From Bookriot:
Anne, the new CBC/Netflix adaptation of Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery, has been getting a lot of hype. The series premiered on CBC on March 19th, and it’ll be available on Netflix on May 2nd and already there have been subtle differences between how the series is marketed towards CBC audiences versus the Netflix audiences–most notably in the respective trailers. Those differences have been interesting, but harmless. And then my friend Melanie Fishbane (author of the upcoming YA novel Maud, yes, about that Maud) and the biggest LMM fan I know shared this image:
. . . .On the left, we have the CBC promo image. On the right, the Netflix image. Or as the added captions note, Canada vs. America (U.S.). The first obvious difference is the background color, but the more you look at the Netflix image, the more obvious it is that someone thought that fourteen-year-old Amybeth McNulty needed some serious Photoshop magic.
. . . .
In the Netflix version, Anne’s face has been elongated, her freckles lightened, and her teeth straightened. The circles under here eyes have been smoothed away, and it would seem that even her eyes are farther apart.
Link to the rest at Bookriot
im so old, I read the old old book of Anne, prob pub’d somewhere in mid 20th century or earlier in a green hardback. It had a soft small watercolor of anne on the cover, her hair style looking gibson girl,
not cutesy ‘mod-ren’ annie, with red braids who looks like an actual person instead of artful rendering.
Frankly, that’s not what Anne looked like in my young mind long ago… she looked far more wild and beautiful … and rounded, and just… well. It was a long time ago. Time marches on. New ways of looking at old things.
Yeah, I was thinking ‘both’ of them looked overly ‘photoshopped’.
This one perchance?
https://geekimperative.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/anne.jpg
(The internet has its uses: a search for “anne of green gables covers” delivers hundreds.)
There’s a zillion versions of Anne’s looks and each and every one is somebody’s Anne. Comes with the universal appeal; everybody wants to claim her.
Like here:
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=anne+of+green+gables+covers&qpvt=anne+of+green+gables+covers&qpvt=anne+of+green+gables+covers&qpvt=anne+of+green+gables+covers&FORM=IGRE
The great thing about these books was there was more than one, and she grew up in them. The Gibson girl look would have been when she was older. At the beginning she was just a kid so braids would have been practical and appropriate.
The american version makes her look like a modern teenager wearing makeup. Boo hiss.
To play devil’s advocate: why not?
They’re already shoehorning anachronistic 21st century themes so why not promote it with an anachronistic modern look?
In for a penny, in for a hundred bucks. 😉
They can do as they please of course. I won’t be watching.
When my wife and I visited the Maritime Provinces, we went on double pilgrimages.
I wanted to see Fortress Louisbourg, and she wanted to visit the Anne of Green Gables sites. She had been a fan of those stories since her girlhood in Japan (lo, those many years ago).
I’m not going to tell her about this adaptation. It would break her heart–or at least tick her off.
Meh…another reason to read the books instead of watching someone else’s ‘interpretation’. 🙁
So? What’s a little photoshopping when this version itself is apparently another one of those “new and improved” monstrosities that appears to be this decade’s fad…
I guess I don’t expect perfect fidelity to the source material in any adaptation, but do you have to be so gleeful about retconning a book set in 1890 to include themes of “sexism” and “identity?” And it might just be me, but a friendless, penniless 11 or so year old orphan might just have bigger worries than her “identity.”