Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights Whitewashed Heathcliff & Honestly, It Was For The Best

Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights opens with a scene I hated so much, I almost walked out of the theater. Don’t worry, it goes up from there! The scene in question is a hanging. Two feet dangle from a guillotine as an onlooker jokes about the lifeless body’s final unconscious act: a hard on. It’s mentioned later that the perpetrator was a rapist. So the glee in which the spectators (including Catherine “Cathy” Earnshaw) gawk at his erect penis while he is strangled to death is justified. I understand the point — that the story about to unfold is equal parts morbid, horny, irreverent, and uncomfortable — but it just felt like a cheap ploy for shock and awe. The good news is that the rest of the film deals with these conflicting emotions more effectively. And Catherine’s (played in her early years by Charlotte Mellington) curiosity for sex and macabre runs throughout the story, creating a fascinating duality of romance and toxicity, the things Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights are known for. But this opening scene is very different from the book’s, and it was just one reason (of many) why I’m glad the Heathcliff in Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of Wuthering Heights is white. 

Depending on who you ask, Brontë’s Heathcliff is supposed to be Black or Brown, since he’s described in the novel as a “dark-skinned gypsy in aspect” and a “dirty, ragged, black-haired child.” Another description: “as dark almost as if it came from the devil.” In a piece for Vulture called Is Heathcliff White?, Jasmine Vojdani writes that, “The idea that Heathcliff might be of African descent first entered academic discussion in the 1950s and gained momentum as postcolonial studies became more popular in the ’80s and ’90s. Scholars have argued that the proximity of Liverpool — one of the biggest slave ports at the time in which Wuthering Heights is set — to the Brontës’ home in Haworth cannot be overlooked.” Vojdani interviews scholars and tries to get to the bottom of this mystery surrounding one of literature’s most famous leading men. One scholar says, “He is both based on the boy of an Indian ruler who’d been orphaned because of the East India Company battles. But he’s also based on an Ashanti warrior’s son.” Another: “The feeling that he should be of African heritage, I think that is interference coming in from [Brontë] sister’s book. Because we do know that in Jane Eyre, Bertha Rochester is born in Jamaica.” Ultimately, Vojdani decides, “By Victorian standards, he’s definitely not white — and likely by ours as well. Is Heathcliff Black? Maybe! It is both historically and textually viable, but he isn’t necessarily Black.” 

We can debate Brontë’s intentions for decades (and clearly, scholars have), but what’s true in this adaptation is that a white Australian man (Jacob Elordi) and a white British boy (Owen Cooper) play Heathcliff. After watching the film, honestly, it’s for the best. I am not encouraging whitewashing, which let’s be clear is exactly what this adaptation and many before it have done, but aside from what implications could be drawn from a movie starring a Black man opening with a lynching, I just don’t think this love story is one I would want to see, or engage in the discourse, if it was a man of color seducing and obsessing over a white woman in this way.

When they are grownups, Heathcliff and Cathy (Margot Robbie) have a tumultuous and toxic relationship. Heathcliff is surly, cruel, and vindictive. He emotionally terrorizes Isabella Linton (Alison Oliver) because he can’t have Cathy. So much so that at a certain point, Isabella crawls on the floor like a dog as he holds onto her collar and makes her bark. While Isabella seems to enjoy this roleplay, it’s uncomfortable to watch. It would take skill, care and precision to pull off this kind of sexual deviance and kink between a consenting couple, let alone between one with a problematic age gap, and power imbalance. I like how female desire is depicted through Isabella, but throw race into the mix and to be frank, I just don’t think Fennell has the range. 

Based on what scholars have deduced and what Brontë wrote, Heathcliff was probably Brown, which is interesting considering Fennell cast Pakistani-British actor Shazad Latif as Edgar Linton, Cathy’s husband, who was definitely white in the books. His race is not mentioned in the movie. And neither is Hong Chau’s Nelly (played in youth by Vy Nguyen), Cathy’s live-in maid and best friend, also a white character who is now reimagined as Asian. There’s a brief mention of Nelly’s race, when Cathy’s father says something that implies she should be grateful he took her in. Otherwise, the way race would factor into their volatile friendship is never explored. In another writer-director’s hands, this story would be rife for mining the racial and class tensions of the era. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for showing flawed characters of color in toxic relationships. They don’t have to be perfect representations of their race. But, again, I don’t think Fennell has any intention, or the competency, to tackle all of that in her work.  

You realize early on what Fennell is doing. And that this Wuthering Heights is not a straightforward adaptation; it’s her own personal fantasy. She said as much on the red carpet for the LA premiere: “Everyone who loves this book has such a personal connection to it, and so you can only kind of ever make the movie that you sort of imagined yourself when you read it.” In Fennell’s fantasy, Heathcliff couldn’t possibly be anything but a tall, white man that looks like Elordi. Heathcliff is an object of desire and Fennell’s desires cannot extend beyond her worldview, and clearly, that world is very white. Which is fine, actually. She gets to make the movie she wants to. And I’d rather not watch a story told by a rich, white woman about the twisted proclivities of a Black or Brown man. I wouldn’t want to see it, and I wasn’t holding my breath waiting for it.  

I’m not trying to be condescending, I just genuinely didn’t expect a nuanced rumination on class, race, desire, and abuse from this movie. I watched the trailers, heard Robbie and Fennell talk about the movie, and I’ve seen Fennell’s previous films (which I didn’t hate!). I knew what they were trying to do with Wuthering Heights. It’s the spiritual equivalent to the genre of toxic white mess that unfolds in TV hits like Succession and The White Lotus. It’s a continuation of the recent trend of modern, magically race-bent, colorblind retellings of beloved literary works, like Netflix’s Bridgerton and Persuasion, and Apple TV’s The Buccaneers. It was never going to be that deep. But all art is political, so yes, while white filmmakers should know better and do better, I would rather spend my time championing original work from Black and Brown filmmakers and storytellers than wish for a non-white Heathcliff in Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights. I think that’s a waste of time. There is inevitably going to be an onslaught of thinkpieces and TikTok rants dedicated to chastising this casting. Sure, let’s call out whitewashing, but instead of expending all our energy on begging for scraps from white Hollywood, let’s support our own. 

I’d rather focus on making sure The Gilded Age gets 17 seasons (its co-showrunner is Sonja Warfield, a Black woman) and the upcoming adaptation of The Davenports (also brought to you by Warfield), gets all the hype it deserves than try to make this Wuthering Heights into something it was never going to be. I’d rather watch Amma Asante’s Belle again and support whatever work she’s got in the pipeline. I’d rather uplift Alyssa Cole, Adrianna Herrera, Vanessa Riley, and the countless other Black and Brown woman historical romance writers than force Fennell to change her warped fantastical version of Heathcliff and Cathy’s ill-fated love story into anything other than what it is. 

So let’s get into what is onscreen and whether that is worth your time. This may surprise you, but I actually think it is. When I settled into Fennell’s Wuthering Heights world, and got over the unnecessary shock tactic of that opening scene, I started to enjoy myself. I was entertained. Elordi and Robbie (who the internet also swore was miscast because of her age) are electric together. I think their chemistry makes the whole thing worth it.

In the story that Fennell is telling, their chemistry is the one thing that needs to work, and it does. I believe that these two people would tear the world — and themselves — apart to be together. I also believe that they want to tear each other’s clothes off. They are so down bad for each other, inanimate objects that are slightly sexual set them ablaze. Chemistry often feels like a lost art and it was refreshing to see good, old-fashioned, horny-ass onscreen attraction. And for the first time, I understood the global thirst for Jacob Elordi. While Robbie’s Cathy is spunky, stubborn, and independent, Elordi’s Heathcliff is brooding, desperate, and clingy. He’s a real yearner and this may mean that I need some serious therapy, but I was into it. 

A friend of mine went to an early screening of the movie as well and his review was simply, “gowns, beautiful gowns” and he’s not wrong, but I think it’s more than that. The costumes are absurd, but in this cinematic world, that’s a compliment! This movie thrives in absurdity and extravagance. There were moments when Robbie as Cathy walked into the frame and I had an audible reaction to her costume. Sure, at times, that took me out of the story, but if they were going to gasp-inducing costume design moments, they succeeded. Visually, Wuthering Heights is stunning. It nails the gloomy, overcast foreboding rolling hills that the source material describes while also injecting shots of color, humor, and exuberance into the film’s aesthetic. In spite of the depressing subject matter, this Wuthering Heights is more camp than melancholy. 

The film will probably never beat the style over substance accusations, understandably, but for me, the performances are the best part. Chau is perfectly exasperated and defiant. Latif is doting and oblivious yet likeable. Oliver is intoxicating and exhilarating to watch. And Elordi and Robbie lean so hard into the “smooth-brained sensuality” of Fennell’s adaptation that it’s not hard to believe they were obsessed with each other on set. 

The audiences who show up to the theater on Valentine’s Day hoping for a feel-good romance may leave a bit traumatized (just like I was when I first read Wuthering Heights in high school), but they’ll also buy into the splendor and pageantry of this movie. And they’ll understand why Elordi and Robbie are two of the most in-demand talents of their generation. I do wish that a Black-led, Black-directed film — or one made by and for people of color — was getting the same over-the-top treatment, star-making potential, and budget, but until we start yelling more about why we aren’t seeing those stories greenlit, funded, and released, we’ll be stuck in our own fantasy. Fennell’s warped, whimsical, white-as-hell fever dream may be a compelling watch, but it’s her imagination come to life. I want to imagine a world in which the weird whims of Black and Brown filmmakers are able to be awakened too.