Peter Weibel
The Real in Italian Neorealism by the Example of Pier Paolo Pasolini
© Foto: Christine Reeh
In his essay “Is Being Natural?” (1967), Pier Paolo Pasolini engages with the dialectics of language and being and the dialectics of film and reality. According to Pasolini, reality is not defined in ontological terms but, rather, is a matter of representation. By alluding to Dante's Divina Commedia he regards reality as “divine mimesis.” As Pasolini considers life to be on one level with language, everything living and being becomes codeed. Given this “pansemiological” approach, there is no natural state of being; reality and cinema are of equal rank.