Who's manipulating who?! • Jeff vs. Annie (Spoiler Alert: It’s not Jeff) • long post/character analysis/meta
First off: Annie is hands down my favourite character, so this isn’t meant to deconstruct her in a bad way, it’s just something I noticed and felt like writing down to see if anybody feels the same way.
This analysis was born out of the endless discussions about the Jeff-and-Annie-age thing damning their romantic possibilities, which keeps popping up. One of the biggest recurring talking points that I’ve seen so far is: “It’s creepy because the age difference means that there is a giant gap in maturity and also, Jeff is manipulative, which creates a power imbalance in which Annie (should there have been an actual romantic relationship) would have been under Jeff’s control” - or something on the lines of this.
Some even go as far as saying Jeff would have been guilty of “grooming” had they gotten together at any point, which I personally think is too often used as just a buzzword for clout and/or woke-points on the internet but that’s a discussion for another day. I will simply try and tackle the question: Between Jeff and Annie, who was really the manipulative one? And, as a side-alley, I will go into why I think Annie isn’t AT ALL immature, relative to the other characters (using Jeff as the primary example) and also the progress of time on the show and her subsequent character development.
I want to start off with the way many viewers decode Annie’s behaviour as it is laid out for them through the seasons: naive, immature, prone to childlike tantrums, often accompanied by crying, and so very young. I want to look at those terms one by one, briefly.
- naive // Spoiler-alert: this is the only term I somehow agree with as being a main descriptor for Annie (in the earlier seasons) // Annie’s naiveté is named and called out a couple of times over the first two seasons, notably by Jeff and then acknowledged by herself (1.05), signifiers would be her willingness to trust to the point of gullibility and her being slow if not incapable of understanding sexual innuendo jokes due to her inexperience in the “field”. In 1.11 Annie calls her foreignness to all things below the belt “sexual repression” and that she is happy to have it - this is subsequently and slowly changed as Vaughn comes in the picture and by the time we are introduced to Hector the Well-Endowed in 2.14 it’s arguable that Annie very much had her sexual awakening and is comfortable with talking about it, thinking about it and able to understand sexual jokes.
- prone to childlike tantrums // I dislike the “she throws tantrums” as a signifier for her perceived immaturity so much because it completely disregards the fact that nearly ALL characters throw multiple tantrums over the course of the entire arc (because it’s a device the show uses both for comedic value as well as to get characters out of their performative moulds in order for them to reveal truth and character growth). So to illustrate this, I have prepared a little statistic, contrasting Annie’s tantrums with Jeff (feel free to add your own toll of how many times Troy has broken out into hysterical crying over meaningless slights or mild inconveniences or Britta completely looses her sh*t for this that, or the other thing, etc.)
(Mind you, I am leaving out instances where Annie and Jeff were rightfully mad and calling people out for treating them badly, so not every voice raised equals a tantrum. For example: When Annie tells Jeff and Britta off for meddling in her relationship with Vaughn in 1.15.)
Please note the difference in total number and classification
- so very young // Annie’s age, unlike that of Jeff until GI “Let’s keep this problematic” Joe, is fixed. She started Greendale at 18, no way around it, however the suggestion that she acts incredibly young relative to the other characters, I do not agree with, especially looking at someone like Troy, Jeff or even Britta.
- immature and crying all the time // I don’t agree with that assessment of her character AT ALL, so I can only assume that the sum of Annie’s tantrums and/or tangents, paired with her perceived naiveté and young age has led some people to believe that she is immature - what probably also helped: the crying, the pouting, the seemingly thin-stretched nerves. The immaturity is here suspected behind the apparent inability to regulate emotions and accept blame, consequences or simple no’s, thus resulting in a loss of behavioural control.
And that, my friends, is when I come in with section 2. Because it’s all an act.
stormborns
pixelskylines
kianamaiart
annaxmalina
dededos
germansingergirl
blakekathryn
baratheonpilled
