Pasolini’s Murder: Interpretation, Event Narratives, and Postmodern Impegno

Abstract

Pier Paolo Pasolini was murdered on the night of November 1–2, 1975, in a dirt field by Via dell’Idroscalo, near Ostia, outside Rome. He was beaten with a wooden plank and then run over by his own car, his heart crushed.¹ Vivid and disturbing photographs of his maimed body appeared in newspapers and magazines in the following days.² A Roman youth called Giuseppe or “Pino” Pelosi, “La Rana” (The Frog), who was below the age of criminal majority, was stopped by police later that night while driving Pasolini’s car. In a drawn-out legal process, he was later be tried and convicted of Pasolini’s murder. One level of court judged that he had not—as he claimed—acted alone in his assault, but rather in the company of “persons unknown.”³