Pasolini’s documentary Appunti per un’Orestiade Africana (1970) makes evident his desire to project Aeschylus’ Oresteia onto the diverse African people and places he was exploring. And this projecting, with all its overlooking of cultural specificity, its lack of listening and engaging, but instead imposing meaning, was itself Pasolini’s method of mediating his own aesthetic, poetic and political interests.
At one point he laments a dance performed by the ‘Wa-gogo tribe’ as being; ‘emptied of their ancient sacred meaning and …being redone almost out of sheer joy’. This seems to be an echo of Pasolini’s frequent criticism of Italian youth for their westernisation and corruption by consumerism!
Chodzko’s ah; open; offering; severing; ah is an attempt to face up to and play with the guilt, compensate for the neglect implied in the tourist gaze, returning attention to the place of the dance (Makwaru Beach Park), inviting our participation in this collective space with ‘sheer joy’ communicating ‘ancient sacred meaning.’
