To ask if you're looking forward to the "re-imagined" Wuthering Heights?

Not at all. The trailers have put me completely off.

I would love to have seen what a director like Chloe Zhao would have done with Wuthering Heights.

I doubt it would have involved shock factor execution scenes.

From the trailer, sound bites and initial reviews, it all sounds a bit vapid. I'll still watch it when it comes out on the small screen.

I remember being very annoyed with Cathy when I read the book. I am thinking I'd like to reread & figure out what I think now.

Apparently he licks things a lot 😆

I don’t want to see it for reasons I’ve already said, but I don’t see why it needs ‘ego’. What are you suggesting about Cathy? I’ve never imagined her as a great beauty, or even as a particularly nice person.

absolutely

Alternatively, they just need a big name to sell the film

Either way, not very appealing as a potential viewer

I didn't know this! I have only seen it used about well-built men like pirates in fiction so I assumed it was a bit like ruddy - outdoors/manual labour type complexion.

I enjoy a Meatloaf video, so maybe I am missing something not seeing it.

I haven't quite decided if I will watch or not, certainly might wait for it to stream (fan of the book if that matters).

Yes, ‘swarthy’ comes via swart from the German “shwarz” meaning black.

I think it’s a problem to attribute a nationality to a character that is not given in the book. If Heathcliff was Irish you’d think someone might have mentioned it.

His ethnicity is intentionally uncertain but his descriptors “dark-skinned”, “gipsy”, “Lascar”, “American” and “Spanish castaway” point beyond the British Isles.

I don’t think we can speculate what Mr Linton had seen. We don’t know if he travelled abroad. We do know he visited Liverpool where he would have encountered relatively diverse ethic and national communities as well as foreign travellers. No reason why he wouldn’t have seen Romani people - there were communities across the U.K. Gipsies turn up in George Eliot and Jane Austen.

I’ve never liked the book, but I love the song by the wonderful Kate Bush

We can explain away how Heathcliff is now a white bloke with dark hair but it just shows how superficial this movie is. No mystery at all, an it wasn’t anything more than ‘he is hot, he’ll be good for the sex scenes’.

If they wanted to mix up the ethnicity, they could have made him fully black, Indian whatever and made an interesting narrative for him. And explored the race dynamics further.

It's the Where are you really from that non white people get a lot. Swarthy was and still is a loaded word when it comes to race.

My husband, depending on whether he has a tan, has either been assumed as a native Irish Celt or as Spanish or Turkish.

And, my personal bugbear - Moors! Othello was Moorish. They're so often missed out.

Dark and swarthy are discussed in terms of him being foreign looking though. He isn't a local boy with a tan, and isn't viewed that way by the characters.

Given that many of the people who help "tell" the story in the book, or who comment on Heathcliffs appearance have barely travelled outside of Yorkshire I don't think they could be expected to come to an accurate description of his likely origin. They fill in the blanks according to their own preconceptions and prejudice.

Like another poster said Brontë likely left Heathcliffs actual background, and how he made his money, deliberately vague so that the reader has to fill in the blanks according to their own preconceptions.

I don’t think he’s mixed race, more “dark and swarthy” as it was described then.

He’s referred to as ‘dark-skinned’. That coukd be olive I guess. But I think you have to work quite hard given all the clues in the text to conclude he’s white. And especially since the novel clearly explores social divisions of various sorts.

I'll probably watch it when it comes on streaming because I'm interested and I'm sure it'll look gorgeous but based on casting and Emerald Fennell's comments I don't have high hopes.

I think the casting choices were shit. I was pretty young when I read the book and I picked up that Heathcliff was likely mixed race. Margot Robbie may work as Barbie, but she's wildly miscast as Cathy.

It looks like it's going to be a reimagining of WH with what those involved think is edgy. 🙄

What is with the weird miscasting choices for the recent remakes of classics? This and Matt Damon as Odysseus in the Odyssey, I saw the trailer of that too and just, head desk.

I’m going tomorrow and am looking forward to it.

I don’t actually like the book, so I’m quite relaxed about any messing about with it!

@Parrotstwice "Not everything has to be some po faced retelling. Not everything has to be that deep OR have broad appeal. Some things can just be demented"

But the novel is intrinsically "demented" and disturbing. It's the very last book you could describe as po faced and never had broad appeal for those very reasons. The characters are utterly vile, it depicts raw passion (with an undertone of incest), extreme violence against humans and animals and it seethes with vengeance and abuse. Any embelishment or added shock factor (other than to translate it better to the screen) is simply gratuitous and detracts from the story's viscerality.

Well, it's not a problem. Or, only if you think it's a problem. He's not referred to as Black, either, or mixed-race. The most racialised ways in which he's described are as 'gipsy' and 'Lascar or a Spanish or American castaway', but as those are never the first terms applied to him, and as Mr Linton has almost certainly never seen any of the above, it's hardly a firm definition, other than 'not one of us'.

No, I’m not and won’t be watching it. The book was a classic, the original film was all it needed to be, and didn’t need modernising. The reviews are dreadful. 🙄