I love the comedy series The Great. Plain and simple, this is a program I would recommend to everyone, even if it’s gruesome and hyper-sexual. The jokes all land, Nicholas Hoult is giving a performance that has firmly placed him in my top ten to watch, and the emotional moments don’t feel unearned. There’s only one real problem with it to me is the history.
For a very long time, history as a concept has been a jumping of point to create and tell larger stories. Arthurian legends have been linked to retellings of actual history (and, in some cases, claimed to be plain out history), Shakespeare regularly pulled from the ‘headlines’ of his day for inspiration, and films like Queen Christina (1933) and Marie Antoinette (1938) take the facts as a light suggestion.
I’m often left asking myself…why?
Maybe it’s a me thing, but I often walk away from a film or show and ask myself why that story was told. Sometimes it’s very easy, like with Into the Spiderverse. Sometimes there is no point, like House of Gucci (the point of that movie is to hurt me personally). But with historical productions, I am more likely to ask what about that story is compelling to the producer, screenwriter, and director.
It isn’t hard, and oftentimes the answer is obvious. Catherine the Great, who The Great is inspired by, represents a lot of interesting and contemporary ideals. She’s a personification of this decade’s feminist hot takes in the same way that Elizabeth Tudor was for 90s feminism. The only real difference, in broad strokes, is their birth and sex life.
Elizabeth was a rightful descendent to the throne who performed sexual purity to her death.
Catherine was Empress by coup and was rumoured to have fucked a horse (a cruel rumour unfounded by evidence but not the point).
So much like the Elizabeth adaptations that popped up in the 1990s, a 2020s Catherine the Great seems almost inevitable.
But The Great isn’t the life story of Catherine the Great. She’s married to a man only vaguely inspired by her historical husband, her coup and reign are basically fictional here and, weirdest of all, they gave her offscreen sisters who never existed. One of whom, by coincidence, happen to replace Marie Antoinette in this timeline. In terms of basic history, it’s a mess. As I stated earlier, taking liberties with history is a time-honoured tradition, but the changes don’t seem to serve a purpose. They feel absurd, like they’re writing these scripts with only the top paragraph of a Wikipedia page.
While finally watching the abominable Mary, Queen of Scots (2018) in the early months of the pandemic I was shocked to discover that David Rizzio had been reimagined as a trans woman murdered in a hate crime. The concept of integrating trans people into historical narratives isn’t a terrible concept - there are definitely a few figures I’d even make the case it’d be supported by evidence. But not only is Rizzio not one of them, I’m not sure what this murder adds to the story on a thematic or structural level. It’s there to show that Mary Stuart is the bestest most modern feminist Queen to ever live. She gets ousted from her throne for being too perfect, unlike the weak Virgin Queen.
There’s a moment in the film that I think perfectly encapsulates how it sees these women. One that would probably have been effective in a film that had empathy for the characters. Mary Stuart gives birth to the future James I & VI of England, Ireland, and Scotland in one half, while Elizabeth Tudor makes red flowers to send to her. I don’t get it but let’s move on. It shuffles between the two of them, climaxing with childbirth and a sweaty Elizabeth sitting open legged on the ground, red flowers betwixt her legs. The woman is exhausted from her arts and crafts. It’s clear that she’s compensating for her own loneliness, which is a political necessity from her point of view. The scene is tragic.
Until the rest of the movie shows she’s an indecisive coward with no integrity.
One line of dialogue towards the end attempts to refute this, but at that point, she’s clearly meant to be Mary’s pathetic shadow who only survives through inaction. 90s Elizabeth’s was allowed her virginity as a diplomatic weapon and a personal choice. There’s room to take that to a more insecure place, which might be compelling. But the 2010s film does not want to have a nuanced take on her.
2010s Elizabeth is a femcel.
This weird relationship with sex as a political thing can also be seen in the works of Philippa Gregory, an author obsessed with hating women and incest (seriously read Wideacre). It’s not that her take on Anne Boleyn contemplates fucking her brother because the baby looking like a Boleyn won’t raise any suspicions that really bothers me.
Actually, The Other Boleyn Girl (book 2003, film 2008), but also for this reason: It’s that it’s perfectly in line with Gregory’s take that Anne Boleyn was just THE WORST. A take only really echoed in recent mainstream historical literature by G. W. Bernard in the biography Anne Boleyn: Fatal Attractions, which uses flimsy evidence to support Boleyn committed adultery.
Truly, Gregory’s take on the Tudor court is compelling in its mean spiritedness, but in the same way the Real Housewives are compelling. No one is ever telling the truth, people have no morals unless they’re ones that the author herself likes, and everyone is fucking constantly. The 2008 film is even worse, because watching talented to semi-talented actresses try and portray these mannequins with angry eyebrows is less interesting than reading about them.
Also, side note, but Mary Boleyn kidnapping Elizabeth Tudor at the end of the movie is insane to watch.
To circle back to the main topic…what is the point of co-opting the life of someone who existed if you’re just going to tell an unrelated story. Part of it must be star power. Catherine, Elizabeth, and Anne all have a level of brand name appeal to the regular consumer. The Great, The Virgin Queen and Six Fingered Second Wife. This is the reason why we’re getting a Marilyn Monroe movie featuring fictional rape scenes (I’m cutting out this rant because it’ll be timelier when the movie comes out but to sum it up its hugely disrespectful and completely unnecessary).
To take a step back, I do think these stories are told with the best of intentions. Even Gregory. But I think the reason we keep telling these stories of real people in fictional scenarios is the same reason we see so much fanfiction. Writing is hard and having a mostly fleshed out cast of characters to write with is easier. Now if I said a lot of these adaptations are garbage and disrespectful, I’d be correct. But also, they’re just less interesting than these people’s actual lives.
Biography can be a great inspiration for storytelling. The Favourite (2018) is a compelling and ultimately successful portrayal of the life of Anne Stuart, the penultimate Stuart monarch. There are obviously parts to the film that are more based off of rumour than fact, namely an explicit version of her sexuality, but it’s all supported by some historical evidence. Plus, it’s still funny.
I’m not going to stop watching The Great. Good comedy is hard to find, and maybe if I keep watching they’ll go all out and change her name to Cathy to fully divorce from history. But I do hope that, maybe in the future, these stories can be told with integrity. The minutiae don’t matter to me, but the facts do. Changes should make sense. They should have a purpose.
Anyway, stick around, because I’m either going to talk about more history stuff next week, get really into pop music, or steal some shit.