Anne with an E

[osprey_archer]

I watched the first episode of the Netflix series Anne with an E and I have decided to do my blood pressure a favor and not watch any more, because I disagree with essentially all of their decisions, starting with the fact that they’ve added two years to Anne’s age (she’s eleven! Not thirteen! ELEVEN!) - but really that pales beside the fact that they end the first episode with Marilla sending Anne back to the asylum because she thinks Anne stole her amethyst brooch.

Marilla would NEVER. The amethyst brooch incident does occur in the book, but Anne’s punishment is to miss the Sunday school picnic. Marilla doesn’t even consider sending her back to the asylum! (And then it turns out Anne didn’t steal the brooch and she gets to go to the picnic after all.) This is a character assassination.

Other things I didn’t like (I’m really sorry if one of you loved this show, I super hated it, maybe you should not read this review, it seems to be super popular with people who are not me):

Why the hell is Anne in her underwear in the scene where she shouts at Rachel Lynde? (I understand the in-story reason; I don’t understand why the director decided to film the scene this way.) Why does she flee outdoors in her underwear, and then stay away for hours and hours? I realize that Anne’s underwear looks like a complete set of clothes to a modern viewer, but they super were not, and it’s bizarre to me that Matthew and Marilla aren’t concerned about it and Rachel Lynde doesn’t comment on it.

The creators evidently felt that Anne’s childhood as described (“a life of poverty and drudgery and neglect”) wasn’t bad enough and threw in a lot of extra child abuse. I thought this was all gratuitous and particularly loathed the scene where Anne’s fellow orphans torment her by waving a dead mouse in her face, partly because it’s so gross, but also because it led to them cutting one of the best lines in the book: “I am well in body although considerably rumpled in spirit,” she tells Mrs. Barry the first time they meet.

The mouse flashback leads into Anne assuring Marilla that she’ll be “as quiet as a mouse” when they meet the Barrys, you see. She stands in front of Mrs. Barry in a paralyzed silence, convinced that she’ll make a bad impression if she opens her mouth. Diana actually asks if Anne is shy.

Anne Shirley is one of the great chatterboxes of literature. Why would you mute her like this? Why?

And let’s note that this is another change that makes a character look worse than she is in order to make Anne look good: in the book, Mrs. Barry is fine with Anne becoming friends with Diana despite this startling speech. This is annoying both in itself, but even moreso because it shows that the showrunners lack faith in Anne: they evidently don’t think Anne is good enough to win over audiences on her own without making everyone else awful.

If they don’t have faith in Anne Shirley’s ability to win over viewers and carry the story on her own, maybe they should have… adapted something else. Please. Anything else! (I take it back; I’m not going to monkey’s-paw myself. They are not allowed to get their grubby hands on Emily of New Moon.)

In a similar vein, I’m super annoyed to discover that in the second season they’ve decided to give Gilbert his own personal plotline. Was it just too much to let a female character to have her own TV show all to herself?

And! And! I have also discovered (by dint of Googling Anne with an E in hopes of finding someone else who hates it as much as I do) that they’ve decided to make Mr. Phillips gay. Mr. Phillips, Anne’s teacher, whose main character trait in the books is courting sixteen-year-old Prissy Andrews so assiduously during school hours that he neglects all his other pupils.

Now I can understand why they didn’t want to fling themselves on that super creepy narrative grenade, but nonetheless it means that “Mr. Phillips is secretly gay!” is a bizarre reading totally at odds with the narrative and shows how little respect they have for the book. Like, if you want to have a secretly gay character, Matthew is right there.

I mean you could also argue that Matthew might well be asexual, but that almost certainly would not get the shocked, shocked! reactions that the creators are clearly yearning for, whereas secretly gay totally would. So.

I have more complaints - I could honestly go on about this almost indefinitely - but I’m going to cut myself off before my head explodes. How could they get literally everything so wrong?

Comments

[asakiyume]

I have had experiences like this so often that I literally cringe when I hear a story I love is being adapted for the screen.

You might like to cleanse your palate with the version of A Little Princess that Sovay linked to in a recent entry. It comes in six approximately half-hour segments, starting here. The characters are **very** faithful to the original and the acting is very nice.

[osprey_archer]

I'm still bitter about the Ella Enchanted adaptation. STILL BITTER.

Come to think of it, that's another book where they tried to make a more "feminist" adaptation that is actually less feminist than the original book. WHY. Why do people do this. Apparently in later Anne with an E episodes, Anne's classmates (who are mostly pretty decent in the books) have all been replaced by Mean Girls and male chauvinist pigs. Because nothing says feminism like stereotyping all women (except our heroine, who is Not Like the Other Girls) as total meanies!

There are times when I am sad that The Changeling (or for that matter any of ZKS's other books) will probably never be adapted for the silver screen, but on the other hand it does mean that it's safe from this kind of nonsense.

[sartorias]

I suspect the Mr. Philips courting Prissy would seem slightly less creepy if we consider that teachers, especially those sent out to those towns, could be no older than eighteen or twenty. LM Montgomery was in her first teaching assignment.

Otherwise, agree all the way.

[osprey_archer]

Honestly given the writers' priorities in every other aspect of this show, I'm surprised they didn't try to milk maximum creepiness out of that plotline just to shock their viewers. It fits their general modus operandi.

[sartorias]

Yikes!

[sovay]

Other things I didn’t like (I’m really sorry if one of you loved this show, I super hated it, maybe you should not read this review, it seems to be super popular with people who are not me)

This show looked from the start like something I would not want to watch and nothing you are saying about it is making any difference to this opinion, except that I want to watch it even less. My mother has been re-reading the series in order and talking about bits of it with me (I haven't read all of the books since high school; most recently I think I went back for Rilla of Ingleside because of World War I) and it's a complicated world, it's not some kind of disingenuous Canadian Pollyanna. It didn't need darkening.

(I take it back; I’m not going to monkey’s-paw myself. They are not allowed to get their grubby hands on Emily of New Moon.)

Oh, God, don't let them do Emily of New Moon.

[osprey_archer]

I'm pretty sure they've moved the story forward twenty years, to the era it was written rather than when it was set, which means that Rilla's generation won't exist in time for World War I. You know. Just in case we thought they might have any lingering respect for the books they're adapting.

I'm trying to think what books I would willingly let this crew adapt. Maybe something by John Steinbeck? Maybe The Red Pony, which really ought to be called The Dead Ponies. I think they would really appreciate the grimness level.

[evelyn_b]

it's a complicated world, it's not some kind of disingenuous Canadian Pollyanna. It didn't need darkening.

I'll have to find the actual quote later, but there's a bit in LMM's Journals where she quotes a reviewer saying something like "The author seems not to have intended this idyllic small town to come off as such a seething mass of backstabbing, resentment, and disappointed hopes" with the note "That is exactly what I intended."

ETA: Emily of New Moon did get a "darker" (read: sillier) TV adaptation in the early 2000s (I think) and it's wonderfully ridiculous. There are ghosts in every episode and Aunt Elizabeth gets killed off at the end of the first season.

[leaina]

Thanks for this - I hadn't seen any of this series yet, and from what I'd heard I was slightly dubious, but now I'm not even tempted. I reread the original book for the first time in ages just a few months ago and remembered why I'd loved it so much as a kid - Anne really is the most delightful chatterbox, and the book is wonderful. Now I can spend my time rereading the sequels instead of watching this thing. (And if I do feel the need to watch something, I have the Megan Follows version on video.)

[osprey_archer]

I wonder if they watched the Megan Follows version and despaired because the perfect adaptation had already been made, and that despair leached into this new adaptation. They have lost all hope and therefore could not give any to Anne! Or something.

[silverusagi]

I haven't watched this at all, mainly because of things I've heard about it, basically everything you've said above. I do not need a "gritty" Anne of Green Gables in my life.

Honestly, this sounds like the same kind of thing as the 2005 Pride and Prejudice (oops, sorry if you like that movie). The same events happen, but are completely changed in tone, and enough little things change that everyone becomes completely different people, and it's nothing like the book!

[osprey_archer]

My feelings about the 2005 Pride and Prejudice were not as strong as they are about Anne with an E, but I do remember feeling that they had used Austen's character names without retaining much in the way of character traits or truly understanding the time period. There's a scene in that one too where Elizabeth is standing around in her underwear, isn't there? Is this a hallmark of bad period pieces? 'Heroine stands around in her underwear in a circumstance where no self-respecting woman would do such a thing.'

[silverusagi]

I don't remember the underwear, but I do remember Darcy like walking into the house late at night to hand her the letter. WHAT.

[osprey_archer]

Oooooh. She might be in her nightgown rather than her underwear. EITHER WAY. TOTALLY INAPPROPRIATE.

[ladyherenya]

Most of the changes in this seem to be either about MORE DRAMA or MORE SOCIAL ISSUES (or both). Largely unnecessary, but there's enough that I like -- namely, Anne, the Cuthberts, Diana, the scenery and attention to visual details -- that I'm watching the second season.

But I've never had a very strong attachment to the first Anne book, so I don't feel the same compulsion to yell "I don't care how pretty it is, you're doing it wrong" that I've felt about adaptations of other books. (I never saw the third Anne of Green Gables film with Megan Follows because I was so horrified by a friend's description of it.)

[ladyherenya]

Upon further reflection, given that the makers of Anne with an E are much more interested in telling their own story about a high-spirited and creative orphan who moves to a new place than in telling Anne of Green Gables, they they really should have just embraced that. They could have said "inspired by L.M. Montgomery" and given their show a [Name] of [Adjective] [Object] title, if they wanted to acknowledge the connection (or, probably more likely, milk that marketing angle).

[osprey_archer]

I can see why they didn't do this, because they probably would have gotten far fewer viewers if they weren't piggybacking on a beloved cultural icon, buuuut I really think it would have been artistically a better move and I probably would have enjoyed it more. There's nothing inherently wrong with writing a story about a hard-hearted woman who keeps the orphan in her care on tenterhooks for weeks about whether she'll be allowed to stay or not (from an artistic perspective, I mean, morally obviously there's an issue), but she's just not Marilla Cuthbert.

I still think their attempts at social commentary are ham-fisted and ahistorical but, IDK. Maybe the world needs to be bopped over the head with a few moral messages right now.

[evelyn_b]

I felt about the same after the first couple of episodes, and though I came to like it a lot better by the end, I still think the writers did a serious disservice to the source material (though I love the opening credit sequence). I haven't tried to watch Season 2 yet, and probably won't.

I wouldn't have minded a darker-n-grittier Anne if it were a darker and grittier version of the story Anne actually is. Anne's big story arc in Anne of Green Gables is that she learns to balance her daydreams with reality. She's able to do that because, for the first time in her life, reality is a decent place to live. It's "unrealistic" in that many orphans adopted to do farm chores did not have this experience, but that's the story. Anne's a chatty weirdo who messes up a lot, but once the Cuthberts decide to keep her, there's never any doubt that she's their chatty weirdo. I was disappointed in the show for never giving Anne a break and hardly ever letting her have a good time, and especially for cruelly (and stupidly) prolonging the "will Marilla throw me back this time?" drama for no reason at all except to make Anne suffer.

The show also chooses to give Anne a traumatic first period and to make her hate and fear everything about conventional womanhood and growing up, which is the opposite of her attitude in the book. I am disappointed that they apparently couldn't get past "olde tymes = bad for girls!!" long enough to imagine an Anne who actually looks forward to housekeeping and babies of her own, in spite of her bad experiences with Mrs. Hammond et al..

I did like Lesbian Representation Miss Barry, though. And the cast is excellent.

[osprey_archer]

I probably would have been more forgiving if they hadn't messed up the "will Marilla keep Anne???" storyline so badly. Marilla doesn't keep her on tenterhooks for weeks and weeks, let along actually send her back to the orphanage. Did they just really want an excuse for that scene where Matthew races madly along the coast of Prince Edward Island? If they really wanted a race-along-the-coast-of-P.E.I. scene, surely they could have had Anne do it. She didn't actually do that in the book but it's just the sort of thing she would think thrillingly romantic, don't you think?

I felt like the show was really invested in wallowing in Anne's suffering - all those scenes where she's gulping in deep sobbing breaths - in a way that really undermines the more triumphal aspects of the book, where Anne wins people over through the sheer force of her winsomeness.

I hear they're really ramping up the queer themes in season 2, which is such a monkey's paw situation for me, because before actually seeing this adaptation I was so on board with this idea... but now that I've seen it, I don't trust them to explore it in a way that is at all accurate or period appropriate or anything but sensationally traumatic for any of the characters.

[evelyn_b]

That madly-racing scene was so ridiculous, and so Anne! but it had no business being enacted by Matthew Cuthbert in alleged real life.

The show was really invested in wallowing in Anne's suffering, and in undermining Anne's triumphs, in a way that seemed to have more to do with the writer's headcanons about what "the real" Anne "would actually have" experienced than with anything in the book. I also really hated the use of flashbacks. It felt invasive and patronizing, like Anne wasn't being trusted to tell her own story and we, the audience, weren't being trusted to read between the lines along with Matthew and Marilla. (I may be a little overinvested in these fictional characters).

The Aunt Josephine Barry story isn't sensationally traumatic, or badly done at all, imo. It's an acknowledgement of the complexity of past lives that fits seamlessly into the existing story & characterization. Maybe a little overly concerned with making sure audiences Get It, but what in this show isn't?

I'd love to see an Anne adaptation, or any LMM adaptation, with gay and lesbian characters who are just living their lives without too much fuss, and French and First Nations and Italian characters who get the same clear-eyed, easily frustrated but affectionate attention as LMM's white Protestants. There's some of that here, but there's also this persistent failure of imagination, or rejection of genre, or whatever it is, that can't or won't allow an Anne who is both deeply wounded AND a miraculous spring of happiness (a.k.a. The L.M. Montgomery Story) - and that's the most disappointing thing for me.

SORRY TO RAMBLE. I GUESS I STILL HAVE FEELINGS. :|||

[osprey_archer]

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS TOO MUCH RAMBLING ABOUT L.M. MONTGOMERY FEELINGS well maybe it is theoretically possible, but I haven't seen anyone do it yet. Maybe if there's someone out there with super intense rambling feelings about The Story Girl? I'm not sure The Story Girl is worth having super rambles about.

On the other hand I'm sure there are people who think that about Pat of Silver Bush and I do have super rambly feelings about Pat of Silver Bush, so maybe I should put aside all judgment here.

Yes, I hated the flashbacks too! Ugh. There was another recent Anne adaptation (the one with Martin Sheen as Matthew Cuthbert) which has flashbacks to Anne's AbusIve Past, and I didn't like it there either, but there was only one or two which is positively restrained compared to Anne with an E. And there was some tomfoolery to balance it out.

What really frustrates me about Anne with an E is that it's essentially contradicting the themes of Anne of Green Gables: rather than having Anne overcome challenges through imagination, charm, and a sometimes disarming tendency to tell the truth, all of those things avail her nothing. In fact, she's positively punished for them - just look at the mouse scene.

I've honestly gotten a bit frustrated with the media obsession with PTSD these days. It's like they think the prevalence of PTSD in war veterans is close to 100% and it would be unrealistic to have a character who went through trauma but is basically okay, when it's actually closer to 20% in modern America (apparently other societies often have lower figures). Probably the figures are higher for abused and/or neglected children, but still, as you say, it absolutely is possible for Anne to be wounded and also a spring of imagination and joy.

It feels like in the name of raising awareness, the media is (presumably unintentionally) putting together an argument to the effect that "if you have been traumatized, you will never be happy." Not so much through any one story, but through the sheer volume of stories about traumatized characters who don't get to be happy.