Wuthering Heights: Love makes you do crazy things.

The thing that I like about classics is that they are very upfront and direct about their metaphors, subtlety is completely out of the window.

For example, if you didn't know, Little Red Riding hood while being a story for kids, was actually potentially about someone who was a prostitute, and the Wolf is meant to represent a typical customer who takes pleasure in the Depravity.

He asks her to lay next to him while in her Grandmother's clothes, makes her eat her flesh, which she mistakes for chicken, the teeth for rice and the blood for wine.

She is innocent, while the wolf is anything but...

Deeply misogynistic I know.

Thankfully Wuthering heights is written by Emily Bronte and not the Grimm Brothers, and was a story about the absurdity of the structures society ties us to rather than about some moral policing for some "greater good".

But that directness, that bluntness, is still very much present.

In the modern day a lot of things are hidden, layered, more sanitized, for better or for worse.

And I believe that bluntness is very in theme with the intention of the story, as it mainly highlights the absurdity of societal hierarchies and the structures we base around them like marriage and land/house ownership.

But mostly Marriage.

Specifically as an institution.

One might see this as a simple romantic Tragedy, and it definitely is that, but also, it is a story about all the stuff I mentioned above.

You see at every turn in the story, the characters throw themselves into deeper and deeper Darkness because some random structure comes in their way, at first it is the fact that the father is an absolute piece of shit, then it is that Heathcliff isn't high class or rich enough, while simultaneously Catherine wanting a better life for herself away from all the gambling and abuse, and the obvious fact that their father is burning all their money away on gambling and hedonism trying(presumably) to drown his sorrows.

The point is obviously, that everyone in this story is selfish, because they are placed in positions where doing so not only benefits them, but is necessary.

For example, Cathy marries Linton even though she doesn't love him so that, through her marriage she can pave the way for even Heathcliff to come out of this abusive situation.

But Nelly who sees Heathcliff does not let Cathy know when she says things that are directly the reason for his disappearance.

etc. etc.

Now in the books, Heath and Cathy truly deserve each other in the sense of how mutually horrible and selfish they are.

Isabella who is Linton's sister in the books is now his ward, and while in the books she faces abuse, here she faces... Intense BDSM...

Now, compared to this book the movie is a lot more... sexual, and I think that is deliberate, as a way to portray that... this is normal folks, people do this, and the whole structure of marriage is a pathetic attempt to bring order to something that is inherently chaotic.

I believe that most of the internet is looking at this through the lens of a romantic story, and the Filmmakers themselves aren't helping.

But based on the death scene of Mr. Earnshaw where he just has gigantic piles of alcohol bottles on either side of him the size of mountains, I believe that this story is satirical.

That belief is strengthened when one listens to this movie's retelling of Romeo and Juliet.

Did you know that Romeo and Juliet was actually a satirical tale.

And the fact that the character in this movie that romanticizes it most is actually a hundred times more depraved in their sexual fantasies and clearly uses Heathcliff's obvious desperation to get what she wants is a clear indication.

Yes, I am aware that taking a character who faced abuse in the books and changing her like this is disrespectful to both the character and the original story as well as people who actually face such abuse at the hands of people like Heathcliff.

But, I believe a movie needs to be looked at as its own thing as well, anyone who hasn't read the book is going to see it as such.

And so yeah, Romeo and Juliet was a satire and most of modern and even somewhat ancient pop-culture since time immemorial considers it to be the peak of romance.

That is the point of this book as well.

This is bullshit, and yet you all consider it romantic.

What does that say about you?