How Triangle of Sadness Makes Us Look Beyond Racial Equality | Video Essay
The wealthiest are often portrayed as caricatures in Hollywood movies. They appear unsympathetic and decadent, often splurging on sculptures of themselves or hosting orgies on their bespoke yachts. This ensures that the films’ financiers do not see themselves in these characters and develop a conscience.
Triangle of Sadness is a breath of fresh sea breeze because it attempts to satirize human excess by making every character relatable. Everyone’s motivations make sense even if you disagree with their choices. It’s no surprise that this film was made in Europe.
Most of this video essay is spent breaking down the opening scene which has a subtle message about how modern society only seems to be interested in paying lip service to equality rather than addressing the real issues behind it.
Just noticed the perfume Carl was modeling for which he found on the beach
Yeah, and he was delighted
Maybe the first part is about power of beauty, the privilege it brings, then the second part is about power of wealth and a hierarchy based on money. Third part is about individual powers, skills and abilities. Leadership, brutal force and trade.
As a Swede, Ruben Östlund is my hero for taking our weird, Scandinavian way of sarcastically and satirically commenting on everything - and he's been "taking over" Hollywood with it. I love that he keeps true to his roots, and represents us Swedes as we should be, not as vikings or russians in everything one of us is cast in, and he's using Swedish actors who's been big in Sweden for (sometimes) decades but only ever gotten casted as - like I said - russians or vikings in Hollywood, if at all. He plays to their strong sides, because he *knows* their strong sides. And Swedes and Russians have literally *nothing* in common, so why are we even being casted as Russians? Ruben is a wonderful edition to the list of internationally known Swedes. He's doing his thing, and he's a *superb* director.
Wonder if it was consciously put even at a physical level of the yacht, top deck, regular level then bottom (basement) of the boat. The wealthy (if I recall were all Whites in the film) that can pretty much travel anywhere in the yacht w/out much restriction, then the working Whites (captain, co-captain, the well dressed crew members, even the hair bunned topless guy that got kicked off) were on working on deck level to get sun and such. Then the minority engineers, Abigail, cleaners and such all working below the deck. I mean we didn't even know that there was a black crew member until late 2nd or 3rd act when he was one of the survivors.
You deserve a growing audience. A really solid digestible commentary on a brilliant movie. Hope the algorithm will pick this up! That delivery at the end was so funny! Cheers
The algorithm found me! Excellent analysis 👍
0:03 humour taboo 5:03 main characters, they slowly lose their status as the parts go on 5:35 modernity and power
This is a really good analysis, helped me further understand the film and honestly pick up on details that i completely missed.
This is wonderful! What a great movie. So refreshing. RIP Charlbi Dean
I am really missing video essays of this film, well done!
I think race is a major factor, but also, as you point out, not a major factor in all aspects of class inequality. Both can be true, right? It is often a big factor, but also sometimes not a factor. Wild movie! love it
Best observations I’ve seen on YT. Thank you. ♥️
This is a great explanation!
A shout from Brazil. Good content!
love your videos, keep making more such awesome videos, ur loyal viewer ❤❤❤❤
Brilliant review!
This is suuuuuch an interesting take!
Amazing review more power for ur channel 💛🤟 love from Philippines 🇵🇭
I also think it is interesting that the movie critiques racism and class structure, while also kind of claim that Abigail can fish with her bare hand, and make fire without tools, simply because she is working class and brown and thus primitive. Such a meta situation...
This is fucking brilliant analysis. I’m blown away dude. Keep it up!
To me the movie wasn’t about racism but economic discrimination. On the ship the passengers were rich and powerful but once they are on the island and all that’s stripped away they are just a bunch of assholes who can’t survive without someone who knows how to do things.
really really good video
6:56 mins shows the luscious vanity of male models. The host was clearly more suited to the role. But rather acquire power than shallow praise. Beauty is skin deep. Fashion is about hiding imperfections.
Wow great job on this! Wishing you the blessings of the KZhead Algorithm xD but no joke, this was a great digest!
Great movie. I also liked the filmmusic.
Finally, a real content in the KZhead's ocean of mediocre! Good job.
I believe the dog is actually a boston terrier
I deeply enjoyed this, thank you
Interesting. This doesn't really matter in the greater context of the films communication internationally, but a whole heaping lot of the extras in all Ruben's films are authentic people from the art world, fashion world, celebrities etc in Sweden, basically playing themselves, like cameos. The designer (female in t-shirt) judging Carl, is a famous one (Ann Sofie Back) and beside her is a Swedish fashion editor from Elle, and the blond in the back an actress who's also a famous fashion stylist; the dog is the designer's (every Swede who knows fashion immediately recognizes the dog at the first frame of it) not the woman's who has it in their lap. The people on the entire first row of the catwalk scene are famous profiles in Sweden (Ruben's country) and Ruben himself is married to a fashion photographer, who knows all these people and is the real reason this script was written, as Ruben's fascination with the world and hierarchies of fashion came about through his relationship to his wife, and they spent hours discussing the realities of the business, where beauty is the ONLY currency, and male models have the lowest status, the shortest careers and get less pay than the female models (unique reverse situation than the usual). This idea of beauty as currency, and the totally new discovery for Ruben of actual relationships as transactional (to boost careers, like Yaya does for Carl) was what got him writing in the first place. It was a real story about a male model who'd had a break for a big perfume brand, but slowly started losing his hair; his agent said he had 2 years left in him, but being the face of a big house he had to either sit tight for a while, or get a more famous girlfriend in fashion to get another high profile job, boost his profile, and that got Ruben's attention. Understand, to Ruben's generation, commodity-type relationships (fake for publicity) is a shocking discovery. The idea that not even that is genuine or private today. Also the entire money-vs - equality conversation is taken word for word from his own early dating with his wife. Of course there's a racial aspect in a film all about various hierarchies. In the first part, they are your commodity, your flavour, the face you give, what you deliver. The model is object, the jury subject. The designer's dog is a visual brand even (to those who know). Yaya hardly needs Carl, but he's going nowhere without her, they both kinda know that. His hopes of being her equal is doomed, he has no currency to be "the man" literally and figuratively (but that changes in chapter 3, at which point Yaya starts caring or feelig sorry for herself ). Actually, it's the african engine worker that was supposed to become king of the island originally. But one of Ruben's students said he thought it would be more interesting if it was a female, and Ruben totally agreed and changed the script to make Abigail, the asian toilet cleaner, the heroine. Which dictated the rest of who does what. What's really cool and utterly unique about Ruben's working method is he does the exact opposite to most screen writers/directors. Instead of hush hush about his work, from day one he does nothing but talk to people about his ideas he's writing, trying them out, listening to people's reactions and thoughts. Students, family, friends, colleagues, anyone. So for a year or two things are still changed, adjusted, new stories arise, old ideas are dumped, in search of the right way to raise the questions he's interested in to the effect he's hoping for. Also the way his actors play these characters is largely up to them, and include big surprizes, so changes must be made to scenes, in order to follow the script credibly, the way a character is portrayed, so the story gets told. I think there is a possibility of reading more premeditated aspects into his work therefore, on the other hand I believe he's highly intuitive and sensitive to what's going on frame by frame, (like a musician with perfect pitch), so that more layers arise kind of naturally when shooting. Nomatter how high he turnes up the volume of comedy, satire, absurdity, it's really important to him there's a believability about each scene, or the spell is broken (the agreement with the audience). So he gets in deep with research on specifics like luxury yacht companies and related stories, or actual problems of the fine arts world vs handling byte sized media when writing The Square. Which was likewize full of real fine art dealers, several controversial celebrity artists, critics and society figures more or less representing themselves, lending more than a bit of real world credibility to the scenes, at least for Swedish audiences with an observant eye. But his films work regardless of cameos or famous actors in the roles. Which is also a neccesary choice. And I'd argue it gives more probability to limit those than if all these actors were hollywood celebs, or the Kardashians were in the front row. It might be just as funny, but not as uncomfortable and unpredictable, or ambiguous if it was an all star cast. I like that alot about Ruben's work. He's a big fan of my favorite director Michael Haneke, which was evident to me from the very get go, and still is to some degree in his work (although Haneke doesn't do comedy). He's definately had so much fun putting together scenes with political references (not just the quotes mind you), and it's a bit funny to me foreigners either don't notice or more or less ignore them. Harrelson though, fell for his role immediately as he's an avid anarchist. It's tangible how much he enjoys playing the Marxist American Captain bonding with the Ultracapitalist Russian Oligarch over their common passion: getting shtfaced. 😂 Truly a fantastic casting choice! This film is one of the best modern films studying how human behavior and hierarchy shifts when you change the working currency, the funtioning system of power. Three obvious currencies apply to this film: part 1 Beauty. Part 2 Wealth. Part 3 Practical survival skills. Race, gender and age is involved but in the end these systems are all quite absolute within their context, but redundant in another, except perhaps the practical skills which are always necessary for any other systems implementation. So... even in part 3 cute becomes currency to some degree, but wealth and uselessness is dead weight. Like the poor are to the oligarch in his world. In Den Wolken, as it were. You should see Östlund's other films. Yes, film and all media for that matter, is manipulation, as is the process of anyone telling a story. Both Haneke and Östlund want their audiences to remember that.
It’s BRILLIANT…. And DeLeon is the best actress I’ve seen in years…
This movie was fkn amazing!!!!
at the end is so hahaha
art is subjective and you can interpret images however you want but downplaying the importance of race when it comes to inequality is downright problematic and borderline racist. Just because there are images of a rich asian woman doesn´t mean that race doesn´t play a big part in the movie. I´d say the most important takeaway from these scenes is just how much an audience is willing to ignore racialized characters in favor of white characters in a movie. ofc these thing can be seen in however many ways you want and that´s the sign of a good film, but saying that race is of small importance shows how biased you are, specially when there´s a scene in the yacht where all the cleaning crew is made up of asian people indication a clear racial disparity in inequality, at least in western countries.
I share the same sentiments as if racism and colonialism don't play a part in the proliferation of marginalized folks working service level jobs esp on cruise lines. The west likes to exploit people in vulnerable extenuating circumstances similar to Abigail. Ironically the analysis falls in line with what the Russian capitalist would probably emphatically argue about. Racism and racial politics are much more nuanced than simply superficial representation. Side note but just because someone is represented doesn't mean that they don't face racism.
I have to disagree with this entirely.Race and class is intertwined, that's why majority of the waiting staff are white, the people who are forced to clean up literal shit and those who work below the deck are people of colour...that's no coincidence. when Paula asks Abigail why she gets more, its not just in the capitalistic sense, but from a racial perspective too... Abigail is not as deserving as the white counterparts EVEN in the wild...at least that's what Paula is really trying to say. Also even the film in some ways portrays the radicalized character in negative ways. Abigail is portrayed as more animalistic than the others (when she picks up the stick in defence, or when she hits Yaya with the rock compared to how the men could barely hit the donkey without crying). On the island, Nelson is giving Dmitrv a haircut...he's STILL relegated to a service person despite the fact that they are no longer on the yacht. Racism is rooted not only in our system, but in our minds.
It's not a frech bulldog.
Reply to the question on the last part of the video: She shouldn't be there if she doesn't speak English.
Why not
Everything is racist nowadays to a certain soft ass people 😂.
no, not EVERyTHING. Only when the "victim" is black.
kzhead.info/sun/i8msobiojXqCias/bejne.html made me LOL