I’m so glad we finally got to see the movie and talk about it! Loved your piece specifically about the book. That’s one good thing to come out of all this. If this neutered adaptation gets more people to read one of the most intense books of all time then great. Also, the skin walls!!!
Forced myself to exercise restraint and finish writing my own review before I read this! Really appreciate how you analyze it as a love story:
To understand the story’s enduring power, you must go back to the source. For some readers, Brontë’s novel is the interminable story of two terrible people determined to destroy everybody around them. (It often features in the answers to social media prompts about the worst book you had to read for school or classic novels you hate.) For others, the novel is one of the greatest love stories of all time. The secret to its enduring strangeness, though, is that it has always been both.
I watched in on youtube in high school back when content-moderation was basically nonexistent for foreign media / people were just uploading stuff. I do remember enjoying it a lot, though!
also, now that we’re enough comments down: it’s too bad Hanya’s level of taste when it comes to art / design is so stringent because I bet Emerald would have a ball directing an adaptation of ALL.
(1) really loved your piece, which articulated beautifully exactly what i've tried to articulate about the novel irl numerous times in the past several weeks
(2) haven't seen the movie but trusting your assessment: it's crazy that jacob elordi has now played two icons of victorian fiction in adaptations carefully designed to totally strip his character of any of the violence and moral transgression that makes the source text as rich and fascinating as it is. stay tuned i guess for his turn as rochester in a reimagining of jane eyre where his dark secret is that his last wife died a month after the wedding and that's why he's so sad all the time
also because the list of people who care about this is short and you’re on it, TTPD songs which are Wuthering Heights–coded.… currently my list is “Fortnight,” “My Boy…,” “Down Bad,” “But Daddy I Love Him,” “Fresh Out the Slammer,” “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?,” “The Alchemy,” “The Black Dog,” “imgonnagetyouback,” and “Robin”
thought about this more and "loml" has shades of cathy/heathcliff too t b h.... hareton/little cathy is the point in the new heights podcast episode taylor announced showgirl on where she says she explained hamlet to travis
ok your mind... i feel like a case can be made for "guilty as sin?"... also the one-two punch of "i can fix him" into "loml" is very specifically giving isabella/heathcliff. not TTPD but i also want to shout out "the great war" because the idea of a love story so noxiously fraught it feels comparable to one of the great catastrophes of modernity has always been funny to me and is not not wuthering heights. "there's no morning glory, it was war, it wasn't fair...."
I feel like the problem Jane Eyre presents for somebody who wants to do a Emerald Fennell sort of movie is that Jane is clearly not repressed but she is restrained, sort of a deadly combo for sexing her up. Probably the move would be to adapt Wide Sargasso Sea and not Jane Eyre… actually I haven’t read Wide Sargasso Sea so maybe that's not the move either.
oh i think there are lots of options for sexing up jane eyre... turn restraint into repression (the babygirlification of jane eyre), lean into the age gap of it all (the babygirlification of jane eyre, #problematic edition), draw out the finale and turn it into a sort of phantom thread situation (i haven't seen phantom thread) where jane sets the fire so that they can be equals at last... if you're going to let a little thing like "this is not remotely supported by the source text" stop you, you'll NEVER make it in hollywood!!!
it's true it's true I concede defeat but nevertheless The Voices are telling me that we're getting sexy Villette next… however it's true they are frequently wrong
I'm patiently pacing the room. Hello, left wall. Welcome back, right wall.
(I'd rather you post this whenever you feel like it rather than stressing over it. I don't think this is publish-or-perish situation (unless it is, then, I'm sorry))
I’m so glad we finally got to see the movie and talk about it! Loved your piece specifically about the book. That’s one good thing to come out of all this. If this neutered adaptation gets more people to read one of the most intense books of all time then great. Also, the skin walls!!!
Forced myself to exercise restraint and finish writing my own review before I read this! Really appreciate how you analyze it as a love story:
To understand the story’s enduring power, you must go back to the source. For some readers, Brontë’s novel is the interminable story of two terrible people determined to destroy everybody around them. (It often features in the answers to social media prompts about the worst book you had to read for school or classic novels you hate.) For others, the novel is one of the greatest love stories of all time. The secret to its enduring strangeness, though, is that it has always been both.
thank you!! though now that it’s out and irrevocable etc all I can see is that I used “enduring” twice in that paragraph…
hahaha I didn’t notice until you pointed it out!
fine, I’ll direct a good version of Wuthering Heights myself.
have you seen the Japanese one… I want to see it
I watched in on youtube in high school back when content-moderation was basically nonexistent for foreign media / people were just uploading stuff. I do remember enjoying it a lot, though!
also, now that we’re enough comments down: it’s too bad Hanya’s level of taste when it comes to art / design is so stringent because I bet Emerald would have a ball directing an adaptation of ALL.
you bringing up Hanya 🤝 me bringing up TTPD
gotta stick up for the Queens.
apparently there's a whole book about its popularity in Japan! https://press.umich.edu/Books/O/On-the-Bullet-Train-with-Emily-Bronte2
I think it might be out of print (or just expensive) in English now, but Minae Mizumura’s A True Novel was soooo good.
I read it a couple years ago! Agreed though like everybody other than Emily its Heathcliff is not a bad guy… he's more Jay Gatsby than anything.
this is fantastic!
thank you sir!
Lovely review, I'm so glad Cathy and Heathcliff don't have to be emotionally healthy... that's the whole point!
for the emotionally healthy, the tenant of wildfell hall is always an option
two things:
(1) really loved your piece, which articulated beautifully exactly what i've tried to articulate about the novel irl numerous times in the past several weeks
(2) haven't seen the movie but trusting your assessment: it's crazy that jacob elordi has now played two icons of victorian fiction in adaptations carefully designed to totally strip his character of any of the violence and moral transgression that makes the source text as rich and fascinating as it is. stay tuned i guess for his turn as rochester in a reimagining of jane eyre where his dark secret is that his last wife died a month after the wedding and that's why he's so sad all the time
also because the list of people who care about this is short and you’re on it, TTPD songs which are Wuthering Heights–coded.… currently my list is “Fortnight,” “My Boy…,” “Down Bad,” “But Daddy I Love Him,” “Fresh Out the Slammer,” “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?,” “The Alchemy,” “The Black Dog,” “imgonnagetyouback,” and “Robin”
thought about this more and "loml" has shades of cathy/heathcliff too t b h.... hareton/little cathy is the point in the new heights podcast episode taylor announced showgirl on where she says she explained hamlet to travis
"loml" is for Edgar Linton I feel
ok your mind... i feel like a case can be made for "guilty as sin?"... also the one-two punch of "i can fix him" into "loml" is very specifically giving isabella/heathcliff. not TTPD but i also want to shout out "the great war" because the idea of a love story so noxiously fraught it feels comparable to one of the great catastrophes of modernity has always been funny to me and is not not wuthering heights. "there's no morning glory, it was war, it wasn't fair...."
a friend texted me to say that there should be a version of Wuthering Heights where "Enchanted" starts playing when Isabella meets Heathcliff lol
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde but they’re both cute and nice.
dorian grey, widely beloved patron of the arts
I feel like the problem Jane Eyre presents for somebody who wants to do a Emerald Fennell sort of movie is that Jane is clearly not repressed but she is restrained, sort of a deadly combo for sexing her up. Probably the move would be to adapt Wide Sargasso Sea and not Jane Eyre… actually I haven’t read Wide Sargasso Sea so maybe that's not the move either.
oh i think there are lots of options for sexing up jane eyre... turn restraint into repression (the babygirlification of jane eyre), lean into the age gap of it all (the babygirlification of jane eyre, #problematic edition), draw out the finale and turn it into a sort of phantom thread situation (i haven't seen phantom thread) where jane sets the fire so that they can be equals at last... if you're going to let a little thing like "this is not remotely supported by the source text" stop you, you'll NEVER make it in hollywood!!!
it's true it's true I concede defeat but nevertheless The Voices are telling me that we're getting sexy Villette next… however it's true they are frequently wrong
> Patlabor is coming I promise
I'm patiently pacing the room. Hello, left wall. Welcome back, right wall.
(I'd rather you post this whenever you feel like it rather than stressing over it. I don't think this is publish-or-perish situation (unless it is, then, I'm sorry))
well I’d like to get something out before the end of the month… if only I had a nice robot suit named “Alphonse”…
I’m still only one episode into the OVA, so you have plenty of time 😆