"Since the 2024 announcement of the casting of Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi in Emerald Fennell's buzzy adaptation of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, invested parties online have condemned the filmmaker's choice of Elordi, a white (and very tall) Australian actor, for the role of Heathcliff, the adopted brother of the Earnshaw family who, through their mistreatment and his separation from his beloved adopted sister Cathy, becomes implacably vengeful and cruel."
"X users have spent the better part of a year calling each other idiots for declaring that, based on their enlightened readings of the 1847 novel, Heathcliff is obviously supposed to be white-or not. Things descended to a point where I saw people arguing over whether Elordi's father's Basque origins could qualify the actor for the role, if you squint."
"that contentious question will be top of mind for at least some book-minded readers: Is Heathcliff supposed to be a man of color? This new round of discourse is especially fiery given that Emerald Fennell is a director who attracts dissent. She inflamed people even more in this case when she explained her casting choice by saying that she had made the movie she imagined while she was reading the book, because she was "focusing on the pseudo-masochistic elements of it.""
The 2024 casting of Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff in Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights adaptation provoked intense online backlash focused on race and physicality. Critics flagged Elordi's whiteness and height; defenders and commentators debated the novel's sparse descriptions and possible origins for Heathcliff. Social-media users argued over ancestry, offered alternative actors of color, and questioned eligibility based on distant heritage. Fennell defended her artistic choices, citing the elements she emphasized while imagining the film. The controversy echoes longer-running debates since the 1990s about how Brontë's text permits multiple interpretations of Heathcliff's identity.
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