new nebbish

Warning: Discussions of death, suicide, and sexual assault/rape. Spoilers for Saltburn (2023).

You know you’re supposed to condemn the violence committed by Emerald Fennell’s protagonists, but that just makes you love it more. In both Promising Young Woman (2020) and Saltburn (2023), disenfranchised characters claw their way to victory over a privileged foe.  Promising Young Woman follows Cassie Thomas in her quest of revenge against the man who raped her friend Nina. That trauma drove the woman to suicide. Cassie uses the disarming nature of female sexuality to achieve a violent confrontation with the rapist, only for him to kill her and dispose of her body. However, it is revealed that Cassie had predicted her fate, and was relying on her murder as a catalyst for the imprisonment of Nina’s rapists. In Saltburn, we watch the shy Ollie Quick befriend a charismatic college peer, Felix Catton, from a family with such enormous wealth that their estate has a name (‘Saltburn’). Ollie spends the summer with Felix and ingratiates himself with the family– including sexual endeavors with Felix’s sister and cousin– on the pretense that his own family is impoverished and tragic. Felix dies, followed quickly by his sister, and eventually both parents, leaving Saltburn in Ollie’s name. The twist ending reveals that his encounters with Felix and the deaths of the Catton family members were all part of a carefully-orchestrated plan.

Both of Fennell’s films follow a character denied power by society– Cassie as a woman, and Ollie as a member of the proletariat. Cassie and Ollie are deeply manipulative, with questionable methods. As much as our protagonists are unpleasant, their enemies are far nastier and far more powerful– an imperfect hero is the nature of reality. We in the audience cannot help but root for them as they take revenge on the rich and powerful. However, as a member of a socialist organization, I cannot help but find myself wanting more. Cassie and Oliver may win their individual battles, but they have done nothing to change the system these power imbalances are rooted in.

Cassie is fueled by revenge for a friend who has committed suicide following poor social support after being raped. She pretends to be drunk at various clubs and bars, making a record of how far men will go without seeking consent. The film then follows Cassie as she targets those she deems responsible for Nina’s death. A peer who didn’t believe her, a school official who took no action, a lawyer that intimidated her out of legal action, and, of course, the rapist himself. She wants them to feel the terror that Nina felt, terror they either inflicted or dismissed. These episodes highlight how Cassie sees herself as an individual woman wronged, rather than part of a victimized class. The peer she drugs, and leads her to believe she has been raped. To the school official, she claims to have taken the teenage daughter to a college boys’ party. Cassie is not looking for solidarity, but for fear. 

Rape is tragically, incredibly common. Cassie proves that even so-called Nice Guys will assault women they think are drunk or drugged. Yet the film wants us to believe that Nina is the only victim worth caring about. Even the record of predatory men that Cassie maintains is not published or distributed to other women. Cassie never talks to other survivors of rape, let alone reach out to them, and she clearly believes that none of the women in her life have been raped, because they don’t understand her fixation on vengeance. When confronted, the college dean even says that accusations of rape between students “happen all the time”. Cassie sees this just as a dismissal of Nina’s suffering, instead of a call to action to interrogate the system that allows such rampant sexual violence. The rapes that have happened to other women, and their fear of being raped, is a tool in Cassie’s aresenal, rather than a cause for concern.

The ultimate tool that Cassie uses is carceral justice. This is the most damning evidence that Cassie operates on the framework of individuals rather than systems. Getting Nina’s rapist arrested may save some women from being preyed upon by that specific man, but does nothing to the hundreds of other rapists in that city. Perhaps Cassie did scare some of them off from assaulting women, or reported them to the police, but these actions still require individual men to change their behavior, rather than empowering women as a whole. Additionally, although the police may be interpreted as being somewhat bumbling, they are still the heroes of the finale. In reality, police interactions and prisons are common sites for sexual violence. You can find satisfaction in the punishment of Nina’s rapist, but you cannot find liberation.

Before my analysis of Saltburn, I do want to mention issues of race and disability. I am white and generally navigate the world as an able-bodied person, so I do not feel it is my space to give a thorough analysis from these lenses. However, conversations of race and disability are noticeably absent from Promising Young Woman. The closest thing to a main character of color is Laverne Cox’s role as Cassie’s boss, but she is mainly there for one-liners and furthering Cassie’s storyline rather than having her own experiences with gendered violence. There is also a glaring lack of fat people. Race does get addressed in Saltburn, but personally I felt that it was poorly done, and is only in one scene. Disability is used as a plot point rather than a social issue to engage with.

While Promising Young Woman explores gendered violence, Saltburn addresses class conflict. As an American, I may not be fully able to appreciate the nuances of nobility and land ownership in England, but I can definitely relate to being a lonely middle-class person at a prestigious university. I went to Cornell, and Oliver is a student at Oxford. His peers talk of fancy vacations, tease Oliver for his clothes, and refer to him as a “scholarship boy”. But this is his chance to climb the social ladder, and he does. He befriends the wealthy Felix who, rather than letting him go back to a miserable addict mother mourning the death of his dealing father, invites Oliver to spend the summer on his family’s estate.

My first hints to the twist that Oliver is not as destitute as he claims were his interactions with the estate staff. Oliver is greeted by Head Butler Duncan and some footmen– his first experience of the noble life. And he takes to it quickly. Oliver does not ask the footmen their names, talk informally with Duncan, or otherwise humanize the servants. He accepts himself as better than them, rather than cut from the same cloth. At meals he adapts quite readily to his place seated at the table, rather than expressing discomfort with the dynamic of servants tending to him. Even though these people might be able to understand Oliver’s jealousy towards the wealthy, he shows no interest in relating to the servants as fellow working-class peers. He would just as soon forget they are present. At the end of the movie, Oliver is joyously alone in Saltburn, and we are given no answers as to the fate of the servants– even Duncan, who was still there at least a few months prior.

Oliver would rather emotionally manipulate the rich than radicalize them. College is a unique moment where people of diverse backgrounds meet and can become friends, humanizing members of populations that had been dismissed. Oliver takes advantage of the opportunity. He sees how Felix needs to feel like he is a Good Person, that he needs a charity to give himself to. So he molds himself into the charity case. He appeals not only to Felix, but each of his family members, buttering them up so he is not a threat. What if, instead of trying to fit in with the family, Oliver had encouraged Felix to question his wealth and power? 

The eventual goal that Oliver realizes is him alone on the estate, rather than a redistribution of resources. This is where he fully loses me. As much as I want to revel in the violent destruction of the wealthy Catton family, the selfish ending leaves me feeling hollow. Oliver feels no obligation to any community, even his parents, so how am I supposed to find joy in the transfer of wealth from the Cattons to Oliver? He does not want to ‘eat the rich’, he just wants to be one of them.

I appreciate what Emerald Fennell has to say about imperfect victims, sex, and violence. I enjoy the twists in her thrillers. And I cannot expect anything too radical from bastions of the movie industry like MGM. But I do think that these stories could have been great propaganda for why we need to organize into leftist movements.