Music in Pasolini's The Decameron: Humour, spirituality, (de)tabooisation and playing with conventional signifiers of the Italian musical past

Abstract

Pasolini's controversial figure, marked by refined and revolutionary leftist ideas, is based on experimental artistic ideals that defy the establishment and conservative ideological thinking. Promoting the de-tabooing of sexuality and a more open attitude towards cultural tradition, the director turned away from mimetic, naturalistic film practices and approached biblico-mythical and ancient themes. The selection of genre and stylistically diverse musical references from The Decameron is, thus, in line with the geographical shift of Boccaccio's humanist ideal from the central to the southern Italian macro-region. The aim of this paper is to determine Pasolini's ambivalent and in some ways subversive treatment of religious and folkloric signifiers of the Italian musical past. Flirting with material and immaterial signifying practices encourages alternative interpretations of spirituality, class antagonisms, folkloric traditions and cleverly profiled and unusual elements of eroticism.

Keywords

• pier paolo pasolini
• the decameron
• italian cinema
• traditional folk songs
• sacred music
• religious signifiers
• de-tabooing of eroticism