“Often father and daughter look down on mother (woman) together. They exchange meaningful glances when she misses a point. They agree that she is not bright as they are, cannot reason as they do. This collusion does not save the daughter from the mother’s fate.” -Bonnie Burstow

Funny note: De Beauvoir told the Paris Review in 1965 that she had no interest in being interviewed: "Don't you think I've done enough in my three books of memoirs?"

The Woman Destroyed1 is a collection of three novellas, each centered on a different woman in the twilight of her life. Although they differ in temperament and circumstance, all three have devoted their youth to husbands and children, only to be abandoned, betrayed, and yup — destroyed.

Age of Discretion

The mother in “The Age of Discretion” is warm, principled, and deeply assured of herself, but it is also that assurance that blindsides her. She has spent much of life with an idealized vision of her son and of the life she thought he was going to lead. Subsequently, when he rejects that path, it is not only a maternal disappointment, but a disruption to her very foundations on which she has built her identity and purpose.

I thought of my own parents and how we fought when I told them that I wouldn’t be choosing the college that they wanted for my undergrad. The fight raged days and nights with yelling and tears on both sides. At the end of it, my dad just handed me a four-page long letter without another word. After reading it, I threw it away even though it was written on the nice paper and the carefulness of his penmanship clearly indicated that he thought I should keep it as a reminder of what I was given away in my choice. I don’t think my relationship with him was ever the same after that week.

The Monologue

this story is arguably the most polarizing section due to its stream-of-consciousness style through fragmented disjointed prose trapping the reader inside a endless wave of shrieking hysteria paranoia grief and sentences without pauses periods it’s what you’re reading now / on page 98 she says that she’s sick of it sick of it sick 82 times which was great fun (not) to get through / we find that this crash out comes after the her daughter’s suicide so maybe? the mother was emotionally domineering and corrosive long before that so maybe it was her cruelty that drove her child to despair / she shrieks shrieks shrieks no, no, no, of course not, the action of the people around her seem to suggest otherwise but what idiots they are they don’t understand they are the ones that drove her to madness / who can be blamed for any of this? the finger points and curves back on oneself, she’s a bitch, she says but who is she but a bitch? i hate cussing in books and in real life so now i think i’m quite sick too after reading all that

The Woman Destroyed

The title novella closes the collection. Monique’s account unfolds through diary entries, which places the audience directly alongside her as she comes to discover her husband’s infidelity and the subsequent fallout. And because her narration is coherent and emotionally intelligible, we do not regard her with the same suspicion and dislike that we directed toward the previous narrator.

Monique’s tragedy is not just her partner’s betrayal, but her inability to imagine a self outside of the relationship. She waits, she bargains, she clings, she allows herself to be humiliated even though she knows that the marriage is unsalvageable. I think it’s all too easy for readers to judge and mock her for her passiveness. Especially now in 2026, I can imagine so vividly, Monique opening up an anon Reddit thread: “I (40F) just found out my husband (42M) has had a side piece for the past years. We’ve been married for 20 years. What should I do?” and met with a barrage of “Girl leave him / men ain’t shit / take all his $$$ and leave without a word / confront the side piece".

Despite the misfortunes of these women, I don’t think Simone is trying to mock domesticity. The better question would be this: what happens to a self that has been built entirely through its relationships to others? Our protagonists are not destroyed by marriage or motherhood alone, but by the social conditions that encouraged them to construct their identities through caregiving, emotional labor, and sacrifice. All this reflects de Beauvoir’s broader existential and feminist philosophy, that the Woman is placed as the inessential “Other.” She does not and cannot exist just for herself, but has to provide some sort of instrumental utility to the people around her. But The Woman Destroyed illustrates the existential danger of that positioning.2 The destruction across the novellas does not come solely from external betrayal, but from the collapse of selves built on self effacement and dependency.

There is a difference between being “sexy” VS “erotic” and the best literary example is James Salter's A Sport and a Pastime. The back-cover copy reads “the intensely carnal story - part shocking reality, part feverish dream - of an affair between a footloose Yale dropout and a French shopgirl,” which is about as good of a synopsis as you can get. I picked it up because embarrassingly, I am a francophile. Oui, oui, très désolée. But so great it was that I read it three times. As Grant Faulkner observed::

Salter is a fantastic erotic writer, if only because he’s a lover of surfaces and a natural sensualist. “Painterly” is the kind of description that gets tossed around easily, but it deeply and intrinsically applies to Salter’s prose.

There are a lot of graphic sex scenes in this novel, and in less experienced hands it would have easily tipped into pornography. But writing obscenity is easy, vulgar, and wildly accessible to anyone without regard for standards. Conversely, erotic literature requires specificity, attention, and a willing to play with tension that may, or may not, lead to a climax.

It is also why the novel earns its description as a “dream.” Philip drifts through France with no apparent concern for money, logistics, or any of the uglier obligations of living. He and Anne-Marie exist only to make love in countless positions, moods, and rooms. She, as his paramour, is also never fully drawn but I think that too, is the logic of dreaming. Think of those nights when you dream of a lover you have never met, yet somehow are completely certain that the two of you have a whole life together? Their voice, the way they move, all of it feels like memory rather than invention. But when the alarm sounds, that sourceless certainty immediately snaps away and before you have even swung your legs over the mattress, their face is gone. A Sport and a Pastime ends like that, with a waking and an abrupt leaving.

The distance between yearning and satisfaction is not always meant to be solved. This pertains not only to literature, but life. Nowadays, we have become so desensitized by sexually explicit material and so efficient in our consumption, that we have lost our ability to enjoy an accumulation of libido without resolution.3 So come to this book with openness and let it remind you of the difference between the two.

You can also find me on Instagram!

3

Intimations: A Writer's Discourse

The erotics of writing

This is a story about how I discovered God’s erotic side…

Read more

a year ago · 27 likes · 9 comments · Grant Faulkner

“Qué importante te crees, tan importante / Qué importante te crees, tan importante / Qué importante te crees, tan importante…”

(Translation: How important you think you are, so important...)

The swell of this accusation fades as Carlos Ares, the Galician composer and singer, begins his heart-wrenching meditation on the insignificance of life and ego. Despite the press images of a long-haired sombre man with dark, downcast brows, his voice has a lightness best described as “boyish”. But simultaneously, that youthfulness is held in concert with something older and steadier, invoking the image of a father pushing back the sweaty strands from his child’s forehead and slowly spinning out a story meant to lull them to sleep. This melodic contradiction is even more poignant as the tenderness of Ares’ delivery sit at odds against the morbidity of the lyrics; after the repetition of “Qué importante te crees, tan importante,” he gathers the people around their future graves:

“Que el día que esté tu nombre en una esquela
Más allá de que le duela a tu pariente
Tendrá un peso equivalente al de una hormiga.”

(Translation: That the day your name appears on an obituary/Beyond the fact that it hurts your relative/And it will have a weight equivalent to that of an ant.)

He pushes on, backed by the steady strums of a single guitar, comparing our existence to “a crumb in the Bakery of Fools” that still believes itself to be important. He assures us, “que nadie se va a dar cuenta de tu baja” - no one will notice our absence, for we are but a “splinter in the frame of a box”.

Around the two minute mark, the acoustic begins to crescendo, with the vocals becoming more impassioned as well, all does so without breaking stride. Such a subtle build up is a powerful demonstration of Ares’ control; I don’t think the singer has taken a single breath since he opened his mouth for the first line. Now, his voice is no longer that of a boy or a dotting father, but rather embodying the passion of a revolutionary’s call, the fervent insistence of a town crier that will go on even if no one listens.

“el tiempo de pasar nunca se olvida
ni creo que nada nunca se lo impida.
Nunca se caerá una hoja repetida.
La vida seguirá siendo paradoja,
la habitación de Matisse igual de roja.”

(Translation: The time of passing is never forgotten / nor do I believe that anything could ever hinder it / A leaf never falls twice / Life will remain a paradox / Matisse’s room is just as red.)

Here, “Importante” goes beyond admonishment against ego into a message that is far more encompassing. “A leaf will never fall the same way twice” reinforces the insistence that each one of us is minuscule, equal to the “weight of an ant”. But, if the path of a falling leaf cannot be repeated, then no life, however outwardly small, can ever be duplicated either. This is what Ares holds out to us: “La vida seguirá siendo paradoja.” It is a paradox that we are simultaneously trivial and sacred, forgettable yet utterly one-of-one.

What makes the track so keenly felt is also in how its structure embodies the philosophy in its lines. As we moves closer to the climax, I began to brace for one last lyrical punch. In a more conventional format, this would have been its most definitive moment. But Ares subverts that expectation entirely, pulling back his voice entirely to instead spin his audience into 20 seconds of a triumphant instrumental break.

While surprising at first, it actually does make sense. By abandoning articulation at its most expected, Ares shows that language is also insufficient for the truth that the song has been circling. Words reduces us to crumbs, splinters, ants, while melody opens us outward to something that is much more ambitious and limitless.

At the end, we are delivered right back to where we started, as “Qué importante te crees, tan importante” repeats for the final time. Yet the refrain no longer sounds like reproach. Instead, softened by all the verses that has come before: death, paradox, time, the soul in Matisse’s red room…it is now transformed in our ears. What first sounded like accusation is now an invitation, an alternative lens through which to view our lives. In a world so preoccupied with legacy, “Importante” argues that is not nihilistic to accept the idea that we are no more important than a leaf or ant. On the contrary, our greatest significance lies in our smallness and impermanence.

You can also find me on Instagram!

I had attended their debut launch in 2025 to an eye feast of: A$AP Rocky’s Ray-Ban collection, Memphis Milano bookcases, ENORME telephones, and personal favorite - a 1965 Pontiac Vivant, with a gleaming baby-blue coat, parked beside the installation of Jean Prouvé’s Gas Station (1969). It was impossible not to love the excess of it all. So of course I came back.

The thesis behind what Basic.Space is doing is something that I can appreciate from a consumer’s lens. But for my inner art freak, it reminded me of what I dislike about the contemporary art & design scene - how people’s love of art can so easily be twisted into performance - though the crowd did provide ample material for my journal.

The Glade by Rick Owens Furniture

The first room was dimly lit, its edges made hazy by the slow drift of incense and smoke from AB+AC’s sculptural city (which doubled as a candle holder). The main feature was Rick Owens’s couch, looming over its audience by several feet. There was something oddly religious about this atmosphere, although I might have been caught up by the smell of frankincense and the soft clinks of Chrome Hearts necklaces as the person next to me tilted their head in contemplation. Two weeks ago, Basic Space had posted a post explaining the couch’s composition of “Batipan plywood and French wool army blankets” and to which a person in the comments section replied with just a word: “hard”. There was a loose circle of admirers, all clad in dark greys, blacks, and minimum three silver rings, standing in front of the monolith structure with their palms folded in front of their pelvis. We all looked at the couch. No one sat on the couch.

“A Woman’s Work”

The theme of the next room was the opposite. Well-lit fixtures, mirrors, mahogany and flowers; the shades of creams and beige were deliberately chosen to whisper West Village. There was a curated assemblage by HURS titled “A Woman’s Work,” featuring only female designers. My eyes immediately went to a Mariyo Yagi’s fringe lamp, its strands hanging silkily from ceiling to floor; it was hard to suppress an intrusive urge to run a hand across the strings and watch the fibers ripple. Elsewhere, a vase of white lilies curled elegantly over dark wood; an ornate silver combs by Jessi Burch sat dead center on a metallic chair; and Jacqueline Rabun’s magnifying glass was positioned perfectly on a Ruemmler bench.

Despite my adoration for the exquisiteness of these individual objects, I couldn’t help but feel slightly disappointed when consider the space as a whole. Stepping back, the room felt somewhat…sexless. A lone copy of The White Album by Didion was on the shelf, maybe to lend a deeper impression of femininity , but it barely registered as evidence of a woman’s presence.

Then again, maybe I’m too critical. The room wasn’t titled “A Woman Lives,” It’s “A Woman’s Work” interpreted by HURS. They just chose the approach of presenting the finished product rather than showing the working process, the mess, the evidence of labor. They portrayed femininity as a composed and untouchable - the interior design of a cool girl with “nyc / paris / tokyo” in her bio and weekly plans at the candle-lit bistro, small plates & natural wine. It just wasn’t my preference. Where’s the friction? The tension? Show me the effort, sweat, and the labor it takes to acquire taste.

We move from “A Woman’s Work” to Rodrigo Garcia’s sculptural sundials hanging vertically on wooden beams. If I were to liken Rick Owen’s couch to the insides of a gothic church, then the sundials (or “estudios” as Garcia calls them) reminded me of Cristo Redentor tanning under the Brazilian sunshine.

A few more steps away was multiple SS26 Bottega Veneta bags were pitched on top of 6AM Glass stools. A silent sentinel warily watches over these woven jewels, scanning each passerby. Upon meeting my eyes, they rightfully clock the fact that I would not be buying anything.

Take the picture! Take the picture!

I reach the art gallery. The largest square footage was occupied by Nick Thomm, and it was there, that without fail, came a constant stream of influencers and college students posing in front of his aura ring paintings, all of whom will then leave without another backward glance. I drifted to the other stalls, mentally bookmarking names for later research: Henry Galvin, Archer Defterios, Katie McGown, Alex Moore; these artists carried a sort of playfulness and emotional liveliness that I empathized more deeply with.

Subscribe now

by Aeir

My head began to spin from all that I’ve seen — or more accurately, from all that I had smelt. Even before catching glimpses of Maison Margiela pinky rings, I could smell the $$$. You just knew that these people exclusively used Aesop soap and could correctly pronounce Loewe.

Three girls in Tank Air tops and Cartier bangles walked past, saturated in the test sprays of Wet Stone, “the first biomolecular scent by Aeir.” Aeir had taken over a narrow room shaped somewhat like a trapezoid. The lengths of the space converged at a thin strip of wall only few hands wide. On that sliver, Aeir had installed a single canister of their $169 parfum (only $169?). Due to the limited space and the crowd, I did not see the canister at first, and was genuinely curious as to why everyone was staring so intently at a blank wall.

Another couple wandered in, and I immediately recognized wafting of Thé Noir 29. I caught this wiggling thought by its head, and found myself briefly wondering - if I could place MM and Thé Noir 29 so quickly, what made me so different from the crowd I was deriding?

you can buy the house, but not the bed

Having made our way around the floor, my last stop was outside, where Paul Rudolph’s Walker Guest House was. The 576-square-foot home had been moved from a dusty dungeons in Mojave Desert to be temporarily installed under the punishing LA heatwave. Likely it will be bought and placed back into another dusty garage. There were some signs of wear, but luckily, the interior got spruced up by Hommemade, A$AP Rocky design studio. There was a queue waiting to go inside so a man began to lower himself onto one of the chairs next to the house. Instantaneously, a staff materialized and rushed over. “You can’t sit on that, sir, it’s — it’s only for display.” There was a slight pause, as if he also heard the ridiculousness of his statement.

Ceci n'est pas une pipe. This is not a chair. I am reminded of the banana taped to the wall and that Tate Modern cleaner who mistook an art installation for trash and scraped it away.

Proudly, Basic Space told us, you can buy anything you clap your eyes on! The Walker House is yours for just $2 million. Or if you want the fuzzy cactus in the kitchen. Or the hanging art of SpongeBob crying. Everything from the toilet cover to the kitchen sink. The bed is the sole exception. “The bed, owned by A$AP Rocky, is the only item in the guesthouse not for sale.”

I might start crying or laughing, or both.

You can’t sit here, sir.

Basic.Space is admirably transparent about its ambitions. The event states clearly that it is “invite only - RSVP needed - for members.” Their website writes “obsessively curated, and unapologetically commercial.” Basic.Space is self-aware of its contribution to consumerism because it’s not meant to be a museum, it’s a business. It wants people to buy, and even better if those people are influencers and celebrities that will go on to post about their obtained wares.

I actually don’t have a problem with Basic.Space despite my sarcasm and wryness. They are trying to make shopping IRL again. That is exciting! Especially with art/design/fashion, it is a poignant experience to experience in person rather than through a screen. Basic.Space has gathered lovers, buyers, and people who genuinely appreciate the value of the objects being shown. But bad fishes do slip in. Alongside the art lovers and serious buyers, there are people only there for the hype. These people are just there to be seen and photographed. They will take a selfie in front of Thomm’s pieces and walk away without a thought beyond, “wowww, pretty colors”. They are neither there to have a dialogue with the artists nor are they there to buy. Unfortunately, I don’t have a solution. Pop-quiz at the door? I don’t know!

Ultimately, I don’t think Basic.Space is the problem. In fact, seeing the number of people that showed up, Basic.Space has demonstrated LA’s desire for these sorts of experiences. We should have more events like this, albeit with less focus on commercialism. There is a want for temporary spaces filled with strong, contrasting personalities & tastes, where artists, curators, and audiences share physical air (sorry, I meant to say Aeir) instead of algorithmic space.

Basic.Space is magical because it is something that established museums cannot do: rotating sensibilities, its once-a-year scarcity, and the sense that each edition is authored by a different mind. Despite all of my wryness and sarcasm, I truly loved coming. I now have the name of five new artists to follow and a renewed hunger for life outside of digital culture. It was a wonderful opportunity to speak to the designers and meet fellow art lovers that are there out of true appreciation. I just wish that there was less photo ops blocking my view.

And that I sat on Rick Owen’s couch.

“The artist’s job is not to succumb to despair, but to find an antidote for the emptiness of existence.” - Gertrude Stein in Midnight in Paris (2011)

Reading The Flamethrowers (2013) by Rachel Kushner reminded me of Owen Wilson’s character in Midnight in Paris (2011), if Midnight in Paris was shot with the perversion of the French New Wave film movement.

I cannot overstate how much I love this book. I genuinely want as many people as possible to read The Flamethrowers. As such, this is less of a traditional review and more like a precursor (love letter?) to one of the best pieces of literature I’ve encountered recently. Kushner’s dialogue, keen astuteness of human thought, and descriptions of 1970’s New York may haunt me for the rest of my life.

This piece can be broken up into four parts. First, I will offer some context, without major spoilers so that you will still be able to enjoy the book for yourself. Then, we’ll explore the novel’s nonlinear structure. I’ll also highlight the theme that stuck with me the most, before concluding with a short list of my favorite quotes.

So feel free to jump around! You can start at the bottom with the quotes and if it speaks to you, don’t hesitate to pick up The Flamethrowers from the bookstore.

“the faint swoosh of a flamethrower” : intro

The start of The Flamethrowers drops us abruptly into a scuffle between two WWI soldiers in Southern Europe. The scene flashes by, only page long, and leaves us with the victor, a man called Valera. But there is no other context or follow-up; instead Kushner cuts across time and continents, to introduce us to Reno, a young artist riding her motorcycle through the United States in 1976. Confused? Because I was.

But stick around for a moment because the interrelation between these two stories does reveals itself later. For now, let’s focus on Reno. Reno is 21 years old, a fresh UNR graduate. Like all young creatives wanting to make something of themselves, she moves to New York City. Unfortunately, at the beginning, time goes by all too quickly without much progress in her career. She makes a friend with a local waitress, Giddle (except Giddle’s not really a waitress and her real name isn’t Giddle.) She meets an eccentric couple that gets off on gunplay. She has a one night stand with a stranger.

Four chapters slip away like this, until she catches the eye of Sandro, a much older and famous Minimalist artist. Sandro has estranged himself from his family’s business empire of rubber, tires, and motorcycle manufacturing, and relinquished his inheritance to instead produce aluminum boxes for prestigious art galleries. Here is where we learn that his father is T.P. Valera, the victor from the very first scene. Although Reno and T.P. Valera never meet, symbols and themes tie them across continuum.

“everything is simultaneous” : structure

The Flamethrowers swivels through different time periods and characters every other chapter. We learn about Reno’s time in New York. Then T.P. Valera’s childhood in Alexandria and his building of the Valera fortune - six decades before Reno’s birth. There is also a brief anthropology of an anarchist group based on the Lower East Side, and my favorite chapter, “The Trembling of the Leaves,” is from the perspective of an unnamed laborer in Brazil. Reading The Flamethrowers was like collecting puzzle pieces, waiting for the picture to come together at the end. This fragmented structure can be disorienting and will not appeal to everyone, although personally, I thought it to be rewarding at its conclusion.

What is irrefutable is Kushner’s ability to render imagery and acute observations that skirt the lines between art, politics, and philosophy. Reno’s sections are especially compelling. As a young woman and as a newcomer to the upper echelons of the NY art scene, she narrates her experiences with a wide-eyed sensitivity that heightens even the ordinary, describing things like so:

“Autumn hand brought in definition, a sense of gravity returning to a place where it had been chased out by the sun, by the diffuse rule of humidity.” (136)

“Like all people who fall in love, I took the attraction between me and Sandro as singular and specific, not explainable to type and preferences.” (94)

“The loft had once belonged to the painter Mark Rothko, and knowing this gave it a despairing and enlightened aura. It was almost better than going to the Met and looking at the Rothkos.” (151)

“to finger” : objectification / exploitation

Beyond its poignant sensory immersions, the novel is unified by many themes stretching like: gender, power dynamics, authenticity vs manufactured reality. But the one that stood out the most to me is its exploration of exploitation. This operates across three dimensions: the objectification of women, the exploitation of labor, and the commodification of nature.1

The objectification of women is the most explicit when Reno’s hears about a performance piece by a fellow female artist. The artist stood naked, with a cut-out window showing only her pelvis and a sign that says “Place Hand in Window”. The exhibition came to a head when a man reached in and fingers her to an orgasm. There is a tension between self-determination and objectification. The artist explains the act as a calculated experiment in perception:

“It was also about making an assertion. There Factual. In a sense male…I offered an object in a box, coldly. If someone placed a hand in the box, it was that person insisting on sensuality, on touching. Not me.”

Neutrality is unachievable, objectification is unavoidable. The moment a viewer participates, the meaning of sex and gender is thrusted the body. And it is not incidental that the body in the box is female, nor that the hand reaching in is male. The performance reveals that even with self-awareness and autonomy, she remains pliant to external desire. Reno’s trajectory reflects the same theme. Her identity relies on Sandro, all of her access to spaces, people, and opportunities is mediated through the man. Without him, she could not have entered the parties filled with the rich, famous, & weird. Even her motorcycle, a representation of freedom and escape, is a gift from Sandro. Reno is only allowed to exist in the art world with constraints; her presence is shaped by her lover and the systems around her. All that determines how she is seen and what she is allowed to become.

Exploitation and objectification extend beyond women. Through T.P. Valera backstory, Kushner also shows us how men in power can exploit other, “lesser than” men. In cahoots with the Brazilian government, T.P. Valera devise a scheme to use the local Indian population for labor in rubber production. Valera’s building of his empire is based on shrewd calculation, pushing the laborers to the millimeter limits of endurance. Men’s suffering computed to the “optimum calibration, the unit of profit.”

Nature too, is absorbed into this logic. The industrial farming of rubber trees is described by T.P. Valera like so:

“the trees could be tapped at the tender age of eight or nine, brought directly into service like very young girls, and they withstood it…The jungle was like a standing army, a reserve that would summon forth a product…and Valera liked this idea, of conscripting nature into service.”

Under his gaze, both land and people are stripped of intrinsic value and instead gets measured by their utility. What connects all these examples: women, men, trees is how their meaning is imposed by those in power.

“move on to the next question” : conclusion

Kushner points her readers to observe the moments in which meaning is imposed. In this, her work echoes John Berger, who argued that “the way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe.” A tree is never just a tree once it is seen; it is a resource, a symbol, a commodity. That same logic extends across the entirety of the novel: from the body performance, to Reno’s access to the art world through Sandro, and to the Valera empire built on the backs of exploited workers.

Across history, industry, and intimacy, Kushner insists that nothing exists in isolation. Meaning is not inherent but imposed by the systems of power, interpretation, and use. Rebellion will not be enough. You will remain entangled and constrained by the structures you seek to resist. But realizing that your efforts were futile often comes too late, often after the destruction. The novel’s disjointed, nonlinear structure reinforces this vision. The puzzle will inevitably come together. Meaning is assembled gradually and what felt scattered in the beginning will reveal itself as inevitable by the end.

favorite quotes

1. “It was almost feminine, Sandro joked, to walk. Contemplation, nature, submitting passively to the time it took.” (28)

2. “If the Earth is something whole, its wholeness is of no comfort…you have a gun pointed at you, and the patrão is aiming it. By the laws of harmony, you cannot both have guns.” (217)

3. “I’d put my hair in a faded pink towel, my Pickwick towel. I had lain next to him, thinking, so naively, that this would be the first of many moments with his fingers in my wet hair.” (329)

4. “He didn’t want to say he loved her, because is that how you treat someone you love? He might have loved her. Leave it at that. Something that might have been but was not, that he could have sustained but didn’t.” (371)

Cue the crimson. It might be blood! Or paint. Turn on the smoke machine and neon lights. We need a beautiful woman for sure. Place her in the center of the frame. Let the crowd around her dance while she stares off into the distance, as though she alone knows the true form of sadness. Pump up the music, throw in a bass that doubles as heartbeat. Add nudity. Sex. Make it clear that sex is not really sex, but a metaphor for capitalism. You, as an educated watcher, of course get this immediately. You’re smart. After all you’re here watching “Wuthering Heights” and not Zootopia 2.

And yet, walking out after credits feels like I just ate three Big Macs. Sure, it’s technically food; and sure, I did sit two hours in the theatre. The aftertaste is still artificial and faintly embarrassing.

So. Let’s talk about why I had this reaction after watching “Wuthering Heights” (2026), directed by Emerald Fennell. Also, why it was the exact same response I had to Anora by Sean Baker.

Watching “Wuthering Heights”

Last weekend, a friend and I made a spontaneous decision to watch “Wuthering Heights” at Westfield Century City. The theater was packed, surprisingly not only with couples and horny Jacob Elordi fangirls but also, most memorably, a ten-year-old sitting between her parents. My friend and I exchanged a look. Were they in the right place? Have they seen the trailer?

The official trailer was a sequence of: bread kneading, ripples of Jacob Elordi’s sweaty muscles, Margot Robbie’s heaving bosoms, and an alarming number of fingers in various mouths. Even a fish was not spared from this treatment as Cathy, Margot Robbie’s character, gingerly probed into its opening. So sure, just the kind of thing for a child.

The lights dim as the movie starts with the horniest scene imaginable. If you don’t want spoilers, then skip to the next section. But a quick recap here: Cathy, a rich girl, meets Heathcliff, a poor boy. They fall in love but miscommunication ensues. Heathcliff runs off in a very Rhett Butler, Gone with the Wind-esque manner. Cathy marries Edgar, her rich neighbor. Years slip by in holographic lingerie. Charli XCX plays as Cathy stares off and violates said dead fish. Heathcliff comes back, hot and rich. BDSM overtures really start to amp up. Grinding, moaning, withering, backshots. Extramarital sex. It is surprisingly much less explicit than I would have expected. The reunion of the lovers is quickly dashed. Cathy dies. It ends with Heathcliff clutching at her corpse and reciting the very famous “You said I killed you—haunt me then!” line. Can’t wait to see that added to the thousand fan edits of Jacob Elordi.

My Two Cents

There is no shortage of Rotten Tomato reviews flaming Fennell’s adaptation. If you want a more in-depth reflection of exactly why her take is questionable/problematic, I really enjoyed the takedown from Howl Noises and WREN.

My two cents is that when you invoke a canonical text, you cannot dismiss its moral gravity. Brontë’s Wuthering Heights is dark. There is some romance, but the main intention is to force readers to sit uncomfortably with topics like: abuse, race and class tensions, and generational trauma. But Fennell trashes half of the plot, and instead rebuilds an architecture of stylized longing.

So why retain the title? The answer is: because of the market and FOMO. Unfortunately, we are currently in a market in which original titles struggle to compete numbers against sequels and reboots. Wuthering Heights is a title everyone can recognize. It already has a market advantage by having book fans. But secondly, invoking “Wuthering Heights” signifies cultural prestige. As a society, we know that the Brontë sisters are shorthand for serious literature. Those who have read the novel can perform outrage at its distortion. And now, those who have not read the book can also join the discourse without confronting the text’s density. It’s no hardship to watch Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi. Then afterwards, you get to assume a defensiveness of your own, that you know the material, and that those snobs are taking this all too seriously. Everyone feels intellectually and culturally engaged.

Red

The reason why I first linked “Wuthering Heights” and Anora was simple. Red.

Both films hanged themselves with it. It wasn’t coral, wine, or burgundy. They used the kind of crimson like freshly spilled blood. That hue demands to be noticed and interpreted. Halfway through “Wuthering Heights”, I toyed with the idea that there might be a sort of shared, symbolic ambition between the two movies.

That assumption held, but unevenly. In Anora, Ani’s red scarf is intentional and singular. Sean Baker explained in his Slash Film interview that the red scarf references Vampyros Lesbos:

“There is that red scarf that comes from ‘Vampyros Lesbos’ in which Soledad Miranda wears it, and that prop becomes part of her character. Well, that’s what we were doing with Ani. We were making that red scarf a very important prop — more than just a prop. It signifies, in many ways, her suppression, in a way. I mean, this thing is being used to silence her, and yet then she has to use it for her own comfort and warmth. So we’re playing with that.”

This sort of deliberation cannot be said for “Wuthering Heights”. Cathy wears a lot of red, but there is no singular object. You had scarlet dresses. Capes. Ribbons. Lipstick. On use of red, Emerald Fennell says:

“Wuthering Heights is fatal. It’s fatal for the characters and it’s fatal for the people who watch it and read it. And so it felt like it needed this sort of arterial channel kind of through it. And so the use of color and the use of shape were really important to me as kind of one of the Gothic motifs. I think it was important that we had those visual signals, the expressionist kind of way of working that me and Linus (Sandgren) really like to watch movies that you could understand emotionally with the sound off.”

It is a coherent, aesthetic approach. But I’d argue that when you use a color so extravagantly, its accumulated symbolism will end up feeling like decoration instead. An article by Thought Catalog offered five separate interpretations of “why red?” When a symbol can plausibly be tied to everything, it means nothing. I found that I wasn’t alone in this sentiment. Back to Shore writes:

“The excessive overuse of the color red, in an endeavor to create a semblance of symbolism or deeper meaning, meets the same fate: it is vulgar, unrefined, and ultimately pointless.”

Baker’s justification is more persuasive. The red scarf has historical lineage and intention. But regardless of reference, crimson is a high-impact choice. It is the color most guaranteed to linger in the viewer’s memory and to dominate a still frame on a homepage. Even when symbolically justified, it is still a strategy for visual capture. This is not an accusation that anytime someone uses red, it’s insincere. But it cannot be denied that in today’s attention economy, using a red like that performs two jobs at once.

Bella Swan, is that you?

The prioritization of imagery over narrative also overcasts the characterization of our heroines. Both films introduce us to strong female characters. Ani is sharp-tongued, transactional, and street smart. Cathy is volatile, mischievous - a defiant streak of red against the grey moors. At first, they appear to have agency. But all this gets thrown out the window when they meet the rich guy.

The film accelerates in spectacle, while the women decelerate in action. They sit while the world moves past them. I ironically enjoyed watching this sort of behavior from Bella Swan in New Moon, but that’s because from the get-go, she’s portrayed as a limp spaghetti. For Ani and Cathy, it’s disappointing given all of their pluck at the introduction.

After Vanya leaves in Anora, Ani oscillates between senseless screaming and sulking silence. Any bit of dialogue reveals nothing about her interiority. Similarly, in “Wuthering Heights” after Heathcliff leaves, Cathy retreats into her jewels and dolls. Her longing is solely underscored by Charli XCX anthems. Maybe these silences are meant to show anger? Despair? Or maybe they’re just hungry and want a burger? We’ll never know. It is left open to the influence of lighting and music, without any concrete storyline development.

Both films advertise complexity. They begin with flesh and blood women. The are set up with the same rebellious spirit as Jo March in Little Women:

“Women, they have minds, and they have souls, as well as just hearts. And they’ve got ambition, and they’ve got talent, as well as just beauty. I’m so sick of people saying that love is all a woman is fit for.”

But as the narrative progresses, and coincidentally when the man disappears, both Ani and Cathy are reduced to their pretty faces. So that, more than the shared penchant for wearing red or their eroticism, is what makes these two works feel so similar. If they do not move, if they do not speak, then we can only assume that there is nothing behind their hollow doll eyes.

Sex as Substitute for Substance

The final and most telling similarity between these two movies lies in how they deploy sex. In promotions, there were heavy promises of sordid scenes, proving that the classic advertising tactic of “sex sells” still holds true. But the actual sex scenes in the films themselves fails to deliver on expectations. Not only that, it further degrades the interiority of its female leads.

I am a big believer in dialogue. A well-written script can move plot and build characterization without any need for fancy camera work or elaborate set builds. But as I have pointed out, a substantial part of these films have their heroines lying around passively.

And yeah, then we get sex. But no matter how beautiful it’s shot, or the chemistry between costars, nothing in the act advances the script meaningfully. It really feels like all of it was just done as a marketing ploy.

I think it’s a shame. Anora is literally about Brooklyn strippers and escort services. Yet it barely scratches the surface of sex work. Even real strippers, interviewed by The Hollywood Reporter, echo this frustration. The setting had such a rich terrain for examining vulnerability, power, and performance. Instead, it’s just a neon backdrop with poles.

Similarly, in “Wuthering Heights”, it pulls from BDSM themes, but only as shock value. The most daring “dog” scene was terrible because of its shallowness. Fennell could have faithfully translated the abusive dynamic between Heathecliff and Isabella. Or made some sort of commentary of her own on the topic of consent, and how a “yes” can be manipulated and distorted through loop holes. Instead, it’s just turned into a silly, kinky detour that quickly gets erased by Heathcliff runs back to Catherine and Isabella is rescued.

Sex is a powerful narrative device. If it had been used with intention, it could have turned into a metaphorical character of its own, a coalesce of obsession, shame, and power dynamics within relationships. Yet despite the numerous closeups of skin, saliva, and egg yolks, the emotional register stays flat. Walking out of both theaters, I didn’t feel heartbroken by Cathy’s death. I didn’t feel scandalized seeing Ani and Vanya’s numerous physical encounters. I felt apathetic. Every emotion that I could have felt, was forced into the same bed-squeaking rhythm.

Conclusion: Fragmentation of Today’s Cinema

Maybe Anora and “Wuthering Heights” are not empty by accident. They may be products of the time that produced them.

Right now, entertainment revolves around short-term content for virality. In turn, this forces a pressure on movie’s capability to be compressed and spliced, so that they can be turned into loops, clips, and edits. TikTok and Reels have trained us to feel emotion in bursts. Would it really be that hard of a reach, to hypothesize that Anora and “Wuthering Heights” heard that, and hence engineered their films for such extraction? Ani’s red scarf whipping in the wind in slow motion. Cathy’s glitter tears. Cheeks getting smacked. Moaning in the shower. Moaning in the rain. All of these are visually memorable seconds.

As Emerald Fennell put it, she likes films that can be understood “with the sound off.” The philosophy is not wrong, given the success of silent cinema. Or look at expressionism. But, filmmaking is an extraordinarily difficult medium because it has to be a slow layering of motive, contradiction, and consequence. These two movies focus on something else entirely. These products are crafted for a media ecosystem filled with an audience that only have five-second attention spans.

Our generation of directors seem to fear that without constant visual charge, attention will evaporate. So red becomes redder. Sex becomes louder. Silence becomes heavier. Visuals must carry everything. It is unfortunate that what prompted me to link Anora to “Wuthering Heights” is their prioritization of aesthetic immediacy. Whether subconsciously, or purposefully catering to the algorithm, it is a troubling sign for cinema as well as our wider popular culture.

Crying in H-Mart has now been out for more than four years. I remember when it first came out and immediately gained widespread popularity. In 2021, the LA Grove’s Barnes & Nobles had that iconic red cover on the front shelf, beaming at you right as you walked in. Book influencers gushed over it, lauding it as a must-read. On the book cover, the quote from Vogue stated, “Deeply necessary.”

Most of us know Zauner more commonly by her band name, The Japanese Breakfast. Her first two albums easily found resonance with die-hard fans for its confessional lyrics on grief and loss. Crying in H-Mart is her memoir. It is a much longer and personal reflection of the experiences that have shaped her. Within her writing, her materials lean heavily on her experience of growing up and the complicated relationship she led with a headstrong immigrant Korean mother and a detached, white American father. As a fellow Asian American myself, I should have felt seen. So why the annoyance instead?

The book began, as you might have guessed already, in H-Mart. Zauner goes in depth into the aisles, the food one might find, the “real deal” for Asians trying to find a piece of home, away from the “single-aisle ‘ethnic’ section in regular grocery stores” or the “sad Asian fusion joint by your work.” The way she lays out the story is detailed. A little…too detailed.

And that is where my perturbation stems.

We understand the point Zauner is trying to make: how early connections to her heritage seem only accessible through food. Yet, every single mention of a dish or snack is always followed up by an English translation and explanation. For example, when she makes gyeranjjim for her mother in Chapter 7. Gyeranjjim was her childhood favorite, and now her making the dish is a physical and symbolic reversal of roles. Saying that much is poignant enough, but she chooses to follow this up with an entire paragraph of exactly what gyeranjjim is and how to make it. Kongguksu, in Chapter 8, got the same treatment. Even in Chapter 9, her mother’s simple words, “Gwaenchanh-a, gwaenchanh-a,” are spoon-fed translated for the readers. “It’s okay. It’s okay.” There are too many excess explanations that it edges towards pandering, rather than deliberate plot devices.

Who are we explaining ourselves to?

These observations come at an apt time given the recent discourse of “#HMartGate”. Funny coincidence, I guess H-Mart is just that place. The main character of #HMartGate is also a mixed Asian girl. Madeline, who posted a video in which she joked that she side-eyes white people when she sees them in ethnic grocery markets. In response, a Korean content creator, Susie frowns back and tells Madeline off by saying that personally, she not only welcomes white people but will purposefully lingers in the aisle to help white customers. This has split divisions across not only Asian, white, but even into black communities.

I’ll let you make your own judgement.

What I’m more focused on is the backlash aimed at Susie. Her “lingering” is framed as being altruistic. Yet in the context of imperialism, colonization, yellow fever, there is an unsettling undertone of stereotype. The submissive Asian woman that helps her white saviors who has, oh so courageously wandered into the jungle of Eastern exoticism and spices. In the same way that Susie purposefully lingers, Zauner’s lengthy descriptions sets her intended audience as this group of people that wouldn’t know what she’s talking about and need to be led through every word like a child. In the literary world, these stories that overexplain, guiding readers to “read” our lives is like an Asian woman “purposefully lingering in the H-Mart aisles” to show white people which spices to use.

Did Zauner mean to write for a child? Probably not. So who is the intended audience? This level of details would be appealing to readers with little exposure or knowledge to Asian culture or cuisine. But if it’s hoping to attract an uneducated audience, the marketing might not be the right strategy either. The cover of chopsticks and noodles, the boldened “H-Mart” is unmistakably Korean. It clearly hints at what the story is about. Without even reading the first sentence, the cover alone alienates readers with no interest in Asian narratives.

Those who did pick it up are probably already curious and have some level of familiarity with Asian stories. But if that was the case, then the constant translation and explanations are redundant.

After finishing the book, my sentiment leans more positive. The way she writes about her mother is evocative and deeply introspective. But this essay seeks to drive home a larger question. I am asking Asian American writers and artists, how might we move forward in our craft to drive a more complex narrative for our community?

Our stories should expand our narrative possibilities rather than rehearse the same legible tropes for outside consumption.

Since the release of this memoir, there hasn’t been another Asian American story that has garnered as much mainstream attention. This makes Zauner’s writing worth examining. And before Zauner? I’m not sure about you, but my mind goes to The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan. From 1989. The plot centered on immigrant mothers and their American-born daughters.

Wait a second…that’s awfully familiar…

Amy Tan and Michelle Zauner are undeniably important predecessors. But when the next author from the Asian American community gains commercial success, I hope it is not another story with tropes of stinky food metaphors, tiger moms, and generational trauma. These stories matter, but we must build upon the shoulders of our predecessors, else remain confined by the framework that outsiders limit us in.

Especially for Asian Americans, we occupy a particular vantage point. We live within our home culture while also being able to view ourselves through a Eurocentric lens. There is a growing curiosity, now more than ever, from those outside our communities who want to learn about Asian cultures. With our “third eye,” we are uniquely positioned to guide attention toward the in-between shades of third-culture identity.

In the very beginning, I told you that I had to stop reading Crying in H-Mart. It wasn’t because Zauner lacked depth or sincerity. It was because it felt like she was incessantly forcing herself into the role of translator. I believe she didn’t need to do that. For any future AAPI authors, I’d also like to propose an exclusion of extravagant annotations. We know the sour tang of kimchi or how our parents cutting fruit don’t really just mean cutting fruit. Asian Americans must move past the belief that we are always required to explain ourselves. Only then can our literature take a meaningful step toward greater dimension, complexity, and freedom.

We watch them from their twenties to middle age as freelance graphic designers with a beautiful apartment in the city’s center. Latronico’s narration can be likened to a stream of bubbles. Easy, digestible scenes. But any deeper contemplation will cause them to pop on your tongue, leaving behind a faint bitterness. Luckily, bubbles are such inconsequential things. Revulsion is brief and easily dismissable, provided we don’t think too deeply about it.

Anna and Thomas are not developed as individuals. Instead, they serve as representatives of a particular, modern breed of urban “creatives.” Despite this label, they are not neither starving artists or disruptive creators. You can find them in Berlin, but just as easily in any major city that markets itself as a cultural capital.

Their lives are asterisked by socioeconomic privilege. Anna and Tom are never explicitly named as upper class, but it’s telling that the novel ends with a dead uncle with an inherited “estate by the coast.” Of course, it’s not only the rich that participate in the arts. But in the present, artistry alone is rarely sufficient. A certain degree of financial insulation is needed for those: minimalistic art studio, Eames chairs, Macbooks and oat-milk lattes, and to navigate complex, foreign bureaucracies without worry for survival.

As Anna and Thomas age, the narrative occasionally drift near external tensions: gentrification, displaced Middle East migrants, local resentment toward expats. But these pressure remain peripheral. Before they can harden into confrontation, the story retreats back to the cafés and parties. By rejecting the arc of The Hero’s Journey story structure, the novel becomes something very realistic, and subsequently, more unsettling.

As I moved through the book, I found myself oscillating between emotions.

I felt amused and disdained by Anna and Tom. Latronico captures these “creatives” in delightful, tongue-in-cheek observations. It is made clear that although Anna and Thomas have talent, their lives are sustained less by art, and more so by inherited privileges and structural advantages. The general public might see them as artists, but for someone invested in creative labor, you can tell differences. Their productions are designed for circulation. It is legible, shareable, and easily monetized. But real contemporary art should fracture and resist the system and demand something from its makers.

I was jealous. I wish I had their apartment. I wish I could afford daily $9 matcha lattes from Community Goods, and generously tip 30%. I want long afternoons of Instagram scrolling under the pretense of “finding inspiration.” I wish my art was polished and profitable enough for capitalism.

Interrupting this stream of consciousness, I was suddenly reminded of a line from Ali Wong’s Baby Cobra special: “Well, I don’t want to lean in. I want to lie down.”

Maybe, what I hungered for the most, was not their material assets but their nonchalant ease of living.

Jealousy gave way to resignation. Unlike Anna and Thomas, I don’t have the luck of their fictional world. I cannot just pack up my things and relocate willy-nilly. I want to be a writer, but I’m self-aware enough to recognize that my writing is still amateur. If I want anything, a career, financial stability, or technical virtuosity, it will have to be earned through sweat. Effort, repetitive failure, and probably pain.

Finally came guilt. How, after recognizing the conditions that make Anna and Thomas’ lives possible, could I still want that life?

But, the path of least resistance is persuasive, precisely because it demands so little. I can stay put. Take the steady corporate pay. Do work that I neither love nor hate, but work that could be done just as easily by someone else. My poems and scripts are put into a back drawer, attended only when convenient. Such a life may turn out to be empty, but it will not be painful. So then, will I also passively slide into a life of convenience?

Perfection is terrifying because it has given me awareness without instructions. I can deride Anna and Thomas, and still arrive at the same destination as them. Latronico never condemns his characters, nor does he punish the life of comfort and ease. Instead, horror is invoked in the absence of deeper questioning. It is a painted life of difficulty preemptively avoided before we are able to clarify what is sacrificed in its place.