Caring deeply will always be the right thing

On "authentic period dramas" and social justice, I suppose.

Anne with an E got cancelled on a Tuesday. I remember the exact day because even though I was then twenty-five and had a foreign language proficiency test that was a part of the entrance requirements for pursuing my PhD, I sat down teary-eyed in the exam room, with this hollow, achy feeling in my chest. I would go on to join the AWAE fanbase as “the avonlea gazette” on Twitter and spend countless hours tagging Netflix, CBC, and other streaming services/broadcasters to beg for a renewal through witty tweets with puns taken from the show (I regret nothing).

While Moira Walley-Beckett gave us enough closure for the show to make sense as a three-parter, she was very clear on wishing to go on telling Anne’s story, having planned material for several other seasons from the outset. After a cancellation, however, shows rarely get picked up again; actors move on, directors find new projects, sets and costumes get sold. Still, if one fanbase was at least a bit philosophically justified in hanging on to hope in a hopeless situation it would be the people who loved Moira’s take on Lucy Maud Montgomery’s 19th century classic. Anne was all about hope.

On book adaptations and period dramas

I recently read a tweet that went on like this:

I get the appeal of barely accurate, "let people have fun" period dramas but why does every period drama have to be like that now? I want something that takes itself seriously, pls I'm starving

Alongside productions like Autumn de Wilde’s Emma, Alena Smith’s Dickinson, and Gemma Burgess’s My Lady Jane (the show the tweet is likely referring to), Anne With an E is probably one of the “let people have fun” shows that are not the poster’s cup of tea. It is very true that “Not every show has to have pop music and glitter eyeshadow to appeal to people”, but is the search for “genuine period dramas” as grounded in reality as decadentquill would suppose it to be. This would probably apply to film in general, but period dramas are never “genuine” in the sense one might hope. If you watch a lot of them across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, it becomes quite easy to place one you’ve never seen before in time, even if you can’t rely on previously knowing the cast.

Beyond the maybe more subtle elements of aesthetics and trends in filming techniques, people are never fully styled in period-appropriate clothing, make up, and especially hair. Victorian hairstyles are often seen as not appealing to contemporary audiences, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a woman with unplucked eyebrows in a period film. If you watch something like Jane Eyre through the decades, you will see a quite accurate representation of male and female beauty standards for each of them (even though Jane and Rochester are famously plain or simply unattractive in the book). The dresses in the 1970 film are suspiciously shiny and polyester-blend like. You can always spot an adaptation produced in the 80s for the frizzy hair and puffy sleeves.

Even if we don’t address the fashion, every adaptation is a portrait of the time in which it was produced - and it will bring to the fore concerns inherent to that time. Introducing the study of Old English literature, Hugh Magennis highlights the importance of “situatedness” when approaching an older text. This refers both the fact that the text itself is situated in time, and therefore somewhat distant from the person who reads it, but also underlines that the reader/researcher is situated as well, in both time and place, and that will inevitably be a key element to the way you will build its meaning, to the way you interpret that text.

There is no such thing as a genuine period drama.

I am not being disingenuous, I understand what they meant. But the fact is, there is a reason why there are so many adaptations like that being produced - and becoming successful in the last 15 years or so. If we are looking for a genuine period drama for our time, they are it. There are many ways in which an adapter can build a connection to a text beyond the mere transcription of lines and scenes from page to screen. Some of the most daring adaptations are often more successful in capturing what makes a difficult novel like Wuthering Heights so special. Brandon Chitwood calls our attention to Monty Python’s cheeky version of it and how effective it is in communicating some of the plot’s refusal to cohere in a conventional way.

And here I must turn back to Anne with an E and its long-lasting impact in my life. The show’s final series stands as its most significant departure from the books it adapts. There is nothing like Ka’kwet’s plot in the novels. There are no Mary and Sebastian in Montgomery, so we don’t have Gilbert’s crisis. There are parallels to Pride and Prejudice and of course, Joe Wright’s movie comes to mind before Austen’s novel does when Anne compares her dance scene with Gilbert to Elizabeth and Darcy’s. With no subplot about consent, there is no need for Anne to rally against the patriarchy in a newspaper. Gilbert Blythe never manifests any desire to go to France. And yet. I feel that this alternative universe caught somewhere between the spirit of Montgomery’s world and our own pays better homage to Montgomery’s books than a mere new take on Kevin Sullivan’s brilliant films could possibly deliver. It just works.

Book- and series-Anne share their earnestness. That fundamental character-trait is not merely preserved, but brought to life by Amybeth McNulty with such freshness, joy, whimsy, and wonder that it is impossible not to be touched, moved really, by Anne’s heartfelt belief in the best of people.

I’ve been led to think of Anne following a crisis that is very close to my heart. It is one of those situations in which you are often intimated to either take the most convenient position or to simply remain aloof. I have struggled in the past month with the fact that remaining silent is cowardly, while simply accepting powerlessness would mean failing people who do not deserve my complacency, while also betraying myself. And it was then that I remembered Anne’s words to Gilbert following Mary’s death. He feared he could never be a doctor because he just cared too much. Anne’s answer to this?

Caring deeply will always be the right thing.

So care deeply I shall. And I am so happy this quite unauthentic take on Montgomery gave me this as a certainty to live by. I’ve also been thinking a lot about this quote by Bertold Brecht: “In times of disorder, of organized confusion, of de-humanized humanity, nothing should seem natural. Nothing should seem impossible to change”.

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