“Wuthering Heights” by Emily Brontë, a novel about revenge and destruction and the darkest parts of humanity, is being adapted into an erotic, dark romance-esque film with a sprinkle of Charli XCX—because that makes sense.
Following the release of the first teaser trailer, the adaptation of the classic book has been in hot water due to the sexual nature of all the clips featured in the video. Fans feel betrayed by this interpretation of the story because it goes against everything Brontë wrote.
“Wuthering Heights” is about Lockwood, a man who rents a manor house owned by Heathcliff and wishes to hear the backstory of his surly landlord. The housekeeper recounts the tragedies that occurred on the property, and through her, readers meet Heathcliff when he first came to live with Catherine Earnshaw and her family.
Heathcliff falls in love with Earnshaw, but that isn’t the point; it just gives Heathcliff his motivations for the rest of the novel. Their relationship turns into one of obsession and results in Heathcliff terrorizing the lives of innocent people just because she rejected him.
Emerald Fennell, however, decided that this movie is going to be an angsty love story with Jacob Elordi shirtless as often as possible.
In addition to the themes of the original novel being completely ignored, key aspects of the characters are also disregarded to get the A-list cast that every movie seems to have these days.
Heathcliff is described as “dark-skinned” and, therefore, should be cast as a person of color. Elordi, if you haven’t noticed yet, is a white man.
The abusive treatment Heathcliff is a victim of is, in part, due to his skin color, and the complete disregard for such a crucial part of his character enforces the idea that Fennell doesn’t care about the source material, she just cares about making a sexy gothic film that shocks audiences the same way “Saltburn” did.
One online creator argues that the erotic nature of the trailer could just be a guise to get more people to buy tickets rather than what actually happens in the movie. She discusses the growing market for smut in the book publishing industry and how that translates to film. However, I think this signals a bigger issue.
Why must a piece of media be erotic for it to sell? A classic novel became a classic for a reason, and in this case, it wasn’t because of how hot the characters are.
To top it all off, the trailer featured a song by Charli XCX, an artist known for her fun party music. The song, “Everything is Romantic,” comes from Charli’s “Brat” album, which is upbeat and alternative and does not match the story at all.
Many of the creative liberties Fennell has taken contradict the essence of “Wuthering Heights” and make me doubt whether she’s read the book at all. With media literacy on the decline, it’s no surprise that classic novels are being taken at face value without any deeper analysis.
Brontë, along with her two sisters, did the unimaginable and became literary geniuses as women. Women, during this time, often had to write under pseudonyms to even be considered for publishing. Mary Ann Evans, for instance, published under “George Eliot,” and the Brontës were no different. Each had their own male name to avoid any prejudice due to their gender.
“Wuthering Heights,” under Fennell’s direction, would make Brontë turn in her grave. It is not a romance, and framing it as such disregards the entire point of the story and spits on her efforts in writing a gothic masterpiece.
I am apprehensive about this movie, but who knows? Maybe Fennell will finally open a copy of “Wuthering Heights,” and the full film will be identical to the book. We’ll all have to wait until Valentine’s Day to find out because, of course, a story that is not about love is coming out on the day of love.
