Why Is Everyone So Enraged by Persuasion on Netflix?

I’m among those still upset about the new Persuasion adaptation on Netflix. You know the one. It stars Dakota Johnson as a wine-guzzling, pining, winking Anne Elliott and was much-derided on the internet from the moment the first trailer dropped. But Jane Austen adaptations take liberties all the time. Why was this one so uniquely enraging to so many? I’ll tell you why. It’s not the color-blind casting, abridged plot, or anachronisms that upset people. It’s that this film seemingly treats Austen fans with disdain while attempting to pander to them.

TikTok has its own thriving Jane Austen subculture—the precise audience the creators of this film were likely attempting to appeal to. It explains the too cute winks to the camera and lines of dialogue like, “If you’re a 5 in London, you’re a 10 in Bath.” Unfortunately for Netflix, #AustenTok has emphatically criticized the film for talking down to its audience and aping Fleabag’s signature fourth-wall breaks. Some creators took a serious critical tone when talking about the film while others mostly ranted. Both have led to Persuasion becoming so well known as a flop on TikTok that simply tagging the title over a meme audio is enough to convey your meaning.

Persuasion didn’t fare much better on other platforms. Twitter lit up for days after the film premiered on Netflix, and Austen fans were enflamed anew when the Los Angeles Times reported that one of the movie’s screenwriters, Ron Bass, is working on similar adaptations of Pride & Prejudice and Sense & Sensibility. “I promise you that everyone involved in this adores Jane Austen and adores her work,” Bass told the paper, speaking directly to critics (including myself) who voiced that Persuasion's creators must either be unfamiliar with Austen or just openly disregard her and her readers.

“I hope we draw in new, younger audiences who perhaps know very little about Jane Austen,” the director Carrie Cracknell told the Los Angeles Times. “And that a whole new generation will watch the adaptation and then be drawn to read and fall in love with the book.” The unsaid implication of this is that young audiences—presumably mostly young women—would be uninterested or unable to comprehend more faithful period dialogue. This presupposition is more than evident in the final product.

The movie doesn’t seem to trust its audience to understand even the most basic facts of early-19th-century life, so it explains, via ham-fisted lines of dialogue, that women in this era didn’t have means of making their own money outside of marriage. It also doesn't attempt to explore the varying shades of rank and mobility within Regency-era upper-class society that was at the heart of the original story. Why assume audiences won't understand the difference between titled nobility and an upwardly mobile gentry? We’ve all seen Downton Abbey.

But one of the movie's most emblematic (and memed) sins was translating Austen’s line “Now they were strangers. Nay, worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted” to this: “Now we’re worse than exes. We’re friends.” Why? Why make this change? The updated line isn’t more understandable; it’s just nonsense. In an attempt to make Anne’s character relatable to modern audiences, the film basically sends her through a Bridget Jones blender from which she emerges with food on her face, pounding red wine, and blurting out embarrassing jokes. In the novel, the tension between Mr. Elliott and Captain Wentworth comes down to whether Anne is still persuaded to value her family’s rank over her own character and judgment. In the movie Elliott and Wentworth are two dueling hunks.

As a cultural object, Jane Austen is a genre unto herself that many people feel emotionally close to but also protective of. Austen diehards are always stressing the importance of the author’s wit, feminism, and influence because, to non-Austen readers, there’s an impression of frivolity, melodrama, and general hyperfeminine unseriousness to her work—as reflected in something like Bridgerton or Sanditon. The reason the Persuasion on Netflix feels so insulting is that it plays directly into this stereotype by translating the text’s nuanced language into trite, 21st-century colloquialisms while smoothing class critiques into rom-com farce. Anne’s agency—her ability to trust her own mind and make her own decisions—is central to the novel. The movie’s Anne is dragged around until her decision is made for her after it is revealed that Wentworth loves her after all and Elliott doesn’t.

I know it sounds like I’m being an Austen purist here, but in general, I view film and books as different mediums and judge them accordingly. Adaptations don't have to adhere exactly to the text in order to work. Take Clueless, one of the most successful interpretations of Austen. While not an exact replica of the original Emma, it stays faithful to the book’s themes, tone, and characterization. Cher’s voice-over narration even successfully translates Austen’s free indirect discourse device. In order for a movie to be an adaptation it has to actually work with the source material.

Persuasion, however, strips Austen’s work of everything that was rich and wonderful and presents instead a weak Regency romance. Because that’s what’s popular now, right? 

Kathleen Walsh is a writer based in New York.