4. Salo Is Just Another Every Day Movie For You
Salo is a movie that strikes fear into many film buff's heart... but not for hardcore sick movie fans! For us sick movie fans, Salo is just one of many dodgy films in our DVD collections that we throw on as easily as a normal person would put on Titanic. In fact, Titanic is more likely to sicken us to the core than Salo. I would rather watch all the horrific transgressive deeds in Salo than look at the insipid inanities of Titanic. At least Salo has a meaning. Salo has a purity of purpose - it wants to highlight the corruption and depravity in Fascist Italy and it uses the Marquis de Sade's infamous 120 Days of Sodom as its inspiration. I am betting that a lot of sick movie fans have read de Sade's book (and if you haven't you must do!) and marvel how effectively Pasolini was able to convert the book into film. Of course, Salo misses the most excessive outrages of de Sade's book, but it is still pretty grotesque with scenes of rape, sodomy and poop eating. You know you are a hardcore sick film fan when you get quite excited about watching Salo, not because you get off on the perverted excesses but because you want to watch a bloody good film that just happens to have a lot of sexual grotesquery in it. Normal film fans would dismiss Salo as a sick and corrupt film. Hardcore sick film fans can discern Pasolini's underlying intentions beneath the perversions and they can admire Salo as a work of transgressive art.