We've seen Pasolini's film. Joe Brennan's interpretation of the scene
with Pound's Canto as backdrop captures the ambivalence toward art (and
Pound) that Pasolini intended that part of the film to communicate. Even
a cursory reading of Pasolini's letters yields this statement to Luciano
Serra: 
 
"I wanted to invent for myself a dualism to set against the idealistic
monism and intuition of Croce.  I am immature - but the fact of ethical
research as something that transcends aesthetic research is a theme that
recurs often in my meditations."
 
--Carlo Parcelli
  & Rosalie Gancie
 
 
 
 Joe Brennan wrote:
> 
> In a message dated 8/11/99 9:00:54 AM Eastern Daylight Time, [log in to unmask]
> writes:
> 
> <<  He isn't making a 'Pound the
>  fascist' point but rather including Pound in the litany of art that forms
>  the films backdrop...art like anything else is a commodity, which makes
>  sense given that the film seems to say, to me at least, that capitalism has
>  no 'victims' or 'innocents' since we are all complicit in our
>  acquiescence...we quite literally will eat shit, or pay to watch a film we
>  people eat shit. >>
> 
> I don't argue with the observation regarding the complicity of art, but I
> don't see why viewing the film as criticizing pound as a fascist is in anyway
> inconsistent, unless one's argument is that the two points are mutually
> exclusive, or that one wants to argue that the film is not a film about the
> evils of fascism -- which isn't to say that that's all that it's about.  it
> would help to recall that the point under discussion when I made the
> association concerned pound as fascist, and not passolini commentary on the
> subject of eating shit.  it's seems doubtful to me that passolini would have
> chosen to include pound in the film had it not been for pound's enthusiastic
> support for mussolini and fascism, nor would he have been unaware of the
> opposition of pound's poetry with the broadcasts.  however, I believe that
> the only way to resolve this question is to see the film and then draw your
> own conclusions.
> 
> unfortunately, I can't think of a context in which Leopold's questioning my
> having seen the film that isn't insulting.
> 
> joe brennan....
 
-- 
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