Elitism in Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24256/ideas.v14i1.8807Keywords:
Elitism, Social Realism, MovieAbstract
This study looks at the worldwide issue of elitism. It takes a critical view of elitism without making it seem better than it is, as shown in the film Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. The aim of this study is to examine how elitism is reflected in the dialogue and to show how the fictional world is connected to the real world. Film analysis through a social realism approach is linked to real social structure. By combining social realism with Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of elitism, this study introduces a new contribution to measure how social inequality is represented in the film and reflected in real-world social structures. This will be based on the theory by Pierre Bordieu, using a descriptive qualitative analysis. The data collection involved watching the movie three times to extract all relevant dialogues before conducting the analysis. The data set comprises 42 cases total, split into 9 cases in the Habitus framework, 6 cases in the Field framework, and 5 cases in the Cultural Capital framework, 9 Social Capital framework, 6 Economic Capital framework, 7 Symbolic Capital framework. This study provides an interpretation of elitism in the film and demonstrates the application of social realism to media reflections of real social hierarchies. This phenomenon is believed to create an imbalance of power, resulting in corruption and the potential for social exclusion and resentment.
References
Abduh, N. K., & Masruddin, M. (2023). Structural Studies of Robert Stanton in The Folklore of Luwu (Worongporong dan Pariama). IDEAS: Journal on English Language Teaching and Learning, Linguistics and Literature, 11(1), 117-126.
Animashaun, B., & Mayowa, B. (2018). Politics in Contemporary Nigerian Novel: A Case of Wale Okediran’s Tenants of the House and Richard Ali’s City of Memories. https://kubanni.abu.edu.ng/search?query=Politics%20in%20Contemporary%20Nigerian%20Novel
Archer, A., & Cawston, A. (2022). Celebrity Politics and Democratic Elitism. Topoi, 41(1), 33–43. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-021-09763-0
Aydoğan. (2023). A New Perspective to the Dede Korkut Stories Within the Framework of Habitus, Capital and Field Concepts of Pierre Bourdieu. https://doi.org/10.7884/teke.1360024
Barrado-Timón, D. A. (2024). Potential Elitism in Selection to Bilingual Studies: A Case Study in Higher Education. Open Education Studies, 6(1). https://doi.org/10.1515/edu-2022-0217
Benjamin, N. Y. (2024). Mainstreaming Social Realism in Children’s Literature. Global Academic Journal of Linguistics and Literature, 6(05), 197–201. https://doi.org/10.36348/gajll.2024.v06i05.003
Bourdieu, P. (2002). Forms of Capital. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Forms-of-Capital-Bourdieu/c0f5ae2d001470f1e655ab0ed776218e963fb2f4
Ekwonna, S. I. (2015). Capacity Gap in Elitism, Group, and Power Framework: The Phenomenon of Envy as Framework of Analysis. In Arabian Journal of Business and Management Review (OMAN Chapter (Vol. 4, Number 6). http://arabianjbmr.com/pdfs/OM_VOL_4_(6)/2.pdf
Freeman, S., & Diramio, D. (2016). Elitism or Pragmatism? Faculty Hiring at Top Graduate Programs in Higher Education Administration. https://www.academia.edu/download/44710740/Elitism_or_Pragmatisim.pdf
Gale, T., Molla, T., & Parker, S. (2017). The Illusion of Meritocracy and the Audacity of Elitism: Expanding the Evaluative Space in Education (pp. 7–21). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-4039-9_2
Gökçe, A. F., Aksu, M., & Fatsa, N. (2025). The Role of Economic Elites in Local Politics: The Gaziantep Example. Kent Akademisi, 18(4), 2308–2321. https://doi.org/10.35674/kent.1613540
Gopi, M., Saidabhanu, S., & Prince Charles, M. (2025). The Concept of Social Realism in Global English Literature. Shanlax International Journal of Arts, Science and Humanities, 12(S3-Apr), 181–184. https://doi.org/10.34293/sijash.v12is3-apr.9085
Grupa, M., & Kozłowski, T. (2021). Selected Determinants of Social Position and Elitism in Archaeological Studies on the Early Middle Ages (Vol. 14). https://swiatowitwuw.pl/resources/html/article/details?id=233750
Hermanto Sihombing, L., Alexander Sinaga, A., & Author, C. (2021). Representation of Social Class in Parasite Movie. Lire Journal (Journal of Linguistics and Literature, 5, 2021. https://doi.org/10.33019/lire.v
Ismayanti, D., & Syam, A. T. (2022). The Community Manipulation through Big Brother’ s Tyranny in George Orwell’ s Nineteen Eighty-Four. IDEAS: Journal on English Language Teaching and Learning, Linguistics and Literature, 10(2), 1556â-1569.
Johnson, R. (2022). Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery [Film].
Lorbeer, E. R. (2020). Contemporary Elitism in Higher Education. https://ssrn.com/abstract=3512115
Maurice, L. (2019). From Elitism to Democratisation: A Half-Century of Hercules in Children’s Literature. In Journal of Historical Fictions (Vol. 2, Number 2). http://www.omc.obta.al.uw.edu.pl/;
Nantais, L. R., & Hall, K. (2021). See and Be Seen: Wealth & Elitism in the Social Scene of the University of Pennsylvania. https://repository.upenn.edu/bitstreams/3d8d3a7c-2b25-483b-99bc-85d450d60891/download
Noviana, D. A., & Simanjuntak, M. B. (2022). Representation of The Impact of Social Gap That Affects Moral Values in the Film “Parasite.” http://jurnal-stiepari.ac.id/index.php/LITERACY
Okeke, R. C., & Anyadike, N. O. (2020). Elitism and the Informal Economy in the Age of Globalization. In KIU Journal of Social Sciences Copyright©2020 Kampala International University (Vol. 6, Number 3). https://www.researchgate.net/publication/344879051
Purnamasari, R., & Indiatmoko, B. (2019). The Image of Javanese Women in Gadis Pantai Novel by Pramodeya Ananta Toer; Social Realism Review. https://doi.org/10.15294/seloka.v8i1.29680
Radulović, B. (2022). Teachers’ Opinions About Elitism in Gifted Education. South African Journal of Education, 42. https://doi.org/10.15700/saje.v42ns1a2171
Rappa, A. L., & Mui-eng Ng, A. (2023). Special Assistance Plan (SAP) Schools in Singapore: Building Chinese Elitism or Settling on Meritocracy, Singapore style? BOHR International Journal of Social Science and Humanities Research, 2(1), 133–137. https://doi.org/10.54646/bijsshr.2023.37
Rhodes-Purdy, M., & Rosenblatt, F. (2023). Raising the Red Flag: Democratic Elitism and the Protests in Chile. Perspectives on Politics, 21(1), 241–253. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592721000050
Ruostetsaari, I. (2017). Stealth Democracy, Elitism, and Citizenship in Finnish Energy Policy. Energy Research and Social Science, 34, 93–103. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2017.06.022
Schirone, M. (2023). Field, Capital, and Habitus: The Impact of Pierre Bourdieu on Bibliometrics. https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a
Thurlow, C., & Jaworski, A. (2017). Introducing Elite Discourse: The Rhetorics of Status, Privilege, and Power. In Social Semiotics (Vol. 27, Number 3, pp. 243–254). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.1080/10350330.2017.1301789
Zheng, Z., & Maziha Mustappha, S. (2022). A Literature Review on the Academic Achievement of College Students. Journal of Education and Social Sciences, 20(1). https://jesoc.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/JESOC20_12.pdf
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Nabila Ardiningrum, Devani Warsito, Euis Meinawati
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under an Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See the Effect of Open Access)
