Daniel Deronda in a way? Also in George Eliot canon, Fred Vincy somewhat? Laurie in Little Women, arguably???
I feel like a distinct warning sign of a carelessly beautiful son of privilege worming his way into your hardworking salt of the earth family is that whenever he saunters into your warm kitchen bubbling with humble home cooking, all the ragamuffin children crowd around to demand pony rides and show off a new penknife or a robins egg and you have to peel them off to get him to come to the piano and sing.
I've never read Vanity Fair! I ought to get on that. But my general sense is that she's not a yearning striver, she's a determined striver, and she's not easily overcome by male beauty, which puts her in a different genre, I think.
It's a cousin but not quite of the genre, I think I share your guess here! It's interested in some of the same questions but has a different relationship to women.
The arc is also different, almost flipped (though in a different way than the "reverse Saltburn" proposed in the post). Instead of "I desperately want these rich people's love and acceptance... but what if they see through me and turn against me?", Tom's arc is "I'm a teenage socialist and it goes against my principles to consort with the decadent rich... wait, they're actually wonderful? And some of them loved me even before I knew it?"
Twin Peaks? Solidly UMC girl escapes *into* the wrong side of the tracks. James even cuts a weird figure as a working class innocent who gets used without even knowing it
Actually the more I think on this the more Fire Walk With Me is specifically what I was reminded of… in the roadhouse scene, Donna even tries to follow Laura Palmer out of the (not actually) safe confines of small town American class division (esp if you identify criminality as a class marker) and Laura stops her short before she can.
I'd put "Withnail and I" closer to "Fear and Loathing" and Beat-era road trip lit, maybe? With the homoeroticism more incidental than plot-furthering, but I'm not quite sure. Great Gatsby could be roped in here but since both the main characters are middle-class strivers it sort of wiggles free from the genre!
Many a classic murder mystery reflects the class element, but the outsider detective is usually too focused on investigating everyone to fall for the beautiful scion. Endeavour played with the trope a few times.
Unrelated, but I recently revisited one of my favorite obscure detective shows--The Inspector Alleyn Mysteries--and there's an episode (Final Curtain) where he visits a family of actors to investigate the murder of their patriarch. The twist, though, is that *everyone* wants to be the *most* suspected person, because that would then make them the most dramatically interesting family member. Hijinks ensue.
"Elite wealthy person learns to love salt of the earth activities and people and tries to insert themselves into a family," then is the opposite of this trope all those cable christmas movies? Sadly almost 0% homoeroticism, but I may be onto something.
The reverse version of this is something like CAPTAIN’S COURAGEOUS or CABIN BOY, where a pampered son of the aristocracy is thrown into poor straits, his noble birth hidden, and becoming accepted means losing his snobbery and learning to work. It’s imperfectly reversed, much more of a kids’ fable. And an important distinction would be that in the reverse, the protagonist is FORCED by circumstance... not chasing it.
It's such a stimulating challenge you've posed. The kind of ruthlessness required for this plot comes naturally to aestheticist snobbism, with its leanings towards cruelty and fascism. People seem not to go in the other direction with quite the same motives or methods—you go from Eton as George Blair and end up at Wigan Pier as George Orwell, which is great but doesn't create the lurking sexiness Patricia Highsmith offers.
This question rules. I do think that if Withnail was more effortlessly gorge and less fucking desperate and atrocious (laudable, affectionate) then Withnail and I would be adjacent to the reversal, but alas.
I think what is so interesting about these saltburn type narratives is that the defining feature of the privileged male allure here is that we (the peasants) come to him to worship his effortless masculinity, which is odd when so much of masculinity is supposed to be conquering and aggressive. This must have something to do with him being the son, rather than a single man alone, or a father. So he in some ways represents the spoils of a previous masculinity, which we, middle class sickos, are now fucking and stealing. I don't know what I'm getting at here but I'm enjoying thinking about it.
I'm enjoying it too, and I think you're on to something! Possibly this is why the beautiful son is always the last of his line -- either he's killed outright (Saltburn, Ripley) or wears out his life abroad (Brideshead); it's an act that can't be repeated more than once.
Fascinating ... aristo-beautyboy as embodiment of generational surplus, which can be appropriated/desecrated sexually. You said it better, I’m just mulling...
Hannibal Lecter (nbc version) becoming obsessed with asocial Will Graham from Wolf Trap, VA is kinda the other side of the male social climbing fantasia spectrum
As to your last point - it put me in mind of My Own Private Idaho, which I (re?)watched a couple of months ago on a plane. ("Re" is in parentheses because in my mind, as a staunch Gen X-er and superfan of both Keanu and River I was absolutely sure I had seen it. But once I started watching I couldn't remember ever having seen it before. So much sadder than I thought.) Pampered beautiful boy uber-slumming it. Maybe not exactly the same - nobody was middle class in that crew - but along those lines...
It has left me with an impossible desire to be locked in a contraption with my best friend / rival / love interest / brother, and dropped into a pit, where we confess our secrets (and our love) to each other.
Daniel Deronda in a way? Also in George Eliot canon, Fred Vincy somewhat? Laurie in Little Women, arguably???
I feel like a distinct warning sign of a carelessly beautiful son of privilege worming his way into your hardworking salt of the earth family is that whenever he saunters into your warm kitchen bubbling with humble home cooking, all the ragamuffin children crowd around to demand pony rides and show off a new penknife or a robins egg and you have to peel them off to get him to come to the piano and sing.
Fred Vincy, yep!
the best piece of pop culture about the idle rich slumming it is, of course, Pulp's "Common People."
"It wasn't even about me! I've never wanted to know anything."
This is Vanity Fair erasure, Becky Sharp would like A Word.
I've never read Vanity Fair! I ought to get on that. But my general sense is that she's not a yearning striver, she's a determined striver, and she's not easily overcome by male beauty, which puts her in a different genre, I think.
That's true, she is, as her name suggests, altogether too sharp and shrewd for the poor unsuspecting gentlepeople who fall within her grasp.
How well does Whit Stillman's Metropolitan match this type? Only partially, I would guess.
It's a cousin but not quite of the genre, I think I share your guess here! It's interested in some of the same questions but has a different relationship to women.
The arc is also different, almost flipped (though in a different way than the "reverse Saltburn" proposed in the post). Instead of "I desperately want these rich people's love and acceptance... but what if they see through me and turn against me?", Tom's arc is "I'm a teenage socialist and it goes against my principles to consort with the decadent rich... wait, they're actually wonderful? And some of them loved me even before I knew it?"
The perfect movie in that mirror genre exists: 2004's The Prince & Me starring Julia Stiles & Luke Mably
YES OH MY GOD
Twin Peaks? Solidly UMC girl escapes *into* the wrong side of the tracks. James even cuts a weird figure as a working class innocent who gets used without even knowing it
Actually the more I think on this the more Fire Walk With Me is specifically what I was reminded of… in the roadhouse scene, Donna even tries to follow Laura Palmer out of the (not actually) safe confines of small town American class division (esp if you identify criminality as a class marker) and Laura stops her short before she can.
So where on this spectrum falls Withnail and I or The Great Gatsby?
I'd put "Withnail and I" closer to "Fear and Loathing" and Beat-era road trip lit, maybe? With the homoeroticism more incidental than plot-furthering, but I'm not quite sure. Great Gatsby could be roped in here but since both the main characters are middle-class strivers it sort of wiggles free from the genre!
Many a classic murder mystery reflects the class element, but the outsider detective is usually too focused on investigating everyone to fall for the beautiful scion. Endeavour played with the trope a few times.
Unrelated, but I recently revisited one of my favorite obscure detective shows--The Inspector Alleyn Mysteries--and there's an episode (Final Curtain) where he visits a family of actors to investigate the murder of their patriarch. The twist, though, is that *everyone* wants to be the *most* suspected person, because that would then make them the most dramatically interesting family member. Hijinks ensue.
Saint Francis gave it his best shot
"Elite wealthy person learns to love salt of the earth activities and people and tries to insert themselves into a family," then is the opposite of this trope all those cable christmas movies? Sadly almost 0% homoeroticism, but I may be onto something.
Oh it’s there. I know there’s some secret clanking of Christmas mugs out in the (seasonally emptied) decorations storage shed
The reverse version of this is something like CAPTAIN’S COURAGEOUS or CABIN BOY, where a pampered son of the aristocracy is thrown into poor straits, his noble birth hidden, and becoming accepted means losing his snobbery and learning to work. It’s imperfectly reversed, much more of a kids’ fable. And an important distinction would be that in the reverse, the protagonist is FORCED by circumstance... not chasing it.
It's such a stimulating challenge you've posed. The kind of ruthlessness required for this plot comes naturally to aestheticist snobbism, with its leanings towards cruelty and fascism. People seem not to go in the other direction with quite the same motives or methods—you go from Eton as George Blair and end up at Wigan Pier as George Orwell, which is great but doesn't create the lurking sexiness Patricia Highsmith offers.
Correction: Eric Blair
This question rules. I do think that if Withnail was more effortlessly gorge and less fucking desperate and atrocious (laudable, affectionate) then Withnail and I would be adjacent to the reversal, but alas.
I think what is so interesting about these saltburn type narratives is that the defining feature of the privileged male allure here is that we (the peasants) come to him to worship his effortless masculinity, which is odd when so much of masculinity is supposed to be conquering and aggressive. This must have something to do with him being the son, rather than a single man alone, or a father. So he in some ways represents the spoils of a previous masculinity, which we, middle class sickos, are now fucking and stealing. I don't know what I'm getting at here but I'm enjoying thinking about it.
I'm enjoying it too, and I think you're on to something! Possibly this is why the beautiful son is always the last of his line -- either he's killed outright (Saltburn, Ripley) or wears out his life abroad (Brideshead); it's an act that can't be repeated more than once.
Fascinating ... aristo-beautyboy as embodiment of generational surplus, which can be appropriated/desecrated sexually. You said it better, I’m just mulling...
Hannibal Lecter (nbc version) becoming obsessed with asocial Will Graham from Wolf Trap, VA is kinda the other side of the male social climbing fantasia spectrum
As to your last point - it put me in mind of My Own Private Idaho, which I (re?)watched a couple of months ago on a plane. ("Re" is in parentheses because in my mind, as a staunch Gen X-er and superfan of both Keanu and River I was absolutely sure I had seen it. But once I started watching I couldn't remember ever having seen it before. So much sadder than I thought.) Pampered beautiful boy uber-slumming it. Maybe not exactly the same - nobody was middle class in that crew - but along those lines...
Does *The Skulls* fit here too? Or is that more of a "someone realizes social climbing isn't worth it" story?
Josh Jackson my gender my beloved.
I wasn’t allowed to see it when it came out!! I must correct that soon
It has left me with an impossible desire to be locked in a contraption with my best friend / rival / love interest / brother, and dropped into a pit, where we confess our secrets (and our love) to each other.
"Homoeroticism is upward mobility is violence" feels like the 3-act structure of The Great Gatsby.