Michael Jarvie urges us not to bother with Saltburn

Saltburn, directed by Emerald Fennell, is a feature film from 2023, currently available to watch on Amazon Prime. The protagonist, Oliver Quick, is from Prescot in Merseyside and is played by the Irish actor Barry Keoghan (Dunkirk, The Banshees of Inisherin). The sense of Oliver being a fish out of water is immediately emphasised upon his arrival at Oxford University in 2006. As he is walking into the college precincts with his wheeled suitcase, to the strains of Handel’s Coronation Anthem, Zadok the Priest, an American undergraduate sarcastically comments, “Cool jacket!”

Late for his tutorial, the same student, who we now learn is called Farleigh, then proceeds to criticise Oliver’s use of the word “thus” in his essay. As Oliver points out, Farleigh can only resort to criticising the style of the essay, not its content, because he hasn’t actually read the books on the summer’s reading list, whereas Oliver has read all fifty of them, including that weighty tome, the King James Bible.

Confiding in the upper-class Felix Catton, the son of Sir James Catton, Oliver frankly admits that his parents suffer from severe mental health and drug abuse problems and gives the impression, aided by his Scouse accent, that he is impoverished and working-class. Felix’s friend Annabel affirms this when she describes Oliver as “a scholarship boy who buys his clothes from Oxfam”. Later, Oliver spins a story that his father has died, to further ingratiate himself with Felix.

Monkeys and organ grinders

As a result of these concerted efforts, we feel it’s only a matter of time before Oliver becomes a performing monkey, with Felix being the organ grinder. As their relationship develops, Oliver asks Felix what they taught him at boarding school, to which the latter facetiously replies, “Latin, water polo and child abuse.”

Once Felix invites Oliver to spend the summer holidays at his parents’ lavish country estate – the Saltburn of the title – we learn that this must be a regular occurrence since Venetia tells Oliver, “I think I like you more than last year’s one”. And as the story progresses, Felix supinely offers up his belly to be tickled like a cat by his new acquisition. After all, the name itself is almost a tautology. Felix Catton is reminiscent of Felix the Cat as well as suggesting the scientific name for the domestic cat, Felis Catus.

The Saltburn estate, complete with two black footmen and Duncan the creepy butler, affords cinematographer Linus Sandgren ample opportunities to linger over its posh porn aspects, and if that were not sufficient, Felix offers a verbal commentary, pointing out to Oliver on his tour of the property the old master on display (a “hideous” Rubens) and the obligatory copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio. When Sir James and Lady Elspeth Catton decide to throw a birthday party for Oliver, Felix’s parasitical cousin Farleigh shows further contempt for Oliver when he cajoles him into singing his karaoke choice of “Rent” by the Pet Shop Boys:

You dress me up, I’m your puppet,
You buy me things, I love it,
You bring me food, I need it,
You give me love, I feed it…

Nevertheless, there are sufficient clues scattered throughout the film for us to question Oliver’s self-described status as a brainy proletarian from a dysfunctional home. Metaphorically he is pictured by his hosts as a predatory spider as well as a destructive moth, to which one might add Oliver’s own description of himself as a kind of vampire, in terms of the commingling of blood that occurs during his alfresco encounter with Felix’s sister Venetia.

For it soon transpires that Oliver Quick has lied about his background – when Felix takes Oliver on a surprise visit to Prescot he is shocked to learn that Oliver’s parents own a comfortable detached property on a middle-class housing estate, they have more than one child (Oliver claims to be an only child) and they go to Mykonos on holiday every year. Oliver is consequently an upwardly mobile individual with a ruthless streak. For him, movement from one class to another is represented by an ascending trajectory. Moreover, that which exits on a higher economic plane is automatically viewed as being superior.

Aristocratic fear of losing their wealth

As for the inhabitants of the Saltburn estate, these effete members of the upper class are portrayed as loveable eccentrics who are essentially harmless. In death, Felix is preposterously portrayed as an angel, slaughtered by an antlered beast. This is arguably a whitewashing exercise, a case of defensive projection if you like, in which the upper class, fearful of losing their ill-gotten wealth, assign their own rapacious instinctual drives to someone from an inferior social class.

In reality, the aristocracy are paid-up supporters of and cheerleaders for neoliberalism, since they benefit from it financially and are unaffected by such regressive policies as austerity and the dismantling of the NHS, so long as they are able to enjoy lower rates of taxation, charitable status for their public schools and other associated perks.

Despite desperately wanting to appear as an arch satire of upper-class manners, the problem is that Saltburn only presents a litany of caricatures. What’s more, none of them possess any redeeming features. The film’s director, Emerald Fennell, is herself an archetypal nepo baby, born into the same privilege as the fictional character of Venetia Catton. Public-school educated, she followed the well-trodden route of such entitled individuals, reading English at Oxford University – Greyfriars College – before writing a screenplay in 2008, commissioned and co-produced by family friend Madeleine Lloyd Webber. She is also the author of the children’s novel Shiverton Hall, published by Bloomsbury. Her father, Theo Fennell, is an Eton-educated jewellery designer, whose clients include Sir Elton John and Madonna; her mother Louise is a novelist and screenwriter. Emerald Fennell therefore comes from the same production line that brought us Phoebe Waller-Bridge.

The film ends with Oliver deliberately engineering an encounter with Lady Elspeth in London, so that he can inveigle himself into her life, followed by a flashback sequence that explains how all the earlier events were set in motion by Oliver – including how he deliberately punctured the tyre of Felix’s bike so that he could appear in the guise of a Good Samaritan by offering Felix the use of his own bicycle. None of this should come as a shocking twist, since it’s been self-evident from the very beginning and Oliver’s portentous monologue, which already speaks of Felix in the past tense.

Although Saltburn includes a hamfisted reference to the maze in Kubrick’s The Shining, the closest cinematic analogues from a thematic and visual perspective are A Clockwork Orange, The Talented Mr Ripley, and perhaps even more pertinent, the television series from 1981, Brideshead Revisited, with its latent homosexual relationship between Charles Ryder (the Oliver figure) and Lord Sebastian Flyte (the Felix figure). In the latter work Diana Quick played Julia Flyte, Sebastian’s sister, so perhaps Oliver Quick is a not-so-subtle nod in that direction.

As a film, Saltburn is all surface with no depth, as shallow as the residue of bathwater from which Oliver slurps, in between his pretentious to-camera monologues. Visually, the font for the opening credits is a lurid red – Gothic in style, like some sort of latter-day Hammer Horror production. Perhaps that also accounts for the aspect ratio being 1.33:1, about as old school as they come, just like the Times New Roman font that Lady Elspeth chooses for the gravestone of her son.

In conclusion, if you are looking for a much more aesthetically satisfying piece of cinema exploring a similar theme, then I would urge you to watch Joseph Losey’s classic black-and-white masterpiece The Servant, starring Dirk Bogarde, with its magnificent screenplay by Harold Pinter.

In the ancient world it tended to be the most trusted slaves who were put in charge of the care and service of the wine cellar. The word ‘butler’ comes from the Middle English word bouteler, and morphed into the Old Norman butelier, itself corresponding to the Old French botellier meaning ‘bottle bearer.’

The artist Hogarth had a painting done of his six most important servants called Heads of Six of Hogarth’s Servants (c 1758) and this was placed on his dining room wall where his visitors were said to be outraged. Portraiture was considered only fit for aristocratic, upper-class representation. In Hogarth’s painting the butler is in the middle of the painting with the five other servants surrounding him showing the hierarchical nature within the servant class itself. Such portraits were highly unusual for this period but the heads show the simplicity and honesty of the individuals and present Hogarth as a man worthy of such loyalty.

Throughout the nineteenth century, and more particularly during the late Victorian era, the number of butlers and domestic servants grew as a result of the largesse made from imperial expansion. The social historian Barry Higman pointed out that a high number of butlers and other domestic servants rose in accordance with a high level of economic inequality within society. This may explain why, in the twenty- first century, a TV and film version of Downton Abbey is proving so popular today.

This world of hierarchical privilege should long ago have been banished but literature, it seems, has kept it alive and thriving. Not only as something quaint, however, but also with the added cultural and hegemonic influence it has to still keep everyone in their allotted places.

There have been countless tacky novels, whodunits and melodramas where butlers end up being the killers – thus the catchphrase ‘The butler did it!’ The fact that in such cheap literature it was the butler only confirms his low breeding and class status.

Jeeves and Wooster

However, there are also quite a few texts that present butlers with plummy voices, such as in the novels of PG Wodehouse. Jeeves, we are told, is not really a butler, but more ‘a gentleman’s gentleman.’ Many of these novels were made into dramas for TV with Stephen Fry playing the part of Jeeves and Hugh Laurie the part of Bertie Wooster. They all followed a familiar pattern with the upper-class twit, Wooster, having to rely on the superior intelligence of Jeeves to get him out of countless scrapes.

Oscar Wilde satirised such people in his plays during the Victorian era and Wodehouse and others were simply carrying on this tradition.  English literature’s fascination with the follies and foibles of class simply reveal how enduring class division in England has been.

The Admirable Crichton

The play The Admirable Crichton (1902) by JM Barrie was made into a film in 1957 starring Kenneth More as the butler, Crichton. This film regularly appears on TV today. The liberal-minded Earl of Loam asks his three daughters to treat the staff as equals over an afternoon with tea. Lady Brocklehurst arrives and strongly disapproves of any change to the natural order of class rule. Interestingly, so too does Crichton. As a loyal butler who knows his place in the scheme of things, he too protests against such folly. Service, for him, means serving those better than yourself.

Lady Catherine, one of the Earl’s daughters, is arrested at a suffragette protest and the Earl decides that the family should take a trip on his yacht to the South Seas. Hopefully, the scandal will have died down by their return.

The yacht’s motors explode during a storm and they all end up stranded on a desert island. The abandoned yacht drifts into an offshore rock formation and Crichton swims out to salvage what he can. Class differences are initially kept until the Earl and his daughters, together with vicar John Traherne and Ernest Wooley realise their uselessness and come to rely on the butler for virtually everything required to stay alive.

There is also a maid called Eliza who is soon known as Tweeny. Because of Crichton’s abilities as someone who has had to work for a living, he goes on to become known as Guv. He creates a division of labour for everyone and this is the first time the upper-class castaways have ever worked in their lives.

Both Lady Mary and Eliza fall in love with Guv Crichton and all the other men fall for Tweeny. Lady Brocklehurst would be appalled at such a turn of events. With a clear division of labour, they all thrive and Crichton and Lady Mary intend to marry and vicar Traherne carries out the ceremony. Just before their vows are taken a ship appears. Everyone wishes to ignore it except Crichton. They return home and reverse into their former class divisions. This was at Crichton’s insistence. Knowing his place is, after all, part of the DNA of being a butler. Crichton, to protect the family, decides to leave the service of the Earl and he takes Tweeny with him. The Earl decides to move across the floor to the Tory benches as a result of his mistakes on the desert island by forgetting his superior position. The paradise they created on the desert island turns out to have been a Never-Never Land belonging only to the realm of dreams.

The tale of Crichton shows how deep those ruling class values have shaped those who have served their masters and they look up to them as their betters. This is precisely what gives us Conservative governments time and time again. Each presentation of a butler – whether in literature or in film – serves to embed the values and the rule of the upper-classes.

Upstairs, Downstairs

Similarly, the drama series on TV during the 1970s, appropriately called Upstairs, Downstairs, presented the butler, Angus Hudson, as authoritarian and irascible. He was the enforcer of hierarchies downstairs among the staff, on behalf of his masters upstairs. Like Crichton he believes in the class divisions as somehow natural. He sees his place as enforcer of values which should be inimical to him if he could only think for himself. He doesn’t seem to realise that such values serve others and not himself.

Even in more popular culture we meet butlers who seem simply as those born to serve. Batman has a butler called Alfred Pennyworth and he too has the Rees-Mogg voice similar to Jeeves and Crichton (Hudson was Scottish). His surname Pennyworth seems significant in that butlers are generally only ever allowed a pennyworth of their opinions. And in the Gothic horror films of The Addams Family there is the tall and scary figure of butler Lurch, a figure I would suggest less scary than Rees-Mogg or any of the other members of the Tory party.

The Remains of the Day

However, for a portrait of the most abject deference and servility there can be no figure that embodies these qualities more than the butler, Stevens, in Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel The Remains of the Day (1989). This work was made into a film in 1993 starring Anthony Hopkins as Stevens and Emma Thompson as the housekeeper, Miss Kenton.

The novel begins in 1956 as Stevens is given a day off from Darlington Hall by his new employer, the wealthy American Mr Farraday. As Stevens drives to meet with Miss Kenton, now Mrs Benn, he has a series of flashbacks about his time working as butler to the mansion’s former owner, Lord Darlington. Miss Kenton had also worked at Darlington Hall with Stevens in the 1920s and 30s.

Ishiguro builds up a portrait of a man who lived and breathed for his employer. Stevens had a mind only for his employer and to serve his needs and wishes. His being was given over to service and he was, like Crichton and Hudson, the enforcer of protocols for the staff which had always to be obeyed and never questioned. This proved delicate when Stevens and Kenton seem to be attracted to one another. However, the iron will of Stevens ensures that there will be no blossoming of romance or passion. There must be no relationships of any romantic nature between the staff.

Lord Darlington had arranged for high-ranking Nazi officials, along with his aristocratic chums, to dine at Darlington Hall and discuss politics. Stevens arranges things as he would for any other visitors. He has no beliefs or opinions of his own save the opinions of his employer, Lord Darlington. He must know best because he was privately educated, speaks with Received Pronunciation and simply knows what is best since he is the best.

Rees-Mogg, David Cameron and Boris Johnson, as well as Kwasi Kwarteng all attended Eton while George Osborne attended Harrow, Jeremy Hunt attended Charterhouse and Rishi Sunak attended Winchester. Between them and the comprehensive-educated Liz Truss, the damage done to lives of millions of people is incalculable. Yet for many people these posh boys are still to be looked upon as knowing better than others of a lower social standing. This is how a class-ridden society works.

Stevens, just like his butler father before him, knows never to question the opinions of those above. It is simply not done. Ishiguro should be commended for such a portrait of unquestioning acquiescence because he showed how such subservience can lead to fascism. There were, of course, several aristocrats who did flirt with Nazis. Lord Halifax and the Duke of Argyll spring to mind – as well as King Edward VIII, later Duke of Windsor, after his abdication. The ruling class will do whatever it takes to see that their interests and privileges are looked after. Right now, after the demise of four Tory PMs since Brexit 2016, they will do anything they can to hold on to power rather than have a General Election. This is in no way surprising.

Interestingly, it was mentioned in the obituary of Charles Stewart of 27^th August 2022 (another Old Etonian) in the Daily Telegraph, that he believed The Remains of the Day to be based on Mount Stewart and his great-grandfather, the 7^th Marquis of Londonderry, Charles Vane-Tempest Stewart. This figure regularly visited Germany to meet with Hitler, Goering, Himmler, Goebbels and von Ribbentrop. He was described as ‘a controversial figure in Conservative and Unionist politics.’ With figures like Jeremy Corbyn and Nicola Sturgeon, along with climate activists, Black Lives Matter activists and striking trade unionists derided as dangerous and a menace, it seems that being in bed with Nazis is no more than controversial.

The Servant

In the film The Servant (1963), written by Harold Pinter, and re-worked by him from a novella by Robin Maugham, we do see the tables turned. James Fox played the wealthy Londoner Tony who employs Hugo Barrett, played by Dirk Bogarde, as his manservant. All seems well until Barrett suggests that the house could do with a housemaid. He suggests his sister Vera, played by Sarah Miles, would be excellent in the position and she is taken on accordingly. However, Vera is in fact Barrett’s girlfriend and he encourages Vera to seduce Tony. Tony has a girlfriend of his own called Susan, played by Wendy Craig. But he duly falls under Vera’s charms.

Like Bertie Wooster and Earl Loam before him, Tony can do little for himself and relies heavily on both Barrett and Vera for all his needs. He is plied with drink and he becomes a hopeless alcoholic who begins to exhibit the infantilism associated with people from this class background.

Barrett and Vera take over the house and have parties where prostitutes are invited along. Pinter’s work is generally associated with strong currents of violence and menace and his script for The Servant certainly bears this out. This was effectively a revolutionary reversal of the class order. Barrett is no decent bloke but Tony is reduced to a pathetic figure when his position of power and privilege is usurped.

No such thing happens in Downton Abbey. The butler, Charles (‘Charlie’) Carson, started at Downton as a young lad and has worked his way up. He embodies the unquestioning mentality associated with service. His values are handed down to him from above. He fears the election of a Labour Government, he loves royalty and detests being called liberal. Carson is clearly made out to be anti-woke before wokery ever came along. The series first aired in 2010 so the writer, Julian Fellowes, was keenly aware of the character he was creating and the current debates going on.

It is a sad reflection that such a film can have had such success since there is so much poverty around; a poverty created to protect today’s Woosters, Loams, Darlingtons and Crawleys of Downton. It also shows that such films exist also to perpetuate class division. Stevens and Carson both look back to the better times when their respective households seemed much more secure before the advent of modernity and post-modernity. Both figures possess the conservative nostalgia for a halcyon past – a bit like the Brexit architects who promised Empire 2.0.

The figure of the butler seems a quintessentially British/English one. In a contemporary twist to this image Oliver Bullough has written Butler to the World: How Britain Became the Servant of Tycoons, Tax Dodgers, Kleptocrats and Criminals. The choice of the word butler seems a perfect one for a book such as this. As the rich have destroyed the economy for the many, their own interests are now served serving others, however unsavoury the others may be. These others now own chunks of our land, our football clubs, properties and businesses and as long as they bank their cash with us then that seems fine.

Born to rule or born to serve? It really is time for this relationship to be severed before more damage is done. The rich have only ever cared about their riches. Nothing has changed today. The image and figure of the butler should be relegated to history just like the class the butler once served. Walter Benjamin said that he ‘came into the world under the sign of Saturn – the star of the slowest revolution, the planet of detours and delays.’ We really have had enough detours and delays and far too many representations of butlers. Things need to be speeded up!