The "Wuthering Heights" Phenomenon

I’m fascinated by the “Wuthering Heights” phenomenon. A movie sort of based on a romantic classic (romance as in nature versus reason, not Fabio), but stripped of most of its original content (obsession, revenge etc). Turned into a “love story.”

But this film isn’t really a love story because love, even romantic love, doesn’t fulfill the fantasy conjured by the desirous mind seeking the divine (ie trying to figure out how not to die). It’s a story of passion, which anyone born before ww1 knows is just a fleeting state of madness. So now passion is the standard we set for what “true love” is.

“Wuthering Heights” is going to open to 60m, because it fulfills a fantasy that doesn’t get fulfilled much anymore - the fantasy of the human stretched to his or her limits and beyond. Of touching the divine. We yearn for this because it transcends our immediate, earth bound experience which always has only one ending. But this is dangerous business. For millennia, we had rites and rituals that allowed for a safe communion with the transcendent (or noumenon or whatever you call it). Now it is a function of mere consumption.

This confuses the celestial divine with the earth bound real, where we live, feel and think. If you believe, even only subconsciously, that true love must be rooted in passionate madness like this or else you’re not getting what you need and deserve, you’re in for hell on earth.