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overleftdown · 3 months

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saltburn and lo real maravilloso

bare with me.

lo real maravilloso, in its direct translation, means "the marvelous real." in english language, this is more commonly said as "magical reality." magical reality is (arguably) a genre of fiction.

lo real maravilloso is a genre which defies definition. it is the inexplicable, the absurd, the ironic, the whimsical, the manifestation of dream and abstraction. lo real maravilloso is also the mundane. if this is confusing, that's entirely understandable. let me quote alberto rios; "first things first. nothing so important and nothing at all unimportant." this is the essence of magical realism. the absurd and unbelievable in a constant dance with the mundane, creating nothing so important and nothing at all unimportant.

to quote un señor muy viejo con unas alas enormes (a very old man with enormous wings) by gabriel garcía márquez, "his huge buzzard wings, dirty and half-plucked, were forever entangled in the mud. they looked at him so long and so closely that pelayo and elisenda very soon overcame their surprise and in the end found him familiar." in the story about un señor muy viejo con unas alas enormes, the absurd and unbelievable (a winged man crashing to the earth) becomes the mundane (the winged man is flightless, and those that found him are quickly annoyed by his pathetic presence). a winged man becomes nothing so important, and the drag of every-day life is nothing at all unimportant.

now, saltburn. i'm fascinated by emerald fennell's choice of using the aristocratic english as her metaphor for the untouchable. in a lot of ways, i'm grateful this is what she chose. while the ultimate inspiration for saltburn was less the materialistic class commentary that it came to be, the aristocracy becomes so many things throughout the movie. what i wanted to talk about is how the aristocracy, the cattons, are lo real maravilloso. the essay i quoted before by alberto rios is spectacular, because it delves into not just the ironic nature of magical realism, but the rhetoric, as well; what it means to think we understand something, how language deludes us into believing we know something, how our own reality is mistaken for reality itself. saltburn and the cattons live in their own reality, which to the outsider, is absurdity. when watching the film, what we find ourselves thinking throughout it is essential to understanding the rhetoric of the movie.

when we see the grandeur and wealth and think how impractical, how unreal, how hilarious. the humor that saltburn taps into is near-identical to the core of magical realistic irony. "to use classical terminology, tone so often derives from the delivery of the narrative as litotes—understatement—in the middle of hyperbole-- overstatement. If it is not humor, then it comes off as flatness of treatment, non-reactivity, deadpan almost, which is the great comedian’s trick..." (rios). think back to the casualty of the cattons' absurdity. the sincerity in which elspeth delivers the most appalling, unreal anecdotes and additions. magical realism places culture, sincerity, normativity uncomfortably close to what we could hardly fathom. a winged man falling from the sky, kept in the chicken coup because it is quickly understood that he is hideous. finding your winged son dead in the middle of an elaborate maze, sprawled out beneath a minotaur statue, and the knowledge that lunch is about to begin.

the longer we experience the world emerald has created, the more we understand the reality in which the cattons live, the more we find it familiar. the absurdity is forgotten, until it's once again realized, until it's once again forgotten. this is the act of interacting realities; ours, and then another, and then back to ours. what's so fun about exploring wealth is this clashing of reality. believing that it's so absurd to be so rich, then succumbing to the normativity of richness, then once again finding yourself laughing at the idea of it. "what do you mean it's almost lunch? how could you say that? your son is dead. and beyond that, he's dead in the middle of a maze. he's dead in the middle of your estate maze, with your estate statues and your 179 bedrooms, one of them being the king's." and when lunch begins, we're dragged back into foreign reality. we feel the grief that pollutes the air, pulls at each of the cattons. we understand that our reality is not reality, nor is their reality. we're submerged in the tone of the film, the tone of the writing. a well-written character is a character who has their own reality; not that they're right or wrong, but that they are.

there is also the clashing of culture. the aristocracy is more familiar to the english. the emotional repression visualized throughout the movie is more familiar to the english. the culture of british boarding school is more familiar to the english. the longer we experience, the longer we stare at the unreasonable, the more familiar it becomes. our reality is not reality. we stand amidst billions of others, who have millions of preconceived notions, derived from millions of alternate cultures, experienced through thousands of languages, interacting with another billion people. what this all boils down to is how little we understand.

how does oliver interact with this foreign reality? how does farleigh? how are felix and venetia interacting with each other, as well as this life that so little experience? how do we understand it? how do we react to it? how do we react to the sex throughout the movie, which exist in its own absurdly real world? at what point in watching saltburn did you forget how stupid it was? at what point did you forget that having a maze in your backyard is ridiculous? having gargoyles? having footmen? having 200-person parties in your own house? at what point did you lose yourself in this foreign reality, and when did you remember that it's all ridiculous? have you remembered? have you realized that the sex was absurd? have you realized that felix catton is absurd? have you realized that oliver is blind to the absurdity as well? hm. hmmm.

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cemeterything · 2 months

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been thinking about fantasy/scifi rule systems and free will

#🐉#human rules is you can go nuts show nuts but so can everyone else

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ganondorf · 4 months

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#everyone stop being annoying and inflammatory and go play bomb rush cyberfunk

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x0401x · 13 days

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So I just saw a post by a random personal blog that said “don’t follow me if we never even had a conversation before” and?????? Not to be rude but literally what the fuck??????????

I’ve had people (non-pornbots) try to strike conversation out of nowhere in my DMs recently, and now I’m wondering if they were doing that because they wanted to follow me and thought they needed to interact first. I feel compelled to say, just in case, that it’s totally okay to follow this blog (or my side blog, for that matter) even if we’ve never talked before.

Also, I’m legit confused. Is this how follow culture works right now? It was worded like it’s common sense but is that really a thing?

#what’s going on like seriously

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princeshilo · 14 days

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sometimes im like "wow holy shit im being really fucking annoying. i should stop talking" and then i pull out my magic 8 ball and it says "youve always been annoying and your friends chose to talk you anyways. youll be fine" and im like wow thanks magic 8 ball. and then the ogre attacks me

#found this beautiful gem in my drafts and couldnt let her go to waste #frog rambles #idk whay this is about. or if its anything. but i think its funny

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copepods · 20 days

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leitmotifs never get old to me like holy shit dude there’s this melody that corresponds to this one guy and if you hear the melody it means the guy is there. holy shit. and sometimes it refers to ideas too not just guys. has anyone heard about this

#text #my standards for video game music are not high #if there’s a leitmotif i go :O every time

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snakesinsocks2005 · 29 days

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Pin for survivors

#snake hisses #Not putting this in my art tag #boop #scheduling this for midnight #edit: huh so its still going huh. oh well have it early

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powdermelonkeg · 30 days

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#dunmeshi #go do your taxes

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skipppppy · 1 month

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“You shouldn’t self-ID as ADHD/autistic, you’re turning a very real mental condition into a trend” Ok then stop saying delulu. Stop speculating on which cluster C personality disorder the criminals you hear about on the news have. Stop saying “schizoposting” and “acoustic” and “is it restarted?” Stop using “psycopath” and “sociopath” as catch-all ways of calling someone a bad person. Stop saying “the intrusive thoughts won” when you bleach your hair and then turn your nose up at people who suffer from very real, very scary urges of physical/sexual violence. Stop saying “I’m so OCD” as a way of calling yourself neat. Stop treating BPD/ASPD/Bipolar as inherently abusive. Stop saying “OP I am living in your walls” without tagging for unreality. Stop diagnosing complete strangers you’ve never met on r/AITA with NPD.

You first. If you don’t want our disabilities to be treated like trends then stop belittling and minimising them. I’ll NEVER judge a person for trying find labels for their symptoms when an apathetic, racist, sexist, ableist healthcare system refuses to. But I will absolutely judge a hypocrite. Which a lot of you are

#the venn diagrom of anti-self ID people and people who go around yelling about ‘spotting narcissists’ on reddit is a circle #sorry this has bugged me for a while #ableism

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cahootings · 5 months

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I redownload this app for one day once every maybe two months and unfortunately I’m rewarded every time

#everyone reblogging this needs to go stream our flag means death on max #and suck your friends’ fingers

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seraphtrevs · 2 months

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STOP no more live-action remakes. We're going the other way now. Animated Casablanca. Animated The Godfather. Animated Oppenheimer. Animated Fight Club.

#i could go on

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greykolla-art · 3 months

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