Writing with Reality: A Pedagogy of the Wretched

This chapter traces and analyses Pasolini’s ideas on realism and his film theory, which includes his ideas on “cinema as poetry” and “writing with reality,” without forgetting his views on objective work gained through the montage of shots from multiple angles. In the end of the chapter there is a take on Salò (1975) as “another type” of take on realism, one which owes a lot to the increasing pornographic and violent content of films in the 1970s. Pasolini scholars have so far quite “forgotten” that Pasolini’s films were not created in a highbrow bubble. The chapter ends with thoughts on Pasolini’s ideas on the ethical responsibility of artists and intellectuals in the West.