Slate Daily Feed Culture Gabfest - Heathcliff, It’s Me Cathy Edition
Feb 18, 2026
Jamelle Bouie, New York Times columnist who mixes politics with cultural critique, and Amy Nicholson, LA Times film critic and Unspooled co-host, dig into three pop-culture beasts. They spar over Emerald Fennell’s lurid Wuthering Heights, unpack Ryan Murphy’s glossy JFK Jr. love story, and celebrate the anarchic revival of The Muppet Show. Quick, sharp takes on casting, aesthetics, and why these stories still fascinate.
AI Snips
Chapters
Books
Transcript
Episode notes
Fennell Chooses Spectacle Over Brontë's Core
- Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights reframes Brontë as a camp, bodice-ripper with pop needle-drops and couture, not a faithful Gothic study.
- The film prioritizes eroticized spectacle over the novel's themes like intergenerational trauma and racial ambiguity.
Age Undercuts Adolescent Stakes
- Casting older, glamorous actors as teenage characters breaks the novel's emotional logic and undermines credibility.
- Amy Nicholson says mature performers make adolescent motivations feel unconvincing and damage the film's premise.
Key Themes Are Sidelined
- The novel's themes—intergenerational trauma and Heathcliff's racial ambiguity—are central to its power.
- Dana Stevens argues the film erases those layers, turning cruelty into eroticized kink and losing the book's darker stakes.
