CALL: The Marlon Brando dilemma
Back in the 2018, I was living in a gigantic, run-down apartment in the former Jewish ghetto of Ferrara, at 26 Via Vignatagliata. We had nicknamed it Vigna. We were six with six bedrooms, but there were rarely fewer than eight or nine people there, including various partners, visitors, guests for lunch and dinner, and university classmates with whom we spent entire nights making useless models for design courses — much to the amazement of our nursing student housemates, who couldn’t understand why we stayed up all night for a stupid exam.
For the condition it was in, the apartment was practically a squat, except that we paid a laughable amount of money to some phantom landlord whom we fervently hoped would never visit, because there was no way he would have wanted to see the house crammed with people and junk. Among all the junk, our greatest pride — like in any proper student house — was the lush collection of posters, flyers, notes, and postcards pinned to every available vertical surface. The crown jewel was a black-and-white blown-up photo of a young Marlon Brando, slipped into a tacky clear plastic sleeve, hanging between an early 2000s radio and the dried bouquet from the most recent graduation party.
At the time, I was in a relationship with a guy who was a big cinephil. One day, Italian media started talking again about a movie that had been scandalous upon its release more than forty years earlier: Last Tango in Paris, by Bernardo Bertolucci.
Back in 1972, the film had been censored in Italy for being an offense to public decency, only to be reauthorized for distribution eleven years later. But the reason it was back in the news wasn’t about the morality of its numerous erotic scenes — thankfully, by 2018, society had progressed in that regard. Instead, the renewed discussion centered on the lack of consent from 19-year-old actress Maria Schneider in the (in)famous anal sex scene.
Now, without going into the controversy (there’s a dedicated Wikipedia page for that), I’d like to introduce you to what we called the Marlon Brando dilemma. This debate arose within the Vignatagliata community; seventh-art fanatics against budding feminists in a heated argument that required coining a term for it: what should we do about the Marlon Brando poster in the kitchen?
On one side, some defended the artistic significance of the film, its provocative screenplay, and the drama of its story. On the other side, there were those — myself included — who had serious reservations about glorifying something (or someone) that fundamentally perpetuated rape culture in the patriarchal system, legitimizing it through art.
At the time, I was in the clear minority, and my arguments seemed weak. Nevertheless, we reached an agreement and unanimously passed a resolution. When it comes to such matters, there’s no fixed protocol to apply; one must consider multiple factors.
First and foremost, two main cases should be distinguished:
If the person who committed the abuse is still alive:
Stop consuming their art (stop funding it, don’t go to the cinema to watch their latest film, don’t stream their music, etc.).
If the person who committed the abuse is deceased:
Stop consuming their art if any funding might still support certain people, groups, or ideologies that promote hate speeches.
Additionally, some exceptions apply:
If one consumes works created before the scandal involving the person, the artist is granted presumed innocence.
If one consumes works created after the scandal (whether the person is deceased or alive), they may receive absolution, provided that they recite one Our Father and three Hail Marys, and perhaps buy a round of drinks for everyone in the house.
As you can see, the decree we devised was fairly intricate but didn’t cover every possible combination of circumstances.
In recent years, with the media storms surrounding celebrities — they too are children of patriarchy — I’ve often had to bring up the Marlon Brando dilemma, even in conversations with self-declared feminists. The recent controversy involving Chiara Valerio and Leonardo Caffo at the Più libri più liberi book fair, held in Rome from December 4–8, 2024, serves as an example.
A friend told me that if we had paid attention to gossip and media scandals, we’d stop reading Pasolini or listening to Miles Davis. I, however, believe that while we are all undoubtedly children of patriarchy, we are also, and more importantly, children of our time. A time in which it is possible — and necessary — to question the ethics of artists and intellectuals concerning sexist, racist, homophobic, and transphobic behavior, because, as decolonial feminism teaches us, knowledge alone isn’t enough; it must be accompanied by the feeling-thinking.
There is, of course, no manual for being a “good feminist,” and hopefully, no one will ever think of writing one. As Fabrizio Acanfora wrote when withdrawing his participation from Più libri più liberi — paraphrasing Giulia Siviero, who spoke of the subtraction practice — sometimes one must give up occupying a space as a form of protest, “to symbolically vacate those spaces and take the conversation elsewhere, to places where critical reflection isn’t neutralized by the system and its dynamics.” Well, this also applies to the consumption of artistic and cultural products, as well as to the places where they are supposed to be produced: so, perhaps it’s time to stop watching Last Tango in Paris (or do so critically; after all, the aforementioned protocol allows for absolution). There are many other films worth watching — and worth our time.
Wondering what happened to the poster?
It was a very young Marlon Brando, portrayed in black and white, tenderly dressed in a sailor’s outfit. We decided to keep it but turned it to face the wall, as though in punishment. On the back, we wrote the reasons for our decision. We didn’t want to reproduce the ostracism of cancel culture but instead framed it as an act of activism for all the regulars of the Vignatagliata community.