Oxford graduates are like Guardian readers. Within three minutes of making their acquaintance you’ll know all about it: ‘when I was at Orksford …’, ‘did you see that thing in the Guardian…’. Same thing.
Whereas you don’t have to wait for a Telegraph/Mail/Times reader to announce their allegiance.
Most of the “cool” oxbridge graduates I know are conscious of its lameness as described in the article and now prefer not to mention it. You’ve just encountered the lame ones.
How very true. Decades ago someone told me that an Oxbridge graduate would say this (without the Guardian bit) on meeting a new person. It is uncannily correct.
Not entirely true- it depends which set you are talking about! The smarter posh lot are likely these days to be the LAST ones to mention their Oxford creds!!!
Mike Downing
5 months ago
Oooh; Oxford hasn’t changed a bit on the basis of this article.
An overlong, self-indulgent bit of navel-gazing about himself and his chums purporting to skewer the place for ‘lameness’ (how lame) while revealing, as usual, the Oxford set’s preoccupation with itself.
J Bryant
5 months ago
“As a result, and whatever its other successes, Saltburn fails to skewer what is distinctively worth skewering in undergraduate life today.”
Of course. If Saltburn took aim at current campus politics, it would be resoundingly cancelled.
The author convincingly describes Saltburn as a sort of cross between The Talented Mr. Ripley and Brideshead Revisited. In fact, it seems impossible to watch this movie without thinking of Ripley, his duplicity and social climbing–so why watch Saltburn at all?
I was also struck by the movie’s title, Saltburn. Apparently, it’s the name of an English country estate, but, for me, that doesn’t quite ring true. Brideshead is certainly the name of an English country estate, just as Manderley is certainly the name of a mysterious country house. But Saltburn sounds much more modest. Is the director trying to tell us something about the parvenu owners of that estate?
The author has written a fine review, imo. So convincing, in fact, he’s persuaded me not to watch the movie. I will stick to my non-politically-correct Korean horror movies for now. The directors of those movies could probably describe current Oxford student life quite convincingly.
If it did so skillfully and with great good humor, it would probably be watched by many and publicly celebrated by quite a few, and not just on the Dark Web or cultural fringe.
*And yes, a simultaneous and ultimately unsuccessful cancellation attempt would also occur.
More and more people refuse to be silent about campus follies, which is better than nothing. This NYT article by David Brooks (a moderate, anti-Trump conservative, a Jewish-born Christian and perhaps a “classical liberal” too) and the balance of the comments on it support my impression: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/16/opinion/college-university-antisemitism-crt.html
Me too. It sounds like the director is trading in derivatives. Has she nothing new to say? I lost interest in reading the review halfway through. I definitely won’t be wasting money on the film.
Susan Grabston
5 months ago
Candidly most of British culture is “lame” at present. We have lost our nerve and with it our inventiveness. Few experiment, preferring the shallows of repetitive memes.
I went to the “other place”, but this sketch also rings true for my student years. I was at Cambridge until 2016, and the latent culture was a sort of wincing neuroticism, with humour (such as it was) most commonly manifesting as bigot bashing or navel gazing about mental health. There were notable exceptions to this culture, of course, but the overall atmosphere was sorely lacking in rambunctiousness. Instead of encountering joy for life and learning, as I had hoped, I found myself surrounded by the tacit acknowledgment that such emotions were a function of small mindedness, a sign that one had not yet perceived our world as the prison that it truly is. Misery was a fact of life to be “normalised”, not a sign of spiritual emptiness.
We should call this nonsense out for what it is: a Gnostic heresy.
UnHerd Reader
5 months ago
It became lame when it stopped being a finishing school for the elites and became a degree factory training the post-Thatcher broader middle classes whose entire being is motivated by angst about status and jobs.
Sayantani Gupta
5 months ago
Thanks to the author for unconsciously giving me a hint about how unwatchable ” Saltburn” is! Sounds like a 21st century and rather OTT version of ” Brideshead Revisited”, with none of the gravitas the latter brought to a seemingly frivolous pair of Oxonians, whose dissolute existence mirrored the socio- cultural angst of sections of the privileged.
Hopefully a positive effect of this movie would be that some high- minded, aspiring students from my part of the globe would be suitably put off an Oxford education( and not bankrupt their parents by forcing them to acquiesce to these plans).
397-4! Mr Kohli has set a new standard.
Oxford certainly in the preference to ‘the other place’, otherwise known as Cambridge.
One Priyamvada Gopal has been a a very divisive figure there.Do you happen to know anything about her? I gather she is/was a Brahmin.
Let us await the clash of the Titans on Sunday!!! Fingers crossed but we should be world champions!!
I donot like that person you mention. I don’t think she abides by any generic other than “Woke ” shrillness.
Divisiveness is in the nature of Woke imho.
Luck did count. But Aussie fielding was flawless. Cummings was the better skipper and KL Rahul, Yadav and Siraj flopped badly.
It was sweet revenge to see off both teams which won against them earlier – us and SA. The latter fought more bravely on Thursday than we did.
Last edited 5 months ago by Sayantani Gupta
Allison Barrows
5 months ago
Thanks for the review. When Douglas Murray was a 19-year-old Oxford student, he wrote a masterly* biography of Lord Alfred Douglas, Oscar Wilde’s lover, “Bosie”. He followed it with a play, “Nightfall”, about Raoul Wallenberg. I’m sure I don’t need to list the numerous award-winning books and articles he’s subsequently produced. Nothing lame about that. Also, Murray proves that one can be both clever and pretty at Oxford. *The late Christopher Hitchens’s description.
Last edited 5 months ago by Allison Barrows
Sophie Duggan
5 months ago
I love the way “putting in a reliable 9 to 5 in the library” creates an added focus for contempt. Yes, it’s true: in Oxford, even studying – unless it’s done with the proper degree of poised nonchalance – can make you a target for bullying. Completed my degree there in 1996 and have never known such unpleasant people. Life got much better after leaving.
David Giles
5 months ago
This article should come with a trigger warning for undergraduates. It is an outrage that it hasn’t and I don’t think anybody should read another UnHerd article until a full editorial apology is issued.
Dumetrius
5 months ago
Saltburn is a town deep in the eastern coastal marshes of Essex where the descendants of George Pickingill & the beings dropped off in The Rendlesham Incident live. A repeater station broadcasts Nadine Dorries’ ‘The Plot’ on endless loop, out into the North Sea.
By night churchbells peal under the waves, heralding a nameless being that sucks down boatloads of refugees.
All the residents wear Tunisian clothes that they didn’t buy. And don’t fit.
AJ Mac
5 months ago
A rather sharply written reflection in review form that persuades me to give Saltburn a look, and to try and suffer though it. I did note that Mr. Maier, a doctoral candidate, calls undergraduate life funny, as if PhD students were impervious to satire and ridicule.
Tony Kilmister
5 months ago
Is the film entertaining? Came away none the wiser after this piece, which seems largely to be the author writing about himself.
Indeed, enough material to write a review of the author, if I could be bothered.
Last edited 5 months ago by Tony Kilmister
Dumetrius
5 months ago
Ahh, that explains AC Grayling.
Pip G
5 months ago
Oxford U sounds horrible; it must have been even more unpleasant in the 1960s. I had a lucky escape in a dull Midlands post war U.
To anyone thinking today about going to a U, or their child/ grandchild going to a U, think carefully about 1. For what benefit? 2. Where, avoiding Oxford (unless you are an (I) an ‘upper’ in society & (II) have money).
More seriously, after graduation I worked for 6 months in a factory then 6 months in an office, to see what I wanted to do; and wish I had done this on leaving school. I would recommend that to anyone.
Jerry Carroll
5 months ago
Sounds repulsive. Pass.
Matthew Duggan
5 months ago
I was at Oxford (sorry, Hugh Bryant) in the early 80s. The JCR institution was lame then (although nothing was as lame as the OU Students’ Union). How could it not be? Most of us had come to Oxford with expansive visions, keen to mingle with fellow citizens of the world, for intellectual or social ends. Only those who were pitifully parochial bothered with JCR trivia, or perhaps too lazy to do anything more ambitious. So I wonder whether Mr Maier should not use the JCR as a means of calibration, and get out of his college more.
Dengie Dave
5 months ago
See You Tube appearances by Ben Shapiro at both the Oxford and Cambridge Union debates. Boy, the Oxford undergrads really are hilariously super-thick, as the Cambridge undergrads took considerable glee in pointing out. Trouble is the Cambridge crowd weren’t that much smarter.
Andy Coughlan
5 months ago
I saw a preview of Saltburn a couple of weeks ago. It’s a very good film, but quite quirky and dark in places. I suspect Barry Keoghan will be up for a BAFTA at least.
The action in Oxford is only about the first 20 or 30 minutes, and I think Emerald Fennell does some really good visual storytelling to whip us through the main character’s first year and set up his relationships with the various people he’ll interact with at Saltburn.
The only downside to the film is if you’re a Sophie Ellis Bextor fan – you’ll never hear Murder on the Dance Floor again without the final scene popping into your head.
Oxford graduates are like Guardian readers. Within three minutes of making their acquaintance you’ll know all about it: ‘when I was at Orksford …’, ‘did you see that thing in the Guardian…’. Same thing.
Whereas you don’t have to wait for a Telegraph/Mail/Times reader to announce their allegiance.
Most of the “cool” oxbridge graduates I know are conscious of its lameness as described in the article and now prefer not to mention it. You’ve just encountered the lame ones.
‘Cool’? Oxbridge graduates? Hmmm.
How very true. Decades ago someone told me that an Oxbridge graduate would say this (without the Guardian bit) on meeting a new person. It is uncannily correct.
Not entirely true- it depends which set you are talking about! The smarter posh lot are likely these days to be the LAST ones to mention their Oxford creds!!!
Oooh; Oxford hasn’t changed a bit on the basis of this article.
An overlong, self-indulgent bit of navel-gazing about himself and his chums purporting to skewer the place for ‘lameness’ (how lame) while revealing, as usual, the Oxford set’s preoccupation with itself.
“As a result, and whatever its other successes, Saltburn fails to skewer what is distinctively worth skewering in undergraduate life today.”
Of course. If Saltburn took aim at current campus politics, it would be resoundingly cancelled.
The author convincingly describes Saltburn as a sort of cross between The Talented Mr. Ripley and Brideshead Revisited. In fact, it seems impossible to watch this movie without thinking of Ripley, his duplicity and social climbing–so why watch Saltburn at all?
I was also struck by the movie’s title, Saltburn. Apparently, it’s the name of an English country estate, but, for me, that doesn’t quite ring true. Brideshead is certainly the name of an English country estate, just as Manderley is certainly the name of a mysterious country house. But Saltburn sounds much more modest. Is the director trying to tell us something about the parvenu owners of that estate?
The author has written a fine review, imo. So convincing, in fact, he’s persuaded me not to watch the movie. I will stick to my non-politically-correct Korean horror movies for now. The directors of those movies could probably describe current Oxford student life quite convincingly.
Saltburn is a town in the North of England between Middlesbrough and Redcar.
I’m afraid nobody is planning on setting their film there any time soon.
If it did so skillfully and with great good humor, it would probably be watched by many and publicly celebrated by quite a few, and not just on the Dark Web or cultural fringe.
*And yes, a simultaneous and ultimately unsuccessful cancellation attempt would also occur.
More and more people refuse to be silent about campus follies, which is better than nothing. This NYT article by David Brooks (a moderate, anti-Trump conservative, a Jewish-born Christian and perhaps a “classical liberal” too) and the balance of the comments on it support my impression:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/16/opinion/college-university-antisemitism-crt.html
What is your favourite korean horror movie?
Me too. It sounds like the director is trading in derivatives. Has she nothing new to say? I lost interest in reading the review halfway through. I definitely won’t be wasting money on the film.
Candidly most of British culture is “lame” at present. We have lost our nerve and with it our inventiveness. Few experiment, preferring the shallows of repetitive memes.
If my landlord would accept experimentation as payment I might be a bit more inclined to experiment.
As a landord I might run a mile
I went to the “other place”, but this sketch also rings true for my student years. I was at Cambridge until 2016, and the latent culture was a sort of wincing neuroticism, with humour (such as it was) most commonly manifesting as bigot bashing or navel gazing about mental health. There were notable exceptions to this culture, of course, but the overall atmosphere was sorely lacking in rambunctiousness. Instead of encountering joy for life and learning, as I had hoped, I found myself surrounded by the tacit acknowledgment that such emotions were a function of small mindedness, a sign that one had not yet perceived our world as the prison that it truly is. Misery was a fact of life to be “normalised”, not a sign of spiritual emptiness.
We should call this nonsense out for what it is: a Gnostic heresy.
It became lame when it stopped being a finishing school for the elites and became a degree factory training the post-Thatcher broader middle classes whose entire being is motivated by angst about status and jobs.
Thanks to the author for unconsciously giving me a hint about how unwatchable ” Saltburn” is! Sounds like a 21st century and rather OTT version of ” Brideshead Revisited”, with none of the gravitas the latter brought to a seemingly frivolous pair of Oxonians, whose dissolute existence mirrored the socio- cultural angst of sections of the privileged.
Hopefully a positive effect of this movie would be that some high- minded, aspiring students from my part of the globe would be suitably put off an Oxford education( and not bankrupt their parents by forcing them to acquiesce to these plans).
397-4! Mr Kohli has set a new standard.
Oxford certainly in the preference to ‘the other place’, otherwise known as Cambridge.
One Priyamvada Gopal has been a a very divisive figure there.Do you happen to know anything about her? I gather she is/was a Brahmin.
Let us await the clash of the Titans on Sunday!!! Fingers crossed but we should be world champions!!
I donot like that person you mention. I don’t think she abides by any generic other than “Woke ” shrillness.
Divisiveness is in the nature of Woke imho.
Sorry that Mr Head et al. spoiled the party!
Australia was superb. Bad luck on us for crumbling after 10 wins.
All that stepping to leg to hit spinners off the stumps. I’m not sure if Head is very talented, or very lucky. Funny game, and all that.
Luck did count. But Aussie fielding was flawless. Cummings was the better skipper and KL Rahul, Yadav and Siraj flopped badly.
It was sweet revenge to see off both teams which won against them earlier – us and SA. The latter fought more bravely on Thursday than we did.
Thanks for the review. When Douglas Murray was a 19-year-old Oxford student, he wrote a masterly* biography of Lord Alfred Douglas, Oscar Wilde’s lover, “Bosie”. He followed it with a play, “Nightfall”, about Raoul Wallenberg. I’m sure I don’t need to list the numerous award-winning books and articles he’s subsequently produced. Nothing lame about that. Also, Murray proves that one can be both clever and pretty at Oxford.
*The late Christopher Hitchens’s description.
I love the way “putting in a reliable 9 to 5 in the library” creates an added focus for contempt. Yes, it’s true: in Oxford, even studying – unless it’s done with the proper degree of poised nonchalance – can make you a target for bullying. Completed my degree there in 1996 and have never known such unpleasant people. Life got much better after leaving.
This article should come with a trigger warning for undergraduates. It is an outrage that it hasn’t and I don’t think anybody should read another UnHerd article until a full editorial apology is issued.
Saltburn is a town deep in the eastern coastal marshes of Essex where the descendants of George Pickingill & the beings dropped off in The Rendlesham Incident live. A repeater station broadcasts Nadine Dorries’ ‘The Plot’ on endless loop, out into the North Sea.
By night churchbells peal under the waves, heralding a nameless being that sucks down boatloads of refugees.
All the residents wear Tunisian clothes that they didn’t buy. And don’t fit.
A rather sharply written reflection in review form that persuades me to give Saltburn a look, and to try and suffer though it. I did note that Mr. Maier, a doctoral candidate, calls undergraduate life funny, as if PhD students were impervious to satire and ridicule.
Is the film entertaining? Came away none the wiser after this piece, which seems largely to be the author writing about himself.
Indeed, enough material to write a review of the author, if I could be bothered.
Ahh, that explains AC Grayling.
Oxford U sounds horrible; it must have been even more unpleasant in the 1960s. I had a lucky escape in a dull Midlands post war U.
To anyone thinking today about going to a U, or their child/ grandchild going to a U, think carefully about 1. For what benefit? 2. Where, avoiding Oxford (unless you are an (I) an ‘upper’ in society & (II) have money).
More seriously, after graduation I worked for 6 months in a factory then 6 months in an office, to see what I wanted to do; and wish I had done this on leaving school. I would recommend that to anyone.
Sounds repulsive. Pass.
I was at Oxford (sorry, Hugh Bryant) in the early 80s. The JCR institution was lame then (although nothing was as lame as the OU Students’ Union). How could it not be? Most of us had come to Oxford with expansive visions, keen to mingle with fellow citizens of the world, for intellectual or social ends. Only those who were pitifully parochial bothered with JCR trivia, or perhaps too lazy to do anything more ambitious. So I wonder whether Mr Maier should not use the JCR as a means of calibration, and get out of his college more.
See You Tube appearances by Ben Shapiro at both the Oxford and Cambridge Union debates. Boy, the Oxford undergrads really are hilariously super-thick, as the Cambridge undergrads took considerable glee in pointing out. Trouble is the Cambridge crowd weren’t that much smarter.
I saw a preview of Saltburn a couple of weeks ago. It’s a very good film, but quite quirky and dark in places. I suspect Barry Keoghan will be up for a BAFTA at least.
The action in Oxford is only about the first 20 or 30 minutes, and I think Emerald Fennell does some really good visual storytelling to whip us through the main character’s first year and set up his relationships with the various people he’ll interact with at Saltburn.
The only downside to the film is if you’re a Sophie Ellis Bextor fan – you’ll never hear Murder on the Dance Floor again without the final scene popping into your head.