Not All Annes Are Created Equal

Even chocolate doesn't seem to ease this pain.  Holidays, children, birth, death, school, summer, winter, fall, all of it comes and goes but something always stays the same - Writings of Lucy Maud.  I really don't know how to fully explain how I feel when I read it, but it's like coming home and finding that everything was more beautiful than you remembered it.  I don't know if it was because I read it as a child and that if I had discovered it as an adult I wouldn't have loved as much, but that doesn't really matter.  The point is that I love it dearly. All that is Maud (hardcore Maud, none of those dishy re-writes) is all that is good and holy in the world.  When I think of heaven usually it involves the smell of fresh violets, lakes with shining waters, kindred spirits and potentially common scandals inside a village of wholesome people wearing clothing from the turn of the century (I'm talking the 19th Century here), along with some talking animals via. Narnia.

I probably have an overdeveloped passion for Maudishness, something that limits me from trying to push it into the hands of any common reader.  Honestly, I am well aware that only a few people can appreciate the world that she created.  I don't expect everyone to absolutely adore Anne, Valency, and Emily nearly as much as I do.  I expect most people to view it as cheesy and sappy.  Despite my hardened heartless state, I don't think I can ever dismiss her love of nature and complete devotion to a beautiful island as sappy and too cheesy to love.  Instead, I think of it as warm and innocent and all things pure.  I can't explain why.  The people aren't perfect, they are stubborn and proud and petty and prudish, but I think I adore them for that. I think in another life I would desire nothing more than to sit on the banks of the Lake of Shining Waters or the harbor at Four Winds, starring out to sea.

I'll admit it's probably sacrilegious, but in some ways our religion is the thing we love the most.  In a way Maud is what I love the most.  A world where beauty is the highest form of pleasure and peace is the greatest thing of value.  Is it heaven, The White Way to Delight? The people she creates, you underestimate or misjudge, until they prove to you that they are more than you first thought.  Is sleeping in a wild cherry tree that has blossomed in the night one of those sweet experiences we no longer value?  Maybe we are a culture that underappreciates simple beauty and the desire to have family and friends around us, just to feel and to learn and to grow.  Our cell phones and movies and cars and clocks and offices and indoor plumbing are all about saving time, but saving it for what?  The simplicity that we have lost has to be re-found for us to enjoy life. The sound of the ocean in your ears, the feel of a misty night on your face and the touch of a living tree on your hand, all of those things are no longer a daily experience and because of that we are lacking-  lacking all the beauty that God granted us but we are too distracted to see.  In many ways I think He left a pathway back to Him, appreciating Him in all the small, yet perfect subtleties He left for us. Our Golden Road to walk on, watching excitedly for that "bend in the road" that we have lost our way to.  All of this is Maud to me, and it does hold a holy shrine in my heart.

And now, dear reader, I get to the point of my devotional.  Like a priestess who has found her shrine desecrated, so I find all the distasteful attempts at recreated all previous Maud (especially Anne) stories.  Very few have been true to what is Maudishness, and when some horrific reconstructions are created, I feel as though I am looking at a living projection of Frankenstein's monster.  How could any fan of Maud desecrate her life's work in such ghastly ways?  Why does something of such perfection, simplicity and joy have to be destroyed for the desire to bring her work to the big screen?  With the complete impalement of original storylines, removal of all the very basic beauties and with the original name pasted on it as though it is the stamp of approval from Maud herself, these terrifying movies are audaciously placed under the brilliance of her hand which never would have done anything as abhorrent as they openly regurgitate.

To throw child abuse, slavery, racism, environmentalism and Freudism in such stories is removing the very essence of goodness with how they were written.  Maud wrote of finding love between parents and children, aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters, families.  She did not take up her pen as a complaint about these modern issues, instead she showed the heart of people and how they live.  It internally nauseates me when I watch renditions of her books so destroyed and entirely overwhelmed by these blasphemous statements that are vomited up over and over again to the tune of the 21st Century.  We adore Avonlea because it ISN'T who we are now, it is a time we miss.  How revolting the assumption that we must see these issues in all things that we watch, as though we haven't been subject to them enough.  Maud wrote about the issues she saw in the time that she lived.  How dare we dictate to her what those issues were when she was the one who lived them and saw them first hand!  How is it that writers of such movies are so dense that they completely miss what it is that we love so wholeheartedly from Maud?  Why we adore her so?  It isn't the warm gooey feeling that emerges because someone didn't die in the war or some unexpected character reappeared!  You brainless nitwits!  We adore Maud because her characters were strong, and noble, and REAL.  Not because their plots were titillating  in an overly-predictable soap-opera fashion.  That is why she is so utterly revered.  Her characters struck a chord in us reminding us of who we are and who we could be and that we can overcome any obstacle with the strength of character that was already within us. Why is it they cannot see what is so obvious to the rest of us?  Must the things we love be dragged through the modern slough of the 21st Century?  Have we not endured enough attempts between Little Women and Pride and Prejudice to have these things thrust upon us?  Must it be Anne as well? 

To hell with them I say.  Destruction of such beauty to me is an earmark of the destruction of our Society.  When we can no longer love Anne the way that Maud wrote her, we can no longer appreciate the simple beauty of life. 

P.S. As a note, being a very dedicated Anne Fan, I very much enjoyed the first two Sullivan Productions of Anne. Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Avonlea.  To follow in that line of thought, I very much enjoyed most of the Road to Avonlea series.  The issues I am seeing are in the more recent destructive endeavor, most notably, *disgusted* The absurdly horrible third installment after the first two Sullivan Anne Movies, which out of respect (or total nausea) I can't even bear to type the name in this blog.  Along with the detestable and ungodly newest arrival claiming to retell Anne's childhood wherein her parents were horrendous and she was an unscrupulous liar.  Grrr...I cannot bear to write more, my rage is too ignited. Understand that not all Annes are created equal.