Bunuel = classist

For starters, at the time the rich were not portrayed as being absurd and ridiculous. The point here thought is that the rich are just as absurd and ridiculous as the poor. Notice the townspeople at the gate to the estate. They are as clueless as the rich (whom at this point we see as victims of their own creations). The only reason you saw them as being depicted in prejudice is because they make themselves look stupid (in a sense). Buñuel has said himself he was only interested in the interactions between people. When this group of people (the bourgeois) are cut off from the rest of the world, their interactions degrade into absurdity where their own beautiful mansions, created to distance themselves from the common man, have become a prison.

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This is the funniest thing I've read since months. Bunuel does not hate the rich. It's just that he has no sympathy for them and thinks that they don't give a *beep* about the rest of the world. And that is true. Of course there are some wealthy people who are excellent human beings but they are the exception.

Exterminating Angel is brutal in its attacks against the rich, yet it offers no reason for its criticism. Are we just supposed to hate all people who wear tuxedos? Despise people who play classical music and enjoy fine art?

Rich people aren't the only people who play classical music and enjoy fine art. It's just that they hijacked these for themselves so they can fool themselves into thinking that they are better than the rest of society. Like the Waltz originated as a Bavarian peasant dance to celebrate the Harvest, the bourgeosie hijacked that and made that their shtick.

In any case most bourgeois people have no taste when it comes to art. They're actually pretty vulgar under those fancy dresses and frilly skirts. Bunuel's movies simply show the extent to which the bourgeosie traps itself within it's own set of social conditions which it keeps repeating ad infinitum in order to keep surviving.




"Don't teach your grandmother to suck eggs." - Nathanael West

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Yeah Buñuel, as everybody knows, used to criticize the bourgeoisie. He always did it with witty remarks, poignant sense of humour, and showing how ridiculous are many of their ideas.

He had many reasons to do it. In Spain conservative groups of the upper-classes were the ones who supported the fascist regime of Franco (also the church), in France they banned his film "L'âge d'or" and destroyed the theatre where he was screening that film. In USA they fired him when his political ideas were identified as "Un-american". In México they made a huge fuzz when "Los olvidados" was released.

I mean don Luis had some valid reasons to criticize that segment of the society who truly believes they are far superior from the average Joe (you or me).
I have "friends" who belongs to "old money" families. They are proud of their last names because their grand-grand-grand father killed a gazillion of indians and conquered vast extensions of lands in México, or because they spent a fortune covering with gold an entire church.
These people thinks that they are better than poor people by nature, in particular if the poor fellows are not white. They doesn't like jews, protestants, muslims, atheists, lefties, etc. Albeit if they are rich and "white" they can make an exception... sometimes.
(BTW the same thing happens with the ultra-conservative groups in USA, just replace catholics for protestants, and there you have it)

Anyway Buñuel also criticized another classes, just take a look at "Viridiana" or "Nazarín" and you will notice how he painfully makes fun at some of the customs and ideas from the lower class. For Buñuel the mere fact of being poor doesn't makes you any better than a rich person, just like to be rich doesn't makes you better than a poor person.

In short: Buñuel criticizes the whole society, in particular the church and the bourgeoisie, but he always did it with great taste, his particular sense of humour, wonderful dialogues and shocking scenes. Producing in this way some of the best movies of all time.

If you are a hard-core conservative (even if you aren't catholic), surely you won't love "too much" Buñuel (in fact the ultra-conservative groups in Spain, France and México still hates don Luis to the core).

But If you are a tolerant person, and more important: If you loves GREAT cinema, then you can't help but to love him and his works.

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Bunuel is a very misunderstood film maker. As a result of his exile from Franco's Spain after the civil war, he has been type cast as being anti-bourgeois and obsessed with class struggle. But Bunuel's scope was so much broader than that.

Especially this film is misunderstood, and he hasn't helped us by refusing to explain its meaning. Although the most of the characters in the Exterminating Angel are upper class people, it is a spiritual film rather than a political one. His handling of spiritual themes is wrongly perceived as merely anti-clerical, but he shows that there exists a positive alternative available for everyone, including the wealthy burgeoisie. Bunuel allows a happy end for those that survive the trap of the house, although to understand this you need to pay very close attention, and most viewers don't.

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Well to be fair he did more or less the opposite in Viridiana.

Somebody here has been drinking and I'm sad to say it ain't me - Allan Francis Doyle

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definition of classism:
"prejudice or discrimination based on class"

By constantly ridiculing the rich and portraying all rich people as absurd and ridiculous, isn't Bunuel guilty of harboring the same "prejudice or discrimination based on class" that he so violently ridicules?

Exterminating Angel is brutal in its attacks against the rich, yet it offers no reason for its criticism. Are we just supposed to hate all people who wear tuxedos? Despise people who play classical music and enjoy fine art?

I think Bunuel is just the 20th century equivalent of a "hater".

Though I find it hard to believe anyone would look in a work of surrealist art for a justification for the hatred of the bourgeoisie, I am going to take your ludicrous post seriously merely for the sake of urinating on it.

1.) It does offer a reason for its criticism of the rich: it depicts the bourgeois party guests as cruel, shallow and reactionary. They are thus to be belittled and placed in an absurdist situation in which their more violent, crude and animalistic natures come out even more.

2.) Thus, Bunuel's distaste and mockery of these cruel bourgeois idiots is not merely a "prejudice"-- Mind you, Bunuel had been in similar circles before, and knew well enough how absurd human behavior can get.

3.) He never simply makes fun of people for wearing tuxedos, enjoying classical music, liking art, etc. Bunuel himself enjoyed such things (though I'm not entirely sure about the tuxedo part, but I don't doubt it). His is a mockery of class, rather than of culture. You're acting like The Exterminating Angel is merely some piece of vulgar Socialist Realism. If that's what you're looking for, I can't help you-- Though you might get some enjoyment from some of Brecht's plays or Pasolini's Salo. Or you could just go down to a tennis or golf club and lurk in the parking lot until you find someone driving a BMW or what have you and mow them down with an M2 Browning machine gun.

4.) *beep* you.

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That's a pretty unfair judgment of the film. I think it's important to point out that about half of the characters held on to their decency for the duration of the film. While he might poke fun at some of the customs and trappings of the rich, I didn't get the sense at any point that we were supposed to hate them. If anything, the point of the film was to strip away all of the politeness and social graces to show each individual at their basest human level. Some of them turned violent and irrational, while others were still focused on helping their friends in any way possible.

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