Passolini Essay, Research Paper

Passolini’s movie included short tales displaying the irony and humor that take place in Italian religious communities. For example, one tale was about a convent filled with devoted nuns that decided to hire what thought was a poor, deaf, mute man. They hired this man as the gardener for their convent. Shortly after he began working as the gardener, two young nuns brought him to an old shed in the garden and had sex with him.

Another nun saw this and decided to have sex with him also. However, when he had finished having an orgasm, she hadn’t, and asked him to continue making love to her. As a result, the gardener snapped at her and told her how he couldn’t keep up with all of the nuns wanting to have sex with him. The nun, stunned to see that the man could speak and hear ran to the convent and began telling all of the women how it was a miracle. The runs came rushing in caressing and touching the poor gardener.

Passolini shows irony in the religious aspect because nuns are perceived to be women devoted to God and live a “non-promiscuous” life, which was not what they were doing. They weren’t supposed to think about men or sex. The tale was quite humorous because, the gardener, hoping to find a job, was surprised to see how these nuns who are portrayed as very religious, devoting figures to God in the community were just the opposite of what everyone believed them to be.

In this aspect, his work is very similar to that of Boccaccio’s in that they question and criticize the religion using humor, wit, and irony.