The Notorious Salo – Banned Again

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Refused Classification reports that Pier Paolo Pasolini’s film Salo has been banned yet again by the wise masters at the Office of Film and Literature Classification.

Having viewed the film myself (it’s freely available at a certain public library, shh…) I have to say there really is no reason this film could not be given an R18+ certificate.

The scenes I found most objectionable were in the “Circle of Shit” sequence, but you can’t ban a work of art purely based on whether or not the scenes depicted are really, really gross. While I wasn’t a fan of the film I don’t think anyone who has the intellectual fortitude to sit and watch a movie with subtitles would find themselves irreversibly damaged by the time the credits roll.

It’s been released in Britain by the prestigious British Film Institute, along with essays on its artistic merits and the censorship troubles it has faced across the world. It’s sad to see that Australia is still stuck in the 1950s when it comes to seeing censorship of art as acceptable, though it probably wasn’t the best idea to submit the film for classification this close to the Bill Henson episode.