BY ELLA WHITE ’22
Along with Netflix, Hulu, HBO Go, Starz, ESPN and plenty of other streaming services, Apple has introduced its own five-dollar-a-month streaming service, Apple TV Plus. One of the shows Apple has pushed is “Dickinson,” an anachronistic telling of Emily Dickinson’s life in the years shortly after she left Mount Holyoke Female Seminary.
In the series, Emily Dickinson takes opium and hosts a rave at her house, uses slang like “woke” and makes out with people in trees and fields.
In this version, Emily Dickinson is transformed from a recluse to a prisoner a woman who wants to be free and experience the world but is stopped time and again by her overbearing father, who has some creepy obsession with her. (“It’s like you want to marry her,” Emily Dickinson’s mother — Jane Krakowski — says to her father about halfway through the show.) In another episode, Emily Dickinson’s father comes to her room, crawls into her bed, crying, and begs her to promise not to leave him. Uncomfortable and confused, she promises.
The show struggles to balance the serious and the comedic. It’s like watching a Netflix original Christmas movie — except there’s suddenly a break from awkward, lovestruck Emily Dickinson to portray her being buried alive and screaming to be let out, only to return shortly to the real world, as the wedding happening downstairs is paused to listen while she screams. “Sorry for ruining the wedding,” she tells her father afterwards.
The show sometimes forces its irony, like when Emily Dickinson’s father says women don’t understand politics; the show cuts to the Dickinson girls and their friends gossiping in their pajamas about the Missouri Compromise, and Lavinia says Jane is “so woke.”
One episode focuses on slavery. Emily Dickinson asks her family’s black farmhand, Henry, to be in her production of Othello, and everyone in the club quits because they don’t want to act alongside a black character; nevermind that there’s a Japanese kid living in 1850s Amherst who doesn’t experience any bigotry or hate that Henry does. It’s a rather cursory discussion of slavery — the characters come to the conclusion that slavery is wrong, only saved by the moment at the end when Henry fixes her with a stare and says, “Your life is easy, Emily Dickinson.”
The show does have a few redeeming moments. Emily Dickinson is sent to fetch a chicken and watches as Henry cuts off the chicken’s head — then covers her eyes a second too late. The many montages of Emily Dickinson with her secret girlfriend (who happens to be her brother’s fiancée), making out or laughing or running through fields, provide romantic moments. These scenes make it much easier to forgive the uncomfortably-written transitions to tragedy, as well as making Emily Dickinson a more rounded character. In this adaptation, she’s not just a woman who hates marriage; she’s queer and in love with someone she could never marry.
The show is like candy: funny and not too substantive. It’s a great show to watch if you’re bored on a Saturday — if you can find the time between finals.