In fact, Catherine, who really had planned to free Russia’s serfs, gave up that dream the moment she realized that doing so would alienate the nobles who made her rich. She spent her reign not only making life worse for serfs, but also forcing more people into serfdom. Abandoning her youthful progressive values in favor of unrestrained power, Catherine’s reign, historian Zoé Oldenbourg-Idalie estimates, did not benefit 95% of Russians.
Ollie Upton/Hulu
In many ways, The Great, which avoids that unpleasant reality, is not transgressive, but true to its period piece, big-budget TV origins. Romantic sex is had in missionary position, fully dressed and under the covers. The casting is just color-blind enough to have actors of color in the 19th-century Russian story, but not so color-blind that they get to play the emperor, the empress, the archbishop, the general, or foremost courtiers. There is one scene in which Catherine gets violent revenge on a creepy man so satisfying that it caused my heart to make what I can only describe as the Lady Gaga in "Shallow" noise. But The Great is most successful when it abandons girl power in favor of a more subtle critique of white feminism. Catherine wants to be a feminist, but she wants power more.
“They are the future,” Catherine fumes in one scene, as the printing press she has introduced to court is wheeled away.
“Why do people say that?” the Russian religious leader, seriously called “The Patriarch,” snaps at her. “As if the future is by its nature better than the past. Or a progression, rather than a setback.” Our future is better than our past, in some ways—if you are found guilty of treason in 2020, for example, you won’t be cut open, stuffed with baby rats, and sewn back up. But aren’t women still treated as decorative wombs? Hasn’t the gun problem gotten worse? The war problem? The horrific poverty? Don’t we, like Catherine, want equality—up until the point that it takes anything away from our own comfort?
