Written by Lily Simpson, Edited by Abigail Aldrich

In the class-obsessed (semi)modern England we live in, it’s impossible to ignore the inextricably intertwined curse of hierarchy involved in everyday life and, more specifically, the arts. Coming from a suburban London state school that was famed for its uselessness, there was always a fear of being left behind – an exclusion from the future that seemed to be reserved for blue-bloodedness. Within a 2020 study taken by the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre (PEC) funded by the BFI, it was revealed that over half of the people in the UK’s Screen Industries were from privileged backgrounds, a shocking statistic considering only about 7% of the school population attend private school. Going to University and meeting people from similar backgrounds to me made me realise my fear wasn’t melodramatic – it’s an epidemic, and a scary one at that.

With the release of Emerald Fennell’s new scathing commentary on class and superfluous disposability, Saltburn, there is a sense of solidarity within the excluded mass; but one is bound to ask: what’s the point when these films are only in fruition thanks to the people they seek to destroy, or perhaps not destroy, but commodify? Born in Central London to a successful jewellery designer father and author mother, and going to Kate Middleton’s Marlborough College (with modest fees of £15,665 per term), it seems almost gauche for Fennell to use her position to create a film about the very essence of British disparity: sickening wealth and nauseating lack of. Can it truly be satire if “it’s an act of self-excavation” as the Independent puts it? Once a haven for the disenfranchised, the arts have become a microcosm of the class divide, a place where the wealthy can entertain their infinite resources, hiring jokers and jesters to satisfy their infantile fancies. The endless danger of this division is looming; gone are the days of the Michael Caines, replaced by fantasy mockneys like Tom Hardy. Actress Jessica Barden has referred to this fashion as ‘working-class tourism’ – the ability and innate privilege in being able to flitter and fetishise lives and lifestyles. This ‘trendiness’ of poverty is by no means something exclusive to film; recent fashion trends are seeing the Screwfix, dad loved brands of Carhartt being upscaled to the appropriating Urban Outfitters and labelled as ‘Bloke-Core’. Things once seen as cheap and chavvy are now the epitome of style – where will the line be drawn? Can the arts be effective if they’re from one voice?

Saltburn exists in a confusing limbo of class discourse. Whilst the film provides a visual feast and a wonderfully efficacious narrative on excess and gluttony, the sickly substance is wavering, and before long only an age-inappropriate Barry Keough can keep the viewer from spiralling into the indulgent saccharine. It begins to just feel like Fennell is exercising her aesthetic prowess (of which cinematographer Linus Sandgren has created a marvelling display of gothic and richly synergistic oil portraits). Taxidermied in copious embellishments of metaphors for class and influence, the allegories for ancient powers exercising their vacuous prominence over society and educational systems prove confusing for audiences; who is the villain? The bloated upper class or everyone else? Or perhaps confusion is the point. The scenes at a 2006 Oxford prove scarily accurate, flittering between documentary and satire for those of us from non-academic backgrounds, but considering it was once real life for both Fennell and Rosamund Pike, it’s hard to watch and be able to carelessly enjoy. Now don’t get me wrong, there’s no need to disparage the already dwindling space for female directors, but next time save yourself time, and watch Scrapper (Charlotte Reagan, 2023) or Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold, 2009), two brilliant stories of class and isolation created for the many, not the few – and by the many, not the few.