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in some ways society itself.

The basic story(which created a configuration of characters Genet would later use to death) is this: four aristocrats-a president, a bishop, a banker and a judge ("president" is "duke" in De Sade) kidnap a number of innocent adolescents, take them to a remote castle where they are told nobody can hear them or will come to help them, for they are believed dead; that they cannot call upon God for help and will be killed if they do; and that the four of them will do anything they like that is devoid of warmth or love(demonstrations of either of which will result in punishment). The captives are converted into objects for use, and these four children enjoy watching how their toys can break. And they do, till they kill them, after subjecting them to the most horrifying psychological & physical meat-grinder, culminating in making them betray one another.

Pasolini chooses to set this in the Republic of Salo, the last fortress of fascist Italy which held out for awhile after the rest of Italy had fallen to the Allies. The events didn't happen as such, except as a reflection of the tone of fascist Italy and the nature of its power relationships, but Pasolini is interested in tying the two together to show what he considered the evil of "normal, mainstream," consumer capitalist culture.

It would be difficult to call this film truly pornographic; it makes sex look evil and septic, and there is no "sex" in this film anyway, only rape, only use of the weak by the strong. Someone looking for some SM leather romp will be very surprised. This is the real essence of De Sade, and a view he was not advocating but describing, mostly: people reduced, basically, to pigs for slaughter by very cruel and patient butchers who enjoy the squeals of fear. DeSade is more akin to(in genre, but certainly not in quality) Swift than to Anais Nin.

Freedom reduced to lack of suffering, and dangled in the face of the powerless, if they eat excrement first (in at least two scenes in the film, this is no metaphor), only to have it snatched away right after, because power doesn't need to keep any promises if it has no equal. All for the pleasure of a bunch of upper-class bastards. One can look at one's place in the work world and wonder how, in principle, the average person's role in life is much different. Except in the actual things one has to do.

One can also see in this film, and Pasolini intended this. One can only think of what he might have said about Calvin Klein

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