had this «real» role actually materialized in the midst of an
imaginary collection of tales, Pasolini would have joined two distant worlds and
sealed the solidarity of their players in a «consciously fable-like alternative to the
contemporary bourgeois reality» he opposed.3 As a result, his presence would have
remained central to capturing – in body and spirit – the range of personal tensions he
infused in his work and the ideological problematics that he relentlessly sought to
work out onscreen.
mian anxiety, its meaning multiplies when considered withiin the broader scope of self-reference beyond the
film. First, Chaucer’s interaction with Boccaccio reflects the process of writing in the post-modern era,
wherein every attempt to compose is somehow the re-composition of a previous work. Second, it points to
the difficulties inherent in literature-to-film adaptations. It is not by chance, therefore, that Pasolini empha-
sizes in more than one place Chaucer’s act of contemplating, portraying himself as a student of literary tra-
ditions and observer of reality in the course of daily life. And in so far as he does not participate in any par-
ticular tale internal to the film, his marginal position with respect to the primary narrative action of the film
underscores the importance of the spectator-observer and her vital, active role in building meaning from
what she sees. Finally, Chaucer’s gesture of placing Boccaccio toward the bottom of a large pile of books by
his side implies not only the author’s will to bury the «originals» but also his will to get beyond his own and
recent treatment of the Il Decameron as well. See pc i, pp. 1415-1416. «Ecco che prende in mano il Bocaccio,
lo legge un po’, gli viene da ridere, ridacchia forte, da solo, per un po’, come un pazzerello. Poi prende il
volume del Boccaccio e lo nasconde, lo “sotterra” accuratamente sotto una pila di altri libri e oggetti.»
1 Antonino Repetto, op. cit., p. 142. «Dichiarandone con atti e parole inequivocabili il tema omoses-
suale, sarebbe stato, se fosse stata realizzata la cornice contemporanea prevista, la presenza corporale più
eclatante e scandalosa della sua intera filmografia.»
2 See Nico Naldini, op. cit. pp. 131-137.
3 Antonino Repetto, op. cit., p. 129. «Si rivolge a loro amichevolmente ed esprime chiaramente che
l’ideologia politica della Trilogia consiste nell’essere un’alternativa consapevolmente fiabesca alla rifiutata
realtà borghese del mondo contemporaneo; dà infine un bacio sulla bocca a ciascuno dei quattro ragazzi.»
 autogenesis and creation in pasolini ’ s cinema 103

Thanks to the sheer, lively, and indisputable fact of his «being in the text» (compared
to mere autobiographical allusion, which is common to all of his works, but also to
most auteur cinema), it becomes clear that the Pasolini-figure was not merely a sur-
face-level immersion of the self as thematic, meaning it was in the text as part of an
enduring narcissistic impulse. Rather, his presence was part of a methodology with
theoretical implications. Through the medium of film, Pasolini engendered a «self»
that was inextricable from his concept and pursuit of the sacred. As mediator of time-
frames, social classes, political spheres, gender relations, and artistic references with-
in his texts, Pasolini generated vitality between the old and the new. His physical pres-
ence allowed him to directly substantiate the ideological and poetic associations he
made with ancient and authentic modes of living, and he showed himself immersed
in the vital realities he longed to rediscover as artist-maker and fruit of their goodness.
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Ultimately, he engendered the self as a life-giving force that acknowledged the sacred
and promised its renewal.

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