Strike Magazine has an article supposedly 'Breaking Down The Over Sexualization of Literature' but which really should have been 'Breaking Down Over The Sexualization of Literature'.
When the Wuthering Heights (2026) teaser trailer dropped, the English major inside of me died. A Charli XCX soundtrack, trendy casting, and steamy scenes (that are certainly NOT written anywhere in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights) felt like a blow to the gut. I thought back to the rise of “spicy Booktok”. A side of TikTok that grew in popularity over the pandemic, highlighting romance and fantasy books that feature “spicy” romance scenes. It is a new form of erotica, one that is disguised beneath discreet covers, long forgetting the era of shirtless men on mass market paperbacks. I saw a post a few weeks back asking if Wuthering Heights had spice. I’ve seen someone asking if George Orwell’s Animal Farm had spice. It has gotten out of control! [...]
Spicy books and classic literature are two separate worlds of literature. Emerald Fennell is famous for her erotic and sometimes unsettling films, like Saltburn (2023). She has met with countless criticisms for her interesting casting choices regarding the Wuthering Heights adaptation. In the novel, Catherine Earnshaw is 19, while Margot Robbie is nearly double her age. Heathcliff is described as “dark-skinned” and is instead being played by Jacob Elordi, who is of Basque and Australian descent. Among these changes to the original novel, she has also decided to include a multitude of seemingly steamy scenes, which the novel contains absolutely none of. Written within the constraints of a Victorian society, Emily Brontë did not add any explicit scenes to her novel. While the time period may play a role in the omission of sex, I believe it also has to do with the novel focusing on the passionate connection between the two and their deep soul ties.
The most famous quote from the novel is, of course, “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same” (Brontë). Doesn’t the addition of erotic scenes take away from the connection that is so genuinely written throughout the novel? In the times of hookup culture and casual sex, I feel like Wuthering Heights’ original story is exactly what we need right now. Where did the classic 2000s-era romance movie go? Where did pouring rain, love confessions, will you marry me, I only love you, romance novels go? Can’t Emerald Fennell create an entirely new film instead of completely altering one of the most life-changing classic literature novels of our time?
For my sanity, and I’m sure countless others, I just need Emerald Fennell to stay genuine to Heathcliff’s yearning. (Abby Marshall)
If your sanity depends on what a free artist does inspired by a book while not destroying the actual book at all (not altering it at all, as the writer claims Fennell is doing) perhaps you should seek help. Again, for those at the back: an artist is free to make the art they want. If you're somehow offended or saddened, or disappointed by it is not their problem at all and should never be. You're free to like and dislike what they make, of course, but thinking you have a right to impose your views onto someone else's art is a pretty worrying sign of the times. If Emily Brontë herself or, say, the Impressionists had backed down in view of what their critics thought, what would we have then?
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