Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
'Wuthering Heights' & Generations of Misunderstanding
45 Plays1 month ago
In this episode of 'Adaptation: The Book to Movie Podcast,' Nate and Chris break down the famed novel 'Wuthering Heights' by Emily Brontë as well as its film adaptations, in particular, the 2026 film written and directed by Emerald Fennell.
In their discussion, they cover the history behind the book and the reasons it has been deeply misunderstood over the nearly 200 years since its publication, all culminating in an unfortunate (and perhaps misguided) hate campaign via social media by fans of the source material.
References:
Nate's essay, 'Wuthering Heights': In Defense of Emerald Fennell's Adaptation.
The Big Picture: The Heaving 'Wuthering Heights' and the Throbbing 'Pillion': A Very Horny Valentine's Day Double Feature
Based on a Book: Wuthering Heights (2026)
UP NEXT: 'Lord of the Rings' by J. R. R. Tolkien and the film 'Fellowship of the Ring' directed by Peter Jackson.
Follow us on social media:
Nate's Letterboxd (@professor_n8)
Chris's Letterboxd (@cjanderson878)
Hosts: Nate Day
Producer: Nate Day
"Adaptation Theme"
- Written by: Chris Anderson, Jem Zornow
- Performed by: Chris Anderson, Jem Zornow, Nate Day
Recommended
Transcript
Podcast Promotions and Sponsorships
00:00:00
Speaker
Ever notice how ads always pop up at the worst moments?
00:00:04
Speaker
When the killer's identity is about to be revealed.
00:00:08
Speaker
During that perfect meditation flow.
00:00:12
Speaker
On Amazon Music, we believe in keeping you in the moment.
00:00:16
Speaker
That's why we've got millions of ad-free podcast episodes, so you can stay completely immersed in every story, every reveal, every breath.
00:00:26
Speaker
Download the Amazon Music app and start listening to your favorite podcasts ad-free, included with Prime.
00:00:33
Speaker
If your team isn't using ClickUp, you're wasting time, and Dad approves it.
00:00:38
Speaker
61% of knowledge workers manage work more than doing it, switching apps 1,000 times a day.
00:00:42
Speaker
That's work sprawl and costs millions.
00:00:44
Speaker
ClickUp replaces 20 apps with convergence, uniting projects, docs, and chats, while AI super agents handle the busy work.
00:00:51
Speaker
Join 4 million teams using ClickUp to finish work 30% faster.
00:00:55
Speaker
Try it free and get 15% off AI upgrades at clickup.com slash podcast.
00:01:00
Speaker
That's C-L-I-C-K-U-P dot com slash podcast.
Podcast Updates and Announcements
00:01:12
Speaker
Welcome to Adaptation, the book to movie podcast.
00:01:15
Speaker
I'm Nate.
00:01:16
Speaker
And I'm Chris.
00:01:18
Speaker
And we are back to discuss Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, as well as mostly Emerald Fennell's adaptation, but I think we'll cover several others.
00:01:29
Speaker
But we're back from a brief unexpected hiatus.
00:01:31
Speaker
Chris, what's up with that?
00:01:33
Speaker
Yeah, sorry guys.
00:01:35
Speaker
I know everyone thought we fell off the face of the earth for two weeks.
00:01:40
Speaker
We unfortunately made an awesome recording and episode with our dear friend Hannah about Hamnet, which was delightful and so much fun.
00:01:51
Speaker
And then we lost the freaking audio content.
00:01:56
Speaker
And that's a
Current Reads and Movie Experiences
00:01:57
Speaker
super bummer.
00:01:58
Speaker
But we'll have her back on later in the year.
00:02:00
Speaker
Have no fear.
00:02:02
Speaker
But yeah, that's where we've been.
00:02:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:05
Speaker
And I just to qualify, we didn't lose the audio content.
00:02:09
Speaker
Yes, correct.
00:02:10
Speaker
So we are switching hosting platforms.
00:02:14
Speaker
Everything will be in the same exact spot on your streaming service here.
00:02:19
Speaker
And we're just excited to be back at it for this pretty crazy text, both in and of itself and the culture surrounding it.
00:02:28
Speaker
I think before we dive into Wuthering Heights, Chris, what have you been reading?
00:02:34
Speaker
Yeah, I'm really excited about this one.
00:02:36
Speaker
I just Googled it to find the author's name, and I'm seeing a bunch of controversies about appropriation and perhaps mistreatment of the content.
00:02:50
Speaker
But for my part, just as a reader, I just finished T.J.
00:02:56
Speaker
Klune's House on the Cerulean Sea.
00:02:59
Speaker
Have you heard of it?
00:03:00
Speaker
Sounds familiar.
00:03:01
Speaker
Is it like big right now or something?
00:03:03
Speaker
Why does it sound familiar?
00:03:04
Speaker
I think, yeah, we're a little behind the curve.
00:03:06
Speaker
It was pretty big, I want to say two years ago now, maybe less than that.
00:03:10
Speaker
Okay.
00:03:12
Speaker
Very cool book, very on-the-nose sort of perspective of all of this controversy I'm seeing.
00:03:20
Speaker
I'm going to ignore and let people explore for themselves, but in a nutshell, how does society treat people who are different and other and why?
00:03:31
Speaker
And, you know, the consistency with which people get to know someone and suddenly they realize they're ignorant jumping to conclusions was incorrect.
00:03:44
Speaker
Just a delightful book.
00:03:45
Speaker
Very heartwarming.
00:03:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:48
Speaker
conclusion.
00:03:49
Speaker
So I guess maybe I need to explore these accusations a little more before I recommend it.
00:03:55
Speaker
But still knowing that, and having seen them, I'm going to say go read it.
00:04:00
Speaker
Cool, cool
Exploring Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights
00:04:01
Speaker
book.
00:04:02
Speaker
Cool.
00:04:02
Speaker
Makes you feel good.
00:04:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:04
Speaker
What's been on the screen for you?
00:04:06
Speaker
You know, I'm
00:04:08
Speaker
It's been a little dry lately because I was sick over the last couple of weeks.
00:04:12
Speaker
There's stuff going around here.
00:04:14
Speaker
So I really feel like going and sitting in an enclosed room with strangers and subjecting them to that.
00:04:20
Speaker
So the one that I have seen is Send Help, which is that island survival.
00:04:27
Speaker
thriller drama horror comedy thing with Rachel McAdams.
00:04:31
Speaker
It's so fun and so funny.
00:04:33
Speaker
Is it?
00:04:33
Speaker
I really love that movie.
00:04:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:35
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:04:36
Speaker
It's like hooting and hollering the whole time.
00:04:38
Speaker
It's so fun.
00:04:39
Speaker
I saw an ad for it and it looks like something I'd really enjoy.
00:04:43
Speaker
Yes, I think it is.
00:04:45
Speaker
It's a little gory.
00:04:46
Speaker
Oh, if you had to cover my eyes a couple of times.
00:04:49
Speaker
Oh, but you know, I'm I'm a little squeamish, more squeamish probably than the average bear.
00:04:55
Speaker
Yes, you are.
00:04:57
Speaker
So, you know, grain of salt.
00:05:00
Speaker
But is it is it just in theaters right now or is it streaming already?
00:05:05
Speaker
Still just theaters.
00:05:07
Speaker
Okay.
00:05:07
Speaker
Okay.
00:05:08
Speaker
I'll track that down.
00:05:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:09
Speaker
So I've literally only seen, I think one trailer for it or one little blurb.
00:05:15
Speaker
I wasn't sure.
00:05:16
Speaker
Oh, really?
00:05:17
Speaker
Yeah, I haven't heard much.
00:05:18
Speaker
It's good.
00:05:18
Speaker
And I think it's second weekend drop.
00:05:20
Speaker
I think it only dropped like 5% or less in its second weekend, which is lost unheard of.
00:05:26
Speaker
You usually drop close to 50%.
00:05:29
Speaker
So, so yeah, people are really enjoying it.
00:05:33
Speaker
It's not like setting the box office on fire, but the people that are going to see it are really enjoying it.
00:05:38
Speaker
Okay, I'm gonna track that down.
00:05:40
Speaker
Speaking of things that may or may not be enjoyed by certain groups of people, Chris has got a stunned look on his face while I say that.
00:05:50
Speaker
Let's talk about a wild transition.
00:05:54
Speaker
You know what?
00:05:55
Speaker
I'm over it.
00:05:56
Speaker
I don't even care.
00:06:00
Speaker
You're not wrong, but... Yeah, I know.
00:06:02
Speaker
We'll dive into it a little bit, but there's been some controversy around this movie.
00:06:06
Speaker
And before we talk about that, Chris, tell us about Emily Bronte's book, Wuthering Heights.
00:06:12
Speaker
Yes.
00:06:13
Speaker
First of all, I should have said it after the first one, Bronte.
00:06:16
Speaker
Oh, Bronte.
00:06:17
Speaker
Okay.
00:06:18
Speaker
Sorry, Emily.
00:06:19
Speaker
I kind of went back and forth a lot on this one.
00:06:22
Speaker
I mean, the fact is we owe like an entire dedicated episode to this family.
00:06:31
Speaker
Right.
00:06:32
Speaker
And so in light of that, I have kept the sort of author introduction and summary perhaps less detailed and more brief than usual.
00:06:43
Speaker
Okay.
00:06:44
Speaker
Just disclaimer there.
00:06:45
Speaker
Because it's a fascinating family of writers.
00:06:49
Speaker
So Wuthering Heights was published in 1847 by Emily Bronte.
00:06:54
Speaker
She had some poetry that her sister, Charlotte Bronte, convinced her to have published.
00:07:00
Speaker
But otherwise, this is literally her one and only novel.
00:07:06
Speaker
Really?
00:07:06
Speaker
One and done.
00:07:07
Speaker
Isn't that crazy?
00:07:09
Speaker
I mean, I'm sure she wrote it all the way to the bank for her whole like 40 years of life or whatever was expected back then.
00:07:16
Speaker
So I'm sure she's fine.
00:07:19
Speaker
The poetry book that they submitted and got published, you know, this was coming up on 200 years ago.
00:07:26
Speaker
So who knows how accurate this was.
00:07:28
Speaker
But supposedly the folklore is that the publisher told them only two copies sold.
00:07:37
Speaker
And Wuthering Heights is another one of those books that has done much better since than it did, you know, in her lifetime while she was still there.
00:07:47
Speaker
And part of that is due to, as I said, crazy family history, Charlotte Bronte.
00:07:55
Speaker
I guess maybe it's just to me, but arguably the more famous sister with her book, Jane Eyre.
00:08:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:02
Speaker
Yeah, arguably.
00:08:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:04
Speaker
So, you know, context, perspective, whatever.
00:08:07
Speaker
But, I mean, nonetheless, this is inarguably a classic.
00:08:11
Speaker
Born in 1818, we see a lot of parallels, as we've discussed with many authors, you know right about what you know, a lot of parallels between her life and setting, especially, of the book, which actually led me to really ask myself a lot of questions throughout the book, but I'll save that and kind of ask you in the discussion section.
00:08:32
Speaker
Obviously in Victorian England, incredibly difficult to even get published as a woman.
00:08:39
Speaker
So all three published under pseudonyms.
00:08:42
Speaker
So Wuthering Heights was published under the name Ellis Bell.
00:08:47
Speaker
And then her name was added...
00:08:50
Speaker
not even as by Emily Bronte initially, but after her death, it was added to an editorial page near the front of the book.
00:08:57
Speaker
Just exactly the amount of sexism we expect.
00:09:02
Speaker
But I did think it was fun when they published the poetry together and her sister's publications.
00:09:07
Speaker
So she wrote under the pseudonym, the pen name, Ellis Bell, and wrote under the name Acton Bell, and Charlotte under the name
00:09:16
Speaker
Curer or Curer, which first of all, crazy names, what is this?
00:09:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:22
Speaker
But I really love that it maintained each of their actual initials.
00:09:25
Speaker
Initials, yeah.
00:09:27
Speaker
I mean, maybe I'm just dense, which unfortunately I think I say that every episode.
00:09:32
Speaker
I was just going to say, stop saying that.
00:09:34
Speaker
This is not the first time that I've seen that it was originally published under the pseudonym Alice Bell.
00:09:40
Speaker
Never put that together, that it was... Oh.
00:09:44
Speaker
EB.
00:09:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:46
Speaker
So I felt a little dumb when I saw that, but it's a fun little morsel, a little tidbit for you.
00:09:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:51
Speaker
Yeah, like I said, we owe this family so much more than what we have time to commit here, but like real broad scope, their father was a curate, clergy or parish priest, meaning there was much more emphasis on education, literacy, writing, especially for women.
00:10:11
Speaker
to be expected
Characters and Themes in Wuthering Heights
00:10:12
Speaker
in the average rural English home of this time.
00:10:15
Speaker
There were six children in total, so Emily had five siblings.
00:10:19
Speaker
I believe only four of them grew to adulthood, survived to adulthood, which we see echoes of in the book, of course.
00:10:28
Speaker
And then, as I said, arguably her most famous sibling, Charlotte Bronte, the author of Jane Eyre.
00:10:35
Speaker
I did see a wild, I didn't corroborate this, so I didn't want to present it as 100% fact, but I did see there's speculation that they had a somewhat unsanitary home living conditions, partially due to their water source being contaminated by runoff from the church graveyard.
00:10:55
Speaker
Oh, man.
00:10:58
Speaker
Yikes.
00:10:59
Speaker
Yep.
00:11:00
Speaker
Yep.
00:11:01
Speaker
Which, of course, as we know, life expectancy far lower than anyway.
00:11:05
Speaker
Larger families, because there's some infant or adolescent mortality rate expected.
00:11:10
Speaker
But still, that was like...
00:11:13
Speaker
There's so much here, obviously.
00:11:14
Speaker
I mean, the biographies on this entire family, so much here, so, so much here.
00:11:18
Speaker
So unfortunately, we kind of need to move forward to get to what was already a controversial episode without this crazy family history.
00:11:29
Speaker
I have chosen for two reasons to remain basically spoiler free for the book.
00:11:36
Speaker
Okay.
00:11:37
Speaker
And we have discussed this, usually a book this old, we are not concerned with that.
00:11:41
Speaker
Right.
00:11:42
Speaker
But for one thing, it is a classic for a reason.
00:11:47
Speaker
We've also discussed that on previous episodes.
00:11:49
Speaker
I'm not a big, you have to read the classics guy.
00:11:52
Speaker
But I do think some need to be allotted their fair share of sort of being held sacred.
00:12:02
Speaker
And this is one that I really think needs to be allowed to unveil its own secrets to a reader firsthand, even if you've seen the movie that is, in this case, perhaps more than any, not the same as consuming this text yourself.
00:12:17
Speaker
The other reason is because to a certain extent, the depth of this story, as a reader, you are beholden to consuming it in whole.
00:12:29
Speaker
There is not an easy way to unravel it into digestible pieces, which I think is part of the magic of the writing and why it's a classic.
00:12:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:40
Speaker
I think that plays into how difficult it's been to adapt.
00:12:43
Speaker
Yes, exactly.
00:12:43
Speaker
As well.
00:12:44
Speaker
Exactly.
00:12:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:45
Speaker
So, so, um, too long, didn't read.
00:12:48
Speaker
I'm, uh, I'm not going to give you spoilers because I can't, and I won't.
00:12:54
Speaker
Uh, the, the copy I tracked down for this reading, the first time I read this, I, if I remember correctly, I believe it was an audio book.
00:13:01
Speaker
This is my second reading.
00:13:02
Speaker
It included a,
00:13:03
Speaker
I think it was 40 pages, a very in-depth primer on the text, an entire sort of pseudo dictionary of the angry, grumpy housekeeper man's, what I've always read as a Scottish brogue.
00:13:23
Speaker
I guess I don't know if that was the accent she was going for, if it's just funny.
00:13:27
Speaker
such rough Yorkshire that it leans that way.
00:13:30
Speaker
Sure.
00:13:31
Speaker
I think in the writing it's understandable, but they included an entire little dictionary of what the heck he's saying.
00:13:38
Speaker
That's hysterical.
00:13:39
Speaker
There was an entire family tree, which I found...
00:13:43
Speaker
indecipherable and unnecessary.
00:13:47
Speaker
But again, I know this was my second reading, so I don't know.
00:13:50
Speaker
Maybe first time readers would find all of that more efficacious.
00:13:55
Speaker
But point being, it is a dense, twisting, winding.
00:14:00
Speaker
This is not a difficult path with low light through the woods.
00:14:06
Speaker
This is a monkey's fist, you know, the Celtic knot rope thing that they make.
00:14:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:13
Speaker
in a delightful way.
00:14:15
Speaker
Wow.
00:14:15
Speaker
Okay.
00:14:16
Speaker
Cool.
00:14:17
Speaker
Good metaphor.
00:14:19
Speaker
I hadn't thought about that till just now.
00:14:21
Speaker
Thank you.
00:14:23
Speaker
In a tempted summary, the setting is essentially where she grew up.
00:14:30
Speaker
The Western England, rural, I think Yorkshire moors, picture rolling hills and marshes and not a lot of people, a bunch of cows, right?
00:14:43
Speaker
Rural Victorian England.
00:14:45
Speaker
And as such, again, as we've discussed nearly ad nauseum at this point, home life and social customs that modernize will find quite baffling.
00:14:54
Speaker
Right.
00:14:55
Speaker
It is a tale of one foster child, Heathcliff, two estates, Thrushcross Grange and the titular Wuthering Heights.
00:15:04
Speaker
By the way, when did we quit naming houses and estates?
00:15:08
Speaker
I don't know.
00:15:09
Speaker
I know.
00:15:09
Speaker
It is cool.
00:15:10
Speaker
A little mad about that, but anyway.
00:15:13
Speaker
The entire book, which is not a short book, a 460-plus page book, is just going back and forth.
00:15:21
Speaker
This, again, we've discussed previously.
00:15:23
Speaker
It is extraordinarily difficult to write an engaging and complex plot with fairly deliberately limited settings.
00:15:32
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:15:34
Speaker
And I would argue Wuthering Heights is a masterclass of exactly that.
00:15:38
Speaker
Okay, cool.
00:15:41
Speaker
Within these two homes, we witness class struggle, malevolence, and essentially just a gaggle of people who are not happy, most die young, and gothic literature and modern readers have reaped the rewards.
00:15:59
Speaker
Yep.
00:16:00
Speaker
Yes, they have.
00:16:01
Speaker
I have obviously oversimplified, but more or less, this is the plot in its entirety.
00:16:08
Speaker
Right.
00:16:09
Speaker
A lot of people dying young, a lot of people feeling strong feelings and talking about them or not talking about them.
00:16:16
Speaker
Or not talking, yeah.
00:16:19
Speaker
And then the book ends, right?
00:16:21
Speaker
Yep.
00:16:22
Speaker
And yet you are drawn in and just magnetized to the strength of these characters.
00:16:30
Speaker
They are very much visceral, corporeal
Analyzing Gothic Elements and Class Struggles
00:16:35
Speaker
creations in your mind as you go along.
00:16:39
Speaker
Again, due entirely to the strength of the writing.
00:16:44
Speaker
And there's oftentimes maddening interactions, sometimes literal maddening interactions that create an overall truly just dark, dark tale that was originally split into two or three volumes.
00:16:59
Speaker
Oh, that's interesting.
00:17:01
Speaker
I knew that there was a clear break, but I did not know that it was ever at any point like sold separately.
00:17:07
Speaker
Yeah, initially that's exactly what they did.
00:17:09
Speaker
And both this copy that I had now and that first one, again, as an audio book, you never know if they just skip the page that says part two or something.
00:17:18
Speaker
There are some clear timeline breaks, which are where I would imagine these initial publications put their separations.
00:17:26
Speaker
Another brilliant literary device that Bronte used was the book essentially starts with quote-unquote present day.
00:17:37
Speaker
Almost the entirety of the book is narrated by this newcomer, this visitor, who is renting out Thrushcross Grange from Heathcliff, who now owns both, enters this desperately desolate place.
00:17:55
Speaker
landscape of unhappy people and kind of looks at Nellie Dean, the primary narrator for the entire story and says, what the heck?
00:18:05
Speaker
And we're, we are told the story through the eyes of her recollecting the last several decades to this newcomer in order to explain, here's why this place and the people in it suck.
00:18:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:18
Speaker
She's kind of the omnipresent, um,
00:18:22
Speaker
I almost said handmade.
00:18:23
Speaker
That's not right.
00:18:25
Speaker
Well, maybe.
00:18:26
Speaker
Yeah, she is.
00:18:28
Speaker
She is a maid.
00:18:29
Speaker
Maid?
00:18:29
Speaker
Yeah, maid, maid, maid.
00:18:31
Speaker
You know, nurses the kids, cleans the house, whatever.
00:18:33
Speaker
Housekeeper, yeah.
00:18:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:35
Speaker
So she's there for all of it and then is recollecting all of it to this newcomer.
00:18:40
Speaker
And it's brilliant because this drives me nuts sometimes.
00:18:44
Speaker
Videos, I think maybe it's just the ones that I consume, but I've been seeing it more lately where they give you the highlights right up front.
00:18:53
Speaker
Oh, sure.
00:18:54
Speaker
The rest of the video, I'm kind of looking for them.
00:18:56
Speaker
It's a let off of anticipation to me in most cases.
00:19:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:04
Speaker
In this case, it does the exact opposite brilliantly.
00:19:08
Speaker
You look at this and you go, wow, so I already know how it ends right from the beginning.
00:19:12
Speaker
I know where this is going and I am still fully engaged in the journey.
00:19:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:17
Speaker
The characters suck.
00:19:21
Speaker
All of them.
00:19:22
Speaker
Nellie is probably the least abhorrent, but still not fully lacking of culpability in some circumstances.
00:19:32
Speaker
If you were going to make an argument for anyone, you could perhaps say she is... The best?
00:19:38
Speaker
The best.
00:19:39
Speaker
Certainly the best.
00:19:40
Speaker
I was going to say without fault, but I disagree with that.
00:19:42
Speaker
She is not without fault.
00:19:43
Speaker
They all suck.
00:19:44
Speaker
They all suck.
00:19:45
Speaker
She doesn't suck.
00:19:46
Speaker
There are just a couple of instances of poor choices on her part.
00:19:50
Speaker
Okay, yeah.
00:19:51
Speaker
I had these two quotes that literally made me laugh out loud, which is just beautiful to me for a book written in 1847.
00:19:59
Speaker
That makes me happy.
00:20:01
Speaker
Okay.
00:20:02
Speaker
But just a couple little tidbits, pieces of evidence.
00:20:05
Speaker
The other main character, obviously, across from Heathcliff is Catherine.
00:20:10
Speaker
Right.
00:20:11
Speaker
And she sucks.
00:20:13
Speaker
Big sucks.
00:20:16
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:20:17
Speaker
And here's my evidence.
00:20:18
Speaker
Exhibit A. She's talking with Nellie.
00:20:22
Speaker
They're in a fight.
00:20:23
Speaker
And she says, but I begin to fancy you don't like me.
00:20:30
Speaker
How strange.
00:20:31
Speaker
I thought, though everybody hated and despised each other, they could not avoid loving me.
00:20:41
Speaker
We all know somebody like that, don't we?
00:20:44
Speaker
Yup.
00:20:45
Speaker
Yup.
00:20:46
Speaker
And why is that so?
00:20:47
Speaker
Because for the most part, it is truly baffling in modernity.
00:20:51
Speaker
And even at the time of its publication, people directed a lot of scorn toward what they perceived as exaggerated characters, unrealistic, forcibly dark, forcibly unhappy.
00:21:03
Speaker
But that's real as heck.
00:21:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:06
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:21:06
Speaker
This second one, truly, I mean, I probably wasn't crying, but I was laughing heartily.
00:21:13
Speaker
Okay.
00:21:14
Speaker
A gentleman that she is professing her love for and wants to marry, Nellie is rightfully trying to talk her out of it unsuccessfully.
00:21:23
Speaker
And so Nellie says to Catherine, he won't always be handsome and young and may not always be rich.
00:21:30
Speaker
Catherine, the imbecile, that was my words, not from the book.
00:21:35
Speaker
He is now, and I have only to do with the present.
00:21:39
Speaker
I wish you would speak rationally.
00:21:42
Speaker
Oh my God, Kathy.
00:21:45
Speaker
Girl, think.
00:21:48
Speaker
Incredible.
00:21:51
Speaker
Yeah, strong characterization in this book, if nothing else.
00:21:55
Speaker
They are phenomenal characters.
00:21:58
Speaker
And I have pondered a bit, perhaps that's part of what makes them so compelling.
00:22:05
Speaker
They are so irrationally abhorrent that there was really a lot of room to play.
00:22:10
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:22:12
Speaker
Because if on the reverse end of the spectrum, if we can call it a spectrum, if the characters had been this level of magnitude, irrationally kind and happy and pleasant, it would be sickly, it would be cloying, right?
00:22:28
Speaker
Right, totally.
00:22:30
Speaker
So maybe that's the magic in it.
00:22:32
Speaker
You know, we've discussed with the Shakespeare stuff, like why, why are we as humans drawn to tragedies?
00:22:37
Speaker
Why do we love a murder mystery?
00:22:39
Speaker
There's, there's a depth that can be achieved that just, oh, this individual is so kind and so nice.
00:22:47
Speaker
Like, okay, well now we've exhausted that direction.
00:22:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:52
Speaker
Yeah, I agree.
00:22:54
Speaker
I'm trying to picture, I guess it would be like the Sound of Music sans Nazis.
00:22:59
Speaker
I don't know.
00:23:00
Speaker
I can't even picture it.
00:23:01
Speaker
Yeah, just the part on the hillside.
00:23:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:04
Speaker
Maybe that had to be the case in order for her to explore such depths.
00:23:10
Speaker
Again, I have some curiosities about that that I want to save for the discussion section.
00:23:15
Speaker
So I am leaving a ton out, obviously some crucial details deliberately in hopes that this is enticing to you.
00:23:23
Speaker
And rather than bug us about it, you choose to find them for yourself because this book does deserve that.
00:23:29
Speaker
Yeah, that's great.
00:23:30
Speaker
Let's take a quick break.
00:23:32
Speaker
And when we come back, we'll dive into the movies, plural, and the discussion questions.
00:23:40
Speaker
If your team isn't using ClickUp, you're wasting time, and data proves it.
00:23:45
Speaker
61% of knowledge workers manage work more than doing it, switching apps 1,000 times a day.
00:23:49
Speaker
That's work sprawl and costs millions.
00:23:51
Speaker
ClickUp replaces 20 apps with convergence, uniting projects, docs, and chats, while AI super agents handle the busy work.
00:23:58
Speaker
Join 4 million teams using ClickUp to finish work 30% faster.
00:24:02
Speaker
Try it free and get 15% off AI upgrades at clickup.com slash podcast.
00:24:07
Speaker
That's C-L-I-C-K-U-P dot com slash podcast.
Adaptations of Wuthering Heights
00:24:13
Speaker
Welcome back to Adaptation.
00:24:14
Speaker
We are talking Wuthering Heights, both Emily Bronte's version that Chris gave us a rundown for.
00:24:20
Speaker
Bronte.
00:24:21
Speaker
Bronte, whoops.
00:24:22
Speaker
And I'm going to dive into the adaptations of it.
00:24:26
Speaker
This, I think,
00:24:28
Speaker
I'm trying to recall what other ones I've said this about maybe Frankenstein and, and little women.
00:24:33
Speaker
This is an extremely famous text that has been adapted many, many, many times over the years.
00:24:39
Speaker
I couldn't even find like a complete list because it also goes into stage and television as well as film and crosses several languages.
00:24:48
Speaker
You know, it's been adapted into other languages.
00:24:51
Speaker
The hosts of the big picture podcast estimated there being a
00:24:55
Speaker
roughly 35 or more adaptations of this throughout the years and sort of in varying degrees of like fame you know some of them have really lasted a lot in the sort of public consciousness more than others and it began as early as the 1920s and leading us all the way up to the 2020s um in this new like when they started making movies
00:25:18
Speaker
Yes, and the very first version of this is considered a lost film.
00:25:23
Speaker
There's not thought to be any like surviving copies of it, you know, really, really ingrained sort of in the history of what movie making is.
00:25:31
Speaker
The most famous version of it came out in 1939, and that's really maintained until probably now maintained its status as sort of the.
00:25:41
Speaker
I don't want to say definitive because I think that that almost goes against
00:25:46
Speaker
the concept of adaptation, but but it's the the movie version that people turn to when they're looking for Wuthering Heights.
00:25:54
Speaker
But it's been adapted.
00:25:55
Speaker
I mean, there's like television movies.
00:25:57
Speaker
MTV made a movie out of it.
00:25:59
Speaker
It's set in modern day and it's a musical and there's just tons of like weird people have taken big swings at this throughout the years.
00:26:07
Speaker
Of course, most of these adaptations only examine the first half of the book.
00:26:14
Speaker
it always ends with the death of the character Catherine and it's posed.
00:26:19
Speaker
Most, most versions of this story are posed as a tragic romance, almost in a Shakespearean manner, which obviously I would argue is a really gross misinterpretation of the, the full text, but that's sort of just how the story has been told or retold, I guess, for almost 200 years since the book was published.
00:26:43
Speaker
So,
00:26:43
Speaker
you know, you kind of have to examine it through the lens that it's been adopted under, you know?
00:26:51
Speaker
I guess what I'm saying is most adaptations kind of get the book wrong, so you can't really hold it against any one adaptation.
00:26:57
Speaker
And I want to push back on your, you know, if we're going to be fair to everybody and say adaptation is adaptation.
00:27:05
Speaker
Is it getting the book wrong or is it, you know, what was their goal setting out?
00:27:11
Speaker
Exactly.
00:27:11
Speaker
And I mean, you know, in the 1930s, Hollywood had what was called the Hays Code, which was the sort of unofficial set of rules of what you would and wouldn't put on a screen.
00:27:21
Speaker
And that's why movies didn't have like sex or swear words or.
00:27:26
Speaker
black people, you know, things like so it makes sense that they would take the story and turn it into some sort of swoony Shakespearean romance instead of telling it, you know, as a story of like intoxication and infatuation and all of the things that it actually session stalking a dark poltergeist.
00:27:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:47
Speaker
Cool.
00:27:48
Speaker
Cool.
00:27:48
Speaker
Cool.
00:27:49
Speaker
There are a handful of versions that have adapted the full story.
00:27:54
Speaker
They tend to not be very good or at the very least, the major criticism is that they're way too long and dense because the text is way too long and dense to put into an hour and a half or two hours chunk of time.
00:28:09
Speaker
And like I said, perception of those adaptations are sort of warped because we've come to know it as this tragic romance.
00:28:18
Speaker
So I remember the first time, you know, I've never read the book.
00:28:21
Speaker
I've seen several versions of this movie, including one that
00:28:24
Speaker
told the full story.
00:28:25
Speaker
And when Kathy died about 45 minutes into the movie, I was like, what the hell is going on here?
00:28:30
Speaker
This is not Wuthering Heights.
00:28:32
Speaker
And then I had to like look it up and I was like, oh, yes, this 100% is Wuthering Heights.
00:28:37
Speaker
So people sort of leave with the sour taste in their mouth because it isn't the Wuthering Heights they expected.
00:28:43
Speaker
Because like I said, for 200 years, the story has been retold, whether it's through cinema or
00:28:48
Speaker
word of mouth or whatever as a tragic romance, which it is not.
00:28:53
Speaker
So really complicated history that leads us to nobody liking almost any of the versions of this movie.
00:28:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:01
Speaker
I personally have not seen a version, including this 2026 version that I thought was really all that good.
00:29:08
Speaker
So I'm just going to run through the ones that I've seen really quickly just to contextualize our conversation here.
00:29:15
Speaker
This 1939 version, I've seen probably the best one, but again, it's one that's operating under that Hays Code.
00:29:22
Speaker
And so it's certainly a tragic romance more than it is a story about bad people, really.
00:29:29
Speaker
A lot of what's toxic about that story doesn't make it on screen.
00:29:32
Speaker
Stars Lawrence Olivier, who's one of the actors of all time.
00:29:38
Speaker
So very, very famous.
00:29:40
Speaker
I don't think there was really another major version until 1992.
00:29:43
Speaker
Wow.
00:29:44
Speaker
And this version starred Ralph Fiennes and his first film role as Heathcliff.
00:29:50
Speaker
Oh my gosh.
00:29:51
Speaker
Yeah, I know.
00:29:52
Speaker
And this is the one that I've seen that tells the whole story.
00:29:55
Speaker
And it's also the one, the first one that I've seen that actually
00:29:58
Speaker
Tracy Heathcliff as a monster too.
00:30:01
Speaker
So I went from the 93 or the 39 version to the 92 version and was like, Whoa, which one of these was wrong?
00:30:07
Speaker
Because it was just picking up on, yeah, which was more faithful or which was, I don't, I don't know a better story.
00:30:15
Speaker
Interesting.
00:30:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:17
Speaker
These, these, some of the changes end up being distracting from version to version, which I think is a valid criticism as opposed to some of the criticisms we'll talk about later.
00:30:27
Speaker
The third version that I've seen is one that came out in 2011.
00:30:31
Speaker
Pretty notable because it's one of the only ones that cast Heathcliff as a person of color, which is something that Bronte alludes to in the book, but never really has the cojones to say.
00:30:44
Speaker
Plus,
Emerald Fennell's Controversial Adaptation
00:30:45
Speaker
I think there's a lot of critical race theory politics that go into everything.
00:30:49
Speaker
Like the fact that Heathcliff goes away and gets rich and educated, I'm like, well, he can't.
00:30:53
Speaker
He had to be white passing for that to happen.
00:30:56
Speaker
I've heard this argument and I was kind of half expecting because I didn't get a sniff of that in my first reading.
00:31:04
Speaker
I was like, nothing here tells me this is a person of color.
00:31:07
Speaker
And so I thought this second reading years later would be like, oh, how did I miss this?
00:31:12
Speaker
Still not the impression I get at all.
00:31:15
Speaker
Yeah, I think, I mean, there's a few.
00:31:18
Speaker
I wrote an essay that's on the blog page of our website.
00:31:20
Speaker
I'll link it down below.
00:31:22
Speaker
that largely gets into kind of why I think it's okay for Heathcliff to be played by a white actor.
00:31:27
Speaker
And it talks about that sort of ambiguity and how this isn't like a great representation of race.
00:31:33
Speaker
The character of Heathcliff, like Emily Bronte is no civil rights hero for writing
00:31:37
Speaker
a character that may or may not be white.
00:31:40
Speaker
It's pretty ambiguous.
00:31:41
Speaker
And the evidence that people have that he is not white is just a handful of like poll quotes that refer to his skin as a little bit darker.
00:31:50
Speaker
And then of course there's this entire othering around him that exists.
00:31:55
Speaker
But I think, you know, there's so many ways to represent othering that are not black skin.
00:32:00
Speaker
and that are all far more present in the actual text.
00:32:05
Speaker
Right.
00:32:05
Speaker
And like I said, I can't get past the fact that he goes away and gets educated and gets rich and that doesn't happen unless you look like you're white.
00:32:14
Speaker
Yep.
00:32:15
Speaker
And so I think the general consensus is that he's probably Romani, that 39 version that used the G word quite a bit.
00:32:23
Speaker
So that's that's sort of the vibe that I got throughout.
00:32:25
Speaker
But that's more because
00:32:27
Speaker
There's been this we'll talk about the discourse around this movie that's just been impossible to avoid.
00:32:33
Speaker
It has like permeated the way that I'm seeing this.
00:32:35
Speaker
So I don't know, like read it how you want to.
00:32:39
Speaker
I guess she didn't she didn't straight up say it.
00:32:43
Speaker
She could have gone that extra mile.
00:32:45
Speaker
That brings us to 2026, which this new version is written and directed by Emerald Fennell.
00:32:50
Speaker
who previously wrote and directed Promising Young Woman and more notably Saltburn.
00:32:54
Speaker
I'm sure a lot of people listening will have seen Saltburn.
00:32:56
Speaker
That was a pretty big hit on streaming.
00:32:59
Speaker
Very, very safe to say that Fennell is like a provocateur filmmaker.
00:33:03
Speaker
All of her films are about making you uncomfortable, making you wonder why you will have sat through the whole movie.
00:33:10
Speaker
She's, I think she's doing something.
00:33:12
Speaker
There's definitely a joke that she's in on that I think most people are not.
00:33:16
Speaker
And I'm not saying that I'm in on it 100%.
00:33:20
Speaker
I just think that a lot of people are ready to attack her with like knives out.
00:33:24
Speaker
And I don't think that they're really seeing the forest for the trees when it comes to her movies.
00:33:31
Speaker
She stated many, many times since this movie was announced that this was the version of Wuthering Heights that she imagined when she was 14 years old and read it in school, which again, I think accounts for like Heathcliff being white and Catherine being blonde hair, blue eyed, most beautiful woman in the world, Margot Robbie.
00:33:48
Speaker
This like an acronym also is in the movie, Alison Oliver and Owen Cooper, most recently seen in adolescence and winning a billion awards for adolescence.
00:33:58
Speaker
So kind of cool to see him get a big movie right after that.
00:34:02
Speaker
And as I've alluded to, more than alluded to really, this movie has been the subject of a lot of controversy online and garnered a level of hate from,
00:34:14
Speaker
quote unquote, fans of classic literature that I've never really seen levied against a movie like this.
00:34:21
Speaker
It's it's very similar to the hate that you see when Star Wars fans don't get what they want out of a Star Wars movie or Game of Thrones ends poorly or a Marvel movie is bad like it.
00:34:35
Speaker
I I'm really stunned.
00:34:38
Speaker
I've never seen this population react this way.
00:34:41
Speaker
But any time you get online and start
00:34:43
Speaker
sifting through tweets or tick tocks or instagram reels about weathering heights so many of them are i guess again fans is the best word i have for it snobs maybe uh that like the book that are just ripping this movie to shreds saying awful things about the people that are in it and made it i just am really dumbfounded and kind of upset by that and i want to point out too
00:35:09
Speaker
I'll get into this later when we talk about the ratings and recommendations and whatnot.
00:35:13
Speaker
I didn't love this movie.
00:35:15
Speaker
I don't love any of Emerald Fennell's movies.
00:35:17
Speaker
I think she has some serious flaws as a filmmaker, but I love that she's trying these big, bold things and I will always defend that.
00:35:23
Speaker
So I'm going to defend this movie, despite the fact that it was kind of just okay to me.
00:35:29
Speaker
And I want to point out that it had an $82 million global opening weekend at the box office, which accounts for its budget.
00:35:36
Speaker
So like it's,
00:35:38
Speaker
It's on track to break even and make money for the studio.
00:35:42
Speaker
So there's people spending money on it, even though it doesn't have great reviews.
00:35:45
Speaker
It's got a 59% on Rotten Tomatoes.
00:35:48
Speaker
Technically, that's a Rotten Tomato if you drop below 60, but you know, that's barely below 60 and a 55 on Metacritic.
00:35:55
Speaker
So the reviews are actually very much like middle of the road, which is kind of where I've landed as well.
00:36:00
Speaker
But
00:36:01
Speaker
it's making money.
00:36:02
Speaker
The screening I went to yesterday was full, chock full.
00:36:06
Speaker
I just have to throw that out there because I want to again, you know, sort of bolster the fact that even though we're hearing these really loud voices that are saying, this movie is obviously bad, this movie is a bastardization of Bronte's vision, like most people aren't really caring.
00:36:24
Speaker
So
00:36:26
Speaker
stuff it, I guess is kind of what I'm saying.
00:36:28
Speaker
Now, sorry, I'm a little, I feel very passionately about this because criticizing an adaptation for making changes to the text, I think is like inherently anti-art.
00:36:41
Speaker
This has been adapted, like I said, roughly 35 times.
00:36:46
Speaker
There are 34 other versions that you can consume if you're upset about this one.
00:36:51
Speaker
You don't need to be
00:36:53
Speaker
adding to the hate, you don't need to just be swallowing TikToks and tweets and Instagram reels that are negative, like they're painkillers, form an opinion based on what you actually see instead of what other people tell you.
00:37:05
Speaker
And I think if you're mad about this being sort of anachronistic and more sex forward, maybe is kind of one of the bigger changes.
00:37:14
Speaker
I think you're missing the point of film and art itself.
00:37:18
Speaker
And I just really would have expected more from fans of classics because
00:37:23
Speaker
This happens a lot.
00:37:25
Speaker
I don't know why this movie is getting this level.
00:37:27
Speaker
I don't know if it's because Fennel's a woman.
00:37:31
Speaker
I don't know what is going on.
00:37:32
Speaker
But I'd also push so far as to say you're probably not a real fan of Wuthering Heights if you're mad about this.
00:37:39
Speaker
Because the theme of Wuthering Heights is like defying expectations and getting stuck up in what everybody expects of you.
00:37:45
Speaker
Everything.
00:37:47
Speaker
It's just crazy to me.
00:37:49
Speaker
I can't I can't get past it.
00:37:51
Speaker
And I just wanted to throw this in there, too, because I think it shows kind of it contextualizes the criticism and kind of the vitriol that it comes with.
00:38:01
Speaker
I've been accused of, quote, worshipping at Emerald Fennell's feet for defending this film, which is not true.
00:38:09
Speaker
I hate the movie, Saul Byrne.
00:38:10
Speaker
I really do.
00:38:11
Speaker
This one.
00:38:12
Speaker
This movie, I think, is, like I said, middle of the road.
00:38:15
Speaker
I I
00:38:17
Speaker
I think that the point of this movie was to sort of hold up a mirror to the novel to highlight why it's not the great romance that everybody thinks it is.
00:38:26
Speaker
And to do so, the mirror that Fennell used was like a funhouse mirror.
00:38:30
Speaker
I think making all of these bonkers choices, like stuffing it with sex, which I don't think there's a ton of in the book.
00:38:36
Speaker
In fact, I've heard that there is speculation that Bronte never had sex, so probably it couldn't even really
00:38:43
Speaker
write it, you know, that like, certainly couldn't write it an erotic.
00:38:48
Speaker
It is not a spicy book.
00:38:50
Speaker
No.
00:38:51
Speaker
So I think making all of these weird choices was a way to, to kind of make the toxicity an easier, not an easier pill to swallow, but it makes it easier to see because in a lot of these past versions, the emphasis is always placed on this bond.
00:39:08
Speaker
Like you said, this bond between
00:39:10
Speaker
Kathy and Heathcliff.
00:39:11
Speaker
So I think that the toxicity can go over so many people's heads.
00:39:14
Speaker
And that's why we are 200 years later expecting it to be a tragic romance when it's really not when like dying was like the best case scenario for Kathy and Heathcliff.
00:39:26
Speaker
Like a lot of the characters.
00:39:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:30
Speaker
So that's very much the lens that I or the reading that I got as I was watching it is I think that it was a takedown of
00:39:38
Speaker
the way that we've viewed this text for 200 years.
00:39:40
Speaker
And I think that's why people are getting so upset.
00:39:44
Speaker
because it's hard to hear that you're wrong.
00:39:48
Speaker
Or it's hard for you to hear that you're right, but to hear it in a way that you didn't necessarily want to hear it.
00:39:56
Speaker
Anyway,
Artistic Liberties in Film Adaptations
00:39:57
Speaker
can you tell that I'm fired up?
00:39:59
Speaker
Well, this is, at the induction of this podcast, that was why one of the first rules we made for ourselves was we are not going to say which was better, the book or the movie.
00:40:12
Speaker
Right.
00:40:14
Speaker
Because why?
00:40:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:17
Speaker
And I completely agree with you.
00:40:19
Speaker
I see the defense, and I adore classics.
00:40:25
Speaker
I consume all of them that I can.
00:40:26
Speaker
I see the defense of them as little more, typically, not always, but typically, little more than gatekeeping.
00:40:35
Speaker
Right.
00:40:36
Speaker
It's exactly what we talked about with the ivory tower academics response to Vineland.
00:40:43
Speaker
Suddenly Pinchon was digestible for everyone.
00:40:48
Speaker
And so the hipster academics who were quote unquote there first or something had to throw a little tantrum.
00:40:56
Speaker
Yep.
00:40:57
Speaker
Because that's brilliant.
00:40:59
Speaker
Can I ask you one of my discussion questions?
00:41:02
Speaker
Yeah, please.
00:41:03
Speaker
Let's do it.
00:41:03
Speaker
Because you very much unintentionally answered it.
00:41:06
Speaker
Okay.
00:41:07
Speaker
So I've had a lot of trouble picturing this movie in movie form because, to me as a reader, so much of the driving force that sucks you in is this dark weightiness of individual and entirely intimate interactions.
00:41:23
Speaker
And so my question was, how on earth do they capture this on the screen?
00:41:27
Speaker
All I can picture is some uncomfortable eye contact.
00:41:31
Speaker
But I feel like you kind of hit the nail on the head with how at least this director approached it.
00:41:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:38
Speaker
Like I said, there's, there's definitely some of those visual cues through that sort of fun house mirror metaphor.
00:41:44
Speaker
But I think to specifically answer your question, Nellie in this movie is given more agency than I, in any of the versions that I've seen.
00:41:52
Speaker
Interesting.
00:41:53
Speaker
A lot of the, I guess, tension or conflict comes out in conversation between Catherine and Nellie.
00:41:59
Speaker
They're very much, um,
00:42:00
Speaker
They're pretty much enemies, maybe frenemies, you could say, in this 2026 version.
00:42:05
Speaker
So a lot of it comes out there.
00:42:07
Speaker
I've also never seen, oh, I'm going to forget the character's name now.
00:42:11
Speaker
The Linton sister.
00:42:14
Speaker
Isabella.
00:42:15
Speaker
Isabella, yeah.
00:42:17
Speaker
I would not say she has agency in the new movie.
00:42:21
Speaker
True to the book.
00:42:22
Speaker
But she's utilized in such a way...
00:42:26
Speaker
that could not have been put on screen probably before 2026.
00:42:28
Speaker
And I think it's a moment where you really realize just how fucking sick Heathcliff is.
00:42:36
Speaker
Right.
00:42:37
Speaker
So like I said, she sort of goes for it.
00:42:39
Speaker
And I say sort of because I think one of the pitfalls of the movie is that Fennel doesn't
00:42:44
Speaker
land any of the punches that she swings.
00:42:48
Speaker
But that's kind of a different conversation.
00:42:50
Speaker
But they just, I would say that they just kind of turn everybody's actions up to an 11.
00:42:54
Speaker
Like, Kathy doesn't stop crying this whole friggin' movie.
00:42:57
Speaker
Everything you're describing is just so true to the text, which is what's fascinating here.
00:43:02
Speaker
I know.
00:43:03
Speaker
And this, as you were going through it, I was like, maybe this is a more faithful adaptation than I think...
00:43:09
Speaker
it was because I've just been bombarded by social media messages that say it's not, you know, or social media posts that say it's not.
00:43:17
Speaker
Yeah, because that's exactly what we were discussing with, you know, how frankly detestable.
00:43:23
Speaker
I mean, you are sickened at these characters.
00:43:26
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:43:27
Speaker
I mean, Catherine's entire choice to marry Linton is like, yes, there is the beautiful discussion of how she views Heathcliff, but end of the day, it is nothing more than a good old-fashioned have-her-cake-and-eat-it-too.
00:43:41
Speaker
Right.
00:43:42
Speaker
I know he's so obsessed with me.
00:43:43
Speaker
He's not going anywhere.
00:43:44
Speaker
So in the meantime, I'll marry this guy for money and I'll just have both.
00:43:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:50
Speaker
That sucks.
00:43:50
Speaker
That is using both.
00:43:53
Speaker
I know.
00:43:53
Speaker
And she carries on for a long time.
00:43:56
Speaker
A long time.
00:43:57
Speaker
And Nellie and Catherine being frenemies.
00:44:00
Speaker
Yeah, that's Nellie spends the whole time going, that's a bad idea.
00:44:05
Speaker
Don't do that.
00:44:06
Speaker
Oh, you did it.
00:44:06
Speaker
Yes.
00:44:07
Speaker
Well, I'm the servant class and you're the master.
00:44:09
Speaker
So that's it.
00:44:11
Speaker
Yep.
00:44:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:13
Speaker
I'd just be curious to hear what you think, having just read the book and knowing that you've also seen some of these things online about the hate for the movie.
00:44:22
Speaker
I'd be curious for you to go in and see whether it's really as bad as some of these people are saying.
00:44:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:27
Speaker
I think in a lot of ways, this movie was made.
00:44:30
Speaker
for the trailers to piss off fans of the book because sitting through the movie like it's not nearly as sexy well i'm giving up some of my um discussion later but it's not exactly what it was advertised i guess is what i'm getting at yeah yeah yeah which is interesting yeah okay i'm curious what your reaction is i know that you didn't learn this today because it's a pretty well-known fact i think about this book
00:44:55
Speaker
But what are your reactions to the idea that only half of this book is often adapted?
00:45:02
Speaker
Honestly,
Modern Adaptations and Audience Relevance
00:45:03
Speaker
I don't mind it.
00:45:04
Speaker
It's front-loaded.
00:45:05
Speaker
Oh, okay.
00:45:06
Speaker
You definitely get that.
00:45:08
Speaker
It certainly develops more, and there is more there.
00:45:12
Speaker
But I wouldn't have minded if this book was 100 pages shorter.
00:45:16
Speaker
Okay.
00:45:17
Speaker
I can see why they would do that.
00:45:19
Speaker
I'm surprised they wouldn't approach it as a...
00:45:24
Speaker
you know, like a twofer, let's make a part one and part two.
00:45:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:31
Speaker
Yeah, it is odd because it doesn't carry the gravity necessarily, especially because, as I said, the sort of flashback, flash forward literary device, after Catherine's death, knowing where it ends, you can more or less piece it together for yourself.
00:45:53
Speaker
Right.
00:45:54
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:45:55
Speaker
Heathcliff isn't going to turn around.
00:45:57
Speaker
Right, right, right, right.
00:45:58
Speaker
Do they start the movie like that with Heathcliff sitting there in the house with Kathy?
00:46:03
Speaker
And who is with, I think it's just Kathy and Harrington.
00:46:07
Speaker
No, some of them are.
00:46:09
Speaker
The 92 and I believe the 39 both start with Heathcliff kind of sitting in the decrepit second estate, which the name is escaping me right now.
00:46:21
Speaker
Oh, they're at
00:46:22
Speaker
thrush cross no they're at weathering heights no well maybe you're right because yeah they're not allowed in certain rooms of the house and yes they're not allowed um you're right it's at weathering heights but i think in the 2011 version and and certainly in the 2026 version it's kind of just told from kathy's perspective so there's no um there's no flashback nelly is not a major character in any of the versions except for this 26 version
00:46:50
Speaker
See, she absolutely has like the third most lines in the entire book.
00:46:54
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, huh?
00:46:56
Speaker
Okay.
00:46:56
Speaker
Interesting choice.
00:46:57
Speaker
Yeah, weird.
00:46:58
Speaker
Yeah, so I can see why they would, and there's definitely plenty there to entail an entire story of its own, but it is almost certainly missing the full picture, which again, as we've discussed, would take so long.
00:47:16
Speaker
Right.
00:47:17
Speaker
Right.
00:47:17
Speaker
And, you know, we touched on that a little bit in our Wicked episode, too.
00:47:21
Speaker
It just doesn't translate quite as well because the book was so vastly different from the stage musical, which is kind of what was adapted to screen.
00:47:29
Speaker
Yep.
00:47:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:32
Speaker
And actually, to your credit, I did not know that most of the movies were only the first half until you told me.
00:47:39
Speaker
Oh, okay.
00:47:40
Speaker
I think it's one of the things that has been coming up in all of this social media bombardment.
00:47:45
Speaker
So I guess I figured a lot of people knew.
00:47:48
Speaker
You'll be shocked to be reminded here that our social medias look very different.
00:47:53
Speaker
I know, but you've even told me that you've seen some of the hate pointed towards this movie.
00:47:58
Speaker
Yes, yes.
00:47:59
Speaker
And for it to permeate your limited...
00:48:01
Speaker
social media usage means that it's really freaking out there well it's funny for me because i only see it from like the strict classics book side which is comical because without you i would have no information about the movie and i'd be like why are people scared for emerald fennel to get her hands on classics right right i think it'd be fun i think she should do more i agree no i would love i mean we don't need more faithful adaptations
00:48:30
Speaker
That's what I'm saying.
00:48:31
Speaker
Right?
00:48:32
Speaker
You want something?
00:48:33
Speaker
Yeah, okay.
00:48:34
Speaker
Anyway, the other question that I kind of started getting into earlier but wanted to save for now...
00:48:41
Speaker
We have covered multiple stories at this point where there are many, many unsavory characters.
00:48:50
Speaker
But there is no one likable in this.
00:48:53
Speaker
Again, like kind of Nellie, but at certain points, even not her.
00:48:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:57
Speaker
How do you enjoy stories like this?
00:48:59
Speaker
Like during the movie, did you find yourself rooting for anybody?
00:49:04
Speaker
I guess the root of the question is, is the movie as much of a drag as the book is?
00:49:10
Speaker
That's an interesting question.
00:49:12
Speaker
I don't know that I would say the movie's a drag.
00:49:14
Speaker
It is too long.
00:49:15
Speaker
So the ending is a little bit of a drag.
00:49:18
Speaker
But I think one of the reasons that she stylized it, Fennel stylized it and sensationalized it so much was to sort of give you a reprieve from some of that.
00:49:28
Speaker
So even though everybody sucks, you're also like two people, two really hot people like have sex.
00:49:34
Speaker
So it's all good.
00:49:35
Speaker
You know, like it'll hold you over for a little while.
00:49:38
Speaker
How do I enjoy stories like this?
00:49:40
Speaker
I guess I'm not necessarily looking to root for somebody in a story, especially if I am prepped for it.
00:49:47
Speaker
You know, I watched three versions of Weather Heights before watching this 2026 version.
00:49:52
Speaker
So I was well aware of the fact that I didn't like anybody.
00:49:56
Speaker
So I think I just sort of lean more into I like how this works.
00:50:00
Speaker
I like the characterization that I'm seeing, which is that every step somebody takes is very much in line with who they are.
00:50:11
Speaker
It's like liking, what was his name in Dallas, JR. Everybody loved to hate him because he was such a good, delicious, soapy villain that he really permeated pop culture.
00:50:25
Speaker
Everybody's the best in this.
00:50:28
Speaker
Well, I know, but I mean, pretty much everybody gets their friggin' comeuppance in this movie, too, you know?
00:50:35
Speaker
I guess.
00:50:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:38
Speaker
They end up dead or heartbroken or alone or... Actually, in most cases, all three.
00:50:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:44
Speaker
Okay.
00:50:44
Speaker
So there's at least a sense of justice.
00:50:49
Speaker
So you heard it here first.
00:50:51
Speaker
The true protagonist of Wuthering Heights is tuberculosis.
00:50:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:58
Speaker
Is that what she dies of?
00:51:00
Speaker
It's kind of implied for a couple of them.
00:51:02
Speaker
Linton, certainly.
00:51:04
Speaker
He's coughing up blood.
00:51:05
Speaker
I mean, it was the predominant killer of the time.
00:51:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:08
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:51:10
Speaker
If you were charged with writing a screenplay for a film adaptation, what are the details that are key?
00:51:15
Speaker
Like, what would you keep and what would you get rid of because it's too dense to put into one?
00:51:21
Speaker
I think I would advocate for exactly what I suggested.
00:51:25
Speaker
Make it, what do we call a trilogy that's only two?
00:51:29
Speaker
Duology?
00:51:30
Speaker
Is it a duology?
00:51:32
Speaker
I think technically, yeah, but why would we ever say that?
00:51:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:36
Speaker
What would I leave out?
00:51:37
Speaker
Because also part of the brilliance is...
00:51:40
Speaker
Given its length, it is truly masterful that you are constantly gripped.
00:51:48
Speaker
Yeah, sure.
00:51:50
Speaker
And so I think that's the essence I would want to carry over.
00:51:54
Speaker
I think what would be important to me in making this an adaptation would be clearly and unforgivingly portraying these creatures of malice and temperamental rages and...
00:52:16
Speaker
I mean, what permeates the text is just a selfishness on what we want to be in otherworldly level, and the sobering aspect that you are confronted with is, this is quite realistic.
00:52:31
Speaker
Right.
00:52:33
Speaker
At our heart, day-to-day decisions, this is what we want to do.
00:52:38
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:52:41
Speaker
They're just in such a position that these are incredibly harmful decisions for those around them.
00:52:48
Speaker
So I think that's what would be important to get across, and I think you could manage it within one film.
00:52:55
Speaker
What I'm struggling with is what do you cut in that sense for the sake of time?
00:53:00
Speaker
Because there is this pensive, I mean, time itself is very much another character of the story.
00:53:09
Speaker
You're right.
00:53:09
Speaker
It's a multi-generational, it's damn near an epic because of how long the story is.
00:53:15
Speaker
Exactly.
00:53:15
Speaker
Exactly.
00:53:16
Speaker
And so who does that well?
00:53:20
Speaker
Honestly, okay, so we're discussing this next, Fellowship of the Ring.
00:53:24
Speaker
That's important at the beginning there.
00:53:28
Speaker
And Peter Jackson did a good job of including, yes, time has passed, but we can marry those ideas.
00:53:36
Speaker
We can still include what that entails without, you know, you don't need a 15-minute montage of, oh, what did we do in this boring estate for 13 years in between Isabella dying, or in between Isabella fleeing to London and then subsequently dying and her son having to come back, right?
00:53:58
Speaker
I think it is well within a filmmaker's means, again, should they choose to make a true adaptation to capture these intimate dialogues that give you the necessary glimpse into the individual's minds and souls.
00:54:15
Speaker
Sure.
00:54:16
Speaker
Without that requiring 17 hours.
00:54:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:22
Speaker
Because there are absolutely discussions and monologues that are not throwaway by any means, but you could skip.
00:54:30
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:54:31
Speaker
You know, they go down there and Catherine gets hurt.
00:54:37
Speaker
Heathcliff runs back to Wuthering Heights and she has to stay there to convalesce for five weeks.
00:54:42
Speaker
That scene can take 15 seconds and you're not losing much emotionally.
00:54:49
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:54:50
Speaker
I mean, dramas exist, right?
00:54:51
Speaker
We don't have a lack of means here.
00:54:55
Speaker
So that is...
00:54:56
Speaker
by no means objective.
00:54:58
Speaker
That is personally what I would want to see if I were to say, let's try to distill this.
00:55:04
Speaker
Because, I mean, the ghost part is not this weird, wild right turn at the end.
00:55:11
Speaker
That is also an entirely necessary level of meaning.
00:55:17
Speaker
Like, he really...
00:55:20
Speaker
As a character, he's horrific.
00:55:23
Speaker
But we are also presented with exactly why.
00:55:29
Speaker
which you can very much empathize with.
00:55:33
Speaker
And as you said, the sense of justice, his loving was by no means abated or satiated when Catherine dies.
00:55:46
Speaker
And do I hope anybody seeks this strange, hell-bent, lifelong pursuit of revenge to the third generation?
00:55:57
Speaker
Literally, like...
00:55:59
Speaker
a Alfie from Peaky Blinders level of biblical fire and brimstone.
00:56:06
Speaker
No, I don't think we should be indulging in that.
00:56:08
Speaker
But as a character, that's masterful.
00:56:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:56:13
Speaker
And again, I think the scary part is not, this is not nearly as far from the human experience as we would hope it would be.
00:56:23
Speaker
Right.
00:56:23
Speaker
And
Reviews and Recommendations
00:56:24
Speaker
that's the story that Bronte presented us.
00:56:26
Speaker
And that would be a cool movie.
00:56:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:56:31
Speaker
I know one of the, one of the versions that I didn't get around to seeing, I think it's a television movie is called Wuthering High and it's set at a high school.
00:56:40
Speaker
All of the characters are high schoolers and it sounds kind of immediately stupid, especially when I say it's a television movie, but after like watching how Catherine and Heathcliff behave,
00:56:52
Speaker
you're kind of like, well, I don't know, there's something very teenage-y about all of this.
00:56:56
Speaker
I knew kids who did this in high school.
00:56:59
Speaker
I've seen kids do this recently.
00:57:02
Speaker
She literally says, actually, I cut it out, but the paragraph just before that one I read you of Catherine saying, I thought everybody loved me.
00:57:11
Speaker
She says, if I knew it would kill him, I would kill myself.
00:57:17
Speaker
Whoa.
00:57:18
Speaker
God damn.
00:57:21
Speaker
What kind of level of petty bullshit?
00:57:24
Speaker
Gabby, Gabby, Gabby.
00:57:25
Speaker
But again, step back.
00:57:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:57:27
Speaker
American high school today.
00:57:29
Speaker
Who didn't know someone that thought it was a brilliant idea?
00:57:33
Speaker
Oh, he's pissing me off.
00:57:34
Speaker
I'm going to go kiss his friend.
00:57:36
Speaker
Yep.
00:57:37
Speaker
You know?
00:57:39
Speaker
That's the brilliance.
00:57:40
Speaker
It is exaggerated.
00:57:42
Speaker
It is, I love the term you used, funhouse mirrors, deplorable creatures.
00:57:48
Speaker
But when in literature do we not require this outlandish caricature to get at that true sense of humanity in a way that's not just laughable and immediately dismissed?
00:58:02
Speaker
Yeah, right.
00:58:06
Speaker
Woof.
00:58:07
Speaker
Okay, well, what did you rate the book?
00:58:10
Speaker
Yeah, so this is tough.
00:58:11
Speaker
Firm, firm three for me.
00:58:14
Speaker
That might be one of your lower ones.
00:58:16
Speaker
I know, and I feel guilty about it, and I don't want to.
00:58:21
Speaker
The problem is in no way in the writing, and that's what's tough.
00:58:25
Speaker
Okay.
00:58:26
Speaker
Unfortunately, due to the nature of this book, it is going to hit you very differently depending on the context in which you consume it.
00:58:37
Speaker
Obviously, for this episode, we're under a bit of a time constraint, and this text demands more.
00:58:42
Speaker
Sure.
00:58:43
Speaker
I wish it were a multi-volume, like two, even just two volumes, but three I could very much see as a trilogy.
00:58:52
Speaker
This would be so much more digestible.
00:58:54
Speaker
There is just so much here that is important.
00:58:58
Speaker
You know, these little tidbits that she sneaks in.
00:59:03
Speaker
You cannot turn your brain off for a single page, and it's just too many pages to be that.
00:59:10
Speaker
wrapped up to be operating at that level.
00:59:13
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:59:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:15
Speaker
If I remember correctly, I believe that's exactly what I rated it the first time to like 10 years ago.
00:59:21
Speaker
Oh, wow.
00:59:21
Speaker
So not true to my own self.
00:59:24
Speaker
It was not a five star and I did reread it, but I just, I didn't enjoy it.
00:59:29
Speaker
You reread it because I made you reread it.
00:59:31
Speaker
Yeah, well, I definitely did not feel confident in my remembering from that long ago to do it justice.
00:59:37
Speaker
And I'm so glad that I did reread it.
00:59:39
Speaker
But will I ever read it again?
00:59:41
Speaker
Goodness gracious, I hope not.
00:59:43
Speaker
Yeah, I know you do have a hard time with these ones with the morally gray and or worse.
00:59:49
Speaker
I mean, I mean, once.
00:59:50
Speaker
Yeah, this is not morally gray.
00:59:52
Speaker
Choosing choosing to take a child to deliberately raise them poorly.
00:59:58
Speaker
And then he gets a second crack at it.
01:00:00
Speaker
Oh, my biological son.
01:00:02
Speaker
I will raise him exclusively because he is my son.
01:00:05
Speaker
I care not for him at all, but I will continue to make your lives miserable through my progeny.
01:00:11
Speaker
That's nuts.
01:00:13
Speaker
That's bad.
01:00:15
Speaker
That's why I asked you that question that I did about the characters because I need someone to root for.
01:00:23
Speaker
It's the same.
01:00:24
Speaker
I can't watch a sports game without arbitrarily choosing one side to root for.
01:00:30
Speaker
Like just sitting alongside neutral does nothing for me.
01:00:35
Speaker
And I think that was the difficulty here too.
01:00:38
Speaker
So I could see a different context where I would enjoy it more.
01:00:42
Speaker
Again, perhaps just getting through it slower.
01:00:45
Speaker
But there were nights where I would read this for like two hours at a time and get done and be like, I need to go watch Instagram reels of golden retrievers doing silly things.
01:00:57
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:58
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:58
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
01:00:59
Speaker
I need that all the time.
01:01:01
Speaker
Tell me about the movie.
01:01:03
Speaker
I'm in a similar boat.
01:01:06
Speaker
I'm only rating this 2026 version because there's just too many and they're too different and I couldn't really keep the lanes separate.
01:01:14
Speaker
The ones I've seen are on my letterboxd if you're really that interested in what I think about any of them.
01:01:19
Speaker
I did give this Fennel's version 3.5 stars.
01:01:23
Speaker
It's probably a little closer to three and I'm rounding up a little.
01:01:26
Speaker
because I'm so worked up about the things that we talked about.
01:01:29
Speaker
But I kind of think this movie does Wuthering Heights about as well as it can.
01:01:33
Speaker
Like I said, I don't love any of these versions of this movie.
01:01:36
Speaker
Maybe it's the same thing that you're experiencing.
01:01:38
Speaker
It's just not a story that I like super enjoy.
01:01:41
Speaker
I don't know if it could ever get a five star out of me because I just am like kind of everything's bad.
01:01:46
Speaker
Right.
01:01:47
Speaker
But it does tip into the positive side for me because I think I'm sort of in on or maybe I'm just like knocking on the door of this sort of
01:01:56
Speaker
fuck you joke that Fennell has seemed to put into all three of her films.
01:02:01
Speaker
I'm giving her a lot of credit because she's never like said that that's her goal.
01:02:05
Speaker
But it's she's three for three with it right now where I'm like, what the hell?
01:02:09
Speaker
You know, that being said, I don't think that the movie is perfect.
01:02:12
Speaker
I don't think that the like I'm probably never going to watch it again.
01:02:16
Speaker
I think that there are criticisms that you can level against this film and even some of the changes that she made that people are upset about.
01:02:23
Speaker
I think there are criticisms that
01:02:26
Speaker
make sense and are fair.
01:02:27
Speaker
Our friends over at Based on a Book podcast, they said that some of the changes were distracting.
01:02:32
Speaker
And I'm like, see, that makes more sense to me.
01:02:34
Speaker
That's a good criticism as opposed to like, I'm mad because it's anachronistic.
01:02:39
Speaker
It's not very meaty.
01:02:40
Speaker
It's not very meaningful.
01:02:42
Speaker
You know, there's a lot that you can say that is negative about this film that I think is a very fair criticism.
01:02:49
Speaker
I don't think it's terribly confident in itself.
01:02:51
Speaker
That's really the biggest one.
01:02:52
Speaker
I think, like I said earlier, most of the punches just don't land.
01:02:56
Speaker
But I will always, always, always be excited when an artist does something like this and does something weird and bold and tries to piss people off.
01:03:05
Speaker
I think that's, you know, we can't afford to be anti-art.
01:03:09
Speaker
now or ever, but I think, you know, despite its flaws, it's worth checking out.
01:03:16
Speaker
Yeah, as you discuss that, I keep thinking about like Saltburn, the number of people who have said, oh, you got to see that.
01:03:24
Speaker
Oh, wait.
01:03:25
Speaker
No, no, Chris.
01:03:26
Speaker
No, no.
01:03:27
Speaker
You will be terribly uncomfortable.
01:03:29
Speaker
Yeah, you would hate Saltburn.
01:03:31
Speaker
But at the same time, this needs to exist.
01:03:35
Speaker
What kind of world would it be?
01:03:38
Speaker
I'm chewing through the James Bond movies left, right, and center.
01:03:42
Speaker
That's not social combat.
01:03:43
Speaker
I mean, he's an objectively bad person.
01:03:46
Speaker
Yeah.
01:03:47
Speaker
But guns, bang, bang, cute girls, fun car.
01:03:52
Speaker
No, we can't live like that.
01:03:54
Speaker
Over and over and over.
01:03:57
Speaker
This did feel like a dark cloud of a bludgeon hitting me over the head.
01:04:04
Speaker
But once again, I'm glad that I returned to the text.
01:04:07
Speaker
Sure, yeah.
01:04:09
Speaker
And we need to do that.
01:04:11
Speaker
It's not like ignoring that or not representing it in entertainment makes it go away.
01:04:17
Speaker
It just makes us not look at it.
01:04:20
Speaker
It is an objective fact that you would read this
01:04:26
Speaker
Yes, I'm going to say 10 out of 10 people would read this and say Heathcliff is grossly mistreating his charges.
01:04:36
Speaker
And yet we know for a fact there are kids of the same age with guardians of the same age being treated the same way right now in a city near you.
01:04:47
Speaker
Right?
01:04:48
Speaker
Yes, sir.
01:04:49
Speaker
So ignoring it is not the answer.
01:04:53
Speaker
And that's why I say I think the context is incredibly important.
01:04:57
Speaker
Right.
01:04:58
Speaker
Because I do not want to look away.
01:05:00
Speaker
I do not want to say, cool, I love reading.
01:05:03
Speaker
This year, I'm going to read 65 sci-fi novels.
01:05:07
Speaker
Right.
01:05:07
Speaker
Right.
01:05:08
Speaker
That's not that's not the answer.
01:05:09
Speaker
That's not going to make society better.
01:05:12
Speaker
Am I am I arguing that Wuthering Heights is going to make society better?
01:05:16
Speaker
No, I don't think so.
01:05:18
Speaker
But I will never be unhappy with a marker that creatively points us back to this is how humans can be.
01:05:27
Speaker
But you don't have to.
01:05:30
Speaker
You know what I mean?
01:05:32
Speaker
Or you'll die of TB.
01:05:35
Speaker
Everything is tuberculosis.
01:05:37
Speaker
Everything is tuberculosis.
01:05:38
Speaker
Another great book.
01:05:39
Speaker
That's not happy, but it was a great book.
01:05:43
Speaker
I think that's, I think that's in, well, frankly, a pretty medium segue, but we're going to segue anyway.
01:05:48
Speaker
Yeah.
01:05:49
Speaker
Because I think you were about to ask me who I would recommend this to.
01:05:52
Speaker
I was.
01:05:54
Speaker
I don't know.
01:05:56
Speaker
Because I do think people need to read this book, but a classic that seems to come up for us one time after another,
01:06:04
Speaker
I think people who have not read it that I know would not enjoy it.
01:06:09
Speaker
And I think people that would enjoy it that I know have already read it.
01:06:14
Speaker
Yeah.
01:06:15
Speaker
I was surprised at the number of people just kind of chatting this week with folks who read it in school because my school did not.
01:06:23
Speaker
I don't think I did either, but I did talk to a few people.
01:06:25
Speaker
I went with a group of friends and at least one of them read it in high school.
01:06:29
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
01:06:30
Speaker
I think I did try to poke around like, because I obviously give a lot of book recommendations to folks when it comes up.
01:06:37
Speaker
I think if someone read a modern gothic novel and was like, whoa, I enjoy this way more than I do.
01:06:46
Speaker
than I thought I would.
01:06:47
Speaker
Frankenstein or Mexican Gothic are a couple that have come up for us.
01:06:51
Speaker
I think I would maybe say, well, you want to go back?
01:06:55
Speaker
Because as we discussed on the Gothic literature episode, this was really a turning point for the genre.
01:07:04
Speaker
And in that sense, I think it would be invaluable to say, well, you dig this, go look at how it started, you know, in the way that people are like, even if you don't dig the Beatles, they objectively change.
01:07:18
Speaker
Right.
01:07:18
Speaker
Oh, yeah, that's a good point.
01:07:20
Speaker
So maybe that's I off the top of my head thinking about the people I know that I discuss books with.
01:07:27
Speaker
Besides maybe my mom, who, of course, has already read it.
01:07:30
Speaker
I don't know a single person that I could in good conscience send a copy to and be like, hey, you're going to thank me.
01:07:38
Speaker
Right.
01:07:39
Speaker
Yeah, I get it.
01:07:41
Speaker
Mine is mine is similar.
Closing and Future Episodes
01:07:42
Speaker
It's hard to say who I would recommend this movie to given
01:07:46
Speaker
some of the social media reaction to it.
01:07:48
Speaker
I almost just don't feel like engaging in conversation about this movie or almost even feel safe recommending it because I know it's so hard to not fall prey to negative content on social media.
01:08:02
Speaker
That's like what it's made for.
01:08:04
Speaker
So I guess my recommendation is if you think that you can go in with an open mind and an open heart,
01:08:10
Speaker
then maybe you'll enjoy it.
01:08:12
Speaker
Just stylistically, I wanted to throw out a few other directors that I think are kind of in line with what Fennell was getting at.
01:08:19
Speaker
She's being compared to Basler Menelot right now who did Moulin Rouge and the Romeo and Juliet with Leonardo DiCaprio.
01:08:28
Speaker
He did The Great Gatsby and the Elvis biopic because he does a lot of that stylized imagery and kind of over the top visuals.
01:08:35
Speaker
So
01:08:37
Speaker
she's getting compared to him quite a bit.
01:08:38
Speaker
I think maybe there's a more accurate or equally accurate comparison to be made between her and John Waters, who calls himself the king of trash, or maybe it's the king of garbage, something like that.
01:08:50
Speaker
Like he's he's he makes these very transgressive queer films and has always sort of intentionally done them poorly so that they are incendiary and that they become campy cult classics.
01:09:02
Speaker
And like I said, I think
01:09:04
Speaker
They're similar because there's this subversive joke that they are in on that, you know, only some audience picks up on.
01:09:13
Speaker
And maybe, you know, he made films for decades and it took a long time for people to catch on.
01:09:17
Speaker
Maybe that'll be the case with her.
01:09:19
Speaker
I just, I did want to mention those two because I think it's also interesting that they both have had decades long careers doing things similar to Emerald Fennel and they don't get hate for what they do.
01:09:29
Speaker
And the one big difference is what's between all these people's legs.
01:09:34
Speaker
So on that note, thank you for joining our conversation about Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights and Emerald Fennel's adaptation.
01:09:44
Speaker
Up next, we have one of Chris's favorites.
01:09:47
Speaker
I'm very excited.
01:09:48
Speaker
Yes, correct.
01:09:49
Speaker
Okay, we are doing J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and specifically the Fellowship of the Ring.
01:09:57
Speaker
There he is.
01:09:59
Speaker
There he is.
01:10:00
Speaker
I'm learning.
01:10:01
Speaker
I'm learning.
01:10:02
Speaker
And yeah, we're very much looking forward to it.
01:10:04
Speaker
So thank you for listening.
01:10:06
Speaker
Please go see Weathering Heights because it's good for art.
01:10:09
Speaker
Agreed.
01:10:10
Speaker
See you next time.
01:10:11
Speaker
Bye.
01:10:13
Speaker
That's the show for today.
01:10:14
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in.
01:10:15
Speaker
Let us know in the comments what you're reading, what you're watching, and what adaptations you'd like us to cover.
01:10:20
Speaker
Be sure to follow us on Instagram at adaptation underscore pod and on Twitter at adapt pod.
01:10:25
Speaker
See you next time.