There is only one Sade: the villain-philosopher——"Salò, 120 Days of Sodom" is still a sublimation of Sadism

This joke has been very famous in the past two years, but what I really want to say is that after Duc said this, he quoted Klossovsky's corollary on pages 22-23 of "Sade, My Neighbor": The pleasure of the libertine depends entirely on the performance of a perverse "gesture", which in Sade is the " expropriation " of the subject and the body of the other.

I have always suspected that Lacan’s placement of the perverse subject in object a was a reflection of what he called the “extremely perceptive” Klossowski, whose book was published in 1947.

Lacan and Klossovsky have reached a tacit understanding on the issue of "gesture". Klossovsky emphasized that the universality of "gesture" is absolutely beyond speech. If imagination is a game of mirrors everywhere, then symbols can also trigger a kind of endless dialectical trick - speech and silence. "Gesture" is the third possibility: action . And this action must be "repeated". Once the "repetition" stops, it will be captured by speech again. Translating Klossovsky's words into the most vulgar psychoanalytic terminology: speech can offset action.

I will talk about "repetition" again at the end of this article, because "repetition" is the prelude to sublimation and is correctly placed by Pasolini at the end of the film.

Assuming that perversion is the "refusal" of castration - "I am not...", "I am not a person", the phallus as the symbolic foundation is still placed in the real world by Lacan, but in Klossowski's case, the phallus that Sade rejected is nothing but "body", Sade's own "body". For example: cuckoldism. Cuckoldism is a variation of voyeurism. Voyeurism is "letting be seen", and cuckoldism also adds a " confiscation " of the body of others: the body that is confiscated can be the body of one's own wife or the body of another man. Many film directors like to watch other men and their women perform passionate scenes, including Klossowski himself who has cuckoldism (refer to his novel "Roberte ce soir"). This sounds very similar to male hysteria, but in perversion, "confiscation" is a "gesture", which is put into action, and no longer stays in words or fantasies. After the consistency between subject and body is broken, Sade's hero easily moves towards a kind of "hermaphroditism" (the victory of anti-sexualization) in a certain sense of discourse, like a woman in front of a man, and a man in front of a woman, always "the opposite sex", a man is a woman, and a woman is a man. For example, the bishop and Sra Vaccari in this film, and the greatest character created by Sade: Juliette.

Sade himself had a quirk about numbers, and "repetition" was of extraordinary importance in obsession-perversion. In order to prevent the loss of enjoyment due to "repetition", Sade's hero could not completely eliminate the "neighbor", as evidenced by the scene below where the bishop pretended to shoot Franco. Klossovsky emphasized that enjoyment is only enjoyment of the "outline" of the "neighbor". Why is it only the "outline" of the "neighbor" that is enjoyed? "Outline" can be understood literally: that is, even if it seems to be repeated constantly, there is still a certain difference in the fantasy or action of enjoyment each time (it is absolutely impossible that Sade only enjoys one "type" of object).

Pleasure is the impossibility of satisfaction. All pleasure is the pleasure that points to "destruction". This is what Lacan learned from Sade. Once Sade's pleasure and "destruction" are separated, then "destruction" becomes the "pure" form of desire in Klossovsky's words - nature can only be free by destroying its own works, which is of course impossible, because words can be destroyed, imagination can be destroyed, but "destruction" itself cannot be destroyed . In other words, only when the flâneur gives up himself, the "neighbor" with a cross S as the object of his pleasure can be pardoned from the "repetition" of pleasure. This possibility does not exist in this movie at all. The ending that Pasolini chose for this movie is far more important than this possibility.

After watching "Circle of Blood", and then watching the previous two "circles", I am sure that this is an ascending spiral. The "Circle of Blood" is at the top of this spiral. Don't focus on the "blood". "Death" and "degeneration" are two different things. "Neighbors" have never "lived" in the wanderers. Their execution, no matter how cruel the means, is just a sublimation of the "inside" of enjoyment. At the beginning of "Circle of Blood" is a scene that Lacanians should be very interested in: Pasolini lets his characters, specifically Vaccari and the unnamed pianist, answer a question that the original author Sade would inevitably raise: " Is this a tragedy or a comedy? "

This question itself mocks the film industry and the greater laws it represents. Some people may not be "human", and some works are not bound by any category, type, or other consistency constraints, just as some ethics cannot be put into the diode of "good" and "evil", "satisfaction" and "dissatisfaction". Tragedy and comedy are always ethical issues. Klossovsky pointed out that all the "virtues" that Sade wanted to transcend can be summarized in one word, which is consistency: consistency of the body, consistency of libido, etc. In order to oppose such consistency, he must create a "constant" inconsistency. Therefore, if Sade wants to escape the trap of "transgression & prohibition", he must ensure that his world is always in motion. Sade's genius lies in: in order to get out of the dead cycle of sensory-conscience & transgression-prohibition, he chose thought and placed "repetition" in thought , thus creating a kind of " indifferent ecstasy" that is anti-sensual climax and anti-pleasure principle. This is the " indifferent ecstasy " that philosophers envy.

This " cold ecstasy " is the film's masterful ending: downstairs is carnival, upstairs is indifference; downstairs is hell, upstairs is the bedroom

The pleasure principle is to pay tribute to the normality of the species "man". Pleasure itself is useless because it is constantly "repeated". Baudelaire said, "The highest level of eroticism is self-control". In the "repetition" of "gestures", Sade's hero successfully achieved "indifference" that would not regret "evil" and would not be captured by "pleasure" by "refuting" the law thoroughly enough (specifically implemented in the blasphemy of ethics). When Sade chose "indifference", he did not choose to be an accomplice of the big other that Pasolini hated, but rather to acknowledge in disguise the impossibility of "destruction" itself. This acknowledgement was an extremely great pain for Sade himself, a kind of forced-perverse pain.

Because the surname "Sade" means "happy" in Middle French.