Che cosa sono le nuvole? Intermedialità riflessiva e strategie di decolonizzazione tra cinema e teatro

In 1967 Pasolini, together with other well-known national and international directors, contributed with What are the clouds ? to the making of an episodic film entitled Capriccio all’italiana, on the genre of the commedia all’italiana. As a transposition of Shakespeare’s Othello, What are the clouds ? inaugurates a series of film adaptations of classics (Oedipus Re, Medea, The Decameron, The Canterbury Tales, Arabian Nights), many of these inspired by the works of the great Greek playwrights (Euripides, Aeschylus, Sophocles). It cannot therefore go unnoticed that, through cinema, Pasolini also intended to place a reflection on theater at the center of the representation. On the basis of these premises, in this article I will first illustrate themes and forms of Pasolini’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s text, with particular attention to the actualization of the relationship between truth and fiction in relation to La vida es sueño (1635) by Calderón de la Barca, Las Meninas (1656) by Velásquez and Les mots et les choses (1966) by Michela Foucault. Secondly, I will analyze the reflection on theater that Pasolini carries out through the use of meta-representation and the decolonization strategies suggested in his reflexive intermediality. Finally, I will focus on some issues of decolonization that emerge in the Pasolini text, that is of race and gender, respectively associated with the figure of Othello (Ninetto Davoli) and Desdemona (Laura Betti). Ultimately,what I intend to highlight is the critical role that Pasolini hopes for and attributes to the viewer, as well as to the actor, warning against the ‘society of the spectacle’ and the power of the mass media.