Abstract
Pasolini's 1996 film is widely recognized as an expression of the filmmaker's desire to revitalize Marxian ideals in the industrialized, consumerist country that the Italy of the nineteen fifties and sixties had become. The filmmaker seeks the cinematic expression of many of the ideas already expressed in his essays. In this article, the theories of Bakhtin provide the framework for the study of the film as the carnivalization of orthodox Marxism. In effect, one of the functions of Bakhtin's carnivalesque is the promotion of historical change in real time. Clearly, the filmmaker was wrestling with issues that continue to be pertinent today in the midst of the worldwide crisis of capitalism and globalization.
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