#not saltburn though

[bondingforbeans]

Saltburn is not an "eat the rich movie". (I still very much adored it), and here's why.

First off, we have to consider what "eat the rich" means. Even though their is no pronoun in the phrase it is a collective phrase and not an individual one. It is credited that the phrase came from Jean-Jacques Rousseau, "When the poor have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich!"

The very history of it is collective, and when we use it now it is meant to be a sort of warning and a declaration of anger. For a movie to be "eat the rich", it has to have a collective desire or celebration behind it.

Oliver Quick is the furthest from being connected to the lower classes. He cuts off the only other normal kid at Oxford once he starts hanging out with Felix. He ignores his parents and doesn't acknowledge them. He makes fun of Duncan (a servant).

Hell! He tries to use Farleigh's economic dependency on the family, for his own gains! (It is also worth noting that when you rewatch the scene where Felix tells Oliver about Farleigh, after hearing the tragic story he tells his lie of his family. A lie that sounds really similar to Farleigh's real life. (Drugs, lack of money, bad dad))

He then frames Farleigh for stealing, and then later tells about the cocaine. Both of these things are issues that have large consequences for low income and/or disadvantaged people.

So yeah, Oliver is not connected to his class at all. It is a problem he deals with, but he isn't connected with the other people who share that problem. He'd rather ignore it ever existed as a problem for him at all. (Which is actually very similar to how the family reacts when facing issues, which is pretty interesting).

[certifiedsnacc]

the way all of saltburn could’ve been avoided if felix just fucked oliver like…once

[quick-catton]

thank FUCK for the new jacob content we've been in a drought truly

[elspeth-catton]

[saltburn characters + text posts part 2 (but it's just felix being poisoned)]

[spacecasehobbit]

I genuinely do think Saltburn is a lot deeper than many people give it credit for. It's not specifically a movie about class commentary, but there are a lot of great messages that can be read out of it, including on class commentary.

It's just that these messages are a lot broader in scope than purely class commentary. It's a movie about greed, obsession, and wanting to fit in to a world that has classed you as an outsider before you got through the door, and it explores these themes, among other things, through intersections of bigotry and entitlement along multiple axes, through the effects of loneliness and repression and what can happen when you're allowed a taste of everything you want but know it might be only fleeting.

It is a movie about how your actions are your own, regardless of whether or not someone else is doing something questionable or outright harmful at the same time - especially when you didn't even know about the other person's actions when you made your own choice to do something cruel.

And it baffles me when people claim that they found the movie boring and don't have any interest in thinking too deeply about it, but then follow up their lack of interest with the claim that there's nothing in the movie to think very deeply about anyway.

Personal preferences are subjective, everyone's allowed to like what they like and dislike what they don't, and not everyone needs the same messages from the stories that speak most meaningfully to their lives. But disliking a thing is not the same as that thing having no substance for others to enjoy.

The water is not made more shallow just because you chose not to dive in.

[heybiji]

he has a library card

[icantspellthings]

Saltburn Behind the scenes

8/?

[aquickstart]

i'm still hung up on oliver's "and i believed him" on felix's "if you get sick of us, you can leave. i promise". it's one of the rare cases when present-day oliver interjects and adds something to the past-oliver story, reflective, analyzing. it is sort of shift of responsibility post factum. felix promised; oliver believed; oliver didn't leave; felix was to blame. an act of revisionism, one attempt to absolve himself of many.

but if read in a sympathetic way, it is so painful to me. read in a way oliver was approached by barry keoghan, as a boy who was lost and confused and pulled apart by too much desire to know what to do with, it is probably the most tragic line in saltburn. refusal to go was impossible for oliver. all he needed was reassurance, knowledge that something would be there to understand, recognize, pull back, control. in the sea of confusing desires, tricks of the house, as oliver probably saw it, he needed something he could believe. and he was tethered to the world by felix, in every way; but felix was not insightful enough to realize it. not because felix is a horrible person, necessarily, but because oliver put so much trust in him it was quite unlikely that felix could ever answer in kind. it's a tragedy in so many ways and it is all contained in this one short exchange, through time. "and i believed him" is so, so vulnerable, and so, so betrayed.

[clanborn]

consolidating all my rizi propaganda so i can put it in her tag and also clean up my blog a bit. plus the image i would’ve used if @nanistar and i had gotten our proper showdown

[peculiaritybending]

Farleigh Start my favourite final girl.

[mossy-bush]

people were really talking up how FuCkEd Up Saltburn was…. how it scarred them for life it was so freaky and gross……….

if they saw some of the things my mutuals post they would hurl

[dominickearney]

i have a very self indulgent cattonquick feminization fic idea, but i don't think i'm gonna write it. i still really wanna find other ppl who might be into it though so. ideas below

oliver poisoned him, but felix didn't die. oliver flees saltburn while felix is in the hospital, scared of possible retaliation or worse. his excuse is everything "hitting too close to home", as the cattons still are unaware of his actual home life. he comments on how overdoses are much too common for him and he can't handle seeing felix in such a state.

felix never sees oliver again.

until he returns to school that fall anyway.

they avoid each other all semester. felix sees him around campus still. oliver's hair is starting to get longer. probably because felix isn't around to tell him what looks good anymore.

felix tells his friends and farleigh that he's mad because oliver left while he was recovering. nothing about him lying.

felix knows oliver tried to kill him. he's mad at himself for missing him. he's mad at himself for not caring.

they return after holiday break.

it's more of the same. avoiding each other, sometimes making awkward eye contact. oliver doesn't talk to anyone, has no friends seemingly. felix always sees him alone. not even the weird blond guy follows him around anymore. his hair's past his ears now. he tucks it behind sometimes.

felix gets drunk at the pub like always. he can't stop thinking about oliver the whole time. how evil he is. how much he wants to hurt him. his eyes. his lips. how much he misses him. his hair. felix leaves. doesn't bring a girl home with him. goes to find ollie instead.

ollie's in his dorm of course. where else would he be?

oliver answers when felix knocks, then tries to close it out of fear when he sees who it is. felix stops the door with his hand, shoves his way inside and onto oliver's bed.

oliver nervously follows, but keeps his distance.

"i need to talk to you"

"felix-"

"shut the fuck up, ollie. you left me to die, least you can fucking do is shut the fuck up"

oliver shuts up. felix feels sick. there's a moment.

"why did you do it?"

"do what?" felix makes a face. "honest to god felix i haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about"

felix's voice changes. "ollie."

that breaks oliver. he rushes up to him on his bed, pleading with felix for forgiveness, making his excuses, declaring his love. felix finds it as pathetic as it is endearing. his face remains neutral as he watches his former best friend and attempted murderer grovel at his feet, pull at his pants and beg for forgiveness.

felix finally speaks. “i don’t forgive you.”

oliver is shattered. "felix..."

he looks at oliver, looks in his eyes. he's always gotten attention, sure, but he's never had devotion like this. it's intoxicating, watching someone look up at him like he's a god, like he possesses unwordly powers.

he pushes oliver's new, longer bangs out of the way, gets a good look at him. he runs his thumb along oliver's bottom lip. oliver is hesitant, but he takes it into his mouth. felix pulls him open. oliver just sits there, pillar still, looking up at felix in adoration. always fucking looking up at him. a glob of spit falls from felix’s lips into oliver's waiting mouth. oliver closes his eyes, clearly being overtaken by pleasure, and swallows it. he's accepted his only chance at redemption.

"i will never forgive you." felix doesn't believe his own words, but needs to say them.

he pulls oliver into his lap (not as easily as he had hoped). oliver's shaking, but keeps his hands at his sides.

for a second, felix thinks about fucking oliver tonight. it's unfamiliar territory, but he's been around bisexuals his whole life, even if he never thought he was one. and maybe he's not, looking at oliver. not just his hair, his hands are so much smaller than felix's own. he's so much smaller than felix in general. fucking oliver would basically be like fucking a girl.

"you grew your hair out."

"i didn't really..." felix pushes a loose bit of oliver's hair behind his ear. "do you like it?"

felix nods. he wants to kiss him. god, he wants to kiss him, but oliver hasn't earned it yet. they have so much to talk about. too much, but at least for now, they have a mutual understanding.

tldr: felix is beating himself up for missing oliver. felix copes with his feelings by treating oliver like a girl. potentially cracks his egg? or is it a devotion thing? who knows!

[saintsenara]

thoughts on harry/cedric? i like the idea of them getting to know each other and harry having some support in ootp when everyone thought him a liar. and none of us can lie and say that harry didn't notice how hot cedric was with how he kept talking about it in book four lol.

thank you very much for the ask, anon!

this is - from harry's perspective at least - one hundred percent, solid gold canon. cedric literally tells him to go sit on his egg in his old bathwater. and harry does.

but it’s one-sided, i fear. while cedric is pretty nice to harry in the books, there's never any sense that he sees him as something other than a background character in his life of being hot and chivalrous.

[even him dismissing his father's boasting about how he beat harry at quidditch is clearly because he thinks it would be a bit of a flop for someone as based as him to gloat about catching the snitch before an unconscious thirteen year old.]

real ones know that the true potential lies with shipping cedric with ron, thus bringing about the heat death of the universe when harry’s unexamined bisexuality catches sight of them canoodling.

[overleftdown]

saltburn and privilege; an investigative tangent

god, where to begin.

i've seen a lot of people discussing this moving and specifically using the word "privilege," along with power, dominance, desire, control, greed, etc. me included. these are all very essential aspects of this movie. what i want to focus on is emerald fennell's nuanced portrayal of how different types of privilege interact. which one trumps the other? which types of privilege are more visible, while others are more subtle? what differentiates different levels and layers of privilege?

when emerald fennell describes the core of this movie, her inspiration for this script, she talks about desire versus untouchability. she chose the most absurd type of wealth to represent untouchability: the british aristocracy. old wealth, generational wealth, so far removed from the majority of their ancestors' sins that they can arguably ignore that the money they're standing on is dirty. and they live in fucking castles. this is one of the most unbelievable, gaudy, visible types of privilege you can imagine. everyone is entirely aware and feels entirely justified to call attention to this type of privilege.

oliver, being the main character, might be considered the least privileged within this movie. i'd like to take a critical look at this. this movie is not a straightforward class commentary; there is no traditional "the poor eat the rich" dynamic. because although some people perceive oliver as the least privileged character in this movie, he is incredibly privileged. oliver comes from a comfortable upper-middle-class home in the suburbs. oliver has two loving parents and two sisters. oliver is white. oliver is a man. interestingly, from oliver's perspective, he's not privileged at all. he hates the cattons because they are more wealthy, more comfortable, more untouchable. this extends to venetia and farleigh, even though oliver has applicable layers of privilege stacked above even them. he knows he has a certain type of power over them... yet he still hates them because they have one type of power he doesn't have.

that brings me to my next point. the existence of one type of privilege does not negate the effects of another, entirely different, type of privilege (or marginalization) [quote]. this is what venetia and farleigh's characters draw attention to. venetia experiences some of the same struggles as many women; she is ignored in her own household, perpetually existing within her brother's shadow (rosamund pike once lovingly pointed out that venetia does not have a single conversation with elspeth in this movie). she's insecure about her body and her worth, so she takes what little opportunity she has to use felix's friends as a form of self-fulfillment. farleigh is not only half black, but he's also queer, non-immediate family, and unaccustomed to english culture (specifically this type of english culture). farleigh is, in some ways, more financially unstable than oliver's family because his mom was too sheltered to understand money and his dad is, apparently, "a lunatic." (that's not to say farleigh isn't economically privileged because oh boy, he absolutely is).

this movie doesn't intend to incite pity from the viewers for any of these characters, and it generally doesn't. oliver is pathetically greedy, ungrateful, and desperate for a chance to lick the boots (or bathtubs) of those above him. venetia is pathetically bored of the privilege she does have yet is still so entrenched in emotional turmoil due to other areas in which she is marginalized. farleigh is pathetically attached to uninterrupted comfort and arbitrary white-centric expectations, constantly running from or attacking any threat of struggle. none of these people understand, comparatively, what the less fortunate experience. they are so ignorant to the bubble they exist in and just how grateful they should be for what monumental privileges they do have. but... felix.

felix is the epitome of privilege. oliver is specifically obsessed with felix. just like oliver, felix is a white man. but felix is more wealthy, more comfortable, more untouchable than oliver. oliver isn't as infatuated with farleigh and venetia because he's fully aware of the privilege they lack. he's fully aware of the privilege he holds above them, and he enthusiastically uses this power he has against them. to be in the position of oliver is to be consumed by jealousy and greed so bottomless that you will assert your dominance over any group that you're able to. felix doesn't need to do this. he's been handed every privilege under the sun and therefor welcomes the less fortunate with childlike interest and an equally childlike attention span. there's an aspect of farleigh and venetia's marginalization that is so invisible, so quiet and unassuming, that felix doesn't even notice it. he can't possibly be confronted by it. to be in the position of oliver is to understand what power you hold over others, because there is always more power to have.

racism, sexism, wealth, power, control, desire. there are so many facets of this movie that come into play. it may seem overwhelming, but this is... how things work. commentary on wealth is, and should be, equally a commentary on other areas of privilege. to be black and wealthy means different things than to be white and wealthy. to be a wealthy woman means different things than to be a wealthy man. to be rich to some also means you're much less rich than others, unless you're the richest person in the world. and, as this movie so beautifully portrays, to be richer than most doesn't make you less messy. the catton family is an ugly one, but also a complexly human one. each catton (or start) is jealous of someone else for another reason. each catton is emotionally damaged or incompetent for another reason. each catton has a different layer of privilege over the other. and each catton loves everyone in saltburn, because this is still a family, albeit a terrible one.

[qweenofurheart]

i redrew that one shot from saltburn with my ocs winghead and adam.

adam is loud and imposing and wants to go to art school and winghead is more like the quiet and polite jock. adam sort of clings onto winghead bc he’s the only other “cursed” at their hs (hence the wings and antennae on their heads) and winghead is annoyed but complacent to his company.

[spacecasehobbit]

When Oliver engineers his meetcute with Felix via the pin in Felix's bike tire, he finds Felix sitting under a tree, uselessly spinning the flate tire, and claiming to already be 10 minutes late to his tutorial after skiving off the whole past week.

And I just think this offers several really hilarious possibilities.

One: Oliver's "plan" was so spur of the moment that he doesn't even know Felix's course schedule, he has probably been skiving off his own lectures to stake out the bike shed and/or ride frantically around campus in the hopes of actually being there to "rescue" Felix next time he takes his bike out, and the fact his "plan" somehow succeeded was way more sheer dumb luck than clever planning on his part.

Two: Oliver's been watching Felix enough to have a good idea of his class schedule. With luck that only an Oliver could manage, however, he stuck the pin in Felix's bike tire right before Felix started skiving off that term. Now Oliver has been riding up and down the path between their dorms and Felix's tutorial all week without so much as a hint of Felix, had already biked up and down that path a few times the day they finally met, and was close to giving up on the bike plan entirely while trying desperately to think of how else he could engineer a meetcute, when he finally ran across Felix who had definitely set out 10 minutes late to tutorial in the first place and had only been sitting under that tree for like one minute, tops, when Oliver found him, and Oliver was just so excited that his plan had finally worked that he happily ignored the part where Felix cares zero percent about his classes but still uses the, "Oh, woe is me, however shall I salvage my school work, kind stranger?" act to get Oliver to fix his problem for him when Oliver stops to talk to him.

Three: Felix is lying about having skived off the whole previous week and possibly lying about being 10 minutes late to his tutorial, too. In fact, Oliver finds Felix sitting uselessly next to his broken bike exactly when he expected to find him. However, Oliver is still so excited that his plan worked that he absolutely does not care what nonsense Felix is making up about skiving and being late and whatever, who cares, Felix is noticing him and talking to him and Oliver is Doing A Plan and It Is Working, and Felix literally doesn't need to try so hard to convince Oliver to help him because Oliver would help Felix with literally anything Felix wanted, even if he hadn't kinda sorta 100% completely been the reason Felix even needed help in the first place.