Ben Shapiro (52:59)
It's a wonderful, wonderful film. And now Fast forward to 2026 and the new. The new version. Glistening butts from emerald fennel. It is insulting, it is degrading, and it is stupid. Truly, it is a stupid movie. It is stupid in every possible way. For it to be stupid. Okay, here you. First of all, the plot is. Is changed. Now you have the father bring home Heathcliff. The brother doesn't really exist, so it's just Kathy and Heathcliff in the house. They get together. The father is both kind, but also an abusive drunk, which makes no sense. In the 39 version, the father is good, the brother is the bad guy. Heathcliff comes back and he ends up buying up the brother's gambling debts and taking over Wuthering Heights as a form of revenge on him. There's no brother here. So Heathcliff comes back, he buys it from the dad who took him in as a foundling. So none of the conflict makes any sense. And then the. The central conflict becomes the conflict not between love and materialism, but between lust and materialism. And one of the kind of key aspects, one of the reasons why she's driven away from Heathcliff is because he is seen as not only lower class, but also racially different. He's a gypsy. Again, he's described that way in the book and in the 39 film. Here you have Jacob Elordi, who is as white as white can be, and her new husband, right? The guy who she's going to marry who's next door. Kathy. Now he is a dude of Middle Eastern extraction, which makes zero sense at all. None. So the plot to this point is at least kind of similar. Heathcliff overhears a conversation where she says she's gonna marry the guy next door. He runs away, okay? In the. In the Emerald Fennel modern version, he comes back. So now he comes back and this is where the conflict is really supposed to play out, right? Except that instead of there being this longing that is barred by virtue, which is where the romance lies. Instead, now he comes back and they just. A lot, okay? That is what actually happens. He comes back and instead of virtue being an obstacle to them being together eternally, they actually just get together and screw like rabbits. That is the thing that happens in the film. So all the romantic tension is gone because there is no romance. It's just them screwing. It's just lust. And, and that's the theme throughout the whole film, is that lust. Lust uber Alice, apparently. But the problem is that then where's the conflict? Where's the conflict at the beginning at least? You sort of understand, okay, fine, it's kind of lust versus materialism, I guess. Kind of. But she has no moral scruples, so why can't she have both? And when he comes back, and instead of them being forced apart by virtue, because virtue no longer exists in 2026, virtue is not of any importance. He comes back and they immediately get together and they start doing the dirty all over the place. Like full scale minutes, long montages of them banging. So where is the. Where is the plot tension? It does not exist. There is no plot tension. She's pregnant in the 2026 version with another man's child, with her husband's child. She tells Heathcliff this. And we'll get into the perverseness of all the sexual viewpoints in the movie in a second. Because they, they really are perverse. Instead of. Of this being an obstacle even to them being together. He says, I'm more turned on by the fact that another man's child is in you. Which is like, what? Okay, so you even took away the, the whatever, whatever perverse values you have. You even took away the plot tension there. It makes no sense at all. And then she says, well, I can't be together with you. And so he marries the sister, just as he would in the 39 version. But he overtly tells the sister he is going to abuse her. He says, I'm going to be horrible to you. I hate you. I'm never going to love you. Do you want it? And because she too is a lusty little creature, she says, absolutely, I want it. Down to the point, as we'll discuss a full BDSM with him, where he is treating her, I kid you not, as a dog. And then the baby within her dies. She dies of septicemia. She's on the bed dead before he even gets back. And that's the end of the film. It's a horror show. And it's a horror show because you got rid of actual love in favor of lust, actual romance, in favor of sex, actual virtue in favor of literally nothing and yes, eroticism. It is not an erotic film. It is not a sexy film. It is not an interesting film. Close up shots from Wuthering Heights of thundering nips do not make up for lack of romance. Particularly, by the way, for women. There's a reason that women read romance novels and men watch pornography, because men and women do not think about sex and romance in the same way. Women like there to be a plot. They like there to be an overarching structure of feeling before you get to the sex. Which is why you can watch an entire movie from 1939 and it can be erotic without there being any sexual or barely any kissing in it. Because the romantic tension is the thing. And in fact, this, by the way, is the way we used to build entire societies. What we used to say is, yes, we know sex is a very important part of life. The human mind is driven toward the forbidden. Libido is driven toward the forbidden. This is true in pretty much every society. And it is a universal of human nature. And therefore what we do is we take sex and we hide it behind marriage. If you want to get to the forbidden, you have to do this responsible thing. Which is why the culmination of every classic comedy is a marriage. Because now you're in the realm of virtue. But you can do the thing that was once forbidden and it's no longer forbidden. And it's good and it's plentiful and it's healthy. And instead, what we did is we obliterated as a society everything that was forbidden. All the walls came down. When there's no virtue, there are no walls. There's nothing forbidden. And so if there's nothing forbidden, you have to get wilder and wilder and wilder in search for the new high. It's basically a Dopamine drug. That, that is where we are as a society. Which is why apparently the new sexiness of Wuthering Heights slash beckoning abs, apparently the, the new sexiness is just bizarre sexual perversion, which is what actually happens in the film. And again, this is not about prudery. That is just what the film is. So to take a couple of examples from the Emerald Fennel film, Margot Robbie, who is way too old for the part. I'm going to get to the casting in a second because it again speaks to where we are as a society. Initially, she is very, very lusty. She realizes she's very lusty for Heathcliff, which makes no sense. She's 36 years old, okay? Margot Robbie is 36 years old. Even if you were to play this entire plot out rooted in lust, she's 36, okay? That makes a big difference. A 36 year old in lust, like constantly in lust is kind of just a bizarre spectacle on screen. It is, you understand, an 18 year old, you know, somebody who's coming into the full flowering of maturity looking for romance, looking for love in the wrong place. You get that? 36. I mean, get a job, lady. My wife is two years older than Margot Robbie and she is a full fledged doctor who's been Married for almost 20 years and has a fifth kid on the way. And Margot Robbie is still cosplaying as a 16 year old lust struck wench masturbating on the hill. I, I kid you not, that's part of the film. She, she literally. Here are the romance scenes of the film, okay? This is what is supposed to be romantic. Not again, the longing. The entire basis of Wuthering Heights as a book, as a film, as a piece of art is the longing. If you're going to come down to one thing, it's the longing. It's the forbiddenness of love and the impossibility of it ever truly being fulfilled because of these obstacles. First, the self made obstacle by Kathy and not going with Heathcliff in the first place. And then the obstacle of actual virtuous institutions that exist for a reason and must be upheld even at the cost of somebody's happiness. That's where the longing comes in. Obliterate all of that and what you end up with is just nastiness. Okay, so here are just a few of the scenes in Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights. One, there is a scene where Margot Robbie's Kathy ends up in the attic of the barn, which is where Heathcliff sleeps for some odd reason, that we have no idea why. She ends up in the attic of a barn and she's looking down through the slats of the attic and two of the farm hands start going at it. A male and a female. It's like a maid from the house and a farmhand, they start going at it. But they don't just start going at it. He bridles her with a horse bridle. He puts like a bit in her mouth. And she is staring at this lustily from above. And Heathcliff comes up from behind her. Jacob Elordi comes up from behind her, shirtless, and puts his hand around her mouth and another hand around her eyes. So they're watching porn together. They're watching horse porn together. And this is supposed to be sexy and erotic. I don't know about you, it's just weird. There's a scene where she is so over overcome with her lust for Heathcliff, for the quivering butts. She's so. She's so overcome that she goes out onto the hill, which is again supposed to. The hill, symbolically, is supposed. The actual place that Heathcliff and Kathy are supposed to be on the moors is supposed to be an idealized place of romantic heaven. It is not supposed to be the place where you do your guilty pleasures. So she goes out to the hill again as a 36 year old woman and she starts masturbating. And Heathcliff spots her doing that. And then he comes up to her and starts licking her hands. Not kidding. It's in the film. Then there's a full scale scene of Cuckery, right, where she's pregnant with another dude's baby. And she literally. He literally says to her, that turns me on more. It makes me want you more. And now I don't know about you. That is not a natural emotion. The number of men I know who are deeply turned on by the idea that another man's baby is in the woman that they are having sex with, that is not. Let's just say that is unnatural there. Then there is the relationship between Heathcliff and Isabella, who is the sister, where he literally has sex with her while telling her that he does not like her, is not interested in her and is thinking of another woman. Now, call me crazy. I don't think there are that many women who would be turned on by a man telling them they're thinking of another woman while they do it. I call me, call me nuts. I think that that's probably uncommon. And then by the end of the film, he literally has her on a leash like A dog. I mean, you talk about degrading to women. This movie is so degrading to women. I can't believe a woman made it. Honestly, it is the most degrading shit for women maybe I've ever seen on film. It's insulting, it's disgusting. Heathcliff literally has her on a leash, a dog leash, and she's barking like a dog. And he takes food and he stuffs it in her mouth with his hand like she is an animal. And she quote, unquote, loves it. Something is wrong. Something is wrong not just with the filmmaker, but with a society that laps this stuff up and then calls it some form of eroticism and sexiness. Again, we are a society that has more pornography than ever, more bizarre sexual fetishes than ever. And less eroticism, less romance, and actually significantly less sex than ever. We are becoming quickly, in the West, a society of sterility, a sort of brave new world society. And again, this goes back to the age point. So when I say that the casting is all wrong, I mean it is all wrong. In order for the story to make any sense, the whole thing has to be rooted in Kathy's immaturity. She's 17, 18 years old. She doesn't know what to do. She's torn between the lure of a materialist lifestyle where she can be in comfort, she doesn't have to live the sort of terrible lifestyle she's led in poverty. And so she's drawn to it and her kind of wild passion for Heathcliff that is supposed to be the basis of the story. That only works for an 18 year old girl. Which is why in the original book she's 18. And even if you are going to play it a little bit older, as they did in the 39 version. Merle Oberon, when she played this part, was 28. And she looks like she's about 24, 25. She looks younger than she is. Lawrence Olivier plays Heathcliff. He's 32 when they made this movie. And that's important too. The man needs to have a dominant emotional position versus vis a vis the woman. He can't look as though he's just whimpering and whining the whole movie. If he looks like that, he's utterly uninteresting. You do not understand for the life of you in the new version why she's interested in Heathcliff. There's nothing about him that's rebellious or interesting. There's nothing about him that bespeaks a sort of inner masculinity. He's just A mewling, whining, tall guy who's good looking. That's it. And when he shows up, he has a pirate earring, which is exciting. Apparently Margot Robbie is horribly miscast here and half the time she's playing Harley Quinn. I don't know what she is playing at. She makes a spectacle of herself on the screen. Jacob Elordi is basically given nothing to do other than stand there and look tall and then every so often say something really kind of on the nose. And again, bizarrely unsexy there. There's one point where she is saying, I, I don't want to be with you. And he says, well, that was your tongue in my mouth just a minute ago. Actual dialogue written by an actual human. Super hot. Again, none of the casting makes sense. Originally, the person that, that Kathy marries in the 39 version is played by David Niven, 29 years old, charming, very seeable as an aristocrat who kind of has a. An unpleasant eye cast at the. At the lower classes. Here it's played by a guy named Shazad Latif, who is 37 and also middle Eastern, which makes no sense because again, the racial component was originally part of the book and the original movie. So what does all this mean? I know I've taken a while to sort of go through this film. Why? Because when you have signal moments in our culture, they're really important. A lot more kids, a lot more young people, a lot more people generally are going to watch the new version of Wuthering Heights and take that as some sort of referendum on what romance is. And that impacts how they think about relations between men and women, how they think about things that are very important in life, like sex and like marriage and. And without any of the original values that undergird the book and the original movie, none of it makes any plot sense. And it just turns into what Emerald Fennel has made, which is a pretty bad music video involving bdsm, animalistic sex. And if that's the direction our society is moving, if that's the thing that is supposed to be so sexy and so hot, that says something not just about the quality of our filmmaking, which is radically declined. I'll admit there are points in this movie that made me overtly laugh because Emerald Fennel, because Emerald Fennels is a director, is trying to do stylized the whole time. There's one scene where a person dies of alcoholism and because she's trying to be stylistically interesting, she literally puts him in a blank room. There's nothing in the room except for two gigantic piles of empty bottles that are just piled up toward the ceiling. It's ridiculous. The whole movie is ridiculous. Any reviewer who pretends to like it is lying to you. And again, something is wrong in our society that can only be healed by a return to actual understanding of how men work, how women work, how romance works, how sex works. What is the proper role of sex in a human life? What is the proper role of virtue in a human life? What is the proper role of marriage? That contrast in value is the thing. I would be embarrassed, embarrassed to show the Emerald Fennel version here to, for example, my children at any age. It is. It is an embarrassing film. The values of it are embarrassing. And by the way, it is so much less romantic than the 39 version. It is not even close. It is not even close. You know, any man who has ever truly romanced a woman knows that when you're talking about movies that are aphrodisiacs. The best aphrodisiac is Pride and Prejudice, okay? Because men and women are not the same. And treating them as the same and pretending that, you know, Margot Robbie randomly doing Jacob Elordi in a field for five seconds over a Charlie XCX score is the apotheosis of what women are looking for in a man is silly. And not only silly, it's degrading to the society as a whole. So it's not just an embarrassing film. 0 stars out of 4. It again. I'll say it again. It says something about why our civilization is in serious, serious trouble. Really? It sounds like an exaggeration. It's not. When the most successful cultural products of our time are in. Are infused with horrifyingly bad values, it says something more about our values than it does about the quality of our filmmaking, even. Alrighty, folks, the show continues for our members. Right now. 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