Pasolini was a controversial figure during his lifetime. A 'Catholic Marxist', who was expelled from the Italian communist party for alleged homosexuality, outside of Italy he is perhaps best remembered for his film The Gospel According to St.Matthew (Il vangelo secondo Matteo - paid for in part by the Catholic Church). Other films, like his final one Salo or the 120 days of Sodom (Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma) were widely banned under obscenity laws, featuring as they did graphic portrayals of sex and sadism.

Pasolini was also considered one of Italy's most important post war poets, with collections like Cenere di Gramsci (Gramsci's Ashes) and La Religione del mio tempo (The religion of my time) confronting themes of history, religion and consumerism.

Film-maker, author, poet, intellectual, Pasolini was also a journalist, writing opinion columns for Italy's daily Corriere della Sera. His opinions were as troublesome as much of his art, and unwelcome in many sectors of Italian society. For example, in '68 he spoke out against violent student protests, angering his left-wing supporters. His stance was based on the idea that the students were, for the most part of the borghese, like himself, while the policemen they found themselves in opposition with were the proletariat - an unpopular idea, to say the least. At the same time, his homosexuality, criticism of the Christian Democrats who governed Italy and fascism made him plenty of enemies on the right side of the political spectrum.

The official explanation for his death was murder at the hands of a young male prostitute, Pino Pelosi. According to the reconstruction, Pasolini attempted to sodomise Pelosi with a wooden stake, at which point Pelosi attacked and killed the poet. Killed in an extraordinarily violent manner - Pasolini's body was battered beyond belief - and yet Pelosi was unstained. There were numerous inconsistencies in Pelosi's statements at the time, and much physical evidence that suggested that Pasolini was killed by more than one person.

After thirty years, Pelosi has taken back his confession, suggesting that in fact three men with Southern accents killed Pasolini and then threatened Pelosi to keep quiet. It's not a huge surprise to many who have argued over the years that Pasolini's murder was politically motivated (it certainly wouldn't be to his fellow intellectuals Calvino or Moravia, were they alive today).

In 1975 Pasolini's murder was reasonably easy to gloss over. It was a distasteful end to a life that, for many at the time, was distasteful. The element of gay sex was enough to make people blush and turn away while an inconvenient voice was fatally censored.

A couple of months ago a series of ads appeared in the glossy news magazine market. They depicted two men on a couch, fully clothed (though one is tugging his shirt off), kissing each other. Controversial and shocking (more relevantly, to this monkey, cryptic - I don't have the faintest idea what product or company they were promoting) according to the Comitato di controllo dell'Istituto dell'autodisciplina pubblicitaria (Iap), the body that regulates advertising standards. "The vulgar and provocative display of situations connected to sexual intimacy makes this ad fall into an unacceptable category for public sensitivity," their judgement explains.

This in a country where lingerie-clad dancing girls present the football results, and where the ultra-catholic magazine Christian Family is running an ad focussed completely on the naked and shapely butt cheeks of a faceless showering woman.

This heterosexual recovering catholic Monkey(it's like alcoholism)was astounded by the acres of female flesh on display in the Italian media when he first moved here. Now I've sussed it, though, and realise that it doesn't pertain to vulgar display of sexual intimacy. Of course not - that's a term reserved for homosexuals, isn't it?

For further reading on Pasolini, and a poem hithertoe unpublished in English, follow the link to Direland - the web site of writer Doug Ireland.