Anne with an Eh?

Watching the second season of “Anne with an E” (Just “Anne” in Canada) with my kids. They love it. I am not happy with it. It is a travesty of the original.

The common observation is that it is darker than the books. That is not my problem. My problem is that it is so badly written. It shows no understanding of character, and especially of the original characters of the books. Plot turns often make no sense. It is often wildly historically inaccurate, although it claims this as something it worked especially hard at; historical authenticity. And it is prone to virtue signal, which is embarassing.

It regularly has characters do things without any good motive. Characters just fly of the handle, when it is useful to introduce some plot complication, without motivation and often out of character. In episode 4 (I think), they have a brothel madame toss one of her girls in the street, literally, in front of our heroes, just as the latter is about to give birth. Leave aside the stereotypical, melodramatic situation: where's the sensitivity to character? Right, so people are all black or all white, and the madame must be one of the bad ones, right? More than a bit hamfisted. The more so since there is, by comparison, no hint that the prostitute herself might bear any moral responsibility for anything. Trite and uninsightful as this is, this is not the worst. It is the absolute lack of suitable motivation. Narratively, why would any madame throw a girl out just as her water breaks, as opposed to once she has become visibly pregnant? It makes no narrative sense. And would the prostutite reallty have had no prior warning, so that she was unable to make any other arrangements?

Meantime, back in Avonlea, two grifters living at Green Gables have a falling out. One wants to take the money they've swindled out of just about everyone in town, the other wants to stay and use it to buy some land and set down roots.

What? So his neighbours are just going to forget all about his swindling their money?

And really, how plausible was it as a plot point in the first place to have everyone in Avolea give their money to a stranger for the sake of getting some supposed assessment of gold prospects on their lands? It's trite and implausible, surely. Even if there were gold, or likely to be gold, would the landowner really pay to find out, as opposed to some mining company doing so?

The series prides itself on being historically accurate—indeed, it claims this as one of its distinguishing features, in comparison to previous productions. Yet in a recent episode, it shows the young French Canadian farmhand, “Jerry,” offered alcohol, and refusing it, explaining, “We never drink at home. We're Catholic.”

Eh? Even given original invincible ignorance, shouldn't the writer or the show have checked whether abstinence from alcohol was indeed a Catholic practice? Would it have been so hard to Google it?

Another episode shows a scruffy, deperately poor Jewish pedlar who says he is from Germany, but had to leave because life is so difficult for Jews there. But this is happening in the last years of the nineteenth century. Jews in Germany at the time were fully enfranchised and, on average, better off and better educated than the general population. Jews from other lands were moving to Germany as a result. It is because of Jewish success and prosperity that Adolf Hitler's anti-Semitism in the Twenties and Thirties stuck. Jews were provoking envy and suspicion with their growing power. They were supposedly in control of banking and so forth. Hardly impoverished pedlars with big scruffy beards. This guy came straight out of some stereotype factory, from someone whose knowledge of European Jewry came entirely from Fiddler on the Roof.

The point of the character's appearance is apparently only to virtue signal. It shows the poor foreigner as generous, first, and then demonstrates Mirilla's racism, as she chases him off her property. Trashing Mirilla's character, in the process; another arbitrary and motiveless act. Predictably, in the series, any identifiable character who is non-white, non-Anglo, or an immigrant is entirely good. Anyone who is white, Anglo, and non-immigrant (Brits and Americans do not count here as immigrants; in fact, it is good and righteous to bash Brits or Americans) is basically bad and stupid. You can read anyone's character at a glance.

That's called racism.

Anne's character is also repeatedly violated: something especially vile for a character who has become so generally beloved. It is all like those illustrations of Mickey Mouse and Minne performing sex acts. Bad luck for her: she is white and Anglo, after all. Here, Anne has no consideration for the feelings of others. She frequently acts like a spoiled child, completely out of character for an abused orphan. She is shown exploding in anger towards the Francophone farmhand, Jerry, for example, who is a sympathetic character who has done nothing to her—as though only her feelings matter. And she is shown first opening and reading Matthew's mail, then, discovering he is getting letters from an old flame, writing love letters back to her in his name.

This is the sort of thing only a confirmed narcissist would do. It refuses to acknowedge either Matthew or his female correspondent as real human beings, with the right to exist as separate and apart from Anne's own fantasies. It shows callous disregard for their feelings. There is no way Lucy Maud Montgomery's Anne Shirley would do such a thing. And worse, when this Anne does it, the series itself seems to show no understanding of how morally wrong and cruel it is.

Another really annoying addition is an amaterish computer-generated fox that keeps appearing as Anne's bush soul. This is gritty realism?

The good news is, perhaps it will at least inspire kids to read the books.