Presenting ‘the myth’ Dickinson
Dickinson
Streaming, Apple TV+
Modern depictions of Emily Dickinson often try to liberate her from the stuffy hangups of a bygone era. Take, for example, Dickinson, writer-producer Alena Smith’s Apple TV+ series starring Hailee Steinfeld as the young poet. People have long imagined Dickinson as a timid, reclusive spinster dressed in white, but the series Dickinson gives us a rebellious young woman who head-bangs in hoop skirts, challenges gender norms and undermines her elders.
Dickinson is just another example of pop culture rewriting history. This new depiction underscores the poet’s powerful intellect and wry sense of humour, which earlier portrayals too often ignored.
By the end of her life, Dickinson really did dress in white. She rarely left her house and seldom agreed to meet visitors. Neighbours called her “the myth” because she was so elusive.
She published only a dozen poems during her lifetime, all anonymously, but soon after her death, in 1886, Mabel Loomis Todd edited the first books of her poems. Todd, the mistress of Dickinson’s brother, cast the poet as strange and solitary.
Such an uptight poet could not have written the impassioned lines of Wild nights — Wild nights! that blaze onscreen in the Dickinson trailer. That poem ends with a racy wish: “Might I but moor — tonight — / In thee!”
The Dickinson trailer casts the poet as a rebellious young woman, happy to let loose and flout social expectations.
Judging from the trailers, the makers of the new series do not worry too much about historical accuracy.
But neither should we.
John Mulaney plays Henry David
Thoreau, which raises some questions since there’s no evidence they met.
If it turns some viewers into readers of Dickinson and Thoreau, perhaps it’s worth bending the truth.
Improbably, ads for Dickinson command, “if the rules aren’t fair, break them.” Dickinson probably wouldn’t have agreed.
Her life and work are unorthodox in many ways, but she often preferred to rework and remix traditional expectations instead of openly rebelling.
Viewers familiar with the poet might be tempted to criticize Dickinson for its historical inaccuracies, but they should resist the urge.
It invites us to accept that Dickinson has long been whatever her audience makes of her. So we might as well let her have a bit more fun than she has in the past.
For The Washington Post