SEX, DRUGS, AND SKULL DANCING

Vatican, an aspatial, timeless, material place

Papacy: father, son and holy spirit, Francis II, Pius XIII, John Paul III

One is dead, causes are still "unknown"

One is in a coma and will rise again as Christ

The other is the Pope intangible as the holy spirit.

No one is frightened by the words of John Paul III, chosen as Pope for his Kierkegaardian aesthetic life. Aristocratic, cultured, ironic, palatable to the Curia of Rome because he would not lose his bearings in the vast spaces of the Vatican, coming from a castle with a thousand acres of garden. Chic, flawed, insecure, he loves golf, women, poetry.

He dislikes himself and indulges in compromise. His parents in contemplation of his brother who died because of his negligence, make him, from time immemorial feel guilty. He must make up for surviving his cowardice; he compensates with drug addiction--a splendid box accompanies him to his regal and papal rooms.

He first refuses, then accepts, a Bentley from His Eminence Spalletta: the request is to fulfill appointments between blackmail and benevolence.

Meanwhile, the surreal Secretary of State, whose only faith is Naples, must deal with an internal insurrection: the nuns go on strike.

The gentile women finally understand the difference between handouts and rights and demand social, moral and economic respect.

It won't take much to ensnare the more or less young and inexperienced maidens of God given over to the metaphysics of blackmail ... and wi-fi.

The aristocratic John Paul III mistaken for Pius XIII by Marilyn Manson, unaware of Lenny Belardo's comatose state, identified the Venetian trip as a recovery of popularity: visiting the dying pope could have turned his authority into authority. But on his return, dear Voiello does not hesitate to point out that it is precisely his authority that has not turned into authority!

The sensual marketing and communications manager, Sofia Dubois, does not hesitate to allow herself to be flattered by Brannox's desires while her husband Tomas Albruck, part of the cursed triad, shares with Giucciardini and Spalletta the same minor in the luxurious and holy rooms of lust.

Costei has great sympathy for Voiello, whom she deems interested only in the good of the Vatican: that same good that defines power and original sin as identical.

A concentrate of lashings flavored with cynicism, those of the secretary of state make him sympathetic precisely because he believes that thinking the opposite of what he asserts means going out of fashion while he would never go out of fashion like the kinder bar.

There is always an empty place at the table with cookies, exclusively for God, and there is a discussion with a resigned political representative who announces a decree revoking the 8 per thousand.

Considering this a declaration of war the counter proposal is to delay the decree until the government falls.

Cardinal Gutierrez desired by eminent colleague Absentee, entertains himself with his own toy boy Freddie who gratifies his body, while Brannox imagines Sofia naked.

The nuns/chaperones wiggle in a neon skull-dance to the sound of Good time Girl, while the dwarf abbess with her legs on the desk smokes a cigar suborning a semblance of power..

Sharon Stone herself is asked by John Paul III not to cross her legs and to leave a tangible memento of her visit: a pair of Louboutins seem perfect for an aristocratic pope's capitalist fetishism: "I'll have them kept in a shrine as a special relic."

And as the pope acknowledges that she is The Flaw, the sexy protagonist of Basic Instinct acknowledges her only flaw, that of having beautiful but large feet, she will ask the pope for a counter commitment, that of the recognition of same-sex marriages.

Only when there is a resolute and revolutionary pope can this happen; unfortunately, Brannox recognizes none of these prerogatives, leaving Stone, stone cold and immobile.

Then again, the pope knows very well that the Bible cannot be updated like an iphone and what can be updated sooner or later ends up in the trash...

"You have 154 I.Q.," the pope says to Stone, "you geniuses know that life evolves and regardless of you, the politicians, the popes...what would you suggest the Catholic church do for the purpose of making itself more eloquent?"

Sharon: "in the end what will be left of you apart from a bunch of commissioned works of art... today there are so many artists but you ignore them..."

Pope: "so life passes but art remains!"

Sharon: "Art also passes but slower because it is HURT."

Alliances, blackmail, partitions, power, sex, drugs, alcohol, finance..

Going to Lourdes to increase one's authority, the one that Pius XIII holds only to be absent from the scene.

Or shout a NO just so that it can become a metaphor for good fighting evil and because the media value of this can change everything.

"NO is a moral punctuation of the highest significance," Sofia argues, while Voiello believes that he belongs to such a small minority that he is the only one who does.

Then again, it is that minority that makes him believe that man cannot be changed but that distracting him is possible.

The fanaticism growing around Pius XIII's coma has the pope's breaths amplified on the radio, the only 24-hour broadcast.

Important is to design the distraction from the revocation of the 8 per thousand especially for the retroactive tax on all properties: the church has never paid taxes, of at least 100,000 properties and only the agreements of the accursed triad or the secretary of state can resolve the issue.

But Pius XIII wakes up and after the beach carpet in costume winking at the adoring bathers, he lights his cigarette pulling it out of the gaudy cross on Esther/Maddalena's chest and hides in the most beautiful house in Venice, that of his doctor. He has to plan his return to Rome and needs time.

Naked fanatics enter the water like zombies, the mother/mother, mourns her sick child like Michelangelo's Pieta, and Isis claims hatred.

As soon as the secretary of state meets the resurrected pope, he asks him if in the coma he has seen what Napoli is doing, championship, Europa League, Champions League... and the fact that the pope answers that he has seen everything leaves him in doubt... something evidently he must have seen!

The nuns record the remarks of His Eminence Absentee against the orphans, as unbearable herds of screaming children, hidden cameras are used to blackmail the three with the minor, dismissed respectively as minister of economy from head of the financial structure of the Vatican and for Cardinal Spalletta the reduction to the lay state.

Either they accept or they will be posted online and given to the judiciary.

For Voiello, sins are not served in prison but with one's soul; for Sofia, prison is the best place to serve sins of the soul..

Meanwhile, Lenny and Brannox must meet, and Lenny must solve the problem of the children held hostage by terrorists: he can either appear to the world and activate a billion fanatics or not appear, at which point the children will have to be released.

"Guiding people's hearts means governing their emotions. If you rule the emotions of your neighbor your neighbor will follow you wherever you want him to go and that is called POWER. Voiello exercises it over you and I over the whole world. You must not trust me but trust, God is on our side, we tend to the Good as God, God knows me and I know him well" ( PIO XIII addressing the College of Cardinals)

Voiello knows well that collective suggestion is more powerful than the atomic bomb and that fanaticism and obtuseness are the same thing.

Pio junior, Esther's son runs on a tricycle through the dark, ancient rooms, seat of the papacy ( like little Danny in the corridors of the Overlook Hotel in The Shining) and runs into Voiello's legs, who exclaims something in Neapolitan and Pio junior responds with a fart.

Could it be because Stanley Kubrick, during the making of the film, used to phone Stephen King at 3 a.m. and ask him things like, "DO YOU believe in God?"

That would clarify Voiello's statement and baby Pio's answer...

Sorrentinian ontology echoes deafeningly in this series, where yet another vindication is made against power, criminal, Il Divo, media, Them 1 and 2, and against PURE and ABSOLUTE power, The New Pope.

Because art is smarter and manages to cross the boundaries of censorship even where they seem insurmountable.

It circles around, like a bird of prey with which it plays with because it is satiated and fulfilled and nauseated.

Yes the Summa Sorrentina antidemagogically and antipopulistically accumulates power-fueled superstitions into a cinematic encyclopedia of reality: if superstition is a private religion religion is a public superstition.

"I have a soft spot for men who have nothing to lose. They are the new children, just to play another half hour they would be ready to sell their mother. They exceed men who have nothing to lose, ad nauseam. But the difference between me and the rest of the world is that I, within nausea, am a wonder. I don't experience it as a problem, the nausea."

Thank you and enjoy Sorrentino, see you next time!

27-Jun-2023 by Beatrice