Netflix and National Literature: Focusing on Anne with an E (2017-19)

Abstract

Lucy M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables (1908) has been continuously adapted to films and TV series, often with great success. The most recent example is the critically acclaimed CBC/Netflix’s Anne with an E (2017-19). The show’s creator Moira Walley-Beckett, also famous for her writing of the “Ozymandias” episode of AMC’s Breaking Bad (2008-13), made some major changes to the original book. In doing so, Walley-Beckett not only renewed the quintessential Canadian icon for the twenty first century TV audience more attuned to the dark anti-heroes in contemporary TV shows, but also re-created an ideal Canadian image and nationality. As Elizabeth A. Galway points out, children’s literature in Canada was nationalistc from its beginning as “a means of promoting and constructing specific ideologies of national identity” (5). In the fields of cultural politics and literary nationalism, Anne with an E actively engages with the nation’s history and imagination so as to project a vision of Canada often with more liberal ideas and values. However, despite the show’s popularity in Canada, Netflix canceled it after its three seasons in 2019. Many fans, including CBC’s CEO Cathereine Tait, criticized Netflix for cultural imperialism, and ran revival campaigns for Anne with an E. The show’s cancellation also raised questions and controversies over the power and influence of Netflix, or such transnational media platforms in a nation state. After examining the way Anne with an E recreates Montgomery’s Canadian classic, this paper explores its critical resonance in the contemporary global media world, epitomized by Netflix.