Lessons from a Twerking Emily Dickinson

Dickinson. Image courtesy of Apple TV+.

I’ve been moving through television phases pretty quickly lately, going from bingeing reality TV day and night one week to watching nothing but Normal People over and over the next. My latest kick has been historical comedies centered around iconic women, and I was pleased to discover that this emerging genre infuses dark comedy and contemporary dialogue to bring new life (and new audiences) to the classic period piece. I’ve spent the past few weeks watching The Great on Hulu and Dickinson on Apple TV+, laughing at bleak subjects and finding a new interest in these women I knew very little about.

I’ve been a fan of period television for a long time, a love that I trace back to the ambitious, colonial-era telenovelas that enthralled my mom and sister when I was little. I have experienced the joys and heartbreaks of Downton Abbey and marveled at the period costumes of Victoria, but I’m excited about this new turn the genre is taking. The beginning of the genre is largely attributed to the 2018 film The Favourite written by Tony McNamara and Deborah Davis, followed by Autumn De Wilde’s take on Emma.

McNamara is also behind the series The Great, a self-professed “Occasionally True Story” about Catherine the Great and her journey to becoming Empress of Russia. I was taken in right away by its dry wit and the loveable/despicable characters who smashed their glasses after every toast, screaming “HUZZAH!” And while plenty of reviews make note of the fact that Catherine’s life would not have been as depicted in the show and its Emperor Peter is nowhere near historically accurate, who cares? This is TV, not a history book. Catherine’s interactions with the deceivingly eccentric Aunt Elizabeth, who wears the same expression when she trains butterflies or (spoiler alert) murders a child for the good of Russia, might never have happened, but they make for an interesting show that examines the roles of women in a male-dominated regime. 

The Great’s Russia is one where members of the court are tortured by day and invited to a celebratory dinner by night, where Emperor Peter (Nicholas Hoult) gives the empress a bear only to later shoot it to prove his aim. As is characteristic of McNamara’s work, it finds humor in the bleakness but doesn’t equate laughter with acceptance. This is a Russia that needs to be enlightened by importing literature, art, and science from the rest of Europe. Catherine (Elle Fanning) learns that her crusade to educate Russia also means giving people the freedom to mock her (one of the occasional truths told by the show is that a rumor spread around the court that she had sex with a horse). In its quieter moments, the show lets us linger in the questions of what it means to be a ruler and what a woman must sacrifice and live with if she leads a public life, especially in a society where the church has so much power.

We’re keenly aware of the lack of power women have historically had, and we are at least somewhat conscious of the women, like Elizabeth I, who ruled anyway. The period drama genre has always spoken to the fact that the human struggles of past centuries are not so different from those we face today, but let’s be real: the only ones watching were moms or huge nerds like me. Suffusing the genre with humor and modernity helps it appeal to a different audience, lured in by characters like the mischievous and stubborn Catherine and the brusque yet hilarious and sometimes even sweet Emperor Peter.

Dickinson, created by Alena Smith, examines the life of a woman on the opposite end of the public sphere. While Catherine the Great left her home in Germany to eventually rule Russia, Emily Dickinson’s life rarely extended beyond Amherst, Massachusetts. Dickinson tells a tale we’re quite familiar with — a reclusive poet who died in anonymity, bound to her home by societal conventions and her own shyness — but paints the poet in a new light. We see an Emily (Hailee Steinfield) who screams and writhes in overly dramatic pain when she gets her period (a mood) and invites her friends to do drugs at a house party when her parents are away. 

The critics are split on this show, some bemoaning that it does a disservice to Dickinson’s biography, others finding joy in the relatable humanity of a teenage Dickinson who feels all the feels. It’s pretty obvious that Dickinson didn’t write: 

Because I could not stop for Death –

He kindly stopped for me –

The Carriage held but just Ourselves –

And Immortality.

after riding in a gothic carriage pulled by phantom horses and conversing with death embodies as Wiz Kahlifa, but this fictionalized version of her obsession with death is appealing and bridges the gap between her time and ours. 

I find the anachronistic dialogue and music in Dickison delightful. Language evolves along with us, and while Dickinson’s contemporaries might not have started any sentences with “yo” or referred to each other as “dude,” I appreciate the use of slang to invite young viewers to fall in love with one of the most important poets in American history. I love a good choreographed old-timey dance scene in a Jane Austen adaption, but a bunch of teenagers in period costume twerking to hip hop is just as good. It reminds us that whether we’re grinding or demurely touching hands, the complexities of human relationships and power dynamics remain the same. 

There’s an episode of Dickinson where Emily meets Henry David Thoreau, a writer she admires, and learns that his life is nothing like the idyllic solitude he describes in his work. And while this version of Thoreau (John Mulaney) is clearly a broadly drawn caricature, the episode makes its point — we can’t pretend to know everything about a writer from their work. The brief glimpses that we have into Dickinson’s life from historical records and her poems are not a complete picture of her life. It’s left to us to imagine what her relationships might have been like and how she might have spent her days. 

I don’t think it’s a fictional television show’s job to teach us history. The Great and Dickinson are pretty explicit about the liberties they take (the expression “wow” and the game of bowling probably weren’t invented in Russia in the same week). But if a show inspires me to look up these fascinating women to learn about their lives and struggles and find ways in which I might relate to them, that’s good enough for me.