Episode 124 -- Wuthering Heights

In Bed With The Right

Adrian Daub and Moira Donegan

Society & Culture, Health & Fitness, Sexuality

4.8 • 654 Ratings

🗓️ 3 March 2026

⏱️ 66 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Last week, Adrian and Moira went to the movies and watched director Emerald Fennell's version of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights (trailer here). In this episode they explore the gender politics of the novel, of this adaptation and what it says about the fate of romance fiction in the 2020s.

Here are some of the texts we refer to in the discussion or used in preparing for it:

Elizabeth Hardwick, "Working Girls: The Brontës"

Georges Bataille, "Literature and Evil"

Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, "The Madwoman in the Attic"

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	It was like when you're watching a movie with your parents and a really intense sex scene comes on.
0:04.8	It was not my favorite way to spend time with Adrian, to be honest with you.
0:10.5	Now I find out.
0:12.4	So I must admit, I didn't feel that way.
0:14.7	And I think this difference might be kind of telling.
0:17.6	I was worried going into it, but I was like, it's not a sexy movie. It's a horny movie, but mostly it's just a gooey movie. I was like, okay. Spoken like a gay man, Adrian Dau. It's just like, it's just a lot of goo. I'm like, like the first five seconds, I'm like, oh, ooh. Then I was like, yeah, okay. Like, it's just very, it's sticky. There are a lot of sticky surfaces.
0:39.1	It has a kind of juvenile fun with this stuff, but ultimately it's only skin deep.
0:45.3	She thinks she's updating the material, right?
0:47.5	It's not your mom and pops, you know, Withering Heights.
0:49.8	Like, the original Withering Heights is far more fucked up than this.
0:53.1	Oh, if you want to be a freak, like, reveling in your own gross horniness and emphasizing the darkness of desire, bring back the necrophilia, you coward.
1:02.0	Like, he digs up her corpse to, quote unquote, embrace it.
1:05.6	Yes.
1:06.1	Like, Emily goes there.
1:07.2	Yeah, and Fennell does not.
1:09.0	Finnell's goo is essentially Erzatz goo. It's just
1:12.4	posy goo.
1:19.6	Hello, I'm Adrienne Dole. And I'm Weirrador Don. Whether we like it or not, we're in bed
1:23.9	with the right. So, Adrian, today we are talking about the movie, the book, the phenomenon, the cultural experience that is Wuthering Heights.
1:38.9	That's right. Hot of the presses. If we don't boost this book from 1847, no one's going to read it.
1:48.0	So, Adrian, you and I took a trip down to a movie theater here in the San Francisco Mission to see the new
1:54.0	adaptation of Wuthering Heights by Emerald Fennell. So I think it's Finnell, but you should
	...

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