Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie to star in Emerald Fennell’s white-washed Wuthering Heights

By Abby Amoakuh

Published Sep 24, 2024 at 01:13 PM

Reading time: 2 minutes

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Images courtesy of IMDb and Jacob Elordi via Instagram

In what appears to be a massive win for people Down Under, both Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi—two certified Aussie hotties—have been cast in Oscar winner Emerald Fennell’s new cinematic adaptation of Wuthering Heights. Yet, the Brontë-heads of this world, who are naturally protective of the literary material, didn’t see the casting as a reason for celebrating. Instead, they called the upcoming film out for whitewashing the original novel and eradicating the central racial tensions within it.

In case you never read it, Wuthering Heights is the one and only novel written by the English author Emily Brontë, initially published in 1847. It follows the story of Heathcliff, a poor, orphaned boy of unknown origins who is rescued and taken in by the Earnshaw family where he develops an intense relationship with his young foster sister, Catherine, or Cathy.

Yet, Heathcliff is an outsider, due in part to his lacking social graces and his appearance. The novel famously characterised his looks as “a dark-skinned gypsy in aspect,” “a little Lascar” (a 19th-century term for Indian sailor), and “as dark almost as if it came from the devil.”

In multiple other passages throughout the book, Brontë also explores Heathcliff’s yearning for fairer hair and skin to fit in with his foster family and, of course, become more deserving of his childhood love Catherine.

For Brontë to include a Romani, or half-Indian character in such a complex tale about generational trauma, toxic love, and cycles of abuse was an unparalleled and revolutionary choice for a British writer during the mid-19th century, when racism was still founded on “scientific evidence” and people of colour were frequently forced into beggary due to a lack of jobs and racial discrimination.

Yet cinematic adaptations of Wuthering Heights frequently fell into the trap of completely bypassing this essential element of Heathcliff’s identity, effectively eradicating the racial tensions and normalised abuse of people of colour the novel explores. And it looks as though we’re about to see this happen again.

To many, this mistake was remedied with Solomon Glave and James Howson’s castings as the younger and older versions of Heathcliff in the 2011 movie version. Casting two multiracial actors as the male protagonists was celebrated by the book’s modern fandom for befitting the original description of Heathcliff in the book.

Yet, Fennell seems to be taking a slight step back by contracting Caucasian actor Jacob Elordi for the pivotal role. And boy, netizens weren’t happy about that.

Next to Elordi’s casting as a biracial man, the online literary community also bemoaned that the casting seemed unimaginative and lacklustre. Netizens argued that Fennell was attempting to attach big names to her movie, rather than hire two actors who had the gothic charisma and dramatic gravitas required to breathe life into such a dark, slow-burning tale about domestic abuse.

Fennell is a director who has frequently been engulfed in controversy for taking a white-centric approach to storytelling and casting.

Her 2020 rape revenge film Promising Young Woman, which earned her an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay at the 93rd Academy Awards, has been critiqued for completely obliterating race from its analysis of toxic masculinity and gender. The movie donned an all-white cast for instance, creating a racial blindspot in which ideas of white femininity as the universal female experience flourished unchecked.

In 2023’s Saltburn, Fennel’s disappointing attempt at ‘eat-the-rich’ cinema, she finally introduces a biracial character. But the director still couldn’t actually bear to see them as the lead, awkwardly dancing around the racial dynamics in the room. Indeed, she ultimately disposed of them in quite an unceremonial way. It was hard to get any satisfaction from this half-hearted attempt at representation.

Wuthering Heights is so precious to many because it doesn’t have one relatable or loveable character in it; it’s a deeply disturbing story about villains that becomes captivating and relatable through the humanity we share with them. I actually think that Fennell and the cast will be great at capturing this crucial, yet elusive basis of Brontë’s ageless masterpiece. But ignoring the racial tensions and social criticism in it? That unarguably only robs the movie of its potential.