THIS PAST YEAR, I saw perhaps the subtlest skewering of contemporary class performance that I’ve ever witnessed. Oddly, it was buried within an otherwise unsubtle tale. Saltburn, by writer/director Emerald Fennell, takes explicit delight in ogling at the richest of the rich. It’s an almost immorally beautiful film, which an AI might have plotted had it been given the prompt, ‘Rewrite the first third of Brideshead Revisited with Tom Ripley as the protagonist.’

The film follows Oliver, who aspires to befriend and eventually become Felix, the most aristocratic classmate in their year at Oxford. And we can understand why. Oliver’s obsession with Felix’s privilege mirrors the audience’s: Felix is impossibly charismatic (he is portrayed by Australian heart-throb Jacob Elordi), and his family home, where Oliver stays for the summer, is achingly grand. All this desire and longing turns to desperation, however, when Felix suddenly decides to do something nice for poor Oliver. And Oliver is poor. Or at least, that’s what he’s led Felix to believe by providing a backstory that includes just enough detail (a dead father) and just enough sordid allusion (addiction, housing estates and a fractured relationship with his mother) to hint at a life of abuse and deprivation. 

Felix drives Oliver to his mother’s house in the hope of staging a reconciliation. It’s a well-meaning act – if not also immature and misguided – which ends the boys’ friendship, because it reveals that Oliver has lied to Felix. The dead father is alive and very nice, and the abusive mother has made her beloved prodigal his favourite spaghetti to celebrate his return. 

I said before that Oliver is a modern Tom Ripley, the sociopathic protagonist in Patricia Highsmith’s crime novels. Ripley ascends the social ladder in the 1960s by pretending to be someone he’s not and killing anyone who threatens to expose his lies. Oliver does the same. Except, seventy years on, the lies you need to tell have changed. In fact, they have inverted. Where Ripley donned a Princeton jacket and styled himself as wealthy, Oliver plays poor.

How many times, in fiction and in life, has a character lied about their wealth to increase their social status? We’ve seen every iteration, from the delusional tragic (Blanche DuBois) to the ruthless con artist (Anna Delvey) to the innocent opportunist (Cinderella). But I still can’t think of a fake-it-till-you-make-it storythat echoes Oliver’s. Let alone one so deeply culturally disseminated that it holds the status of a fairytale. In the past, people might have exaggerated their suffering for pity. But in the twenty-first century, here is a character – a conniving schemer – downplaying his fortunes for social ascension. 

As unique as it is to see such an arc in fiction, Ollie was nonetheless familiar to me. It seemed pop culture had finally caught up with a very real phenomenon: disavowing privilege to consolidate or even increase it. And (spoiler alert!) in art, as in life, it’s a ploy that pays off. 

IN ANY SOCIETY that aspires to a degree of egalitarianism – that is, anywhere that social mobility is, at least theoretically, possible – social status is both performed and asserted. In rigid hierarchies, by contrast, status functions as birthright: it’s articulated by your name; it runs in your veins; it’s an immutable fact of your existence. 

Under capitalism, perhaps the most conventional mode of asserting status is through the performance of wealth. In the early twentieth century, German sociologist Max Weber identified that Northern European societies had conflated an individual’s personal worthwith their financial value. This represented the amalgam of two distinct theories: one moral, the other economic. The first was the Protestant idealisation of work ethic – the idea that to work hard was to exhibit virtue. The second was what historian Eli Cook, author of The Pricing of Progress: Economic Indicators and the Capitalization of American Life, calls ‘the lessons of mainstream neoclassical economics, which suggested, through [the economist] John Bates Clark’s theory of marginal productivity, that everyone earns what they in fact produced’. If you accept that what someone has earnt correlates to how hard they worked, it’s only logical that a society that prizes work would also afford respect and status to those who have managed to amass wealth.

Needless to say, that basic assumption doesn’t hold in societies with entrenched inequality. It certainly doesn’t apply in contemporary Australia. A 2023 Australia Institute report notes that ‘the bottom 90 per cent of Australians receive just 7 per cent of economic growth per person since 2009, while the top 10 per cent of income earners reap 93 per cent of the benefits’. This gap falls largely along generational lines, as older Australians are more likely to own their homes outright, which means the majority of first homebuyers (more than 60 per cent, according to sociologist Julia Cook) now turn to their parents for financial assistance. In a modern economy for which ascension up the property ladder – and, by extension, the accumulation of wealth – is increasingly dependent on the largesse of older relatives, affluence no longer correlates to hard work. Therefore, its ethical significance is compromised. 

While economic inequality is undermining the virtuousness of personal prosperity, mass consumerism fuelled by debt has made displaysof wealth more accessible. The RBA reports that household debt has risen at a faster rate and to a higher level in Australia than in most countries. And, as Anthony Lloyd and Mark Horsley point out, higher credit-to-income ratios have the dual effect of destabilising the middle classes and diluting traditional class markers. Put simply, anyone with access to a line of credit can perform being wealthy, irrespective of their actual income.

While debt makes such performances possible, the internet makes them more accurate, as the habits of the upper classes are studied and disseminated to a wider audience. Saltburn, for example, sparked a TikTok fashion craze called Neo Posh Boy (think rugby jerseys and boat shoes). You don’t need to have Felix’s estate; any student with an Afterpay account and a smartphone can adopt the appearance of off-duty aristocracy.

On the one hand, such trends are deliciously democratising. I’m reminded of an anecdote in critic John Seabrook’s Nobrow, a study of mass marketing and the homogenisation of popular culture, in which Seabrook’s very dapper (and, it is implied, very wealthy) father is so outraged at Ralph Lauren Polo advertising what he sees as an ‘individual’ style that belongs to him – a preppie Princeton alumnus – he actually rips the offending ad out of a magazine. 

On the other hand, this dilution of coherent class markers makes genuinely wealthy people – as opposed to mimics – more difficult to spot. In The Atlantic, Jeffrey Winters explains that unequal societies are usually characterised by political instability; anything that can obfuscate the inequality is stabilising. Therefore, almost paradoxically, the democratisation of class markers can ultimately become a tool to further entrench division. 

In contemporary society, then, wealth and status have an uneasy relationship. First, because surface displays of wealth, like fashion, are now an incoherent language for describing someone’s actual position. Second, because if you know someone well enough to see beneath the surface trappings, whatever wealth they have will not automatically be considered a virtue when it’s just as likely to have come from family money or generational luck as from personal industry. And even if someone has personally earnt their wealth, they are liable to be resented for profiting from a system that is strikingly inequitable.

IF WEALTH AND status have bifurcated – if the rich are not necessarily afforded respect – where, then, do we derive social capital?

I can think of no more precise articulation than that offered by Sally Rooney in her 2021 novel Beautiful World, Where Are You. In an email to a trusted friend, the protagonist, Eileen, reflecting on online political discourse, writes: ‘The only apparent schema is that for every victim group (people born into poor families, women, people of colour) there is an oppressor group (people born into rich families, men, white people). But in this framework, relations between victim and oppressor are not historical so much as theological, in that the victims are transcendently good and the oppressors are personally evil.’

As far as sweeping cultural generalisations go, this one feels apt. We only need to look to social media bios, which typically explicate profiles in terms of demographic factors (age, gender, sexual orientation, race), as if the group to which a person belongs is the most reliable shorthand for the particular human who lives and breathes within it. In such a climate, where virtuousness is situated in victim status, being powerful can, paradoxically, be undermining. Privileged is a slur; it’s a value judgement about a person’s character as much as it is an articulation of their circumstances. Whether from belonging to a demographic majority (‘straight white man’) or simply from being rich, to be privileged is to be out of touch, irrelevant.

In observing that identity politics shapes much of contemporary moral thinking – especially online – I’m offering a descriptive, not a normative, judgement. It’s not necessarily a bad thing – in a society where opportunity is distributed so unevenly, this approach can feel like the only means we have to redistribute social capital. But this redistribution is occurring almost exclusively at the level of public perception. It does not appear to have a trickle-down effect to cultural capital. A good example is the publishing industry, which is often criticised for over-prioritising the representation of racial minorities in deciding who and what to publish. A 2020 New York Times report titled ‘Just How White Is the Book Industry?’ found these concerns to be largely overstated: between 1950 and 2018, 95 per cent of novels published in the US had white authors. While social capital, at least online, seems to accrue to marginalised groups, this doesn’t neatly translate into real-world opportunities. 

This reconceptualising of social capital has little effect on actual capital, either. The threat of exposure to derision is not reason enough for a powerful minority to throw away their privileges. Even though personal wealth can no longer buy respect, it remains as desirable as ever. Which means that this new relation between wealth and social status – where wealth undermines rather than improves status – affects wealth only at the level of performance. Rather than being cast aside, privileges are now carefully navigated. The modern challenge is to pursue the age-old desire for money without compromising on social standing: to enjoy privileges without having to suffer being called ‘privileged’.

ONE MECHANISM FOR reconciling these newly conflicting desires for wealth and status is through political beliefs – specifically, socialism. According to Generation Left (a report by the right-wing think tank the Centre for Independent Studies), Generation Z adults are less likely than any previous generation to become conservative as they age. On TikTok, the tag ‘Eat the Rich’ has over a hundred million views. Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the poster girl for making socialism cool again, famously wore a gown imprinted with the words Tax the Rich to the 2021 Met Gala (for which tickets cost at least $35,000). 

Of course, for wealthy people, who are conscious of the generalised cultural disdain for privilege, announcing your allegiance to socialism can be a means to sidestep criticism. It’s a way of saying, ‘I might have wealth, but I don’t endorse the system that gave it to me.’ In fact, in many spheres of modern life – especially the arts and media industries – socialist credentials are a status symbol. They endear you to other people; they mark you as serious and morally righteous; they grant you entry into friendship groups and a licence to speak on particular issues. 

Just because there are personal gains to be made from declarations of socialism does not mean that every contemporary socialist is disingenuous. Many of the avowed socialists I know are deeply thoughtful, passionate people, whose political commitments are what they see as the only ethical and logical response to a deeply unequal society. But individual motivations aside, the uncomfortable economic reality is that those (yes, very genuine) commitments functionas a brand. They add value to an individual’s voice; they mark you out as trusted and respectable. 

I worry that the radical potential of socialism is diluted when its ­proponents stand to gain within capitalism for the very fact of their commitment to anti-capitalist politics. This is the point at which activism becomes gestural, where political commitments – however earnestly or righteously held – benefit individualswithin capitalism rather than groups. Socialism, then, is no longer about collective action. It’s about personal branding.

ANOTHER WAY IN which contemporary culture allows people to have and enjoy wealth without having to endure social disapproval is through ironic consumerism. 

Social media has made available to us whole new audiences and vectors for class and lifestyle performance. Where previously your political commitments or what books you were reading might have been topics of conversation with close friends at the pub, now they can be projected to hundreds or thousands of followers. Eating at a restaurant is another example; a previously private and intimately social act can now be a place to be seen, not by the people you’re dining with, or even the other patrons, but by everybody who follows you. 

It seems to me that this proliferation of ‘lifestyle’ posting is a direct – and in some ways, highly logical – response to precarity. It allows young people to accessorise with the trappings of wealth, to engage purely at the level of performance. In a way, it’s democratising; we’re approaching wealth in an ironic way that divorces it from an actual assertion of superiority. We’re not claiming to be richer than anyone else; we’re just indulging in an endless slideshow of, as they say online, ‘little treats’. Indeed, as with those Ralph Lauren customers who so infuriated the genuinely preppie, by turning the habits of a whole class into tools for personal branding, we dilute their power. Appropriation is distinct from appreciation; it’s imitation as mockery, not as flattery. 

But in 2024, as the housing and cost-of-living crises continue in Australia, the effect of such appropriation is to flatten and distort ever-calcifying class divides. The uncomfortable reality behind all those pictures of beaches and wine bars is that some of us stand to inherit money and others don’t. The haves can still potentially amass wealth in their lifetimes (even if it’s a matter of waiting for their parents to die). The have-nots have their small plates. And refusing to talk about money seriously is yet another way of not talking about it at all. Worse, it’s a way of not talking about it while giving the appearance of candour.

Looking back, I cringe at the many ways I’ve personally exploited this distance between the performance of wealth and the cold, intergenerationally unfair reality. Perhaps one of the more subtle (and, therefore, more insidious) ways was at the sentence level – particularly my liberal use of the word bougie, an abbreviation of bourgeoise, which is essentially used as a synonym for lush or indulgent. A few years ago, any nice meal I had or holiday I took was bougie. I never said it in a confessional, self-identifying way. If I was going for a frank acknowledgement of my good fortune, I would have said bourgeoise. Bougie is a joke, a trope, a ‘bit’. It is to bourgeoise what tradwife is to housewife. As a full-time novelist and freelancer, I am a member of the cultural elite. (That’s a horrible sentence to type. But horror is precisely the problem. I might tell myself it’s a horror of sounding smug, of making others feel inferior. Really, it’s the opposite: a horror of being judged. By not mentioning it, I’m protecting myself, exploiting the gap between who I am and how I’d like to be perceived. I’m lying by omission. I’m being an Oliver!) And my entry into the creative class was the direct result of a lifelong chain of structural advantages. I wrote my debut novel while I was unemployed and living rent-free with my parents, for starters. So who did I think I was, a paradigm example of the bourgeoisie, going around calling my own life ‘bougie’? 

It seems, in our very reaction to social inequality and financial precarity – frowning upon privilege, performing wealth ironically – we may have found a new way to compound structural disadvantage. Class solidarity is made more elusive when people are being dishonest (with themselves, with others) about the privileges they enjoy. 

SO ENDLESS AND ever-complicating is this hall of mirrors that one can pick up a Jane Austen novel and feel almost a perverse longing for the hierarchy it describes. Status, in such a world, is not a matter of self-curation but of common knowledge. The assessments of worth are unsubtle and unambiguous: £10,000 a year versus £500. Yes, Austen’s world was elitist and oppressive. But we can see in it, perhaps only because we have lost it, the pleasure in certain constraints. Because these days, our privileged few enjoy the privilege of self-invention, too; they can pass as ‘just like everyone else’ by performing their privilege as a bit. No Regency-era lord or lady ever had that. (Try saying ‘10,000 a year’ ironically.) 

That fatigue accounts, in part, for the popularity of Saltburn. It can be refreshing to see characters who are so obscenely, eye-wateringly wealthy that feints and disguises are not an option. But ‘popularity’ is perhaps misleading. Saltburn was one of those rare ‘must-see’ films that is not so much over-hyped as over-analysed: a film that got under people’s skin and had to be talked out. It got under my skin; it’s deeply uncomfortable to catch yourself delighting in overt displays of wealth – empathising with the very people who, according to contemporary ethics, warrant the most disapproval on account of having the most power. And it was offensive to contemporary sensibilities that Fennell chose to make her villain not the stale aristocracy but the middle-class sociopath in their midst.

But I wonder if there was a deeper discomfort, too. Because, in depicting the wealthy as unapologetic and the middle class as grasping, Fennell said something no less true for being a taboo. She forced us to admit that, although we know personal wealth is wrongand that billionaires are public-policy failures, being really, unethically rich would be…well, fun. We can take Fennell’s word for it: she is also the daughter of an Eton-educated millionaire jeweller, Theo Fennell (nickname: ‘The King of Bling’). 

While it’s galling that this critique of middle-class covetousness should appear within a film that was explicitly marketed as a critique of the super rich, it does tell us something about class today. Wouldn’t we all, given the option, prefer more – more money, more status, more power, more praise – rather than less? 

The reticence to admit that basic human greed persists, that our desires and our principles might clash, is dangerous. Such self-deceit allows even very genuine egalitarian principles to become tools for entrenching class divides, as people find new ways to disavow privilege so they can reserve more of it for themselves. 

If we are genuinely committed to a more egalitarian society, we could start by acknowledging the ways in which we are all equally flawed. We could admit that, sometimes, ‘eat the rich’ is not so much a revolutionary sentiment as a vampiric one.

What we seek to destroy, we wish to become. 

Image credit: Siggy Nowak from Pixabay