Consuming Saltburn

Since its theatrical release and its subsequent arrival on the streaming service Amazon Prime, Emerald Fennell's Saltburn (2023) has generated an exceptional level of audience engagement. It has done so within a media context that has largely dispensed with the 'water cooler' moment of shared film consumption. As platforms have diversified and cinema attendance has declined, such collective cultural events have largely become the preserve of big-budget studio franchises. Saltburn is a striking exception. Whether one points to the more than four billion user engagements on TikTok, the countless YouTube reaction videos, the popularity of fan-made memorabilia (including so-called 'Jacob Elordi bathwater' candles and cocktails), the numerous Saltburn-themed parties held in cities around the world, Sophie Ellis-Bextor's resurgence on the UK and US charts, or the film's circulation across social media accounts as different as those of NASA and Grindr, it is clear that the film has inspired a passionate audience response. Critical reception has proved no less divided, ranging from the laudatory to the disparaging. Taking this reception as its starting point, this timely collection brings together a group of scholars to explore the film's role in its current contexts. It interrogates Saltburn's virality and the impassioned reactions it has garnered, while situating the film within the contemporary cinematic landscape through analyses of how it engages with questions of genre, intertextuality, monstrosity, social class and queer cinema.