{"id":79108,"date":"2025-10-16T19:54:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T19:54:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/79108\/"},"modified":"2025-10-16T19:54:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T19:54:07","slug":"the-fall-of-the-classics-how-the-medias-obsession-with-smutty-reads-has-ruined-true-literature-and-a-generation-of-adaptations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/79108\/","title":{"rendered":"The fall of the classics: How the media\u2019s obsession with smutty reads has ruined true literature and a generation of adaptations"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Sabahat Baig<\/a>, October 16 2025\u2014<\/p>\n

BookTok and its need for \u201cspicy\u201d reads has contributed to the fall of the classics and the creation of salacious book-to-screen adaptations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Although many popular book-to-screen adaptations have been quite successful \u2014 despite frequent inaccuracies like costuming<\/a>, casting, plotholes, etc. \u2014 none have caused quite as large an outcry as the upcoming erotic adaptation of Emily Bront\u00eb\u2019s novel Wuthering Heights by Emerald Fennel.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fennel, the director of the critically applauded Promising Young Women and Saltburn, has found herself in quite the public controversy<\/a> with the release of the first glimpse of her Wuthering Heights adaptation, a teaser trailer<\/a> that dropped on Sept. 5. The teaser has caused quite the stir online as people dissected the trailer and compared it to the classic gothic novel.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fennel has brought, in her return to the big screen, Ewan Mitchell and Allison Oliver from her last film. However, the biggest division in the audience has been the actor she chose to play Heathcliff, one of the main characters of the novel \u2014 Jacob Elordi<\/a>, a white-passing Australian\/Spanish actor who also worked as one of the main stars in Saltburn. The only problem is that Bront\u00eb writes Heathcliff explicitly as a coloured man.<\/p>\n

Fennel is not the first film adaptation of this novel, but it is the first adaptation that will be released in theatres, making the wrongful casting of Heathcliff all the more disappointing. Fennel made a conscious decision to whitewash her main male lead, even after so many adaptations have remained faithful to the accurate casting of Heathcliff \u2014 like the 2011 version<\/a> of Wuthering Heights, starring James Howson and Kaya Scodelario.<\/p>\n

And when asked about the various inaccuracies in this book-to-screen adaptation \u2014 including hyper-sexual material not present in the novel \u2014 the casting director, Kharmel Cochrane, announced<\/a> that there was \u201cno need to be accurate\u201d since the source material is \u201cjust a book\u201d \u2014 diminishing, once again, the significance of both the novel and the author herself.<\/p>\n

This inaccurate<\/a> casting of Heathcliff precedes all of the other inaccuracies, though, especially in 2025. It\u2019s far deeper than the usual hair-colour-based online discourse about casting in nearly every adaptation (which Fennel doesn\u2019t even get right).<\/p>\n

Fennel\u2019s casting choice alters the character of Heathcliff in a significant and problematic way. By erasing his identity and background \u2014 traits which play major roles in the novel \u2014 Fennel has effectively pulled at a thread that threatens to dissolve the character and his significance altogether.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bront\u00eb\u2019s Heathcliff often suffers insults based on his race throughout the book, referred to by various derogatory terms by his guest, Lockwood, his adoptive brother, Hindley Earnshaw, and many, many others. This repeated discourse about Heathcliff\u2019s race displays the aggressive behaviour he has been subjected to throughout his life as a coloured orphan. The novel highlights the racial discrimination Heathcliff is forced to endure, even at the hands of the people who\u2019ve adopted him into their household.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bront\u00eb\u2019s Wuthering Heights is a novel on social class, prejudice, abuse and the perceived natural versus the perceived unnatural \u2014 which Bront\u00eb specifically challenges.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The novel was complex for its time, and passionate in its delivery of feelings and complicated relationships like the one between Heathcliff and Catherine, but it\u2019s about much more than their relationship with each other: it\u2019s about their relationship with the world and society, and the decisions they make which are influenced by a divided and prejudiced society. It\u2019s also a straight-up ghost story, which may very well be included here but is hidden in the trailer by hyper-pop, sexualized imagery and an intense Charli xcx song.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, it seems as though Fennel has taken a true classic and adapted it to be a period-drama \u201cspicy\u201d romance film akin to the 50 Shades of Grey series. It has inaccurately presented characters who are meant to represent the different class struggles of Bront\u00eb\u2019s time \u2014 an inaccuracy that deserves more attention than the shortcomings of the costume department which decided to put Margot Robbie (Catherine Earnshaw) in a corset on bare skin, for example, or the casting of a popular, thirty-year-old, blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman who\u2019s meant to be an eighteen-year-old girl with dark hair and brown eyes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Making the once-tense relationship between the main characters entirely sexual eliminates the subtle and emotional yearning that Bront\u00eb originally wrote about.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the novel, Catherine and Heathcliff initially marry separate people to boost their social statuses, betraying each other yet still holding a silent affinity for one other despite everything. The novel leaves any potential sexual encounters during their childhood up for interpretation, but the novel is clearly enraptured with a different, haunting sort of intimacy.<\/p>\n

This remake, in which Bront\u00eb\u2019s characters are sex-obsessed, erases the gentle manner of their relationship and takes attention away from Bront\u00eb\u2019s main issues of class division and the mistreatment of coloured people such as Heathcliff, whom Catherine loves regardless of his appearance. It also does a disservice to the essence of period-drama love, which tends to be full of gentle manners, yearning and true affection without the need to be overtly sexual \u2014 something so well done in adaptations like Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre and Emma.<\/p>\n

As of now, from what we\u2019ve seen in the trailer, Fennel\u2019s focus on lust diminishes the gothic elements of Bront\u00eb\u2019s novel, including themes of paranormal beings, the uncanny, the natural world and death.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t get me wrong, it can be an empowering form of media to make a period-drama piece focused on sexuality and pleasure, especially in a time when such topics are restrained and women are shamed for feeling natural desires. Yet, to adapt a classic novel that discusses real issues and make it all about sexual fantasies and pleasure is to erase the effort of the author, and to erase a message which urges readers to envision a more liberal society.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The inaccuracies in Fennel\u2019s upcoming Wuthering Heights make the film problematic for many reasons, to the point where it would not stand to even call this version of the story a true adaptation, unless Fennel is just rage-baiting fans of the original novel and hiding a more faithful adaptation, which seems unlikely. Many people have taken over Reddit<\/a> to share theories of their own, the most popular amongst them being that the film will not actually follow the novel, but instead be a dream sequence from a modern-day woman, played by Margot Robbie, who\u2019s reading the novel, self inserting herself into it and fantasizing about having a sexual relationship with Heathcliff. This theory \u2014 which suggests that the film isn\u2019t an adaptation to begin with \u2014 might actually come off as a relief to many literature enthusiasts.<\/p>\n

However, that doesn\u2019t make it any better.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We have normalized the sexualization of characters \u2014 many of whom are minors \u2014 to the point that we struggle to engage with films and books that lack sexual content. Accurate remake or not, the general obsession towards \u201cspicy\u201d media is pushing the world of literature backwards and negatively affecting young people. These erotic remakes of classics can be the early introduction to obscene media, leading to unhealthy attachments, and inappropriate, or hypersexual thoughts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fennel reduces Bront\u00eb\u2019s hard-earned triumph \u2014 for a novel that received criticism at its release for being unorthodox but is full of brilliant themes and literary devices \u2014 into a provocative money grab. It comes as a disappointment when Fennel could have made a truly Gothic film with striking cinematography, like 2024\u2019s Nosferatu, or 2015\u2019s Crimson Peak \u2014 both iconic films, with the former appropriately presenting sexuality<\/a> to explore themes of violation, societal constraints, loss of control and shame. Unfortunately, 2026\u2019s Wuthering Heights seems it will represent an unsettling and steadily growing vision of erasure and ignorance in the film industry in favour of \u201cspicy\u201d scenes and sensationalized imagery.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Sabahat Baig, October 16 2025\u2014 BookTok and its need for \u201cspicy\u201d reads has contributed to the fall…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":79109,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[412,4124,55482,55483,5371,146,85,46,55484,5372],"class_list":{"0":"post-79108","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-booktok","10":"tag-classic-literature","11":"tag-emerald-fennel","12":"tag-emily-bronte","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-il","15":"tag-israel","16":"tag-novel-adaptation","17":"tag-wuthering-heights"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79108\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}