| In the years immediately after the Second World War, the term "realism" was the conditio sine qua non of nearly every discourse on Italian cinema and literature. By 1960, however, the term had lost its privileged status and its vicissitudes would eventually reach the point where "realism" either designated a bygone style in no need of resurrection or, more generally, applied to any symbolic production fostering the essentially deceiving "illusion of reality". Thus, realism has been denied a truly historical existence, the capacity for growth and adaptation. Yet, there have been texts animated by the desire to redefine realism in the light of the changes that characterized the passage from old capitalism to consumer society. For example, in 1960, Pasolini wrote "In morte del realismo" in which he declared the death of post-war realism and sketched the features of a realism which would profit by past mistakes and take into account newly arisen needs. According to this poem, realism is not the naive style which pretends to mirror an objective reality rather, it is the result of a complex and often contradictory interaction of factors which act as codes governing the production of meaning by an author committed to social reality.The concern of this dissertation is to show that such a poem initiates a new way of looking at the relation between the production/consumption of cultural commodities and the historical context in which they are marketed and acquire their value/meaning. In fact, the poem not only provides us with a different notion of realism but also allows for a distinctive reading of Pasolini's films. A thorough analysis of his realist films, such as is attempted here, confirms the utility of his notion of realism and, concomitantly, elucidates the practical way the codes function in a given text. His non-realist films, instead, are examined only to the extent that, by constituting a violation of those very codes, they permit us to appreciate the difference between realism and its negation. It is therefore concluded that realism, once adequately rehabilitated, can still operate as a viable category defining and interpreting all of the texts which attempt to make artistic practice the terrain of a symbolic pursuit of reality. |
