The Unpopular Opinion Thread: I love Josie Pye!

[Miss Dee]

I have a doozy of an unpopular opinion about the Anneiverse (all written or filmed adaptations of Anne), so I thought I might as well start a thread.

While I love Jonathan Crombie, and while I know Gilbert was a handsome boy, I think Crombie's looks would have been better suited to Roy Gardner (had he shown up in the Follows movies) than to Gilbert Blythe. Had Gilbert actually looked that romantic Anne would have been head over heels about him. Gilbert should look roguish and fun, not melancholy and romantic.

What are some of your unpopular opinions? Anything in the Anneiverse goes, if the mods are okay with that.

[PRgal]

Not sure if this belongs here, but I'm not sure where else to put this.  I think the Cuthberts are cheap.  Why else would they want to adopt a boy?  Free labour!  That kid they hired needs to be paid.  A kid of one's own?  Well, it's just household chores!  AND they won't have to sell the farm off.  The kid gets to inherit that.  Bonus!

[marina to]

On 3/26/2017 at 11:00 PM, Miss Dee said:

I have a doozy of an unpopular opinion about the Anneiverse (all written or filmed adaptations of Anne), so I thought I might as well start a thread.

While I love Jonathan Crombie, and while I know Gilbert was a handsome boy, I think Crombie's looks would have been better suited to Roy Gardner (had he shown up in the Follows movies) than to Gilbert Blythe. Had Gilbert actually looked that romantic Anne would have been head over heels about him. Gilbert should look roguish and fun, not melancholy and romantic.

What are some of your unpopular opinions? Anything in the Anneiverse goes, if the mods are okay with that.

Jonathan in real life was roguish and fun. He was just shot romantically.

[Priya]

This may not be such an unpopular opinion but I think the new adaptation is a failure from top to bottom. The abuse scenes are tedious, Amybeth McNulty's performance is strident and charmless, and all the small, quiet moments in the book have been overshadowed by heaps of manufactured drama (grifters, financial ruin, premature deaths, abortive suicide attempts, etc.). One major misstep was turning Anne into a proto-feminist (and even genuine feminists of that era wouldn't have uttered sentiments like, "A girl can do anything a boy can, and more."). Anne isn't really a story about a rebel, it's a story about an outsider who yearned for acceptance and eventually found it. Frankly, if Moira Walley-Beckett wanted to tell a dark, gritty story about late Victorian-era Canadian girlhood, she would have done better to adapt the Emily of New Moon novels, rather than twisting Anne of Green Gables into something it's not. There's far more genuine darkness and proto-feminism in the Emily books, and there hasn't been a good adaptation of them yet. 

[SomeTameGazelle]

2 hours ago, Priya said:

manufactured drama (grifters, financial ruin, premature deaths, abortive suicide attempts, etc.).

I haven't made my way through all of the episodes yet and I don't fundamentally disagree with your take on the series, but (hidden as spoilers)

Spoiler

financial ruin and premature deaths do have their place in Anne's story in the books: of course her parents died very young; the Cuthberts' bank fails (and this news is supposed to have caused Matthew's death) and this plays into Anne's decision to stay at Green Gables and teach instead of going to Redmond; later when Anne is at Redmond, Ruby Gillis dies of tuberculosis; and both Mrs Allan and eventually Anne have babies die.

Grifters and suicide attempts are however Right Out.

[MrHammondsGhost]

One part (and the only part) that I found to be out-of-line was in E7 S1, where the Cuthberts do not accept charity but it was okay to let Anne go out door-to-door to sell her labor to their neighbors.

We can be certain that Diana or Ruby or any other youngster did not go out to assist Anne in such an adventure - because the other parents would never allow that.

They ignore the fact that they could have sold whatever Matthew had purchased with the Bank money, because selling (or returning) the seeds would seem easy to do, as would any thing else that Matthew had just bought, and the Bank sign said it had assets of $5000, which is realistic but it is very little by today's standards, so the loan was not so high as to borrow the money from Aunt Jo or from other sources, but instead they let Anne go out to sell her labor which is far more unagreeable then to accept charity.

And for Christians "charity" is to be viewed as a blessed thing.

Otherwise I loved the entire series and look forward to season 2.

[MrHammondsGhost]

On 3/27/2017 at 9:29 AM, PRgal said:

Not sure if this belongs here, but I'm not sure where else to put this.  I think the Cuthberts are cheap.  Why else would they want to adopt a boy?  Free labour!  That kid they hired needs to be paid.  A kid of one's own?  Well, it's just household chores!  AND they won't have to sell the farm off.  The kid gets to inherit that.  Bonus!

Hi PRGal:

You are right - an adopted child would inherit the farm.

If we review this story more sympathetically then the Cuthberts had no next-of-kin and so to adopt a boy would mean that the boy would inherit the entire farm and property after the Cuthberts die - and that is not cheap nor is it free labor.

A hired hand or a slave boy would not inherit anything - only kin is kin - legally including adoption.

I saw it as very interesting (and relevant) in E6 when Matthew offered to help Gilbert with his inherited Blythe farm, then Matthew appeared surprised (if not shocked) that Gilbert did not want to be a farmer - because Matthew had never heard of such a thing as that.

The Cuthberts might have been upset at Anne not being a boy because there are other complications for an inheritance to go to a daughter - as in she would be expected to leave to get married, and a girl would not be so likely as to want to inherit a farm, or her husband might sell the property, and so they wanted a "son" more-so as their heir and less as their servant.

[TwoGrayTabbies]

This entire series was a huge fail for me.  Supposedly, this was going to play up the dark elements from the book.  Instead, this overwrought adaptation imports huge amounts of darkness that were never in the books.  The first book gives glimpses into Anne’s unhappy origins, she escapes Mrs Bluitt’s (Blewett?) clutches, and she gets misjudged by Mrs. Barry, but she does not face relentless emotional abuse by nearly the entire community of  Avonlea.  The adaptation has to keep up the bleakness by making nonsensical changes such as Diana coming from a rich family who will send her to study in Europe.  To what end?  Apparently just to hop on the Dark ‘n’ Edgy Bandwagon.

What’s next?  A Dark ‘n’ Edgy Little Women where Beth contracts syphilis prostituting herself to pay for Marmee’s laudanum habit?  Dark ‘n’ Edgy Ramona Quimby who’s raised in a crack house?  Dark ‘n’ Edgy Caillou?

Perhaps in 25 years or so we will see a reversal of this trend, with Soft ‘n’ Fluffy versions of Lord of the Flies, Tess of the D’urbervilles, and The Hunger Games. 

[greekmom]

On 2/2/2018 at 1:30 PM, TwoGrayTabbies said:

TDark ‘n’ Edgy Caillou?

It would be better than regular ol' annoying Caillou

[biakbiak]

On 12/29/2017 at 8:44 AM, MrHammondsGhost said:

You are right - an adopted child would inherit the farm.

If we review this story more sympathetically then the Cuthberts had no next-of-kin and so to adopt a boy would mean that the boy would inherit the entire farm and property after the Cuthberts die - and that is not cheap nor is it free labor.

A hired hand or a slave boy would not inherit anything - only kin is kin - legally including adoption.

If they left a will they could leave the farm to anyone tjey wanted and would not in fact have to give it to the adopted boy if they didn't want to.

[Llywela]

I think it is pretty clear in the novels that the Cuthberts intended for the boy they wanted to adopt to take over the farm after them - and in fact, that ends up being pretty much exactly what happens, only with a different child and a few years later than planned. Once Anne is grown and has started teaching, Marilla takes in orphaned twins Davy and Dora, raises them during the years she is renting the farm out, and then Davy takes over the farm once he is grown. The show does make notable changes to the story as written, but the reasoning behind wanting to adopt a boy seems pretty much the same to me.

ETA Also worth noting that a hired boy like Jerry would be paid a pittance, really. For an adopted child they would have to pay for food, clothes, education, medical expenses, etc - they really aren't saving themselves any money by adopting a child. What they are doing is ensuring the continuation of their household and farm by establishing a new generation, one who is being taken in as part of their own family rather than one whose loyalty only runs from one pay packet to the next and could walk out at any moment, leaving them in the lurch.

Edited February 23, 2018 by Llywela