“It’s alive!” (Frankenstein, 1931).
“I never drink–wine.” (Dracula, 1931).
“If he loved you with all the power of his soul for a whole lifetime, he couldn’t love you as much as I do in a single day.” (Wuthering Heights, 1939).
These are some iconic lines from Hollywood’s earliest contributions to the Gothic genre. They’ve been quoted, parodied, and ingrained into the collective understanding of the Gothic world. And yet, they have one thing in common: they don’t exist in their source material. Those were Hollywood inventions. Now, with Emerald Fennell’s upcoming attempt at Wuthering Heights, one has to wonder why she is depicting this classic novel with such performative sexuality. This raises a series of questions concerning adaptations: What is lost in translation when books are adapted into movies? Does a change in dialogue or characterization diminish the authors’ intentions, or is it just different? Do the changes reflect the era they’re made in and the cultural anxieties that come with it?Â
Hollywood Gothic has always been about creating a spectacle rather than being faithful to the original story. Novels often use gloomy landscapes, internalized struggle, and unreliable narrators to convey the gravity of a plot. Whereas films use simplistic story lines, the facing of external problems, and famous one-liners to persist in the audience’s memory. These early adaptations remind us that Gothic films go beyond the translation of stories; they become artifacts of their time. They become ingrained in what we understand of the Gothic world.Â
Take Frankenstein, Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, for example. An unsettling tale about Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates life from dead matter and then suffers from the guilt of his own ambition. The creation of the famous line “It’s alive!” became synonymous with the genre and the “mad-scientist” trope, but never appeared in the original novel. Like most horror films, it was meant to hold up a mirror to the social anxieties of the time: what happens when people push science too far for the sake of knowledge? Specifically, the practice of galvanism, or the reanimation of dead matter, as described in Shelley’s novel. Furthermore, the book delves into great detail about internal struggles, including isolation and moral responsibility. This gets replaced in the film with an electrifying scene designed as a spectacle.Â
Similarly, in Dracula (1931), Bela Lugosi delivered the cheeky line, “I never drink–wine,” which does not exist in Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel of the same name. Dracula is an epistolary novel, meaning it contains journal entries and fragmented accounts that help build tension and unease at a gradual pace. Hollywood, on the other hand, is known for swapping out slow burns for sharp and thrilling plots. The addition of this line is meant to depict Dracula as a debonair and dangerous figure in a time when people were often repressed and did not act on their deepest desires.Â
Wuthering Heights (1939) turned Emily Brontë’s 1847, vengeful tale into a sweeping romance. Lines such as “If he loved you with all the power of his soul for a whole lifetime, he couldn’t love you as much as I do in a single day” make Heathcliff and Catherine’s relationship something rooted in deep passion rather than destruction and obsession. The novel tackles many themes, including generational trauma, racism, and abuse. Softening the themes by making the film a romance through and through, alongside the whitewashing of Heathcliff, strips the story of many layers and nuances, and shows Hollywood’s true colors: creating stories that are memorable, marketable, and palatable for the sake of mainstream audiences finding escape rather than allowing them to engage with the films’ literary counterparts.Â
The Hollywood tradition of twisting around Gothic novels and their themes persists well into this day and age. Namely, Emerald Fennell’s upcoming Wuthering Heights starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi. The trailer depicts an iteration that leans heavily into performative sexuality, once again reshaping Catherine and Heathcliff as a romantic relationship with added sex appeal rather than the codependent, destructive, and obsessive bond Brontë wrote. The sexualization of Gothic material prioritizes marketability rather than consistency with the text. It overlooks how the Gothic genre originated as a means to defy the mainstream writing styles emerging from the Romanticism era. However, this aspect of the film is secondary to the casting of Heathcliff. As stated before, Heathcliff is often whitewashed. This is a character who is described as “dark-skinned” from the very first chapter. Other characters compare him to dogs and the devil. Without an actor of color portraying Heathcliff, many of the motivations for why people treat him terribly fall apart. While past iterations followed this practice, one could argue that the reason why those films were well received is that they are largely being commented on by white viewers who may be willing to ignore those details for the sake of a “love story”. Fennell’s iteration does raise questions that often come up when a less-than-faithful adaptation reaches audiences: Can Gothic stories survive in this day and age without constant reworking to keep up with modern audiences? Do the changes diminish the story’s essence? The result of this film may intrigue new audiences while alienating older ones, but it just goes to show that, like Frankenstein’s monster, the age-old tradition of reinventing the Gothic genre and its themes is alive!