Pier Paolo Pasolini
Comizi d'Amore

Time, the times we live in, in my day, once upon a time... We watch the clock hands, but time is a trick. Time moves, but man is immobile, like cars in video games, while it's only the track that moves. Well, the track is time.

This cheap philosophical speculation has been brought about by reality:

Rome, May 20, 2008, Mara Carfagna, former showgirl, now only a minister, denies patronage to the Gay Pride in Rome justifying it with a "I believe the only goal of these events is to achieve official recognition of same-sex couples, perhaps equating them to marriages, and I cannot agree with that." Rome, May 24, 2008, a TV presenter from DeeGay.it is attacked to the cry of "this will teach you not to do these shows for fags anymore." Palermo, May 26, 2008, a father stabs his homosexual son saying "I did it for a matter of honor and shame." ...and my mind goes to Comizi d'Amore.

Comizi d'Amore is perhaps the most precise self-portrait of its author, the work that best identifies him. Pier Paolo Pasolini and Alfredo Bini in 1963 have to travel around Italy to find suitable locations for their next film, The Gospel According to Matthew. Pier Paolo has had a longstanding obsession: to know the opinion of Italians regarding "sex," "the first time," "inverts," "prostitutes," "divorce" and so begin the interviews with the common man and the intellectual or supposedly so.

What emerges is a dismal picture of an Italy traveling at two different speeds, morally and anthropologically divided into a backward, but sincere south or perhaps just unaware of its backwardness, and a slightly more open north, but ultimately bigoted and hypocritical.

Pasolini asks in a dance hall about inverts and people feel shame and disdain for these reverse people, he asks outside the University of Bologna for an opinion on love and in return receives only laconic responses that are merely a sign of the times and the apathy of the average university student, he asks some Turin female workers to comment on prostitutes and the result is third-rate moralism, he asks opinions on divorce in a beach resort and there things seem to go better, as if living in an almost normal country, and finally he asks Neapolitans what they think about the Merlin law, and here he performs the miracle of recounting Naples, the Neapolitan and his perpetual climb to something in just ten minutes as the Neapolitan tries to justify the tendency of young people to enlist in the mafia because with the absence of the law competition and danger in the trade have increased along with prices and a young man can no longer afford a prostitute, the hotel, towels and everything else with his simple job.

A hypocritical Italy was the one that loved to be torn apart by Pasolini and a hypocritical and even mediocre Italy is the one today that nonetheless tears itself apart. I could speculate, attack, foam at the mouth and sweat my brain for the things I have to say, but it would serve no purpose and besides not being Pier Paolo, poor Italy, the quality would be that of any scribe who has read some small editorials. So, I leave you with his words that have left the most with me and that give meaning to what has been written so far:

Tolerance, know this, is only and always purely nominal. I don't know a single example or case of real tolerance. And this is because a "real tolerance" would be a contradiction in terms. The fact that one "tolerates" someone is the same as "condemning" them. Tolerance is indeed a more refined form of condemnation. In fact, the "tolerated" - let's say the black person we have taken as an example - is told to do whatever he wants, that he has the full right to follow his nature, that being a minority does not mean inferiority at all, etc., etc. But his "diversity" - or rather his "fault of being different" - remains identical both to those who have decided to tolerate it and to those who have decided to condemn it. No majority will ever be able to abolish from their consciousness the "diversity" of minorities. It will always, eternally, fatally be present.