{"id":298745,"date":"2026-02-23T22:25:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T22:25:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/298745\/"},"modified":"2026-02-23T22:25:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T22:25:08","slug":"the-wuthering-heights-double-standard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/298745\/","title":{"rendered":"The “Wuthering Heights” double standard"},"content":{"rendered":"

Emerald Fennell<\/a> is not your enemy.<\/p>\n

This may be a strange and foreign idea for some to parse, but it\u2019s true nonetheless. Despite popular opinion, the filmmaker behind \u201cPromising Young Woman<\/a>,\u201d \u201cSaltburn<\/a>,\u201d and her latest movie, a loose and playful adaptation of Emily Bront\u00eb\u2019s classic novel, \u201cWuthering Heights<\/a>,\u201d is not out to get the audience. Yet, Fennell\u2019s penchant for narrative subversion and her almost teenage-like preoccupation with sex, drugs and perverse paraphernalia continues to alienate a growing portion of very vocal, very agitated viewers. And with the polarizing and extreme response to Fennell\u2019s \u201cWuthering Heights,\u201d it seems this animosity has reached its crest. There are opinion pieces galore claiming<\/a> Fennell \u201cgot it all wrong,\u201d video essays asserting<\/a> that the film is \u201cthe worst adaptation of all time\u201d and that Fennell should<\/a> \u201capologize to Emily Bront\u00eb.\u201d (How one would go about apologizing to the ghost of a 19th-century writer is beyond me.) And those don\u2019t even scratch the surface of the sentiments being tossed around on social media. If one is random, two is a coincidence and three is a pattern, then this third round of divisive reception confirms that Fennell\u2019s work will be continually met with raised eyebrows and closed minds no matter how good \u2014 or, more importantly, how interesting \u2014 her films are.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a real shame, considering how interesting Fennell\u2019s \u201cWuthering Heights\u201d is if you can divorce yourself from the film\u2019s source material, as its writer-director does with palpable glee. Her take is a maelstrom of splendid beauty and doomed love, colliding at a feverish pace that makes the fidelity to Bront\u00eb\u2019s book moot. This is Fennell\u2019s vision, her creation. Its bones are the same, but its cells are different. Why, then, is Fennell\u2019s adaptation of a classic met with such ruthless scrutiny, when another recent Jacob Elordi<\/a>-starring remix on an equally beloved, oft-remade tale \u2014 Guillermo del Toro\u2019s<\/a> \u201cFrankenstein<\/a>\u201d \u2014 was lauded by both critics, viewers and awards bodies alike?<\/p>\n

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(Warner Bros. Pictures) Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff and Margot Robbie as Catherine Earnshaw in \u201cWuthering Heights\u201d<\/p>\n

If one is random, two is a coincidence and three is a pattern, then this third round of divisive reception confirms that Fennell\u2019s work will be continually met with raised eyebrows and closed minds no matter how good \u2014 or, more importantly, how interesting \u2014 her films are.<\/p>\n

Fennell\u2019s \u201cWuthering Heights\u201d pivots the novel toward fantastical anachronism and open-hearted femininity, while del Toro\u2019s \u201cFrankenstein\u201d is a dour, dark spin that blunts the sentimentality of Mary Shelley\u2019s book for an adaptation that plays more like a superhero origin story. Both filmmakers chose to make Elordi their 6 \u20186 muse, using his imposing stature to their gain \u2014 strong and rugged as Fennell\u2019s Heathcliff, while towering and intimidating as del Toro\u2019s Creature \u2014 and the cinematic story arcs for both characters regularly deviate from their respective novels. Despite these and other glaring similarities between these films released just four months apart, only one movie was met with virulent animosity from the jump, and somehow, it wasn\u2019t the worst movie of the two. This isn\u2019t just the latest layer in the longtime double standard for films made by women compared to those made by men; the reaction also indicates a frightening lack of curiosity among stubborn viewers unwilling to consider a reality beyond a prevailing narrative.<\/p>\n

But how did this idea that Fennell is some hollow provocateur with subzero artistic talent even begin? How is it that, in the span of six years and three films, she\u2019s become cinema\u2019s most toxic and piled-on filmmaker? Fennell hasn\u2019t done anything wrong, per se. Tastelessness is not punishable by law, and neither is adapting a beloved novel however a filmmaker sees fit. Creative liberty is not a felony any more than dreadful digital imagery is, and if it were, del Toro should be the first one charged for making \u201cFrankenstein\u201d \u2014 a fantasy that\u2019s supposed to stir the soul \u2014 look so flat and unimaginative. But I digress.<\/p>\n

This saga\u2019s gnarled roots stretch back to 2020, the year \u201cPromising Young Woman\u201d was released in theaters, and a year worthy of its own case study on its impact on cinema alone. Fennell\u2019s first feature-length effort premiered at Sundance in January of that year and was slated for an April release until the pandemic halted the world, and with it, the theatrical release schedule. With movie theaters closed for most of the year, distributors were forced to postpone theatrical releases or pivot to new streaming models. When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced it would consider streaming films with releases previously scheduled before the pandemic, many studios pursued the latter option. Nevertheless, \u201cPromising Young Woman\u201d had a small theatrical opening over the winter holidays, making it one of the few films that audiences could see in its intended format, which, if we\u2019re honest, probably led to some overly effusive reviews.<\/p>\n

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(Ken Woroner\/Netflix) Jacob Elordi as The Creature in \u201cFrankenstein\u201d<\/p>\n

But \u201cPromising Young Woman\u201d was an outlier. While some distributors opted for the streaming option, most held films until theaters could reopen safely and viewers felt comfortable returning, hoping to recoup whatever financial investment they could after an uncertain year. Naturally, the pool of films shortlisted for the 2021 Oscars<\/a> looked much different than it otherwise might have, making that year\u2019s nominees both thrillingly diverse and completely atypical. Though \u201cPromising Young Woman\u201d was received well by critics, there\u2019s no guarantee that, without the effects of the pandemic, it would\u2019ve garnered five Oscar nominations, including best picture and directing. In the end, Fennell took home the statue for best original screenplay, cementing her prowess in Oscar gold \u2014 and turning herself radioactive forevermore.<\/p>\n

In the years that have followed, \u201cPromising Young Woman\u201d and its once glowing reputation have soured. The ending, which I won\u2019t spoil here, has become a lightning rod of controversy that cannot be destroyed, no matter how much acrimonious electricity it attracts. And because Fennell is an Oscar-winning writer, her work has since been judged against that standard by detractors who don\u2019t consider the extremely specific circumstances of the year she won. Conversely, the film\u2019s awards-favorite status awarded Fennell a blank check, which she\u2019s used to keep doing what she does best: making films that piss people off.<\/p>\n

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But upsetting viewers has never been Fennell\u2019s exact intention. A true provocateur shows, not tells. And Fennell\u2019s entire career in filmmaking thus far has been about telling. Whether in interviews<\/a> or the context of her films, Fennell doesn\u2019t shy from the fact that she enjoys themes that flirt with impropriety or visuals that push the limits. She\u2019s forthright with her interest in depravity, and as such, her films make no effort to conceal their degeneracies or shock the viewer. The most surprising thing Fennell could do at this point is tone down her overt freakiness, which she does in \u201cWuthering Heights\u201d with as much assurance as she wrote the bathtub-licking scene in \u201cSaltburn.\u201d<\/p>\n

Del Toro\u2019s work is just as overwrought, just as bogged down by ideas and just as keen to emphasize style over narrative substance as Fennell\u2019s. And yet, \u201cFrankenstein\u201d was met with an air of prestige, while \u201cWuthering Heights\u201d has been treated like a guilty pleasure.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that Fennell isn\u2019t good at playing the rabble-rouser, as many have alleged. (She is, in fact, great at it, considering how many people she aggravates by simply making a movie.) Rather, she is not given the same grace as her contemporaries. As a woman working in big-budget, mainstream film, Fennell\u2019s boldness is mistaken for trashiness; her feminine gaze is confused with a typically masculine gratuitousness. Most telling of all: Those chafed by \u201cPromising Young Woman\u201d haven\u2019t given Fennell the impartial second chance that her male industry colleagues receive time and time again. Instead, she\u2019s been stamped with a red \u201cV\u201d for \u201cVacuous\u201d and labeled cinema\u2019s number-one fraud, regardless of the merit, improvement and commitment to refining her vision demonstrated by her two most recent films.<\/p>\n

Fennell\u2019s reputation precedes her by a mile, which makes the filmmaker\u2019s decision to adapt \u201cWuthering Heights,\u201d a novel she\u2019s loved and cared for since she first read it at 14, all the more bold \u2014 and dangerous. By taking on Bront\u00eb\u2019s book, Fennell was doomed to stare down millions of overly pedantic literature sticklers, people who prefer their adaptations pure and untainted. Any major decision that fell outside of Bront\u00eb\u2019s story and character arcs was bound to be picked apart by the vultures. And in just a little more than a week after its release, almost every element<\/a> of Fennell\u2019s film has been criticized. The costumes<\/a>. The soundtrack<\/a>. The narrative changes<\/a> to fit an alternate interpretation. The casting<\/a>. (Granted, complaints about Fennell\u2019s colorblind casting \u2014 poorly justified<\/a> by Fennell herself \u2014 are the most valid of the bunch.) It seems there is no one thing anyone can agree on when it comes to Fennell\u2019s version. This constant bickering only leads to an inescapable level of discourse that serves the false perception of Fennell as the raging provocateur she is not.<\/p>\n

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(Warner Bros. Pictures) Margot Robbie as Catherine Earnshaw and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff in \u201cWuthering Heights\u201d<\/p>\n

One particularly confounding and repeated<\/a> grievance is the film\u2019s title. More and more versions of \u201cIf you don\u2019t want to adapt literature faithfully, call it something else,\u201d are popping<\/a> up<\/a> online<\/a> daily<\/a>. Fennell has already addressed this, noting that her film is stylized with quotation marks around the title because it\u2019s her own vision of the book, inspired by how she imagined it as a teenager. Her film also isn\u2019t far enough from the source material to warrant a full name change; it\u2019s more \u201cRomeo + Juliet\u201d than \u201cClueless.\u201d Curiously, this was not a prevailing gripe about \u201cFrankenstein,\u201d despite del Toro changing the ending, altering the inciting events of the Creature\u2019s creation and adding new characters while changing the textual behavior of key others. Microbloggers weren\u2019t taking del Toro to task over his title, nor were they criticizing harmless anachronisms that better fit the version of the story he was trying to tell. If Fennell\u2019s idealistically romantic and aesthetic-minded \u201cWuthering Heights\u201d is a perversion of the source material, one could just as easily say the same about del Toro\u2019s \u201cFrankenstein\u201d: a less violent, way more maudlin reading of Shelley\u2019s novel about fatherhood and trauma cycles, rather than othering.<\/p>\n

That wasn\u2019t the case. Articles comparing<\/a> the book to del Toro\u2019s adaptation highlighted the changes but stopped short of outright criticizing his film or his skill as a director \u2014 an integral part of every conversation surrounding Fennell. Meanwhile, the sumptuous imagery and amiable pacing of \u201cWuthering Heights\u201d trounce del Toro\u2019s ghastly slog of a film. Fennell couldn\u2019t alter the nature of Heathcliff and Cathy\u2019s relationship without being lambasted, but del Toro could make his Creature into an immortal, regenerating super-monster and remain acclaimed. Del Toro\u2019s work is just as overwrought, just as bogged down by ideas and just as keen to emphasize style over narrative substance as Fennell\u2019s. And yet, \u201cFrankenstein\u201d was met with an air of prestige, while \u201cWuthering Heights\u201d has been treated like a guilty pleasure.<\/p>\n

Fennell hasn\u2019t done anything wrong, per se. Tastelessness is not punishable by law, and neither is adapting a beloved novel however a filmmaker sees fit.<\/p>\n

Fennell is an easy target. She\u2019s white, she comes from money and her first film ended on a controversial note that has stuck to her ever since. There are things to criticize about her and her work, and, no question, these criticisms should be lodged when appropriate. But when examined against another, more seasoned and more widely beloved filmmaker like del Toro \u2014 one who, it should be noted, takes as many risks as Fennell does \u2014 it\u2019s difficult to see what makes Fennell the hack, other than latent misogyny and a predilection for kink. Just because a filmmaker does something with one film that a viewer may not jive with doesn\u2019t mean their work should be refuted forevermore. If that were the case, no one in Hollywood would ever work again. Still, Fennell\u2019s critics spend weeks decrying<\/a> her as a hack and review-bombing<\/a> \u201cWuthering Heights\u201d on the movie-logging platform Letterboxd before they even have a chance to engage with her film.<\/p>\n

That may be the most disturbing aspect of all. Whether people enjoy Fennell\u2019s work is a matter of personal taste. But refusing to keep an open mind and stay curious about a film simply because of a filmmaker\u2019s reputation for (relatively tame!) smuttiness is detrimental to the cinema that Fennell\u2019s critics purport to uphold. \u201cWuthering Heights\u201d may not be to many people\u2019s taste, but what Fennell has done is irrefutably interesting. She\u2019s made something different from your typical adaptation, a movie that brings a fresh perspective to a very old and frequently retold tale. How very frustrating that so many people have closed off their minds and hearts to the film before they\u2019ve even seen it, or before the credits rolled. Such baseless reticence only makes us more defiant and less inquisitive. Social media might be the modern watercooler \u2014 the dominating force of cultural conversation \u2014 but taking its narratives as gospel without considering art for ourselves only reinforces our worst instincts and upholds the systems that a surprising, offbeat and altogether different film like \u201cWuthering Heights\u201d rallies against.<\/p>\n

Read more<\/p>\n

about Emerald Fennell\u2019s work<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Emerald Fennell is not your enemy. This may be a strange and foreign idea for some to parse,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":298746,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[156,409,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-298745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298745\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/298746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}