#salò

CW: topics discussed include SA, misogyny, torture and coprophilia

I would like you to take a closer look at the title font for this game. Really train your eye on it. Go on, do it. ... Has the nature of its composing materials dawned on you yet?

This is Euphoria, developed by CLOCKUP, an erotic visual novel with a rather infamous reputation, to put it mildly. Depending on who you ask, it's the grossest, most disturbing work of fiction ever made or the best reading experience in one's entire life span, with the two conflicting opinions oftentimes originating from the same source: the people who actually sat down and played it, beginning to end. Hyperbole aside, it takes a special kind of literature to elicit such wildly disparate reactions from its readers. I was inevitably drawn to it like a bee to a succulent, pollen-rich flower trembling in anticipation at the coming of its rigid sting... So, what is Euphoria?

Part 1: Acknowledging The Murdered Elephant in the Room

The Killing Game is a genre of fiction popularized in Japan by Koushun Takami's seminar novel, Battle Royale, which was about students being forced to murder each other in a State mandated free-for-all. This scenario used to be a vitriolic critique of the Japanese education system before its message was diluted by profitability - and Fortnite. Obviously, many imitators were spawned from the groundwork laid out by Takami's book throughout various media, too many to count. One of the most influential entries in the then burgeoning trend was Spike Chunsoft's Danganronpa, released mere months before CLOCKUP's own title, between 2010 and 2011. Both games were, in the broadest sense, genre alumni.

It's fascinating to behold these titles as contemporary pop-cultural artefacts, to pin them as either pioneers or direct inspirations to what was becoming a big multi-media oeuvre, in wildly differing yet similar ways. To be as emphatically clear as possible, I may lump the two works together for the convenience of my own rhetoric but, in terms of tone, mood, atmosphere, writing and age rating, they could not possibly be more different. What they do share in common is a premise borne from a similar pool of references; Namely, the SAW films, the aforementioned Battle Royale novel and definitely Ryukishi07's Umineko no Naku Koro ni!

They feature high school students trapped in a Life-or-Death Game run by a mysterious mastermind but it's a distinct flavour for each. Danganronpa operates in the realm of cartoonish exaggeration, dark humour and a vivid Pop-Punk aesthetic wherein Euphoria is much less comical, more muted, monochromatic and consistently dire. The same applies to the characters: the former hosts a who's who of colourful caricatures, the latter vaunts a cast that appears to be visually subdued and realistically grounded - an illusion bound to be violently shattered, I assure you. Although, it sure is a funny coincidence that they also share someone by the name of Byakuya. These two creatures have absolutely nothing in common!

I would also like to add that, if Danganronpa's popularity set the stage for the artistic direction most Killing Game properties would rip-off in the coming decades, Euphoria could be positioned as the counter-cultural outlier, seldom ever considered a "proper" entry in this category. Because, whilst Battle Royale and SAW may be the obvious inspirations for the scenario, its thematic approach is more comparable to Marquis De Sade's The 120 Days of Sodom. Some of the unspeakable things that happen in Euphoria are darkly reminiscent of the torture depicted in either the original text or the Pier Paolo Pasolini's film adaptation from 1975 - a "political art horror" piece that was banned in several countries, as it happens.

Euphoria, as fiction, as art, has something to say and it's using its own extreme language to convey the message, unconcerned with the "moral wellbeing" of anyone receiving it. It just so happens that its language of choice includes rape, sexual flagellation and coprophilia. So, once again, we must ask ourselves: just what the hell is this visual novel?!

Part 2: It's Gender Politics!

Imagine, if you will: a voice actress who specializes in pornographic recordings. She gets handed a script. She was probably expecting to enact the usual material, the typical moaning and panting, perhaps some screaming... As it turns out, the character she's meant to play is getting her brain fried by an electric chair as her bladder and bowels are emptied. She has to act it all out. And she does. It's a weird and loud performance. ... Now that I have appropriately set the mood, I am going to attempt, at the best of my abilities, to talk about this unusual fiction and why I find it deep and meaningful. Deeply uncomfortable and meaningfully revolting, that is. Euphoria wants to examine the horrific nature of gender politics. It presents an oppressive, seemingly bleak outlook on binary male/female dynamics, for which this scenario works as an elaborate metaphor. As we established, there is a Killing Game and students have been forced to take part in it. However, the nature of the beast is quite irregular in this case, for the mysterious mastermind has trapped six women and only one guy in what is essentially a glorified rape dungeon. All the participants are victims of a cruel entity that enforced roles based on biological essentialism (as in, chromosomes) and reduced them to a series of physical functions for the benefit of "Winning." The only choice is to play or die.

The man (referred to as "Unlocker") is in a position of innate power and privilege compared to the women (the "Keyholes") and he may openly benefit from a system that enforces the abuse. The apparent goal of this series of challenges is to unlock all the doors. The aforementioned metaphor should be rather obvious, at this point. Mind you, this is not the case of fetish bait art gratuitously and hypocritically maledicting your weird attunements to fetish bait art. It's not really meant to judge you for engaging with PrObLeMaTiC media, for staring into the "Abyss" of non-con pornography, for playing Those Games. Rather, the Abyss is actively seeking your complicity. It stares back at you the same way Nemu (pictured below) looks at the male lead, with narrowed eyes and a devious smile.

It knows of all the twisted desires you keep buried in your mind and it wants to see how far you'll be willing to go under the right circumstances. It's keenly aware that you play Eroge and enjoy 2D waifus. After all, don't you want to see cute, fictional girls being [CENSORED], [REDACTED] or even forced to [HAVE A NICE MEAL]? Don't worry, my guy, you can just enjoy this. You don't need to see them as people. They aren't people. They're just holes. This is a mere game. Don't think about it. Embrace it. Become corrupted. It is what you wanted.

The framework, in its textual and meta-textual manipulation, creates a "safe outlet" for the protagonist to get his freak on with no legal repercussions, just as much as the VN itself is the safe outlet for the player's. This is one of the reasons why I find Euphoria to be interesting, as opposed to merely edgy and self-servingly abhorrent. It cannot judge you for being a horny dick monster because it was designed with you in mind, eagerly expecting your direct input in the upcoming horror. You are part of the horror - or so you are led to believe. Likewise, this is how a patriarchal society "designs" gender power dynamics: if you have XY chromosomes, you must be the "Unlocker." If you have XX chromosomes, then you only exist to be a hole. The key difference is that Euphoria is just fiction. You can disengage from it whenever you want. Alas, there is no escape from Life's own "Killing Game", the Game of Society, of Capital and Misogyny, whether it's rigged in your favour or not. Once again, the only given choice is to play or die. We're all objects, in the end. Living under such hierarchy is a prison that traps us all, does great violence to us in ways that aren't immediately apparent. The arbitrary division between men and women based on anatomy and a willfully narrow-minded understanding of biology is a portion of what maintains the structure. Fiction is the tool that allows us to explore the fetishizing nature of this unfair imbalance but it is also what fuels every manner of explicit fetishes built on that worldview. There is a useful, nuanced conversation to be had on the subject of objectification and kinks, how they may reflect society at large, what they can teach us about humanity... Unfortunately, we cannot reach that level of discourse while being under the constant threat of payment processors pushing a global fascist agenda. What's the deal with that!?

Part 3: What's the Deal with Keisuke!?

There are choices you have to make in this visual novel, very unfortunate choices. The plot progresses based on which girls get to be picked as "Keyholes." Many combinations are available but you should strive to target the same person, every single time. Doing that will unlock that girl's specific route - whatever that may entail in this context. It's important to keep in mind how Choice is presented here as a devilish moral trap. The Unlocker (penis-having male), is forced to participate. He doesn't get a say in the matter. However, he does get to decide who to violate and, more crucially, he can choose to enjoy it. As in, you, the player, will do the deciding. There's still a degree of free will within the Game that the man can exercise over the women. Thus, the Game successfully manufactures a patriarchal hierarchy. The main character implicitly understands this and the innate violence that comes with it. Yet, he covets it.

Keisuke is a difficult protagonist to place in one's mind. He's unwell, to say the least, and has accepted himself as a monster who should be hated. At the same time, he's still afraid to be outed, to deal with the shame of it. He operates under the foolish notion that there could still be a "normal life" waiting for him after surviving this. A belief that the character of Nemu, who appears to be just as messed up as he is, is all too eager to obliterate. He's traumatized in ways he cannot even begin to process, opting instead to de-humanize himself just as much as he's willing to de-humanize his schoolmates. He gives in to his urges but he reviles the idea of using the Game to excuse his actions - the guilt would be overwhelming if he did. He's a coward yet he's resolute, self-aware yet afraid of judgment. He must do horrible things but he gets off on doing them, etcetera.

The prose is unexpectedly layered, giving texture to his chilling monologues and the interpersonal relationships he develops with the women he's "legally obligated" to abuse. The writing does a good job in exploring these complicated feelings, mostly. Some routes may be better paced and structured than others, I will say. Crucially, every member of this cast, would-be victims and victimizers alike, are fleshed out characters with wants, needs and secrets. At its strongest, Euphoria is a story about deeply flawed individuals being forced to emotionally respond to extreme situations, exposing a side of themselves that no one should see. It's a parable on frailty, powerlessness, the facade of normalcy, the scary parts of ourselves we wish to bury beneath the mask. In one specific case, that hidden side would be akin to a yawning abyss of pitch-black darkness... but let's put a pin on it. It's horror about humanity, basically. Horror about existing in a human society. Misogyny is merely the first step to a much harsher descent.

Euphoria is also "very funny." Did you know that it has an Ejaculation Countdown? Yes, that is exactly what it sounds like. Little numbers will appear on the side of the screen, counting down to zero with each click, when the guy is close. The pay-off for this nifty little feature comes in a seemingly random scene in Rika's route, wherein she is sitting at a dinner table, ready to enjoy some delicious treats, only for the countdown to mysteriously appear at the bottom right. The end result is one of the worst H-scenes I have ever read, and I mean that as a compliment!

She just wanted to eat pudding. I don't know whether I should laugh, cry, cry-laugh, hurl the contents of my stomach in utter revulsion or do all of the above simultaneously. What a game! Apropos of nothing, there is an option to toggle 'body waste CG variants' on and off in the settings' menu. I just thought you should know about it.

Part 4: No, You Can't Fix Her

Something that's worth knowing about the many routes in Euphoria is that, while you may have access to them at your own leisure and discretion, it would be best to get Rika and Natsuki out of the way first, leaving Rinne and Nemu for last. Trust me on that. Just, trust me. The fragmentation of the overarching narrative through multiple scenarios is more of a detriment than a boon, I noted. Each path is divided in two halves, the Killing Game and the world outside of it. The latter halves always tease or outright reveal key plot twists. This runs the risk of diminishing the impact of these very same twists when they eventually become relevant in their character-specific events. For example: it's slightly dissatisfying to be clued in on what Rinne's role is before actually seeing her story unfolds - and how utterly, gob-smacking insane it is!

That will happen if you read through Natsuki's route before her own. On the other hand, the quality between these scenarios is uneven. Rika and Natsuki's paths are clearly meant to be played first, and I am going to insist that you do so. Every heroine reacts in a different manner to what they are forced to endure, leading to uniquely "flavoured" dynamics with the protagonist. Rika is the most "victim-coded" out of all of them, to put it horribly, which paints her abuser in the scariest light. So, she should be the logical starting point. The resolution to her arc is probably the weakest as it attempts to speedrun through a concurrent heroic redemption for her willingly unwilling rapist and a romantic relationship that has absolutely no business existing. Essentially, it hand-waves all the pain away. There is, however, a hidden depth to her behaviour, a frightening one, that gets fully exposed in Rinne's route. It re-contextualizes the childish, clingy nature she has showcased all throughout the game as something more innately toxic and dangerously co-dependent. In that light, even her so-called happy ending might read as fundamentally tragic, if one were so inclined to defend it.

The line between abuser and abused becomes blurrier, more complicated, more gaslighting, as the violence escalates with each new cycle... Again, if you play Euphoria in the "correct" order. Hence why the regular Eroge structure could potentially do more harm than good to the narrative. Characterizations, in general, tend to be insidious and clever, lulling the main character (and you) into a false sense of security, an illusion of control literally and figuratively bestowed upon him by the environment, only to dramatically disrupt the status quo when the time is ripe. The scenario I find to be the most emblematic of that pattern is, as previously hinted, Rinne Byakuya's.

Let me preface this paragraph by acknowledging the head scenarist for this title, one Asou Ei. He crafted most of the story as well as the creatively appalling situations furthering said story. I can't say I am familiar with his body of work, sadly. Curiously, he did not write all of this VN. The second half of Rinne's route, specifically, was handed over to one Izumi Ban'ya. Now, unlike Asou Ei, I am somewhat familiar with this man's body of work. I played Black Cyc games. I played SaDistic BlooD. I know what he's capable of unleashing upon the scripted word. I was in for quite the ride.

I shall not tell you what happens. I will not attempt to explain, allude or even hint at any occurring situation. What I will say is that the whiplash I felt from it left me with the spiritual equivalent of a festering, gash wound. I was engulfed by the insurmountable darkness of Rinne's world, my soul crushed by a tragedy so profound, so horrific, that my heart was cast into the abyss of despair along with her. The decision to let a different writer, with his own defined style and "sensibilities", have his way with someone else's established prose and characters could have easily backfired, but it worked brilliantly here. It worked because of it, in fact. Alienating the reader by disrupting their reading experience was the intended effect. Nemu's route may have been technically worse in terms of its factual contents (as in, H-scenes) but it was merely escalating what was already put into motion. The 180° turnaround I experienced with Rinne was more impactful. Simply put, her utterly bizarre scenario is my favourite in this game and one of the best reads out of any form of visual literature I have ever encountered! It is also where Euphoria peaks.

Part 5: The Door to Paradise

To reframe everything we have discussed thus far, Euphoria is a story about Agency. It interrogates what it means to have free will and whether or not that is applicable in a given situation. How much do our personal feelings matter and how much the environment may influence them. Where does said influence, the repressed memories and the trauma finish, where does our true self begin? What role does Society play in the formation of our human identities? How much do gender politics factor in the shape of our egos? Euphoria is also a story about Violation. Not just the literal violation on display but the more insidious, manipulative kind that messes with your mind, your sense of reality, to the point you can no longer be assured of your own choices, your own agency and your identity. That is the violence of living under an oppressing system: one that divides humans into the binary of "unlockers" and "keyholes", one where the difference between assailant and victim is falsely determined by chromosome count, one built on the sufferance of many for the bliss of the few. One that promises a Paradise at the end of sorrow as long as you can "Win the Game", but the Game is rigged and Paradise is but a dream of what could never be.

Euphoria finds many ways to metaphorically rape you. The question of Agency inevitably becomes murkier, more confusing and confounding when the environment itself forces you (both the player and the protagonist) to doubt the validity of every event that takes place at any point. You cannot trust your eyes and your brain as much as you cannot trust the world around you. In that sense, this game is a great psychological horror. It starts from a place of obvious commentary about misogyny and female objectification only to flip itself over, multiple times, lashing you across the face as roles are subverted and perceptions are altered. It finds unmitigated strength in the uncertainty of it all, and it comes undone the moment it attempts to explain everything.

Horror dances on a fine line between the Unknown and the Familiar, between the allure of that which we can't understand and the eventual light of knowledge. Knowledge is what ultimately dispels the fear of the unknown, thus bringing us to a resolution, the moment of comprehension, but too much of it may retroactively ruin the overall experience. The Horror in Euphoria is not subtle. It's vile, putrid, in-your-face, designed to gross you out and it serves a point beyond that. Even a basic blowjob will come off as the most disgusting sequence you may behold in your lifetime. The context that lurks behind it is terrifying at an existential level, bleak and tragic beyond reproach. It's made so specifically to manipulate the feelings of both the player and the protagonist. It is a sordid tale that works best when it allows you to sit on your thoughts, to ruminate on what it all means and what it may say about you. The worst thing that could happen to this game would be an ending that simultaneously over-explains itself and overstates its welcome, not quite knowing when to actually end. The kind of finale that aims to answer every question and, by doing so, winds up glossing over so many points it only creates further questions. Questions that did not need to exist if your own mind had been given the chance to fill in the blanks. Unfortunately, the finale commits such carnal sin.

I shall not go into the minutia of how this title falls from grace but I wish to express my frustrations over it. If I'm being honest, I wish it had the courage to leave us off with a more vague, open-ended and bitter resolution. I seriously did not need to have all my queries answered in the most uninteresting manner imaginable and I certainly did not need a prolonged conclusion that tied everything up in a neat bow whilst still being weirdly sad and dissatisfying. It just kept going and going until all the pathos was sucked out of its anal cavity. I am especially unhappy with the handling of the "main couple." As previously stated, the main selling point here is the complex and multi-layered cast. Characters revealing themselves to be more messed up than initially surmised, hiding deep seated issues, having more to them beyond their assigned archetypes - or genders, even. The exact opposite of that happens in the final act as the two characters that seemed the most compelling, the most deliciously disturbed right at the beginning, finish up as the most clean-cut and boring. What made their interactions deeply toxic and, therefore, fun to read, is washed away because the true story has to be about their fated encounter as lovers akin to the most overused visual novel plot point... but Euphoria has been nothing like a typical VN! Such issues were already present in Rika's route, which forced an out of place romance into the mix, but the limitations of the medium have never been more evident than in its final note. I truly believe that, looking past (or, rather, through) the various atrocities placed in front of my eyes, this game had earned its tragedy, its sadness, its ultimately doomed pairing. The finale doesn't fully commit to that mood and that is a crying shame. Much like a mystery box with nothing inside, the Door to Paradise should have been left unopened.

Nevertheless, I shan't forget about this experience any time soon. The journey getting there is unlike any other narrative of this particular ilk. The aesthetic presentation courtesy of Hamashima Shigeo (a lady, actually), the skin-crawling texture of its prose, the memorable soundtrack by Uehara Ichinoryuu, the fact that [RINNE BEING OFF-HANDEDLY REVEALED TO BE AN INTERSEX CHILD WHO WAS MUTILATED BY SCIENCE SHOULD HAVE BEEN A MUCH BIGGER DEAL]. All of these bits and pieces, the imagined scent of its body wastes, will be lodged into my lower intestines for a long, long time. ... My tummy hurts.

---

A/N: Congratulations! You've made it to the end of 2025! Hopefully, you'll make it to the end of 2026 and every year afterwards until you literally cannot anymore! This has been a bewildering time for me, as well. The amount of erotic titles I played has been staggering. I do believe I read more Eroge in the past eight months than in my whole life. I was inspired to write essays like never before and I shall continue to publish them for as long as I can carry on. I'll make a relevant Tier List before it all ends. So, keep joining me, won't you?

Merry holydays, fellow freaks.

---

Follow Madhog on:

YouTube

Bluesky

Blogger

Why you should consider boycotting Microsoft: https://www.bdsmovement.net/microsoft

Pasolini might have elevated Salò to be a commentary against consumerism/capitalism and the ruling class, but de Sade wrote it with different goals. Yes, there is social commentary in the original book but de Sade, a renowned libertine, the original sadist, reveled in the debauchery (which was a lot more and lot worse in the book).

The libertines were clearly the villain for Pasolini, they were not for de Sade. Both of them did share similar views about the ruling class though.

Which brings us to the age old question? Does power corrupt or does it just bring out one's true nature.

How quickly morality crumbles when one has the means to indulge in pleasures indiscriminately. People who decide their own pleasure is supreme and no moral guard rails matter. And these people are at the top, they will never face any consequences, no stone thrown by those at the bottom will ever reach them.

What did Pasolini know? Fifty years after his brutal murder, the director’s vision of fascism is more urgent than ever

With mystery still surrounding Pier Paolo Pasolini’s death, the poet and film-maker’s warnings of corruption and rising totalitarianism offer a chilling message for our times

By Olivia Laing

Pier Paolo Pasolini was murdered at around midnight on 2 November 1975. His blood-soaked body was found the next morning on waste ground in Ostia, on the outskirts of Rome, battered so badly the famous face was almost unrecognisable. Italy’s premier intellectual, artist, provocateur, national conscience, homosexual, dead at the age of 53, his scandalous final film still in the editing suite. “Assassinato Pasolini,” the next morning’s papers announced, alongside photographs of the 17-year-old accused of his murder. Everyone knew his taste for working-class hustlers. A hookup gone wrong was the instant verdict.

Some deaths are so suggestive that they become emblematic of a subject, the deceiving lens through which an entire life is forever after read. In this weirdly totalitarian mode of interpretation, Virginia Woolf is always walking towards the Ouse, the river in which she drowned herself. Likewise, Pasolini’s entire body of work is coloured by the seeming fact that he was murdered by a rent boy, the crowning act of a relentlessly high-risk life.

But what if this was the intention; the malevolent cunning with which his assassination was designed? What if, rather than the instant martyrdom of a bullet to the head, Pasolini was killed in such a way as to make it seem that he had sought out his own destruction, a rightful punishment, at least in the eyes of conservatives, for the manifest perversions with which his art as well as life were rife?

Furthermore: what if this reputational as well as actual murder was designed to drown out – contaminate, confuse – the warnings he’d been issuing with increasing ferocity in the final years of his short life? “I know” was the central refrain in a famous essay published a year before his death in Il Corriere della Sera, Italy’s leading newspaper. What Pasolini knew, and what he refused to remain silent about, was the nature of power and corruption during Italy’s brutal 1970s; the so-called “Years of Lead”, named for an epidemic of assassinations and terrorist attacks by both the extreme left and right. What he knew, in short, was that fascism was not over, and that the right would metastasise, returning in a new form to claim power over a populace stupefied by the tawdry blandishments of capitalism. Was Pasolini wrong in his predictions? I think we all know the answer to that.

Pasolini was born in Bologna in 1922, the year that Mussolini became dictator, to a military family. He spent a formative spell in his mother’s home town of Casarsa, in the remote rural region of Friuli, after his father was arrested for gambling debts. The schism between his parents grew more serious as the second world war took hold. Susanna was a schoolteacher who loved literature and art, while Carlo Alberto was an army officer and avowed fascist, who would spend most of the war in Kenya in an English prisoner-of-war camp.

Pasolini studied literature at Bologna University, but when bombing made the city too dangerous he retreated with his mother and younger brother, Guido, to Friuli. He was obsessed with the beauty of the region and its pure, archaic dialect, his mother tongue, spoken by peasants and almost unknown to literature. In 1942, he published his first volume of poems, Poesie a Casarsa, written in dialect. But during the chaotic years of fighting that followed the Italian armistice, not even Friuli was safe. Guido joined the resistance and was executed in the hills by a rival group of partisans, a tragedy that bound Susanna and her adored surviving son even more tightly together.

Part of the allure of Friuli was erotic. It was here Pasolini discovered his sexuality, his magnetic attraction to peasant and street boys. It soon brought him into conflict with authority. In the late 1940s he was charged with corruption of minors because of a supposed sexual act with three teenagers. Though he was later absolved, the scandal drove him and Susanna to move again, this time to Rome.

They stepped straight into the seething city of Bicycle Thieves: a Rome in ruins, its slums populated by a new urban proletariat, escaping the deprivations of the rural south. Pasolini found work as a teacher and immersed himself in another secret language, Romanaccio, the street dialect spoken by the wild youths he befriended. Ragazzi di vita, he called them in the 1955 novel that made his reputation: the boys of life. Pockmarked hustlers and petty thieves, slim-hipped and amoral, often homophobic, nearly always straight. It was these boys he set at the heart of his books, his films, his poems and his life.

You can glimpse Pasolini in photographs of this period, a slight, slender figure with bandy legs, a mackintosh over his smart suit, dark hair slicked back from an intense, sharp-cheekboned face. A watcher, a driven artist, a passionate football player. He found his way to Cinecittà, the famous Roman movie studio, as a scriptwriter. He assisted Fellini with Nights of Cabiria, and then he was off on his own, writing and directing Accattone, a 1961 neo-realist account of a pimp – played by a real-life street kid, Franco Citti – and his blighted life in a Roman slum.

Lesser artists might have mined that seam for years, but Pasolini soon revealed the exceptional depth and idiosyncrasy of his talent. He made explicitly political films such as Pigsty and Theorem, animated by his loathing for the complacent bourgeoisie. He told the life of Christ in The Gospel According to St Matthew and he took up classical stories too, creating raw and visceral adaptations of Oedipus Rex and Medea, starring Maria Callas, as well as Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, The Decameron by Boccaccio and The Arabian Nights in The Trilogy of Life.

There is nothing in all of cinema like these films, which are bawdy and poetic, visually sublime and heavily invested in the realm of ideas. Many of them star Pasolini’s great love and long-term companion, Ninetto Davoli, a shambling naif from Calabria with an infectiously broad grin. Pasolini’s tendency to use amateur actors gives his films a strange, unsteady realism, as if a Renaissance painting had come to life.

By his 50s, he was globally famous, a controversial figure, constantly under attack. He was tipped for the Nobel prize in literature but had also been subject to 33 trials on trumped-up or invented charges, including public obscenity, contempt of religion and, weirdest of all, attempted robbery; his weapon a black pistol loaded with a golden bullet. Pasolini didn’t even own a gun.

His art was never doctrinaire but it was always political. He’d joined the Communist party in his youth, and was rapidly expelled for his unconcealed homosexuality. He was as often criticised by the left as the right, but though he was a thorn in everybody’s side, he remained allied to communism and the radical left. In the 1970s, he became exceptionally vocal on political matters, using the essays in Il Corriere to discuss industrialisation, corruption, violence, sex and the future of Italy.

In the most famous, published in November 1974 and known in Italy as Io so, or “I know”, he claimed he knew the names of those involved in “a series of coups instituted for the preservation of power”, including the fatal Milan and Brescia bombings. During these Years of Lead, the far right deployed the so-called “strategy of tension” to smear the left and shift the country to a more authoritarian basis. Pasolini believed that among those responsible were figures in the government, the secret service and the church. He referred to a novel he was writing, Petrolio, in which he intended to lay these corruptions bare. “I believe it is unlikely that my ‘novel in progress’ may be wrong, that is to say that it may be disconnected from reality, and that its references to real persons and facts may be inaccurate,” he added.

The last film is the bleakest. No horror film in all the intervening years has come close to Salò (1975), no hacked-up torture porn approaches its icy formal perfection or anguished moral intent. A version of De Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom transposed to the Italian countryside in the final days of the second world war, it is a terrifying masque about fascism and compliance, an accounting of both sides of the totalitarian coin. Like De Sade’s own writing, it’s about power, not pleasure: who possesses it and whom it destroys. It’s an apocalyptic masterpiece that remains unbearable to watch; “off the reservation, proscribed”, as the writer and critic Gary Indiana observed in a screen essay extolling its still-radioactive capacity to wound the viewer.

I set my new novel, The Silver Book, around the making of Salò. I wanted to imagine Pasolini at work, in a tight Missoni sweater and dark glasses, running from scene to scene with the Arriflex camera held lightly at his shoulder, overseeing the construction of turds from crushed biscuits and chocolate for the infamous shit-eating scene. He didn’t bully his collaborators, like Fellini did. He was loved and admired, and also lonely, separate. The compulsive cruising, night after night: in a poem called Solitude he wondered if it was simply a way to be alone.

Ninetto had married two years earlier and the loss had pitched him into total despair, a mood that leaked helplessly into the film. He had publicly repudiated his joyous, erotic Trilogy of Life. Now sex equalled death and pain. As for utopia, no possibility remained. And yet, when an interviewer asked him who was the intended audience for Salò, he said in all seriousness: everyone. He still believed art could perform its counter spell, could shock the populace awake. He hadn’t lost hope.

One of the theories of Pasolini’s death is that he was lured to Ostia to recover some reels of Salò that had been stolen a few months earlier. I took up this story in my novel but I decided not to directly describe Pasolini’s murder, in which he was beaten, his groin shattered, his ear almost severed, before being run over by his own silver Alfa Romeo, causing his heart to burst. The boy who served a decade for his murder had a few tiny spots of blood on him, and no injuries, though he had apparently beaten a man to death. Another sentence from Io so hints at what probably took place: “I know the names of the sombre and important people who lurk behind the tragic youths who chose the suicidal fascist atrocities or the common criminals, Sicilian and otherwise, who offered their services as killers and assassins.”

Pasolini saw what was coming. Like the rarest artists, he had the gift of second sight, which is another way of saying that he paid attention, that he watched and listened and knew how to interpret the signs. On his last afternoon, he was by chance interviewed for La Stampa. A few days after his death, his final recorded words were published in a sold-out issue, a prophecy from beyond the grave.

He talked about how ordinary life was becoming distorted by the desire for possessions, because everyone was taught that “wanting something is a virtue”. He said it affected every aspect of society, though the poor might use a crowbar to get their spoils, while the rich relied on the stock exchange. He said, referring to his nightly excursions into the shadow world of Rome, that he descended into hell and brought back the truth.

What is the truth, the journalist asked. The evidence, Pasolini said, of “a shared, compulsory and wrong education that pushes us to own everything at any price”. He described everyone as victims in this, thinking no doubt of Salò, where victims and perpetrators are locked together in a terrible dance. And he described everyone as guilty, because of their willingness to ignore the costs in favour of their own lucrative private gain. It wasn’t about individual culpability or good and bad actors, he added. It was a totalising system, though unlike in Salò there was a way to escape, to undo the sinister, seductive spell.

As ever, his language was more that of the poet than the politician: dense with metaphor, spooky with warnings. “I go down into hell and I discover things that don’t disturb the peace of others,” he said. “But be careful. Hell is rising towards the rest of you.” Right at the very end of the conversation, it is as if he becomes frustrated by the interviewer’s continued attempts to make him clarify his position. “Everybody knows that I pay for my own experiences in person,” he says. “But there are also my books and my films. Maybe I’m wrong, but I keep on saying that we are all in danger.”

The journalist asks how he thinks he, Pasolini, can avoid this danger. It is getting dark and there is no light on in the room where they are talking. Pasolini says he will think about the question overnight, that he will answer in the morning. But in the morning he is dead.

I think Pasolini was right, and I’m certain that the warnings he kept uttering were why he was killed. He saw the future we’re now in long before anyone else. He saw that capitalism would corrode into fascism, or that fascism would infiltrate and take over capitalism, that what appeared benign and beneficial would corrupt and destroy old forms of life. He knew that compliance and complicity were lethal. He warned about the ecological costs of industrialisation. He foresaw how television would transform politics, though he was dead before Silvio Berlusconi came to power. I do not think the ascent of Trump, a politician formed in Berlusconi’s mould, would have surprised him very much.

He wasn’t perfect. He was infected with nostalgia for a rural peasant Italy, the cost of which he was wilfully blind to. He was against abortion and mass education; he took the side of the French police against the students in 1968. His poetry can be self-indulgent, his paintings are bad. He paid for sex with rent boys who stayed the same age as he grew older, and on the other hand he took them seriously, listened to them, found them work, provided a steady source of support. He was a visionary and an artist of unshakeable moral conviction. He would not shut up.

The timing of his death makes it seem as if Salò was his final, desolate statement but even on his last night he was talking over dinner about his next film. There was more work to come, unimaginable in its shape, unprecedented in its form. He ate steak, he went cruising. He was hungry, you see. He was on the side of life, always.

🔴 The Silver Book by Olivia Laing will be published on 6 November by Hamish Hamilton. A 50th anniversary screening of Salò will take place on 11 November at the Barbican, London.