The Only Catholic Intellectual

In the early 1970s, Italian cities were flooded with what were known as capelloni—young leftist men who sported long hair as a way to stick it to the proverbial Man. One article in the popular newspaper Corriere della Sera commented that “the way they wear their hair is horrible, because it is servile and vulgar.” The author admitted to feeling “an immediate dislike for them,” and went on to critique their facial expressions as “disgusting masks” and to compare their “obscene” aesthetic to “court jesters,” “swindlers,” “self-righteous weirdos,” and “old whores from an absurd iconography.” These words came not from a conservative reactionary or church cleric, but from the queer Marxist writer and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922–1975).