PIER PAOLO PASOLINI: writer, poet, actor, film director, intellectual, communist. In my teens I watched his Decameron and Canterbury Tales at the old Paramount Theatre in Wellington’s Courtenay Place. It’s a measure of the man’s artistic powers that the imagery of those films has remained with me ever since.
I had not thought about Pasolini himself for many years – not until this morning. Giovanni Tiso’s Bat, Bean, Beam blog (which I cannot recommend highly enough) had posted a translation of Pasolini’s 1975 newspaper column Io so – “I Know” – an excoriation of the Italian Right’s infamous and deadly “strategy of tension” and a powerful articulation of the political duties of the intellectual.
What grabbed my attention was the passage in which Pasolini describes the Italian Communist Party (PCI). Pasolini was a party member (albeit a highly critical one) and in reading his passionate description of the PCI as it was in the 1960s and 70s, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the New Zealand Labour Party (NZLP) as I first encountered it in the late 1970s.
This is what Pasolini wrote in Io so:
“The Italian Communist Party is a clean country in a dirty country, a honest country in a dishonest country, an intelligent country in a foolish country, an educated country in an ignorant country, a humanistic country in a consumerist country. In the last few years, between the Italian Communist Party – understood in a genuinely unitary sense as a compact ‘whole’ of leaders, base and voters – and the rest of Italy, a chasm has opened up: so that the Italian Communist Party has become a ‘country apart’, an island. And it is precisely for this reason that nowadays it can have its closest relationship ever with the corrupt, inept, degraded real power: but it is merely a diplomatic relationship, as if between two different nations. As a matter of fact their respective morals, understood as concrete wholes, are incompatible. It is on this basis that it is possible to put forward that realistic ‘compromise’ that might save Italy from a complete collapse: however this ‘compromise’ would be really an ‘alliance’ between two neighbouring states, or between two states that are locked one inside the other.”
Obviously, Pasolini was writing in a political context very different to that of faraway New Zealand. In the late 1960s and early 1970s Italy was under attack by Far Right extremists. Multiple terrorist bombings had claimed the lives of hundreds of Italian citizens. As the above passage so eloquently attests, Italian politics of the period possessed an heroic, Manichean quality that most New Zealanders would have found both unfamiliar and frightening.
Even so, joining the NZLP in the 1970s was a little like receiving a passport to another country – especially if you were, as I was, a middle-class university student. Understood in Pasolini’s terms, as “a compact ‘whole’ of leaders, base and voters”, the NZLP represented that part of New Zealand that did not own farms and businesses; that did not use overseas funds; that did not go to Wanaka or the Coromandel for the holidays.
Labour in those days was the party of the Public Bar, the TAB, the Housie evening. It’s members worked in factories and freezing-works, shops and offices. They drove trains and trucks and crewed ships. It’s members belonged to trade unions, Rugby League teams and the Catholic Church. They recognised each other by accent and attire, and by a certain, unspoken, pride in being part of the world of real things: iron and steel; bleeding carcasses; bitumen and shingle; timber and corrugated iron. The world that’s held together by rivets and welds, nuts and bolts.
It wasn’t that they were hostile to ideas per se. It was more a case of them not having much time for ideas that did not lead back to the jobs that they did or the stuff that they worked with. The people they admired most were the people with ideas that made life easier for themselves and their families. The people they most despised were the people who came touting ideas that bore no relation to the solid, tangible things that filled their lives. People who used ideas only to build more ideas, onwards and upwards until, before you knew it, they had constructed an entire world without a single real object – or person – in it.
It was an NZLP that was already in the process of turning into something else when I joined the Otago University Labour Club in 1977. But for just a little while, and maybe just as a tourist, I travelled through the clean and honest country of the NZLP before Lange and Douglas reduced it to rubble.
And what a fine feeling it was. When I visited the home of my girlfriend’s wealthy parents it was, to use Pasolini’s evocative metaphor, as if I had crossed an invisible border and entered another country altogether.
It made me feel like a spy.
There is another country. It is the disaffected, disengaged electorate.
Our general election turn outs (dismal), the “occupy” movement attest to a huge malaise in this country.
Various ethnic issues add other symptoms to a societal angst.
Pasolini is relevant.
This is NZ. We appear to be dominated by Wall Street (and one of its hucksters).
To be fair it was Chicago that manipulated Douglas and Prebble into raping New Zealand.
It is Key and his Wall Street ethics that is picking off what remains on the carcase of what was once a fair and decent society.
Key will retire to Hawaii smugly happy that NZ is a train wreck after Douglas/Prebble hobbled the signalling system.
The Occupy movement was pretty tiny in NZ. A few hundred people at most.
I can attest that there would have easily been a few hundred people involved in just the Christchurch Occupy camp..
Sure, it wasn’t as big as some of the overseas efforts but I think that merely speaks to how good New Zealand has it in comparison to the USA/Europe.
Lets not let it get that bad eh?
“world of real things: iron and steel; bleeding carcasses; bitumen and shingle; timber and corrugated iron. The world that’s held together by rivets and welds, nuts and bolts.”
That world has been exported to China.
Well , that was a comforting post since I’m able to concur completely . And Peterlepaysen is equally dead on the money , so to speak .
I think the reason New Zealanders have the dreaded Voters malaise is that they genuinely don’t know what to do . They don’t know who to vote for since 99% of our politicians across the spectrum are wankers to use a riveter and welder parlance .
They certainly don’t know how to gather in groups and protest and the potential , protesting population of New Zealand are so worried about everything all the time that they have little or no energy to do anything much at all but work , work , work anyway .
New Zealand desperately needs a humorous , human , commonsensical , charismatic , dynamic leader who knows nothing about rugby and everything about art to lead us out of this horrible , soulless , empty void of toil to pay Fed Reserve debt that just keeps building up and chocking us into submission .
Everybody I talk to loathes jonky-stien and his Fourth Reich minions so what the fuck is he still doing in Parliament ? If he’s so universally hated , why have we not purged us of him / it ?
Chillingly [they] know why while [we] haven’t got a clue .
I’ve put forward this idea before .
Why doesn’t the Council of Trade Unions pay an actor to play the part of Prime Minister ?
‘Argo’ ? Hello ?
Clearly , waiting on someone to come out of the woodwork to take on the roll of leader with the aforementioned attributes is as laughable and as likely
as waiting on John Keys promises to come to fruition so why not hunt with the hounds and buy a leader . ( Why have I got the feeling that , that’s been done before ??? )
Here’s a few ideas ; Charlie Sheen ? Arnold Schwarzenegger ? Russell Brand ? Bruce Willis ? I’d love to hear him holler ‘ Yippy Ki Yay motherfucker ! ‘ as he hurls Winston Peters down the steps of Parliament , the pinstripes flying off his suit !
Imagine a woman Prime Minister ? How about Penelope Cruz ?
( Watch ‘ Volver ‘ and you’ll fall in love with her terminally , as did I . )
Not someone who frightens children and makes dogs bark then sells us out for our trust placed in her then fucks off for a fancy , wanky , ego stroking job in the Big Apple .
Seriously ! If [They] can buy Prime Ministers , if not whole caucuses then why can’t [ We] ?
Am I on meth ? Am I a recent arrival ? Perhaps , but does anyone else have a better idea ?
Everytime I read one of your posts I thank the stars you’re a lefty. Too funny stone of your stuff.
Many thanks for the kind words, Chris.
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