Pier Paolo Pasolini, Accattone and the Condition of the Underclass Heretical Semiotics as a Method of Overcoming Dialectical Materialism
Pier Paolo Pasolini, Accattone and the Condition of the Underclass Heretical Semiotics as a Method of Overcoming Dialectical Materialism

Summary/Abstract: My paper presents the connection between the ideological structure of Pasolini’s first film, Accattone, and the heterodox nature of his theoretical discourse. The “heretical semiotics” which he alludes transforms an apparent dialectical materialism into a form of abstracted extrapolation of symbols from objects, characters, and actions. I suggest that the spatial contextualization of these ontological elements plays a key role in the negation of a supposed fatalism in Pasolini’s work, and in the affirmation of the validity present in his disseminating theoretical justification of social praxis as a means to change an unacceptable reality. Beyond these considerations, I have also touched upon the sacredness implied by Pasolini’s use of technical means to suggest an iconographic staticness of images and actions, and to establish what I consider to be the “visual archaeology” of a passing world: that of the borgate – the marginal townships in which the underclass lives.

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