On Saltburn, yes the movie
Eat the Rich Escapism and men with heart-shaped pelvii
Hello Sweet Readers; This is Issue 23 of Obsessions, a newsletter devoted to one lesbian’s obsession with the body and culture. I did not formally publish anything here for the last year because of serious chronic illness. I can say this — my experience navigating chronic illness has opened me up to all the flaws in late stage capitalism. I’m particularly rattled by the overuse of the word traumatized to mean bothered/annoyed/decentered/misunderstood by a stranger/pooped on by a pigeon. However, in this moment, I’m glad to be writing to you about something besides chronic illness. At the end of the post, there will be links to what I am reading/watching/listening to as well as links to help broaden understanding of the suffering that is occurring in Gaza right now.
Here comes Issue 23.
I watched Saltburn on New Year’s Eve as I lay on the floor stretching, erectors, piriformis, hamstrings. These muscles that pull and place the pelvis. In medical education textbooks, it is men that have the heart-shaped pelvis. Saltburn is about men with heart-shaped pelvii. Felix, the narcissistic golden child, is the kind of young college student that you can imagine pulling you in with his pelvis. And Oliver’s pull is his skull. Saltburn is about the psychology of rich people, rich people who are insular, decadent and demonstrably unafraid of being insensitive, greedy, misunderstood, mishandled, misplaced, mistooken.
Maybe I loved Saltburn because I had not seen The Talented Mr. Ripley. Maybe I loved Saltburn because of Carrie Mulligan’s id-driven character. I love the invisible fool, the teller of jokes, the person who has no idea how they are being perceived by others. Tobias in Arrested Development, sometimes Ilana in Broad City, often times Hannah in Girls.
Carrie Mulligan’t character spoke to the part of me that when taking a dance class, would say, “Tandu, 1, 2, 3, make sure you dust the floor or you will never get a Russian husband.” I was the invisible femme, the foolish teller of jokes. “Yours is worthy of 4 Russian husbands.”
In Saltburn, Pamela, in fact, is dating a Russian billionaire. She’s my favorite character because she thinks the Russian language is pretty, she doesn’t pick up that the billionaire is calling her a whore, and she is very focused on her outfits. We get to indulge in her thick eye shadow, her curtain bangs, her inability to see that she is not welcome at Saltburn.
I think I came back to the movie more than once for self-indulgence. Escapism. While it took me a much longer time to catch onto say The Bachelor (thin, young, attractive women fight over the same man = pretty status quo) than it did The Kardashians, I love me some escapism. I love The Kardashians because beauty and greed interest me. Maybe this makes me a basic b****, but watching 5 sisters with the same face created by probably the same plastic surgeon is kind of fascinating. While wealthy people have been trying to hide their wealth both aesthetically and literally since the gilded age, many of us look when it’s on display. Kim K, of the Kardashian, was held at gunpoint in her hotel room in 2017 so that the robbers could take 10 million worth of jewelry. I can’t personally imagine walking down any street anywhere with 10 million on my body and feeling safe. I get it, she’s not like us, oh my. But 10 million is enough to retire in a prized neighborhood in Los Angeles, 10 million is a wild life changing amount of money.
I think what we truly desire is more interesting than what we are told to desire. I can’t tell you how many women I know like to be choked, or how many women are sending me Billie Eilish’s new Lunch video because her vibe has gotten just a little butch, and so many queers are like, finally.
And as you will see if you watch Saltburn, desire leads the show. At a time when Elon Musk thinks he’s contributing meaningfully to the ‘fertility crisis’ and movies like Triangle of Sadness remind us that rich people are often hypocrites who require us not to point out their hypocrisy, there’s also historical precedent. “Qin Shi Huangdi (259-210 BCE) the first emperor of a unified China, had 700,000 men—out of perhaps 10 million—working for three decades on an immense necropolis in which he was eventually buried with 8,000 terra-cotta soldiers and a number of live human sacrifices (including the artisans responsible for building the place.” From the river of mercury that was meant to preserve his necropolis from grave robbers that were fully alive and would now get mercury poisoning to the idea that one would need 8,000 soldiers to go with you in the void, I dunno, feels a little excessive. The problem isn’t desire, but that a small group can have a million desires, and another group, is working so many hours that they won’t get to nap on the couch and think thoughts about what they desire.
I think I liked Saltburn because I like pretty things, and I like watching Americans freak out about sex. I liked Saltburn largely because of it’s beauty (yes, I have a stellium in Libra that includes my moon). I don’t mean the beauty of a poem you whisper to your first child as you lay in silk sheets smelling their soft head. And I don’t mean the simple egalitarian beauty of a functioning world where everyone can grow tomatoes in their yard. I mean cunning, ugly beauty. The kind that is rampant in the great U.S. of A..
I will say this. I watch movies for costume and character development. I don’t even know I’m doing this, but this is what I do. In American Horror Story Season 3 Hotel, the Countess must keep her nails so sharp that she can slit a man’s throat. In Physical, Sheila must wear outrageous striped leotards over tights to remind us that it’s yes the 80’s. In Clueless, Cher not only wears all yellow to school but the yellow of her clothes matches the yellow of her hair and the yellow pallet of sunny Beverly Hills. The best costumes for Saltburn were given to Pamela who has bright copper hair, big fake eyelashes, and the kind of eye makeup we associate with influencers under 31 who think, genuinely think, that they are old.
Saltburn starts in the mid 2000s at Oxford University in England with a quiet, pensive character called Oliver who is seeking a way to befriend Felix. Felix is the George Clooney of Generation Z. He has a Gaston chin, and the deer like eyes of a man that is so tall and muscular and so y chromosomey that he can blink his eyes and expect to open them up only to be met with shiny things. If there’s anything interesting about Felix at all, it’s his relationship with Oliver (Barry Keoghan).
Is it Oliver’s obsession with Felix that reveals Oliver to us? Isn’t that how we get revealed to ourselves? Isn’t that how we know we are a thing? Just by seeing how we are with another?
Oliver introduces the movie with a moody little monologue that goes like this, “I wasn’t in love with him {Felix played by Jacob Elordi}. I knew everyone thought I was. But I wasn’t. I loved him, of course. It was impossible not to love Felix. And that was part of the problem. Everyone loved him. Everyone wanted to be around him. It exhausted him. People just wouldn’t leave him alone. Especially the girls. Christ the girls. I think honestly that’s why he liked me so much. I was honest with him.”
Here is the plot of the film. Oliver, through a series of strategic moves, looks to climb the class hierarchy at Oxford University where he has been labeled by other students as a “scholarship boy who gets his clothes from OxFam.” He is teased by Farleigh for wearing a suit that is too big and not properly tailored. But what Oliver really wants more than anything, what he is truly obsessed about, is becoming Felix’s best friend. There’s some mirroring of Jennifer’s Body in that there is some kinky tension and desire between Felix and Oliver throughout the movie.
At point, Oliver, written as the complex outsider, hooks up with another college girl who is obsessed with Felix and she asks, “Do you think he’ll be jealous?” Oliver’s answer is, “Honestly, I don’t t think it’ll even fucking register.” The timing is horrid (mid coitus), but also are we to believe that he’s an insensitive asshole, a flawed human being kind of sick of playing side show to Felix the playboy, or just bad? I think when we are young, even if we aren’t a playboy or a manic pixie dream girl, it is the plump collagen in our skin that prevents us from being called personality-disordered. We just don’t have our frontal lobes developed yet.
You will not be bored by Salburn.
I would not watch this with children.
Rich people behave badly. There is sex and death.
There will be rich people playing tennis in tuxedos and high heels. If Venetia discovers the blisters are so bad that she cannot walk the next day, she can take off her shoes and lie on the couch for the week. Sometimes, I forget that people where ugly (but expensive) REI fleece jackets in Portland because they are sturdy, practical and easy to clean. I forgot this because, growing up outside of Los Angeles in the 90’s, gave me the idea that you dress for your personality, not for the clouds. I didn’t get that clouds, mud, and ice were things, or that ugly clothes are designed with purpose.
At some point, Oliver, who has already endured dumb bullying by some of the rich kids at Oxford, goes home with Felix to the estate called Saltburn where his nuclear family lives. The entire family live like narcissistic children plopping about, playing tennis in heels, and insulting each other’s sex lives. The Mom makes fun of the daughter’s sex life. The father is interested in talking about who Lord Byron slept with. The daughter, Venetia, giggles and licks her teeth a lot. This is where you learn that Felix actually lives in a castle. This is not like one or several of the Kardashian’s homes. This is a castle that’s made of marble and gold and that has a red room, a green room, a blue room, a piano room, a room where King Henry the VII slept, and an employee called a footman. There is a footman at the castle! Also, they are so rich that their servants are men. Yes, they have like butlers in tuxedos like batman. If you ever forget your class status, look around? Do you have a butler or a footman who is a white man? I mean, not even the Kardashians could achieve this.
When Oliver arrives without cuff links to Saltburn, there’s someone new for the fully grown children and the parents, Elspeth and Sir James E. Catton, to metabolize. Pamela, the girlfriend to a Russian billionaire, has been hiding out at the estate to avoid the billionaire. Elspeth, proving she will throw her own friends under the bus, describes Pamela as a woman that is so stylish that you wouldn’t know she was a bimbo. Pamela, red copper hair, curtain bangs and raccoon painted eyes, is either the hottest or the ugliest woman in the room. She is also mysteriously dead by the middle of the movie.
Farleigh, biracial half brother to golden child Felix, bullies Oliver because he is quietly diminished by the family at Saltburn. Farleigh makes fun of Oliver’s suit for not being properly tailored, and sets him up at a dinner party to sing I’m Your Puppet at karaoke. At one point, Farleigh discretely tries to sell some 16th century Palisse plates to Sotheby’s
I loved this movie because it was amoral and indulgent. The sexuality was not American. The characters do not declare that they are born this way.
If you have seen The House of Yes or The Piano Teacher, there was moralism in Saltburn but it wasn’t caked on thick dripping down the windows like in an America movie.
Saltburn is a silly movie that is maybe the wrong thing. It is silly with death and sex and the copper-haired Pamela. It is silly with a blue room and a red room and a green room and a Henry the Eighth room silly. I think I liked Saltburn because it edged the horror genre, and then the new genre called Rich People Are Idiots.
Movies like Saltburn allow us to revel in our own moral superiority. Saltburn draws from a rich history of rich people behaving badly. In the movie Triangle of Sadness (a 2022 film released in English by Swedish director Ruben Ostlund), a bunch of wealthy elites end up stranded on an island when their cruise ship sinks. This movie is the best written of the bunch I’m mentioning, the most cerebral, the most conscientious of systems of inequity. Other movies like Ready or Not (2019) and You’re Next (2011) display rich people as a bit more willing to hide their relationship to money. In Saltburn, there is no hiding. There are pieces of art strewn about like college sweatshirts. Saltburn feels reckless and young and kinky. And while the horror is a little bit too on the nose at this moment in American political history, I would watch this movie again if anyone asked me to.
What I’m reading and watching and listening to, just the good stuff:
Reading The Creator Economy is Asylum We’re Being Raised In: Engaged communities like the Swifties are data-rich ecosystems exploited by surveillance capitalists. I’ve had a really, really hard time articulating why I have been so disinterested in the obsession with Taylor Swift. I felt the white girl boss feminism from the beginning, but I really haven’t had a great angle on this because I really have avoided engaging — I have absorbed not enough for someone who is pretty obsessed with pop culture. This piece is brilliant! brilliant!
Listening and watching How Contrapoints Reinvented Philosophy for YouTube with Natalie Wynn - 267, Adam Conover’s podcast.
Easy Beauty by Chloe Cooper Jones.
The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness by Meghan O-Rourke
I support a free Palestine, and seek out resources to better understand the history of the Middle East, and frankly, the U.S.’s involvement in allowing and aiding in the death of so many innocent civilians. I support a CeaseFire now in Palestine, and recommend researching the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) Movement. If all beings are truly interdependent, we cannot stand for the killing of innocent, vulnerable civilians in Gaza. I believe The Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund through UNICEF is still a good place to send money.\
Thanks you for reading dear humans! Take good care until next time.