Reply to Ok DCUM, what do you think of the Wuthering Heights movie?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]From what I read, Heathcliff is described as a gypsy and a dark stranger in the novel. Could it just be that he’s dark in mysterious or does it imply that he’s from a completely different race? I never understood it this way. The actor who plays Heathcliff is tall, dark and handsome.[/quote]

I'm French and have lived in the UK.  "Gypsy" means traveling Roma people that mostly came from Eastern Europe but that have very distant Indian heritage (they migrated in the Middle Ages or something). They are not of African or Arab descent. In Bronte's time, gypsies would have looked like the gypsies of today, and since the settled populations looked down on them, they probably wouldn't distinguish between impoverished English folk without a home and actual Roma, if both looked relatively similar. If you walk in the streets of Paris right now, you can see gypsy women holding babies in their laps begging for money, usually near metro stations. They are purposefully scruffy to attract sympathy, but they do actually have relatively pale skin and dark hair (also today they're slaves to a begging racket, so don't give them money - they'll have to hand it over to the menfolk in charge).

So casting a Caucasian with dark hair in the role of Heathcliff is entirely appropriate.
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+1
I never thought of Heathcliff as black.  I pictured him as swarthy, with dark hair and eyes - which in comparison to the pasty white Brits would have definitely looked “foreign.”  But black?  That never crossed my mind.

And for those upset about the casting, were you also upset about Laurence Olivier previously playing Heathcliff?  How about the casting in Hamilton of POC when the people they were playing were (factually) white?[/quote]

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