VO: Welcome to the David Geffen stage at Kahan Concert Hall. Please take this moment now to silence your cell phones. 
Vinson Cunningham: Hey, you guys doing? 
Naomi Fry: Hey. 
Alex Schwartz: Hello. 
Naomi Fry: Hey everyone. 
Vinson Cunningham: We are thrilled to be here at the 92nd Street Y for a special live taping of critics at large. Thank you. Uh, I'm Vincent Cunningham and these are my wonderful co-host Alex Schwartz and Nomi f Fry. Uh, we love doing this with an audience. It's one of the.
Intermittent joys of this job. And so we really do want to hear from you. As you can see anytime during the show, if you have a question for us, text the word critics to this number to send us a question, and some of them will, will pick to, to be part of the conversation. So. Weathering Heights. It's Emily Bronte's only novel published nearly 200 years ago.
And in that time it's inspired, dozens of adaptations in every medium you can imagine. We've had movies, we've had operas, we've had a really good Kate Bush song that I, I came to way too late in my life. Um, and now we have. Emerald Fennell, that Wiley filmmaker Emerald Fennell's very 2026, take a film starring Margot Robbie and Jacob a Lorde with a score by Charlie XCX.
CLIP: Trailer
Vinson Cunningham: can we get just a quick poll? If you've seen the new Weathering Heights movie and you loved it, please clap.
Naomi Fry: That's respectable. 
Vinson Cunningham: If you've seen it and you hated it, give it a boo. Okay. 
Naomi Fry: Crowded, haters. I think that's, I think that's 
Alex Schwartz: kind of 50 50. 
Vinson Cunningham: It might be 50 50. 
Naomi Fry: I feel like the haters were like more louder. Maybe you would feel better. 
Vinson Cunningham: Have you guys seen a lot of reviews? Have you been looking at the yays and nays and various periodicals?
Naomi Fry: Yeah, I've been, I've been reading reviews, I think. They are also somewhat polarized. I don't know if I've seen a rave. 
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. 
Alex Schwartz: What I've become aware of in the past week since I saw the movie is that I don't know if I can remember a divide between professional critics and viewers as I can with this movie.
This movie is doing very well and people love it and critic. I think really mostly don't. 
Naomi Fry: That's a really good point. 
Vinson Cunningham: Well, we're gonna bridge that divide tonight. Whether you loved it or hated it, the intensity of the response speaks to a lot of people's feelings about the novel, which are still[a][b] also very strong.
And so today we're gonna be talking about this latest adaptation and also, of course about the book itself and the many attempts that have been made over the years. To pin it down, we wanna know like. What do these different versions tell us about the artists that made them, and why has this story, this weird, weird story, endured the way it has for 178 years?
So that's today on this live show of critics at Large Weathering Heights, and its Afterlives. 
Naomi Fry: Yay. 
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. Set the scene. How did you guys, we all watched it separately. How did you guys feel? What was it like going to the theater to see it? 
Naomi Fry: Okay, so first of all, we were sent out, um, to make some content for the New Yorker social channels. We went to the movie theater, armed with a little mic, and documented our steps as we went in.
And, you know, and I, I think that made me at least more aware. Of the reactions of the people next to me. And you know what, and the first thing that I can say is that while me and my husband were kind of, we'll talk about this more, maybe, maybe groaning and rolling our eyes at certain points and we're like checking our watches and et cetera, the, the, the couple of women next to us were.
Right. Sobbing. And Alex, you had a similar, um, experience, right? 
Alex Schwartz: I I did have a similar experience, yes. We'll talk about our own reactions I think in a second. But while watching this movie, I became very aware of, I, I, I venture to say that Gen Z couple to my right. Man and woman, this man was having the, the emotional ride of a lifetime he had, and I hope he's here tonight.
He had absolutely no idea what was coming and each new thing was like too much for him to take, but he just like had to keep going with it and. He just the, oh my God. And, oh no, there was a lot of that. His girlfriend was like checking on him. There was a moment when she felt it was appropriate to, um, to, to go to the bathroom.
And this was when Heath Cliff made, uh, Isabella Linton into his sex slave. And when, when she returned, he was like, he is a sex addict. And. It was just, he was really processing what Emily Bronte dished out, and Emerald Fennell served up for the first time, and at the end of the movie I was also with my husband who was enjoying it.
He enjoyed the movie quite a bit. And we both looked at this guy head and hands weeping. And his girlfriend's like head and 
Naomi Fry: hands. 
Alex Schwartz: Yes. His girlfriend was like comforting him. And honestly, that visceral experience is what it's all about. If you can get that, like ride that high, I, I love being just completely disarmed in movie theater and in between sobs he just said.
That was so fucking dope. So I was so happy for him and it just made my own like, shriveled reaction to this movie. Feel like my sad little, like Raisin in the sun reaction to this movie just feels so depressing to me. 
Vinson Cunningham: Uh, gen Z Lover boy, if you're out there, I can't stress enough to text critics to the number.
You gotta make. Make yourself known. Um, you know what's weird? A single man in a baseball cap going to see this movie. 
Alex Schwartz: I love it. 
Vinson Cunningham: There was 
Alex Schwartz: So You were alone? 
Vinson Cunningham: I was alone. There was, there was all kinds of weeping in between, you know, this is how we go to the movies now. People bringing out burgers and fries and shakes.
People were like, oh my God. You know, it was, it was really, people were being blown out of their seats. It was, it was, it was everything 
Naomi Fry: except for Yes. 
Vinson Cunningham: Well, you know, I think I was, I might've been a little bit blown outta my seat. Before we get to about 
Naomi Fry: Yeah, yeah. 
Vinson Cunningham: Yes. Before we get to our reactions, I do want Alex, who is like, in many ways, our chief synopsis on this podcast.
Nobody gives a, uh, an artful summary like Alex Schwartz. Could you just, could you walk us through Emerald Fennell's wild vision of Weathering High? 
Alex Schwartz: We're on the mos, where else would we be? And a young lad named Heathcliff is brought home by a Mr. Shaw, who's a bit of a degenerate. Also, I should say there's a hanging and an erection like one second into this movie.
So if you haven't seen it yet, prepare, um, there's an, there's an extra textual erection hanging. And after that, after that, uh, Heath cliff is brought home, this little abandoned. Boy and Kathy makes him her play thing. There's no brother as, there isn't a book, it's just the two of them on the moors running around, the Moors doing their thing.
Uh, and of[c][d] course, things go badly for Heathcliff in this case. The dad is quite brutal with him. He's, there's, there are beating scenes, um, but they grow up. In fact, they grow up to be like 35 years old. In the case of Margot Robbie and 28 years old, in the case of Jacob Erdi. And one of them is a scruffy giant with a Yorkshire attempting accent, and the other one did not make an effort to travel north vocally.
But that's okay. 
Naomi Fry: It's okay. 
Alex Schwartz: It's okay because we know it's fantasy and it's the movies. And here come the Linton's. They are a wealthy man and who's a little bit weird, and his ward, who's even weirder, and they live in a nice house. Once Kathie goes there, it's all over for Heathcliff and his dreams of being with her, because Kathie likes the fine things, she comes out of the carriage upon her return.
Just like as if she's going to the Met Gala, she's ready to be part of the high life Heath Cliff goes. Away when he hears that Kathy isn't gonna marry him, he comes back. He's rich now. He also has a gold tooth. 
Naomi Fry: A gold tooth, and a hoop earring. 
Alex Schwartz: And a hoop earring, which I, which is lingling. Yeah. So, and things go badly guys.
Things go really badly for these two lovers, except one thing doesn't go badly. And here, I'm just gonna go ahead and I'm gonna spell it out. If you haven't seen this movie yet, and you have, and this is your first encounter with it, I'm sorry, but not only is there an extra textual hanging erection there also.
Is so much fucking at the center of this movie, they're having such an affair. They're like, you know, in the carriage, fully 
Naomi Fry: closed. I will say, 
Alex Schwartz: well, we'll, we'll, yes. Um, anyway, and, and then I don't, that's how it's done Bad about spoiling this book, she dies and the movie. Ends. 
Naomi Fry: Ends 
Alex Schwartz: and that's it. Oh, thank you.
Vinson Cunningham: Didn't I tell you 
Naomi Fry: the master, ladies and gentlemen, 
Vinson Cunningham: we've been, we've been playing around with it for a while, but I do wanna know how did you guys feel about it? Naomi 
Naomi Fry: I really didn't like the movie. The thing is, I am totally willing and welcoming of like a batshit. It adaptation, like when it started actually.
So the way it starts with the hanging. There's, it starts with just sound and you're not sure what the sound is. There's the sort of creaking in one of the reviews. I, I think it might have been Justin Chang's in, in our magazine. Um. There, there's like this sound, it sounds like maybe the creaking of a, of the springs of a bed, like maybe this is, is this, I was like, oh, it's emerald fennell.
Like there's already sex, you know? No, it's not sex. It's the rope hanging of the guy, you know, taking his last breaths. But there is sex in there. There is he, he gets an erection. There's a nun in the crowd who gets very excited, you know, so immediately in like the first three minutes. This thing that has really nothing to do with anything that happens after, it just signals like, I'm a freak and I'm gonna like, you know, I'm gonna do something freaky.
Oh, he's dying. He's, oh, but he has an erection. Oh, she's getting excited. She's a woman of God. Oh, you's know, like the sort of like des desecration, like, oh, we're gonna be bad here. Right? And I was like, okay, you know what? Fine, this is fine. I'm going with it. I'm not getting like, offended that this wasn't in the book.
I'm not getting offended that this doesn't nec, it's not necessarily the version of sex or death that the book has. Whatever I was like, I'm, I'm, I'm going with it. My issue was that. There, there were these like, you know, flashes of these like bad moments, you know, it's like, oh, like, uh, Heathcliff marries Isabella, and she makes like the sex addict part, right?
He, she, he makes her his sex slave. It's like this sort of consensual SNM relationship, like. Um, she, he, she wears like a dog collar, you know, all of these like bad parts, you know, these sort of like kinky contemporary things, kind of like imposed on, on the novel, but then the rest of it is completely bland.
So like, we have Margo, Robbie, a, a gorgeous woman, a very good actress, usually, you know, was amazing for instance. And once upon a time in Hollywood, she was great in Barbie too, I think, but completely unfitting. To this role because she's totally, she's the most like basic beautiful woman. Unblemished also too old for the role, even though she's still young, of course.
But this, this is supposed to be kind of like a crazy Sprite, you know? And it's the most kind of like conventional, boring period drama. Interspersed with these like bursts of like, Ooh, no, but actually I'm like, I'm a little bad, you know? So it was, it, it was confusing to me and just mostly, mostly flat 
Vinson Cunningham: in the way of asking you the same question.
Alex, I'll actually borrow from one of the questions from the audience, which is high critics. Thank you. Did you guys find the sex in the movie actually sexy? And if not, why not? 
Alex Schwartz: I'm ready to go write for that. Um. I, 
Vinson Cunningham: oh, was Emeral Fennell? 
Alex Schwartz: Yes, indeed. I found the sex to be pretty boring. Um, I have to say. And it's no longer enough to gesture at Kaus filmmakers.
Like we get it, you know, it's 
Naomi Fry: So, you want like a smash cut into like, 
Alex Schwartz: I just feel like, 
Naomi Fry: as, I always like to say, like a, a penis going in and out of like, 
Vinson Cunningham: do you always like to say that? 
Naomi Fry: Well, I do like to say, I do like to say, wouldn't it be fuddle be funny? If suddenly 
Alex Schwartz: I found, I found, I found the, I found, I found the sex.
I found the sex to be pretty boring. And I actually think it exemplified to me what the weakness of the film is. So, for instance, you know, weathering Heights and we're gonna talk about the book itself. It's a pretty crazy book. Before I even saw the movie. I was in my local Barnes and Noble, and I saw a copy of Weathering Heights. look, I have my ancient nineties, you know, yellowed, they're the Moors. Usually you see the Moors on a copy of Weathering Heights. Yeah, 
Naomi Fry: I have this too. The Moors staid old copy. 
Alex Schwartz: I don't even think that's mores but someone, it's 
Naomi Fry: not more, but it's like nature.
Alex Schwartz: It's nature. It's enough. Yeah, it's, it's like. You know, we're out here in New Yorkshire and then I suddenly encountered this copy that said Emerald Fennell presents Weathering Heights. And I saw upon the cover. A, a, a riding gear. And I was like, okay. So there is a scene in this movie where, um, Kathy, who apparently has never encountered sex before, even though as we say she's 35, um, is like peering through the floorboards at two servants going at it, and one has a riding crop and the other one has.
You know, whatever. There one is being the horse, let's, let's put it that way. And Heathcliff, and this, I kind of did like, you know, this 
Vinson Cunningham: was, it was good. 
Alex Schwartz: This was pretty good. Yeah. Heathcliff like covers her mouth and her eyes, but leaving her ears mysteriously unaccounted for so she can still perceive what is going on.
So I was like, okay. As you said, Nomi, I was, I was there for the hanging. I was there for the rough play with servants being observed between the floorboards. I was there for masturbation on the Moors and the, you know, then the finger licking that followed, like, I was like, fine. But this movie really lost me at the affair between Heathcliff and Kathie because it made it seem very conventional.
It suddenly became a different kind of 19th century novel. It became an adultery novel, and that's something that weathering heights really isn't. I don't care about Fidelity to the book. Like I'm not sitting there checking off stuff that happens in the book, but I think in making it a kind of conventional, um.
Infidelity novel, it brought the stakes way down. And suddenly I'm looking at, you know, many scenes of what, to me are kind of like, not that sexy sex. I didn't think there was great chemistry actually between the leads. Um, and 
Naomi Fry: yeah, they've like never met. 
Alex Schwartz: It just, it just, it, it, it definitely, it definitely felt weird.
And, you know, I had this thought and then Vincent, we must hear what you thought, but I had this thought, which is. I kind of think Emerald Fennell has been making Weathering Heights through her whole, this is only her third movie, but through her whole filmmaking career and parts of the novel that are more interesting to me, appear in some of her other movies, like The Vengeance that's at the heart of this novel really doesn't come up so much here.
There's jealousy here, but there's not vengeance, but there is vengeance in Saltburn where the main character of Saltburn wants to destroy a family. By taking property and installing himself in it, much as Heif does, and in 
Naomi Fry: fact does. Yeah. No, he's a total Heathcliff. 
Alex Schwartz: He's a total heathcliff. There's like also like, you know, grave stuff that happens in that movie, and there's revenge in vengeance and a promising young woman.
So I almost feel like Emerald Fennell has really been working her way to doing this adaptation. And one question I have for, for us, for everyone is why did she. Defanging it so much. 
Vinson Cunningham: Well see. I think the question of the fangs are not fangs. The correspondence or non correspondence between this film and the novel are kind of the site perhaps of my qualified defense of the film.
And this is what I will say. I think, you know, Fennell has made a big deal of the fact that there are quotes around weathering heights in the title. And as in, you know, this is very much my version and I think. That this is, I think that this is her most personal film yet. I think that it's, it's not Weathering Heights.
It's a young woman who perhaps has a, um, somewhat traumatic past. It's, it, it, it seems to be very significant that in, in, in the novel. Uh, the father dies pretty early on, and here he's alive for a long time and he is a terrible alcoholic, and he physically abuses both characters and it seems to me that this traumatized young woman, the narrator of this Weathering Heights is laying on her bed furiously masturbating with a copy of Weathering Heights, and therefore only picking up the parts of it.
That that young woman would care about. 
Alex Schwartz: But are you saying that Emerald Fennell is the traumatized young woman? 
Vinson Cunningham: I don't know. 
Alex Schwartz: Okay. 
Vinson Cunningham: I'm saying that her narrator is, 
Alex Schwartz: because I'm pretty sure her father is alive. 
Vinson Cunningham: I don't know anything about that. I know that I, not saying that's, I'm saying that's.
Biographically correspondent to our, to our life. I'm saying when the father dies, he does so in a room that has literal huge bottles piled up to the ceiling. It's what a child thinks alcoholism is, right? Um, the, the, the flesh walls are what, uh, a child thinks is, um, weird, but also kind of interesting romance as, as gesture.
Um. I I, I do think that there's a way that, uh, I think this accounts for the weird casting Jacob a lordy is, I mean, is he, is he Heathcliff? I don't know. But he's heathcliff to this young woman. And also I think it so matters that Margot Robbie was Barbie. 'cause she's just Barbie in this movie. She, this, this, this narrator of this movie is just smashing plastic genitals together.
Do you know what I mean? 
Alex Schwartz: I do know what you mean. 
Vinson Cunningham: And, and that, thank you. I'm glad, um, that. Um, sort of like s psychological edge to the movie is really interesting. Somebody here asked, and this is a great sec, um, transition to talking about the novel. Someone asked, do you think you, if you hadn't read the book, you'd see the movie differently?
Most people that I know who didn't read the book loved it and vice versa. I don't know. I kind of think it's interesting to have read the, the book because it's like, um, the book is acting in this case as a kind as clothing for a totally divergent. Desire. It's like I got this feeling and this feeling and this feeling and this feeling.
What story can I grab to like pretty up this wild, untamed thing? 
Naomi Fry: It's so funny because it's what you're saying, Vincent, is that it's like one of those, you know, like one of those like books for kids, which is like, who was Barack Obama?
You know what I mean? Or like who was. Like Margaret Sanger. I don't know who, I mean, I don't know why that came to mind. I don't know. 
Vinson Cunningham: Can you give us one more historical person 
Alex Schwartz: that's a, that's a, who 
Vinson Cunningham: was Obama? Margaret Sanger. Who, who belongs, 
Naomi Fry: I don't know, in 
Vinson Cunningham: that great 
Naomi Fry: litany Who, who was RFK Jr. I don't know.
But, but it's just like the, what you're saying is that this is basically the idiosyncratic, but in a way kind of basic. Like I would, I would say even not just like a traumatized young woman, I would just say like a teen, basically an imaginative, perhaps lonely, perhaps horny teen who reads the book and is like.
I'm gonna like Cliff notes my way out of this. 
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. 
Naomi Fry: And make this kind of like drugstore version of this classic novel.
VINSON TRACKING: In a minute… why “Wuthering Heights” the novel is about a million times stranger than this new adaptation. Critics at Large from The New Yorker will be right back. 
:: MIDROLL :: 
Alex Schwartz: I think I would say pretty definitively. Yeah. If you don't know the book. You should definitely see the movie first. Like don't read the book in advance. Go have that experience. Hopefully en enjoy it. Like I'm still thinking of this dear man sitting so near to me because when he reads this book, it's all over for him.
Like, oh, he thought that was crazy. Hold on. This book is so many times Wilder and weirder. One, one thing that I love, weathering Heights is just, it's. Is, I mean, I still actually remember reading it for the first time when I was probably around the age that Emerald Fennell was when she encountered it. And it's an explosion because there's nothing like this book.
There's nothing like the intensity and of emotion of passion. Um, and there's nothing like the strangeness of this book. I really think it's a work of genius, like a singular work of genius. And it's crazy to me that Emily. Bronte who published this book as Ellis Bell, the same year that her sister Charlotte published Jane Eyy.
Like, what a run for the Bronte's and poor one out for Anne. Um, but like, you know, it's crazy that this book comes, she writes it when she's in her late twenties. It is published in 1847 and the next year she's dead of tuberculosis at 30. And that is it. And the vehement, the intensity, I think. One thing that I love about this book that I do see Emerald Fennell going for, and we're gonna talk about other adaptations, is the very strange interplay between realism and its total opposite.
For example, a lot of the book is told by a maid who has known this whole, both families, the Heathcliff. Family, the Shaw family, all three families and the Linton family forever. It's told by a maid to this random guy, Mr. Lockwood, who's just stumbled into this insane mess. He's renting this haunted house 
Naomi Fry: and for some reason insists on like staying there and then coming back there and.
Alex Schwartz: Arguably, Mr. Lockwood is the freak, his freak in this whole book.
Vinson Cunningham: Just had an awful dream about a maybe dead little girl. Tell me about it. 
Alex Schwartz: Exactly. She came, yeah, in the beginning of the book, Kathy comes through the window at him and he is like, tell me more. Um, I, I wanna stay here now. But the structure device of this hearsay, of this gossip of, um, and I think it's very significant that it's the lower classes gossiping about what's going on with their masters and mistresses.
And I think this is something that Emerald Fennell is trying to get at. Um, her Nelly, the version of the maid is a very vindictive, I think, pretty flat character who really just hates Catherine and wants to take her down. But there is something fascinating, um, between the need to. Serve, be obedient, facilitate the lives of these people who are living out their passions, and also to disrupt them constantly.
And this is my third reread of this book, and what I'm very struck by in this reread is how meddlesome Nelly is. She's messing stuff up, non stop. She's like, oh yes, I was not supposed to take her to take my young ward. Kathy Jr. Daughter of dead. Kathy was not supposed to let her meet Heathcliff. Like, oops, we happen to stop in his house for tea.
Like, what are you doing? 
Naomi Fry: Yeah. Oops. And then like, we got locked in. She's like, it's week. And 
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. My initial read of whether it always seemed to be. When I was a kid, when I first read it, I'm pretty sure it was some summer in high school. I was never taught this book strangely. 
Naomi Fry: I was never taught it 
Vinson Cunningham: either. Neither, yeah. Neither high school nor college.
But the first time I read it, it was one of the early experiences that I had that, you know, there is some sort of like hot potato with the narration between Mr. Lockwood and Nelly, especially at the beginning. That this device you say of like someone's telling someone else. The long sweep of the story. I totally associate this with the 19th century Turgen have loves to do this.
He's like, I was sitting by my hearth, and then some country doctor came in and he was almost dead, and all he wanted to do was tell me about the time he met this one girl. You know? And then the, the story's really about 
mean, 
Vinson Cunningham: about 
Naomi Fry: the, I mean, every, every Turgen book is, is this like, 
Vinson Cunningham: so I love 
Naomi Fry: that. Yeah. I was sitting, thinking about my youth, and then I told my, you know, the servant who came in about this one girl I knew like 40 years ago.
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. 
Naomi Fry: Yeah. 
Vinson Cunningham: This was the first book that I really remember that device. Happening and therefore being asked to think about the difference between narrator and author and thinking of Bronte as this like vast intelligence, like sort of like doing a bunch of puppetry. Um, and it just seemed to me, I was just like, wow, this person seems to be so wild and so upset with something about the world.
You know, the, the emphasis on landscape, the emphasis on the class position of the characters, it all just seemed to me to be. Expressing a philosophy that I couldn't like really grasp, you know, but I just realized, oh, this person, this writer has a philosophy and is trying to express it through this, like, polyphony of, um, voices.
This time. I, I don't know. I, I, I guess rereading it was a big surprise to me. Somebody mentioned, can you talk about the role race played in the novel versus the movie? Um, in the novel, it's, yeah, Heathcliff is this racial other, but it. Uh, race actually plays out in these really small moments. When Kathy comes back from the Linton's the first time, um, she pulls off her gloves and it says her, her hands are, are whitened by like disuse that the class experience of doing no labor has literally changed the color of her skin.
And, uh, there's another moment when, uh, Nelly invites Heathcliff to look at a mirror. He's like, you, you know, you gotta. Uh, lighten up dude, because your anger is making you look bad, and a change in attitude would change your visa like bad affect, bad attitude becomes on some level, like bad race or something like that.
Um, so those touches, um, in this, I mean, I'm really interested in what you guys think about this whole racial thing too. Um, it seemed to me to be expressing something that. Uh, first of all, Emerald Fennell, I don't think is really interested in at all. She kind of uses race to delineate who matters and who doesn't.
In a certain way, Nelly becomes, uh, a person of color, as does Edgar Linton. Um, but I don't know the, the, the book seems to me to be speaking in all these different tones about these issues of difference. 
Alex Schwartz: I so agree. I think, um, the timing of this novel is very interesting in that regard. I mean, this is. Right When Britain is becoming an empire and there is a sense of all of these elements of. Exoticism. You know, there's, I, I wanna find it if I can. Um, but I don't want to take time on stage, but 
Vinson Cunningham: take us to the text.
Alex Schwartz: Yeah. I lo I love the text. Um, oh, here guys. I underlined it. It's right here. I'm so excited. Incredible 
Naomi Fry: hand for Alex. 
Alex Schwartz: Oh, thank you for, thank you. I feel so supported by this wonderful audience. Um, I actually think I just found exactly the part you're talking about and it continues in a really interesting way.
Vincent, so this is Nelly who's saying I, she says A good heart will help you to Bonnie face my lad. I continued. If you were a regular black and a bad one will turn the bonniest into something worse than ugly. And now that we've done washing and combing and sulking, tell me whether you don't think yourself rather handsome.
I tell you, I do. You're fit for a prince in disguise. Who knows, but your father was Emperor of China and your mother an Indian queen, each of them able to buy up with one week's income, weathering heights and thrush cross grange together. And of course that's exactly what's gonna happen. But what I think is interesting here, you know, I've seen, um, some mentions of people being like, Heath, Heath Cliff's race has been debated for generations.
Like, no guys, we all know this is fiction. Right? Like, there's not an answer. There's not a definitive answer. And I think the fact that there, it's 
Vinson Cunningham: from Trinidad. 
Alex Schwartz: We found him. We, yeah, we got Henry Lewis Gates to like, go into his background. Like, no. Um, I think the fact that I, it's not by ax, it's 
Naomi Fry: 19% Ashkenazi Jewish.
Alex Schwartz: Yes. Um, he's one of ours. It's like, I, I think, I think the fact that Emily Bronte uses so many different racial signifiers for him is itself very significant. He is coming into this. Small world. This is a very remote, very rural world. There are only two families we ever hear about. We hear about a village that we never visit and that Gmer Emerton and that, you know, you don't, it sounds 
Vinson Cunningham: so good.
Alex Schwartz: Yeah, but take me to, I went to go 
Naomi Fry: toton 
Alex Schwartz: the hell out of here and take me to Emerton. Like, I need to buy new shoes. Can someone get me out of here? But Heathcliff is this exotic other, and I think that both explains. His sense of, I mean, his othering within the family, he's treated in a very straightforward way as the help by, um, his foster brother.
Uh, and it also explains a kind of vengeance. You absolutely, I think, can read this. As a fascinating story of like subaltern vengeance, and at the same time, if you do read it that way, you have to ask what's going on with Kathy and what the intensity of attraction. Not only do they love each other, but each thinks they are the other.
What an interesting comment for Emily Bronte to make about this non-white character. I am Heathcliff. He is my soul, but I can't marry him because if I do, I would be degraded. And to me, the word degraded is the heart of this whole book. It comes up more than once. Kathy is trying to elevate her position.
She's, she's trying to understand what a finer, better life could be like. She can't degrade herself by association with Heathcliff. And actually very late in her life, her, it's not a conventional 19th century novel. Her own husband says to her. Do you wanna be with him? Like, just tell me like, it's not, it's, we're not getting an Anna Corina, you know, I, I will drive you to the ends of the earth and I will ruin your life and the life of everyone associated with you.
'cause I'm so angry. It's a kind of like, oh, okay, he can win. And she really doesn't go for it. She, she herself is totally torn and tortured. 
Naomi Fry: Yeah. I mean, I think she, she fully says, I, I love Edgar. You know, in, in the book when Edgar proposes to her and she tells Nelly about it, um, she says, yes, of course. I said, yes.
I, I, yeah, of course. I love him. He's, he's rich, he's handsome, he's, you know, elevated. I would be a fool not to have him as my husband, but what she feels for Heathcliff is something else almost. 
Alex Schwartz: Yeah. 
It's, 
Naomi Fry: it's a different border material versus 
Alex Schwartz: it's the superficial versus the spiritual. Yeah. That's kind of what it is.
Naomi Fry: Yeah. 
Vinson Cunningham: We, we have a slide up here about some, some of the initial reactions, the contemporary reviews to the novel weathering heads here, all the faults of Jane Eyre. All the faults of Jane Eyre. Can you list them? Um, are magnified a thousand fold and the only consolation which we have and reflecting upon it.
Is that, get this, this is why you don't listen to critics, except for here, it will never, never be generally read. Um, James Rer, you're a wild boy. Um, it, it does strike me that, you know, RER of course is wrong, but. I like that he acknowledges how strange the book is. You know, it's, so, I was thinking about this 1847, the book comes out, the Communist Manifesto is issued 1848.
You know, so Bronte is not old enough. Never will she unfortunately grow old enough for this book or her later work to be a response to that work. And yet it does seem to be, it seems almost like, to me, it seems like a proto. Christian criticism of Marx. It's like, no, no, no. Everybody can be evil. Oh, interesting.
It's like, yeah, there's class rage and everything, but the emphasis from the very beginning on how bad Kathy is and how bad Heathcliff are on some level, they are each other. They are a mirror across, across class divides. It's like not a novel of class struggle. To me it's a, it's a, it's a novel that says.
You don't have to be rich to be bad. Let me tell you about the lower classes too. 
VINSON TRACKING: When we’re back… how other adaptations have approached this completely unadaptable novel. This is Critics at Large, live… from The New Yorker. 
:: MIDROLL:: 
Vinson Cunningham: Naomi, I have a great question from the audience, and I would love for you to take it first. 
Naomi Fry: Oh my goodness. Okay. 
Vinson Cunningham: Kind of in this area of sort of the text of this book. In the novel, this Astute Observer says, the older generation Kathy and Heathcliff are redeemed through their children, the younger generation.
Um, in the, in the movie that there is no second generation, uh, did Emerald Fennell sanitized the characters of Kathy and Heathcliff because she did not have the space perhaps to complete the arc and, and, and address this issue of the next generation. 
Naomi Fry: Yeah. I mean, I think it's a, it's a very complicated, um, it's a very complicated book to adapt.I think most adaptations haven't even attempted to deal with the second generation because just even the fact that like all the names are the same names, like when I read it, I'm just like, wait, who? Who's Linton? Edgar Linton? Who? What? Kathy, which Kathy, you know, it's like. There's something that is, I think, intentionally confusing about it because there's a lot of kind of reflections and doublings between the first generation and the second generation, and I think that, yes, I think partly what the audience member called sanitizing probably happens as a way to kind of, for shorten, you know, the sort of like, okay, we don't have time for this.
We need to kind of. Close it up, but I think, I feel like Emerald Fennell is also, she needs to sort of like make it kind of into a fairytale just to, just to make it work, you know? I don't think there's any other way for her to build up the world that she does. And it's too complicated. It's too complicated plot wise.
It's too complicated. Emotionally, it's too complicated spiritually. Like, like how would it even work? 
Alex Schwartz: Some have attempted it. um, I don't know if anyone has anyone in this audience seen the, um, the Ray Fines Juliette OSH version, which does have the second generation some smatterings.
So what you do in that case is you have Juliette Osh play both Kathy's. Like Juliet Bosh is the last actress on earth who should pretend to be English, truly the last one. And you just feel for her in the struggle of pronunciation and she really doesn't. Credible job, basically. Um, but yeah, that is, [e][f]that is one movie with within the bounds of two hours they get to the second generation and the redemption that, that this audience member is speaking of, which is a, a whole complicated thing involving, I mean, guys, Heathcliff is a child trafficker, like that's the other thing.
And I know that we're all thinking a lot about that right now, but it's, he, he, and he arranges, he basically keeps his own son alive long enough to entrap. Ka Linton into marriage in order to ultimately revenge himself against her family. Like he locks Kathie up to force her to get married while her dad is dying.
Like some really sick shit happens. And I think that's partly why it's hard to depict because 
Naomi Fry: I think it's hard. Yeah. It's hard to depict. Yeah, I think that's so true. I mean, Heathcliff is such a horrible person. Okay. Like in, in. Book Heath, 
Alex Schwartz: but also hot. 
Naomi Fry: Well, yes, he's hot, but I think just that the book, the, the proportion of the book in which he is, you know, kind of a bully child and a lover of Kathy and a great feeler of.
I guess sort of positive feelings towards her in some way is pales or is minimized in comparison to the hundreds of pages in which he is just like pure rage and anger and vindictiveness and violence and some really rough stuff, you know? 
Alex Schwartz: Yeah. I mean, I, I would love to hear from you guys. If there have been adaptations that you have seen or enjoyed?
I mean, I've now, I've now been like checking off some boxes here, like Lawrence Olivier. He’s a very sweeping, this is a hugely popular movie, the william weiler version, He's a very, I mean, he's Lawrence Olivier. He's playing a Lawrence Olivier Heathcliff. He is a romantic. Handsome man with a very deep chin cleft, and he's been misunderstood, but like Jacob Alote is very tall and he, like, you get why someone would want him.
But I will say, I just watched Andrea Arnold, the English director, Andrea Arnold's 2011 version. I found this to be a fascinating, very moving and emotional movie. Again, it isn't weathering heights, it's there is no Nelly. There's not, there's no second generation. But, it does two things that I think are amazing. One is that as a film, it just works as a film. It's not just trying to like follow like behind the book and just like be like, yeah, I remember that part. The other element that's fascinating is this is the only non-white heath cliff, to my knowledge, who's been committed to film and it really depicts from his perspective.
Naomi Fry: Yeah, I thought it was, I, I watched this adaptation as well. And Andrea Arnold is a, is a great director. If you haven't seen some of our other movies, fish Tank is one. American Honey is another. Those are two very good movies and this, this one I liked a lot as well, and I agree with you. You feel viscerally, what you don't feel at all with the Emerald Fennell, uh, adaptation, the rejection, um, that Heathcliff is experiencing, both from the family, uh, but also Kathy, and why he would feel this both, this attraction to Kath as well as the rage that her rejection of him brings up.
Vinson Cunningham: What do you guys think an adaptation. Owes to the text. What is the sort of, what are the necessary components of relationship between adaptation and the source of adaptation? For me, it's like I, all I want is a sincere grounding in the presence that acknowledges some kind of parentage or heritage from the former, like you're, if you're a theater goer and you, you know, off, off Broadway or whatever, when a, a European, uh, theater company comes to town and they do hamlet.
It, you know, it's not gonna be Hamlet, it's gonna be some German guy walking into the audience being like, you know, I'm lost. You know? Um, uh, which is to say a contemporary emotion that has a history of the, the history of a certain feeling, and therefore that might fit into the close of a former thing. Um, but I do think that a lot of our.
Angst not only over Emerald Fennell, who loves to stir up angst, it seems to me. But generally about our feelings about adaptation are this feeling of owing, like, what? What does it owe? 
Alex Schwartz: Well, I think that it owes less when so many other movies have been made. Like I think that may also explain a certain kind of freedom that exists.
It's amazing to me how often this, as you say, know me, like pretty unadaptable book has been adapted. You know, I, I have a real memory, um, from years ago of, uh, there was an adaptation of the Robert Penn Warren novel, all the King's Men, which I had like read and had a huge experience reading and felt very.
In love with the book and connected to the book and an adaptation was coming and it's like, hooray. I get to see, you know, I also remember even going farther back, I'm of the Harry Potter generation where Harry Potter was coming out as, as we were like roughly the ages of the kids and suddenly there was gonna be an adaptation and there was just a sense of like, oh my God, you can't make Hogwarts.
Like, how do, you don't know what it looks like there. There is this ownership feeling I think very often and, and I was really disappointed by the. Robert Pin Warren adaptation? Um, I don't think it was a great movie. I haven't seen it since it came out, but, you know, I think, I think there's, um, I, I guess paradoxically I would say like, the more freedom the better in a sense.
I'm, I'm for it. I like that. you conceal these different attempts to tell this story because it should be a prismatic experience, like a little bit. The more the merrier. 
CLIP: Yeah, 
Naomi Fry: I mean, it's an audacious proposition to adapt a great novel. Like, I guess I admire the ambition of it for sure.
I don't think it needs to be faithful, uh, necessarily in any way. I just, I just can't imagine being the person who, who does it, you know? I mean, more power to, but I just, I'm just like, wow. Okay. Like, go ahead. Yeah, 
Alex Schwartz: I legitimately think the Kate Bush song is a great adaptation of Weathering Heights. Mm-hmm.
It is a monologue in Kathie's voice that doesn't happen in the book. She's just, you know, and if, if you guys know the song and you know, the music video and the, just the imploring eyes imploring, imploring back from the grave. Good. Great. You know, it's, it's kind of like what you're saying, Vincent of the, the hamlets that Yeah.
That I know too. 
Naomi Fry: I think it's because I think maybe it's because, uh, and this is what's missing. For me in this, in this adaptation, the song is about haunting. And I don't think the movie is about haunting. The movie is about an affair, 
Alex Schwartz: right? 
Vinson Cunningham: And it does seem to me though, that this is part of the logic of, and the necessity for adaptation, which is that, um, I like to think about it in terms of cover songs. It's like, okay, I will always love you, and all of a sudden it's Whitney Houston and it's this, it's more of a, an assertion of power than, uh.
Dolly Parton's more, it seems to me like abject mm-hmm. Song, it's, it's like putting a, a new attitude that's often about, okay, what are the different, what, what has feminism done since the song was written, uh, till now? What are the assertions of romance? And how would this, how would these words be delivered today?
Naomi Fry: That's such a good, that's such a good point that the adaptation itself becomes a portrait of, of, of the time in which. It's made. Yeah. 
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. When you, when Alex told us about this guy, the, it was so dope guy. Um, I was thinking, okay, I mean maybe he's in Gen Z, maybe he is in his twenties and like, so perhaps he went to high school during the pandemic, and all I could think about was how, you know this, the novel is so peopled with characters and she's like, there's seven people here.
Nobody's around. And the most romantic stuff that happens looks like it's happening under the conditions of social distancing. You know, maybe that's why this kid thinks it's so dope. He's like, nobody's there, but guess what? There's no zoom and therefore we got, we have to fuck. It's like the, the, it it, all of a sudden it's, it can't be about that anymore.
It's gotta be a romance. 
Alex Schwartz: Oh, I love that so much. It is the first great pandemic novel. It's like the Catherine Linton daughter of Catherine Earnshaw. She's, her father doesn't let her leave their property. Like she doesn't go anywhere. 
Naomi Fry: And for good reason, it turns out 
Alex Schwartz: Yeah, exactly. Like the second she leaves, she falls into the snare of an evil maniac.
So it was very smart. And knew 
Vinson Cunningham: Edgar knew what he was doing. 
Alex Schwartz: Yeah. Edgar knew what he was doing. I mean, I, I like your point, Naomi, about, and I think it. Very well taken that these adaptations have so much to do with their time. I, I do think the Emerald fennell, there's so much to me that does seem like TikTok, for lack of a better word, like stuff that's gonna look amazing in short clips and short bursts, but at the expense of character.
And, um, I think that's one reason why this movie is really satisfying to people. And I love it too. I love, I love, you know, I love being addicted to my reels, whatever. I love it. Um, but yeah, but we want, we want more. 
Vinson Cunningham: Final question. 
Alex Schwartz: Well, 
Vinson Cunningham: we've all talked about the casting here. If you were casting your ideal weathering heights, who's Kathy?
Who's Heath Cliff? Naomi seems legitimately distressed. She's gonna, which makes me want to ask her. 
Naomi Fry: She's 
Alex Schwartz: freaking out. 
Naomi Fry: No, because I'm so bad at this. It's like whenever, like. Uh, you know, people are like, oh, who would you cast as? Like, whatever, you know, just, it's just fun. Just like, and I'm like, the only actress I can remember is like Julia Roberts or something, 
Vinson Cunningham: you know what I mean?
Okay. So that's one. 
Naomi Fry: It's like, I'm like, I don't, I don't know. I don't know. Robert Redford, you know, suddenly I like, I like forget. Go 
Alex Schwartz: to his grave and 
Naomi Fry: again. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like forget every, every single actor I've ever seen in any adaptation. I'm like, okay, think young.
Think young. I'm like, Gracie Abrams. Like, I'm like, I don't know. That's the only name of a young person that randomly came to mind. So, so I don't know. But I feel like Alex has a Cheshire grin. 
Alex Schwartz: No, I'm just grinning because I have no freaking idea. Like, what am I gonna say? I truly don't. Vincent, do you know?
Vinson Cunningham: I sure do. 
Naomi Fry: Wow. 
Alex Schwartz: Drop it. 
Vinson Cunningham: I was thinking how could we make it even more. Young ified, TikTok generation, 
Naomi Fry: Sabrina Carpenter is, 
Vinson Cunningham: I mean, she'd be great. I, trust me, I wanna see, but have you guys seen, I love la It's kind of like about the worst people in the world, just like weathering heights. I see clap. I'm like Rachel, sin 
Naomi Fry: as who?
Vinson Cunningham: That's Kathy. 
Naomi Fry: No. Yeah, that's good. 
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. Yeah, because she, she has energy. She's got this thing of like, as a real person, you can tell she's got like a lot of heart or whatever, but she can like access. You know, awful young person. She can, she can make nothing be in her eyes in a way that, I 
Naomi Fry: mean, as a, as a contemporary or like as a period application.
Vinson Cunningham: Oh, I don't know. Maybe it's contemporary. And then, 
Naomi Fry: I mean, I could see it as a, as a contemporary, 
Vinson Cunningham: as an actor, as as as Heathcliff. I want to cast a guy who seems to want to play black in a movie. Timothy Chalamet Charlamagne.
He'll finally get his chance. 
Alex Schwartz: Brilliant. I think that's it. I think we, I think I'll produce, we did 
Naomi Fry: it. I mean, Vincent did it. Vincent did it. 
Alex Schwartz: Vincent, we only, but we only need one. We only need one. 
Vinson Cunningham: This has been critics at Large live at the 92nd Street y Nomi. Alex, thank you. Thank you all for coming. This has been great.
VINSON TRACKING: Huge thanks to everyone at the 92nd Street Y, and at The New Yorker, who worked to get this show off the ground. If you couldn’t tell, we had a blast. 
Critics at Large’s consulting editor is Alex Barasch. Rhiannon Corby is our senior producer. Our executive producer is Steven Valentino. Our show is mixed by Mike Kutchman, and Alexis Cuadrado composed our theme music. You can find every episode of our show at Newyorker.com/critics. And we’ll be back in the studio with you all next week.