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PaperclipPerfector  12d ago (text post)   2943 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 23, 2026

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Spoilers for the movie Saltburn

Saltburn points this out. Oliver get's far more cultural cache by portraying himself to the elites as coming from the underclass rather than what he actually was - upper middle class

Comment from reddit

Especially after we found out Oliver lied about being, it completely flushed any little narrative they had going on down the toilet.

That reveal was actually pivotal to the narrative. I think this isn't translating well across the Atlantic because most wealthy American families tend to be "new money," but people like Felix are descended from people like Mr. Darcy in Pride & Prejudice. They're called the owning class because they own vast swathes of land that have been handed down for generations and they can just live off the rent and never have to work. It's a very different kind of wealth from, say, Donald Trump or Jeffrey Bezos.

There's a big contrast between the owning class and middle class people like Oliver (who come from comfortable, privileged backgrounds but ultimately are still expected to work for a living), and there's another big contrast between the middle class and the working class. Especially at universities where students are a long way from home, you get a lot of middle class people pretending to be working class and exaggerating about how "poor" they are, because being working class carries some social capital whereas being middle class is just boring.

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