Is SALTBURN The New PINK FLAMINGOS?

I feel like I’m supposed to hate SALTBURN. My honest opinion is that it's a muddled and toothless satire of modern British aristocracy, written by an overconfident heiress who comes off like a spoiled dipshit and had her first-ever script in the business commissioned by Andrew Lloyd Weber’s wife. Looking to coddled rich people for transgressive debauchery is like asking your “spicy” straight friend to plan an orgy. As a result, SALTBURN kind of feels like a pretentious Kidz Bop-ified SALO. 

The thing is, I didn’t hate it.

Two things can be true at once, and a movie that biffs some things can triumph at others. SALTBURN is a resounding failure as satire, but it’s still a marvelously fun exercise in camp. It's a luscious and enjoyably nasty sensory experience with a great aesthetic. SALTBURN has the same novelty and visual appeal as the bathtub-shaped shotglasses Alamo Drafthouse whipped up for the initial run, and the depth to match. I watched it on Christmas Eve with my partner because we are gay perverts, so we wanted to mark a religious holiday by watching two hot mean twinks destroy each other in that bathtub. Imagine our dissapointment: all that buildup for just a bit of milky liquid. Not since PINK FLAMINGOS have people been quite so inexplicably consumed by a forbidden charcuterie.

That may sound like a dumb joke, but my love of PINK FLAMINGOS is a big part of why I gave SALTBURN a shot. When you enjoy weird movies, big audience reactions are usually a hint that you're in for a good time. The trend of SALTBURN-reaction TikToks remind me of the original PINK FLAMINGOS trailer, where an early audience's horrified and amused reactions were used in lieu of clips from the film. It has a motley collection of visibly stoned hippies and flaming queers, all prepared to declare it the best film they’ve seen in years. (My favorite dude in it is a faded blonde with a bowlcut and a horrible mustache who boozily declares the movie “the future of city living.” That means nothing, and I would die for him.) 

PINK FLAMINGOS also has a lot in common with SALTBURN in that its memetic horribleness is a big part of why it lingered in public consciousness long enough to become infamous. You could ask twenty people what scene in PINK FLAMINGOS was the worst; not only could each person give you a different answer, but they'd have a sound argument. The movie includes violence and murder galore and is also full of sexual assault scenes played for laughs, including one where a live chicken is crushed to death. (That's my pick for the worst scene. Though Cookie Mueller said that they did at least eat the perished chicken.)

PINK FLAMINGOS is also a blunt satire about class and respectability, and John Waters is much better at working with that theme than Fennell. The villains of PINK FLAMINGOS fund their decent middle-class existence through human slavery and child trafficking, using their heteronormative marriage and socioeconomic status to hide their harmful deeds. Divine and her family are openly queer and broke and they live to fuck with cops, churches, and anybody else who gets in the way of a good time. The violent jealousy of the squares who can't hang is what leads to their justified, bloody demise at Divine's hands. There aren’t many movies out there where a drag queen’s trailer park birthday party turns into a cannibalistic orgy where several cops are devoured. Though there certainly should be.

SALTBURN feels like an attempt at similar material, even though a twink licking cum out of the bottom of a bathtub is tame in comparison to the cavalcade of verité real-life sex acts that got PINK FLAMINGOS an NC-17. For all the hype about its perversions, SALTBURN often borders on prudish. Like, who lets some errant period blood get in the way of good vacation head? Grow up, Britain. There's little actual sex in this sexy movie; what does occur onscreen is largely metaphorical or obscured. A lot of folks die, but the violence is off-screen as well save a few well-placed jumpscares. There's nothing galvanizing in SALTBURN unless you're scared of rich people telling boring stories about each other. I can see why some of my fellow freaks felt let down.

However, midnight movies don’t have to be the best technical examples of their genres to have an impact. There’s no real sex in the ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a first glimpse into queerness and debauchery for the perverts of today. FACES OF DEATH is fake, poorly-made, and stupid as shit; it was also the gateway into mondo films for a generation of kids raised by irresponsible video store clerks. You can tell me that you were super-into Ringo Lam movies before you saw a Quentin Tarantino flick, but only if you want me to call you a fucking liar. Me railing against SALTBURN would be hypocritical and short-sighted. I don’t want people to reject a freaky movie just because it could have been better. I want them to realize that freaky art is fun, and go see more of it.

The older I get, the more important it becomes to check my contrarian impulses when engaging with new art. Fair criticism is fine (and I have been fair!). Shitting all over things because they weren't made for you is a shortcut to irrelevance. SALTBURN is not the new PINK FLAMINGOS, and that's OK. SALTBURN might work for people who have never seen PINK FLAMINGOS and need an on-ramp into the joys of nasty art. If you loved SALTBURN, I hope you keep digging for more. 

But maybe don't start with SALO.