Against long hair

By: Pier Paolo Pasolini
Translated by: Zija Vukaj

The first time I saw long hair was in Prague. Two foreign boys, with shoulder-length hair, entered the lobby of the hotel where I was staying. They walked through the lobby, reached a slightly secluded corner, and sat down at a table. They sat there for about half an hour, watched by the customers, including me; then they left. Even when they walked through the people gathered in the lobby, even when they were sitting in the corner to the side, they did not speak (perhaps - but I do not remember - they whispered something among themselves: but, I think, something quite practical, inexpressible). In fact, they, in that particular situation - which was quite public or social and I would say, official - did not need to speak at all. Their silence was strictly functional. And it was simply because speech was unnecessary. Both of them, in fact, used to communicate with those present, with the observers – with their brothers of that moment – ​​a language other than that formed by words. What replaced the traditional language with words, making it unnecessary – and moreover finding immediate placement in the wide possession of “signs”, that is, of the field of semiology – was the language of their hair. It was about the only sign – precisely the length of their hair up to their shoulders – in which all the possible signs of an articulated language were concentrated.

What was the meaning of their silent and only physical message?

It was this: “We are two long-haired people. We belong to a new category of people that is making its appearance in the world these days, that has its center in America and that, in the provinces (such as, for example – and especially – here in Prague) is not known. So, we are a Show for you. We practice the propagation of our doctrine, already full of a knowledge that fulfills and completely overwhelms us. We have nothing to add verbally or with reason to what our hair physically and ontologically says. The knowledge that fills us, even through our propaganda, will one day belong to you too. For now it is a New Thing, a great New Thing, that creates in the world, with the scandal, an expectation: which will not be betrayed. The bourgeois do well to look at us with hatred and horror, because it is the length of our hair that absolutely contradicts them. But let us not be taken for uneducated and wild people: we are very aware of our responsibility. We do not look at you, we stay at our work. Do the same, and wait for the Events."

I was the recipient of this communication, but I was also able to decipher it immediately: that language without lexicon, without grammar, without syntax, could be understood immediately, also because, speaking semiologically, it was nothing more than a form of that “language of physical presence” that people are always able to use. I understood; and I immediately felt an antipathy for the two of them. Then I had to overcome the antipathy and defend the long-haired ones from the attacks of the police and the fascists: I laughed, of course, because of the principle, on the side of Living Theatre, to Beats etc.; and the principle that made me side with them was a profoundly democratic one. The long-haired people multiplied considerably – like the first Christians: but they continued mysteriously silent; long hair was their only and true language and they cared little for anything else. Their speech corresponded to their being.

The ineffability was rhetoric (the oratory) of their protest. What were the long-haired people of 1966-67 saying, with their inarticulate language, fixed in the monolithic sign of their hair?

They said this: “We are disgusted with consumerist civilization. We protest radically. We are creating an antibody to this type of civilization through opposition. It seemed like everything was going well, right? Was our generation supposed to be a fulfilled generation? On the contrary, this is how things are in reality. We are opposing the stupidity of a stubbornness of the “executors”. We are creating new religious values ​​in bourgeois entropy, precisely at the moment when it is becoming completely secular and hedonistic. We are doing it with a fury and a revolutionary violence (violence of the non-violent!) because our criticism of our society is total and unchangeable.”

If they had been asked in the traditional system of spoken language, I do not believe that they would have been able to express so articulately the thesis of their hair: the fact is that this is what they essentially wanted to express. As for me, although I suspected until then that their “system of signs” was the product of a subculture of protest opposed to a subculture of power and that their non-Marxist revolution was dubious, I continued to be on their side for a period, relying at least on the anarchist element of my ideology. The language of that hair, although inexpressible, expressed “things” of the Left. Even of the New Left, born within the bourgeois universe (in a dialectic perhaps artificially created by that Mind that regulates, outside the consciousness of the particular and historical Powers, the fate of the Bourgeoisie).

1968 came. The long-haired had been absorbed by the Student Movement; they waved red flags on the barricades. Their language expressed more and more “things” of the Left. (That Guevara had long hair, etc.) In 1969 – with the tragedy of Milan, the Mafia, the emissaries of the Greek colonels, the Ministers’ collaboration in crime, the black conspiracy, the provocateurs – the long-haired were extremely widespread: although they were not yet in the numerical majority, they had acquired a great ideological weight. Now the long-haired were no longer silent: they no longer delegated to the sign system of their hair all their communicative and expressive capacity. On the contrary, the physical presence of hair, in a way, had been reduced to a distinguishing function. The traditional use of verbal language had returned to function. And, I don’t say verbal by chance. I even underline it. So much was said from '68 to '70, so much, that for a period the end of verbalism was put; and verbalism was rhetoric the new revolution (Gossism, the verbal disease of Marxism!)

Even though the hair – absorbed in verbal frenzy – no longer spoke independently to the bewildered recipients, I still found the strength to sharpen my capacity for deciphering and, trembling, tried to devote myself to listening to the silent, uninterrupted discussion of those ever-longer hairs. What were they saying now? They were saying: “Yes, it’s true, we say things of the Left; our understanding – although purely supportive of the understanding of verbal messages – is a Left understanding… But… But…”!

The discussion of long hair stopped there: I had to fill it in myself. With that “but” they clearly wanted to say two things: 1) “Our inexpressibility appears more and more of an irrational and pragmatic nature: the superiority that we silently attribute to action is of a subcultural character and therefore is essentially right-wing”. 2) We have also been favored by fascist provocateurs, who mix in verbal revolutions (but, verbalism can also lead to action, especially when it mythologizes it): and we create a perfect mask, not only from the point of view of the physical aspect – our irregular flow and undulation tend to make all faces homologous – but also from the cultural point of view: in fact, a subculture of the Right can be very nicely confused with a subculture of the Left.

I soon realized that the language of long hair no longer expressed Leftist "things," but rather expressed every Left-Right misunderstanding that made the presence of provocateurs possible.

About ten years ago, I thought, among us of the previous generation, a provocateur was almost inconceivable (unless he was a great actor): in fact, his subculture would be distinguishable, even physically, from our culture. We would recognize him by his eyes, his nose, his hair! We would immediately expose him and teach him the lesson he deserved. Now this is not possible. No one in the world can distinguish a revolutionary from a provocateur anymore. The Right and the Left have physically merged. We have arrived in 1972. I was in the city of Isfahan, in the heart of Persia, this September. A developing country, as it is said in a terrible way, but equally terrible, in full swing. Over the Isfahan of ten years ago – one of the most beautiful cities in the world, who knows, maybe the most beautiful – a new, modern, and very ugly Isfahan has been born. But, on its streets, for work or for a walk, around dinner, you see the same young people you saw in Italy ten years ago: dignified and humble sons, with beautiful necks and beautiful, clear faces under their innocent, proud hoods. And then one evening, starting from the main street, I saw among all those young people, very beautiful and full of early human dignity, two monstrous beings: They were not exactly long-haired, but their hair was cut European, long in the back, short on the forehead, pulled back by the pull, with two dirty bangs, artificially attached around the face above the ears. What did their hair say? They said: "We do not belong to the number of these hungry people, these undeveloped wretches, who have been left behind in barbaric times!" We are bank employees, students, sons of wealthy people who work in oil companies; we know Europe, we have read it. We are bourgeois: and here is our long hair, which testifies to our international modernity of the privileged! So, that long hair alluded to Right-wing "things." The circle is closed. The subculture in power has absorbed the subculture in opposition. With diabolical skill, he has patiently made it a fashion that, if it cannot be called exactly fascist in the classic sense of the word, is in fact a real "far right". I end with bitterness. The disgusting masks that young people put on their faces, becoming filthy like the old whores of a baseless iconography, objectively recreate on their physiognomies what they themselves have always condemned with words. Old faces of priests, judges, officials, fake anarchists, funny employees, troublemakers (Axekagarbulë), Don Ferrante, mercenaries, thugs, street conformists have emerged. So, the radical and indiscriminate condemnation that they have pronounced against their fathers – who are history in evolution and previous culture – by erecting an insurmountable barrier against them, has ended in isolation, preventing them from a dialectical relationship with their fathers.

On the contrary, the isolation in which they have been locked up – as in a world apart, in a ghetto reserved for youth – has kept them imprisoned in their invincible historical reality: and this has involved – fatally – a regression. In reality, they have gone further back than their fathers, causing in their souls horrors and conformity and in their physical appearance rigid rules and miseries that seemed to have been overcome forever. This is what long hair now says, in its inarticulate and furious language of non-verbal signs, in its gangster iconism, in the “things” of television or product advertising, where it is already inconceivable to envisage a young person who does not have long hair: a fact that today would be scandalous for the authorities. I feel a sincere and infinite dissatisfaction to say (even, a real despair): but now thousands and hundreds of thousands of young Italian faces, resemble more and more the face of Merlin. Their freedom to wear their hair as they want, is no longer protected, because it is no longer freedom. The time has come to tell young people that the way they wear their hair is terrible, because it is enslaving and vulgar. The time has come for them to notice it themselves and to free themselves from this guilty anxiety of theirs to adhere to the degrading rule of the horde.