Wuthering Heat
Is sexy hetero romance back on the menu? Or does an ill wind blow across the moors?
Women everywhere are positively wuthering in their pants in anticipation of this Valentine’s Day’s “Wuthering Heights” premiere. Logline: Barbie finally gets a vagina and learns how to use it. The movie is going be an absolute blockbuster. “Barbenheimer” was a fun phenomenon, but “Heights” will reach the iconic status.
Wuthering Heights, of course, is famous not as a romance, but as a ghost story—after getting ghosted by Heathcliff, Cathy becomes a literal ghost who haunts him forever.
The debate around the movie is swirling: Is it girl “goon fuel”? Is it old-fashioned, standard-issue, bodice-ripping romance? Is it 50 Shades of Heathcliff? Is it feminist? Is it empowering? Isn’t Heathcliff supposed to be “dark”? Is it a symbol of the dumbing down and cheapening of great works of English literature? Does it desecrate Emily Brontë’s moody (and sex-free!) Gothic masterpiece?
Or is it a good sign that women of all stripes are once again allowed to embrace their innate love of swoony male-female normie romance?
We will examine this momentarily, but first, a look at the wuthering lows of the last few years:
Girls Gone Wild
The most recent mainstream bodice-ripping period romance that gained a huge audience was, of course, Bridgerton. It became famous for its diversity race-swap casting (black Queen Charlotte, etc.) and zesty soft-core sex. Every time I watched a clip or two to see what the fuss was about, I wanted to vomit from the bad acting and charisma-free leading men.
Half the characters were gay or bi or “fluid” or had weight issues — where was the romance? Then I realized, ah — women really just want to watch porn and this was a socially acceptable one with high production values and nice frilly costumes. This show has come and gone with zero breakout cast members. Is it still on? No one knows or cares.
Last month, of course, everyone (outside of trad mom circles) was “obsessed” with the near X-rated gay hockey show, Heated Rivalry. Teenage girls are especially smitten, and I think this is because no male leading man has so closely matched the archetypal teenage girl romantic hero until Connor Storrie came along.
Athletic, slim but muscular, hairless face and chest, blond curls, bright blue eyes and a devilish grin—he looks like the All-American bad boy who Taylor Swift’s been singing about all these long years. Of course girls love him. The fact that he plays a gay man, has gay sex on screen, and presents as a gay man in interviews—well, nobody’s perfect.
I wrote about the phenomenon of this show in my last post.
It’s good that girls are swooning over handsome men again, and not getting guilted into becoming lesbians or trans men. Whatever helps them stay off the testosterone and keep their breasts intact.
But does fantasizing about gay dudes in love with each other—and not with them—hurt their future relationships with real, actual men? How do you keep ‘em down on the farm once they’ve seen Karl Hungus, er, I mean, Connor Storrie? Are girls going mad for this show because they are over straight guys, who give them the ick now? I
n general, it’s probably not great in the long run for young straight women to go ga-ga for two gay guys going at it. Is that homophobic? Seems like girls who want to watch two guys do it is not “romance”—it’s a fetish.
And that brings us to…
