Glass Onion's Start Tells You The End

glass onions are pretty good film right but this video isn't a review you don't need some guy in your computer telling you it's another Big W from Ryan Johnson you know that already I do want to talk about it though because there is one aspect one thing this film does which I've not seen many people notice just yet and I think it's pretty neat that's the way Glass Onion tells you its Central Point from the very start before we meet miles Braun before we get to the island I'm talking about the opening puzzle box sequence because this whole thing is heavy with foreshadowing I am gonna spoil the whole film totally though so if you've not seen it yet hey go watch it then come back I'll wait all right you're back pretty good right so I do want to get into that opening sequence but before I can break down how it encapsulates the film's meaning we need to establish what that meaning is now I'm sure many of you picked up on all this yourselves and to be honest I discussed a lot of it in that last weirdly well-performing Ben Shapiro video so I'll try to be quick but in a nutshell Glass Onion is about glass onions the film's built around this titular metaphor spatialized in Miles house for the way we sometimes struggle to see things to just look at the plainly visible I like the Glass Onion as a metaphor an object that seems densely layered but in reality the center is in plain sight the idea of sophistication the Assumption of beautiful crystalline layers to be formed over teased back one by one obscures the fact that the onion is glass that there's nothing stopping us from staring straight to the center and seeing nothing there seeing black seeing the keenly visible absence of what was assumed this is the lens through which Glass Onion approaches the tech sector the strange culture of hero worship that's grown around it and the way it all spills over into adjacent corners of society influence a culture Millennial politics and all that all this is centered around miles Braun who's a musk job Zuckerberg SPF type character the billionaire head of a tech Empire and who's embroiled in a series of messy scandals first some legal weaseling to give himself full control of Alpha and then as the film goes on at murder or two he's a suspect here obviously but not the main one because Mars Brown is not an idiot the case doesn't crack open until Benoit Blanc detective extraordinaire finally opens his eyes to all the hints that have been dropping in front of us abandons the layers the filigreed edges of that Glass Onion and sees nakedly the thing at its Center miles Brawn is an idiot this film isn't a moralistic one not really but the takeaway here is hard to miss there's a sort of Mirage created by wealth material success and the trappings of this status everyone knows life is different for the rich the same rules don't apply to them etc etc but because of the way we take this for granted the way we've been fed this idea that they're above us because they're better than us Bolder more creative smarter we automatically run our perceptions of the miles bronze of the world through this absurdly generous filter you see dumb stuff and you recontextualize it as troubled genius you see a rothko and you so dazzled wow this guy has taste that you don't notice it's upside down and while the film is interested in the specific neuroses and feelings of texelebs the point of this film the central thrust this idea of the Glass Onion it isn't limited to this specific type guys like this are the primary genre of dude this film uses to explore these themes of perspective and status but crucially the key observation being made here is wider than them status does not equate in any direct way to Ability Worth or genius that is boiled down glass onions main point it's got other points too but this is the most Central one now let's talk about how we're shown this from minute one the film opens with each of these successful influential people these so-called disruptors receiving an intricate puzzle box from miles and when all these puzzles are cracked metaphorically or in Helen's case literally an invitation to the Greek murder mystery getaway is revealed this seems an appropriate way to open the movie right a little mystery a set of inscrutable riddles to be analyzed puzzled over solved before the Big Shots get admitted to Big Shot Island it's a bit of eccentric fun miles is the type of person to just do weird stuff like this whittled but implicitly it also seems to suggest a trial a qualification of of sorts on some level this is a type of test to earn a weekend in Paradise while the rest of the world's slowly going mad in Zoom group calls it's not formal there's nothing to stop the squad from teaming up but given how clear this film is about the way miles sees these disruptors as Visionaries like him in making this task the prerequisite to the disruptors actually getting accepting their invitations gloss onion frames this opening ritual as a justification of the praise prominence and place afforded to Bronze in a circle luxury is for the deserving the bright the Bold those few who are better whose essential betterness allows them to make the world theirs and at least for miles one layer of these puzzle box invitations seems to be the way they quietly confirm this these guys they must be brilliant not just anyone could solve these right well let's think about these puzzles what are they really they're not logic problems apart from maybe that one missing tile puzzle there's nothing here that really tests reasoning or anything similar no these puzzles rely far more on simple recognition than anything resembling brightness freaking miles man genius at First Once A Fibonacci sequence and mostly on the recognition of things considered classy smart or esoteric the chess end game the Fugue the atomic number the morse code if we are to understand this puzzle box opening in the way outlined above then it doesn't seem to work in the way miles intended we're not seeing brilliant people prove their Brilliance on an intellectual level through a quick show of wit we're seeing High status people playing a high status game spotting the cultural signifiers of this sophistication this class they're performing and barely succeeding at it it's a quiz no different to the countless Zoom quizzes being killed all around the world at the very same moment except it's not on celebrities or sport or movies it's about cultural capital this is a sociological term coined by Pierre board you put simply it's all those little things those intangible things which to a room full of high society types might Mark the son of an Ivy League professor as different most sophisticated than the son of a plumber from Brooklyn he'd get the highbrow references he'd know the proper attire to where to say a ball he'd know which of the knives and forks to use during a fancy meal what all the different types of wine glasses are for it's knowledge but it's also the awareness of which knowledge in particular is valued by the dominant culture but you argued we can see this process in higher education for instance that many University programs presuppose the possession of this cultural capital which a minority of students actually possess usually those from higher class backgrounds higher education is often seen as meritocratic the best candidates the brightest candidates are assumed to succeed regardless of background but their head start cultural capital gives to some students undermines the meritocracy here in a near invisible way the same principle writ large operates everywhere if you're raised speaking the language of power familiar with the society's legitimate dominant culture the etiquettes and cultural touchstones of the elite countless doorways are opened to you ones which remain closed for your less advantaged peers knowing this stuff puts you in an exclusive Club but if you start off outside this circle and then you make it big or in this case if you ingratiate yourself with someone who does you're gonna feel the need to overcompensate to show the world that you know all the right things that you like all the right art that's why so much of Miles house is dedicated to displaying the products and ephemera of high culture he knows it's important that he's seen to know it to appreciate it even though especially though he doesn't actually understand it and this performative sophistication is exemplified by the various tests in the puzzle boxes but that's kind of all they are they don't test for intelligence they test for how many signifiers of intelligence have been memorized not riddles but references the cultural capital the puzzle boxes are testing for is a little less high brow a little more stem minded perhaps than what buddy was talking about what miles bronze interior decoration suggests but it plays the same role it signifies Brilliance and its cultural capital all the same just maybe in a different currency so the completion of these puzzle boxes doesn't qualify the disruptors the doesn't justify their status not really there's no true intrinsic Merit being shown here all this accomplishes is a buttressing of this self-reinforcing mutually dependent linkage of cultural capital and worth in the eyes of those such a linkage would prove worthy we could even view this as a microcosm of the royal bird you claimed cultural capital played in education the creation of an illusory meritocracy by the way these touch stones of sophistication are privileged the way the mere recognition of them is implicitly held to show Brilliance this is all empty though and gloss onion knows it tells us that by having to Duke's mum be the one to kick start the recognition game she's no disruptor she's not in a position of power she's not held by anyone to be one of the greats and yet without her none of the others would have been able to muddle through that's big bigger than it might seem at first glance because what glacenians showing us in no uncertain terms is that all these systems the rich the high class have devised for marking themselves as better smarter more capable than the rest of us are to borrow a phrase Hokum either Duke's mum is just as special as the rest of these clowns in which case the system's busted because she's not uber wealthy and successful or none of them are special and the system's busted for the way it privileges them and allows this privilege to be passed down justified by cultural smoke screens like this what this boils down to then is quite impressive indeed Glass Onion a film centered around pulling the curtain back throwing into sharp relief the fact that those in position editions of power aren't necessarily more complex than they seem aren't automatically brilliant simply because of those positions and above all that the Assumption of this complexity these sophisticated crystalline layers distracts uh stops us from just looking and seeing that this specialness doesn't exist well Glass Onion shows us all that puts it right in front of our nose in the opening sequence doubtless you could take these ideas way further you could dig into this performative sophistication the prop-like use of culture you could bring in the way the film uses the Mona Lisa and the immense invisible power that painting wields over the world over the viewer even I'm sure there's a good deal of fascinating analysis to be done there but this video is about that opening sequence and the way it's so efficiently so obviously shows us the answer before the films even posed a question and the way this move is just so Glass Onion hope you've enjoyed watching and let me know what you thought below feel free to like share subscribe follow me on Twitter all that nonsense and if this video does even a third as well as that last glass oniony one did I've got another take on this film I wouldn't mind sharing otherwise stay tuned should be some cool stuff coming in January and big thanks as always to my patreon supporters on screen now especially tick [Music]

Channel: Pillar of Garbage

Views: 603,942

Keywords: glass onion, knives out, rian johnson, jonson, benoit blanc, daniel craig, miles bron, elon musk, edward norton, brand, andi, helen, claire, janelle monae, video essay, pillar of garbage, analysed, criticism, analysis, breakdown, explained, review, film, netflix, cultural capital, pierre bourdieu, its all empty, it's all empty

Id: OU2bOtm0XUI

Length: 12min 31sec (751 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 02 2023