I think Wuthering Heights is meant to be disturbing, but I wouldn't reject a book because it's disturbing. I like a certain amount of emotional engagement and I'm fascinated by relationships of any kind. For me personally, though, I have come to respect the damage it does to my mood and general outlook to stay too long with or get too wrapped up in dark things. A movie may not be real, but the ideas behind it are real -- someone wishes to portray torture or evil so much that they go to the time and expense of making a movie of it-- just the fact that someone is so delighted with this stuff or think other people will be that they produce it for mass consumption disturbs me and can depress me off and on for the rest of my life. I can critique with the best of them, I think; I know how to disengage and employ critical analysis -- but movies and literature are strictly free time activities in my life, and my choice is to keep it where my equilibrium is not devastated and I'm later haunted by images I'd prefer not to have seen or imagined. If it's great art, I might venture -- but even then, I might not. It's not good for my mental health. Like I said, if you want that from me, you'd have to pay me. I need more incentive than "it's good to experience different things." I agree with the idea, but for me, I've seen and experienced just about all I care to.
I think I get what you're saying, Marm, about someone who rejects without examining. Maybe it's like my friend from Eritrea who took me to a restaurant serving her native food, which is eaten communally, with the fingers. She was so pleased that I would go there with her. She said other people said No Way as soon as she told them they would not be eating with a knife and fork. I do scorn a provincial mind.