I get why people say it’s kind of losing the essence of the book, valid and that’s okay. But ever since I read Wuthering Heights in high school, 10+ years ago, I’ve always been in “excited” mode whenever anything is inspired by or adapted from it, fr. Maybe I’ve been in love with the idea of yearning since that moment?!? #weirdlittlesoul

But even since then, I’ve never treated Wuthering Heights as something that must be preserved 1:1 from the book. Even my teenage self thought, “I wish there were a modern film adaptation of this,” and then I literally crawled the internet to find any version because that’s how deep my fangirling level went?!?!

I’ve always treated Wuthering Heights as something that can be reinterpreted, modified, stylized, even exaggerated… depending on whose hands it’s in.

Call me lame, call me weird, even though the book is a masterpiece and legendary, which I enjoyed every single thing in it, I won’t sanitize it into something that must always be serious and super identical. I admire it at its core for what it actually is: obsessive, irrational, sensual (even if not explicitly sexual in the text), and emotionally excessive. Like girl, the yearning is SO depressing, they are literally ONE SOUL. Catherine literally says she and Heathcliff are the same soul. THAT’S FERAL DEVOTION. Even Heathcliff says something like “Be with me always, take any form, drive me mad!” AND THAT is what shaped me to accept their story in any form of adaptation… their painful love must stay alive in any way, era, or interpretation 😀 give me more Wuthering Heights in more weirdness and highly obsessive mode, I WILL CONSUME IT.

So me and my girlies who get what Emerald Fennell is delivering, by enjoying the aesthetic excess, visual luxury, horniness, sensuality, emotional extremity, longing, and that heavily consuming kind of love: i don’t think that’s missing the point. It’s leaning into one of its strongest currents. I just felt like, “GIRL, SOMEONE OUT HERE IS COMMITTED TO THE MADNESS.”

I’m valuing a different dimension of storytelling. And for me, art isn’t a checklist… IT’S THE RESONANCE. THIS IS FOR ME AND MY YEARNING GIRLIES, MY FULL OF FANTASIES BADDIES, MY WEIRDOS. DON’T LIE, WE ARE ATTACHED TO BOTH OF THEM

This adaptation for me if i must wrap it in one sentence: SEXUAL TENSION on SEXUAL TENSION, on MORE SEXUAL TENSION and YEARNING.