fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3893 ]

[ SECRET POST #3893 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3893 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

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02.

[Valkyrie]

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03.

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04.

[Joss Whedon and ex-wife Kai Cole]

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05.

[Alyson Hannigan, "Fool Us"]

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06.

[Wolfenstein: The New Order]

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07.

[Anne, the new Anne of Green Gables reboot miniseries]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 07 secrets from Secret Submission Post #557.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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07. http://i.imgur.com/RNo8IvE.png
[Anne, the new Anne of Green Gables reboot miniseries]

Hasn't it always been canon though that Anne's past caretakers were cruel to her so much that Marilla couldn't bring herself to send Anne back? Like it seems less to me like they're adding anything and more like they're acknowledging something that was glossed over in past adaptations because it was 'unpleasant'

It's canon that they were unpleasant and cruel to her, yes. Marilla sort of picks up on that between the lines, but there's never a point where Anne is trembling and dealing with flashbacks. It isn't "glossed over" in previous adaptations, no. Also the reason why Marilla decides to keep her isn't because of Anne's past homes, but because another local woman proposes to take Anne off her hands and she is an unpleasant woman who clearly plans to use Anne as cheap labor.

Not exactly. The families Anne stayed with weren't nurturing, this is true. Anne was stuck in a nanny/maid position and didn't have nice clothes or a lot of food to eat because the families were poor. This is how Anne herself describes those years:

“Well, I don’t know.” Anne looked thoughtful. “I read in a book once that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but I’ve never been able to believe it. I don’t believe a rose would be as nice if it was called a thistle or a skunk cabbage. I suppose my father could have been a good man even if he had been called Jedediah; but I’m sure it would have been a cross. Well, my mother was a teacher in the High school, too, but when she married father she gave up teaching, of course. A husband was enough responsibility. Mrs. Thomas said that they were a pair of babies and as poor as church mice. They went to live in a weeny-teeny little yellow house in Bolingbroke. I’ve never seen that house, but I’ve imagined it thousands of times. I think it must have had honeysuckle over the parlor window and lilacs in the front yard and lilies of the valley just inside the gate. Yes, and muslin curtains in all the windows. Muslin curtains give a house such an air. I was born in that house. Mrs. Thomas said I was the homeliest baby she ever saw, I was so scrawny and tiny and nothing but eyes, but that mother thought I was perfectly beautiful. I should think a mother would be a better judge than a poor woman who came in to scrub, wouldn’t you? I’m glad she was satisfied with me anyhow, I would feel so sad if I thought I was a disappointment to her—because she didn’t live very long after that, you see. She died of fever when I was just three months old. I do wish she’d lived long enough for me to remember calling her mother. I think it would be so sweet to say ‘mother,’ don’t you? And father died four days afterwards from fever too. That left me an orphan and folks were at their wits’ end, so Mrs. Thomas said, what to do with me. You see, nobody wanted me even then. It seems to be my fate. Father and mother had both come from places far away and it was well known they hadn’t any relatives living. Finally Mrs. Thomas said she’d take me, though she was poor and had a drunken husband. She brought me up by hand. Do you know if there is anything in being brought up by hand that ought to make people who are brought up that way better than other people? Because whenever I was naughty Mrs. Thomas would ask me how I could be such a bad girl when she had brought me up by hand—reproachful-like.

“Mr. and Mrs. Thomas moved away from Bolingbroke to Marysville, and I lived with them until I was eight years old. I helped look after the Thomas children—there were four of them younger than me—and I can tell you they took a lot of looking after. Then Mr. Thomas was killed falling under a train and his mother offered to take Mrs. Thomas and the children, but she didn’t want me. Mrs. Thomas was at her wits’ end, so she said, what to do with me. Then Mrs. Hammond from up the river came down and said she’d take me, seeing I was handy with children, and I went up the river to live with her in a little clearing among the stumps. It was a very lonesome place. I’m sure I could never have lived there if I hadn’t had an imagination. Mr. Hammond worked a little sawmill up there, and Mrs. Hammond had eight children. She had twins three times. I like babies in moderation, but twins three times in succession is too much. I told Mrs. Hammond so firmly, when the last pair came. I used to get so dreadfully tired carrying them about.

“I lived up river with Mrs. Hammond over two years, and then Mr. Hammond died and Mrs. Hammond broke up housekeeping. She divided her children among her relatives and went to the States. I had to go to the asylum at Hopeton, because nobody would take me. They didn’t want me at the asylum, either; they said they were over-crowded as it was. But they had to take me and I was there four months until Mrs. Spencer came.”

Anne finished up with another sigh, of relief this time. Evidently she did not like talking about her experiences in a world that had not wanted her.

“Did you ever go to school?” demanded Marilla, turning the sorrel mare down the shore road.
“Not a great deal. I went a little the last year I stayed with Mrs. Thomas. When I went up river we were so far from a school that I couldn’t walk it in winter and there was a vacation in summer, so I could only go in the spring and fall. But of course I went while I was at the asylum. I can read pretty well and I know ever so many pieces of poetry off by heart—‘The Battle of Hohenlinden’ and ‘Edinburgh after Flodden,’ and ‘Bingen of the Rhine,’ and most of the ‘Lady of the Lake’ and most of ‘The Seasons’ by James Thompson. Don’t you just love poetry that gives you a crinkly feeling up and down your back? There is a piece in the Fifth Reader—‘The Downfall of Poland’—that is just full of thrills. Of course, I wasn’t in the Fifth Reader—I was only in the Fourth—but the big girls used to lend me theirs to read.”

“Were those women—Mrs. Thomas and Mrs. Hammond—good to you?” asked Marilla, looking at Anne out of the corner of her eye.

“O-o-o-h,” faltered Anne. Her sensitive little face suddenly flushed scarlet and embarrassment sat on her brow. “Oh, they meant to be—I know they meant to be just as good and kind as possible. And when people mean to be good to you, you don’t mind very much when they’re not quite—always. They had a good deal to worry them, you know. It’s a very trying to have a drunken husband, you see; and it must be very trying to have twins three times in succession, don’t you think? But I feel sure they meant to be good to me.”

Marilla asked no more questions. Anne gave herself up to a silent rapture over the shore road and Marilla guided the sorrel abstractedly while she pondered deeply. Pity was suddenly stirring in her heart for the child. What a starved, unloved life she had had—a life of drudgery and poverty and neglect; for Marilla was shrewd enough to read between the lines of Anne’s history and divine the truth. No wonder she had been so delighted at the prospect of a real home. It was a pity she had to be sent back. What if she, Marilla, should indulge Matthew’s unaccountable whim and let her stay? He was set on it; and the child seemed a nice, teachable little thing.

“She’s got too much to say,” thought Marilla, “but she might be trained out of that. And there’s nothing rude or slangy in what she does say. She’s ladylike. It’s likely her people were nice folks.”

That's a hard life, no doubt. But a far cry from what the TV series portrays, i.e. screaming, emotional/physical abuse, etc. The TV show is definitely making a conscious decision to make the story "grittier" and darker by adding elements that weren't there in canon.

Jesus, what have I missed.

Amazing that an anime made in the 70s did the book justice better than this netflix funded trainwreck.

The Megan Follows films, at least the first two, were great. Never seen the anime. But Megan is who I picture now when I see Anne. The first movie was an amazing adaption, and though the second one changed some stuff, it was still a great movie.

I can't figure out exactly what "moment" this picture refers to. There are many potentially triggery scenes in the series.

The context is that Anne is on a train, journeying to the Island and she hears another passenger's baby cry and that triggers a traumatic flashback to the abuse she suffered while staying with a foster family.

Yeah, I bailed on the show real fast because of this stuff. "Gritty Anne of Green Gables" is not something I will ever need in my life.
It's very clear in the books that she hadn't been treated well, but the Netflix show ramps that up to 11, introduces crazy bullying and all sorts of unnecessary stuff. Anne was plenty sympathetic already. That Netflix did this honestly makes it seems like they didn't trust the source material, and is a sign of just how deep we've sunk with all the gritty bullshit presented as "realism".

This.

ugh, agreed!

This a million times.

"Gritty Anne of Green Gables" is not something I will ever need in my life.

I sounds like EVERYTHING I need in mine. Maybe I should check this thing out.

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bio_obscura - 2017-09-01 02:41 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2017-09-01 04:06 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2017-09-01 06:45 (UTC) - Expand

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bio_obscura - 2017-09-02 02:54 (UTC) - Expand

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bio_obscura - 2017-09-02 02:53 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2017-09-01 06:48 (UTC) - Expand

So very much this - I'm staying far far far away from this. :(

Yes, exactly. The story Netflix is telling isn't Anne of Green Gables. I'm not sure why they'd remake a classic and then choose to tell it in a way that's so out of character it might as well be a completely different series. It's like retelling the story of Winnie the Pooh, only this time Pooh bear is a starving, abused circus bear trapped in a tiny cage and Christopher Robin is his jailer.

I liked this adaptation. I found truer adaptations of Anne Shirley to be tooth rottingly fluffy and sweet to thr point of being unwatchable.

Then, I mean, maybe Anne is just not for you?

what did you think of the books?

That's kind of who the character is? I mean, great if you enjoy this. But it isn't a good adaption of the books. That sweet and spicy Anne who survives and thrives and makes everyone around her love her is the Anne of the books.

This so much.

I'm loving the hell out of this show and everything about it. I think it's more disrespectful to abuse victims to just gloss over it with "oh well, she was abused so you have to feel sorry for and sympathize with her," and instead examine the actual effects abuse has on her mentality and the way she views/deals with the world.

It would be disrespectful to gloss over abuse, but the abuse you see taking place in the show? Is not canon. It does not happen in the books. Adaptations that don't show the abuse aren't glossing over anything because there was nothing to gloss over. The Netflix TV show added that for extra pathos and because they wanted a grimmer version of the story.

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bio_obscura - 2017-09-02 02:51 (UTC) - Expand

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tree_and_leaf - 2017-09-02 14:27 (UTC) - Expand

Go cry on a dandelion snowflake.

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(Anonymous) - 2017-09-01 23:14 (UTC) - Expand

The show was a little extreme sometimes. But on the other hand Anne's perkiness in the book is extreme and unrealistic as well. I thought the show was an interesting interpretation of what growing up in that situation would really have been like. I think it's best if you just accept it's not a slavish adaptation.

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