Cynthia Nixon's Emily Dickinson Dwells In Possibility of Miranda Hobbes
Thursday, February 18, 2016 at 10:45AM 
Daniel Crooke here, new contributor. As daily updates make their way stateside from the Berlinale, certain titles that can’t help but infiltrate and overtake your curiosity. One such film is Terence Davies’ A Quiet Passion. What a time to be alive when the promise of a film starring the soulfully efflorescent Cynthia Nixon as the spiritually untethered Emily Dickinson exists on this planet. While reactions to the poet’s biopic have been highly mixed, the overlapping of these two mustang personas is an undeniable attraction.
Obviously much of Dickinson’s public face continues to be debated – that’ll happen when you like what you like and forget the rest – but there’s still a respected wealth of fascinating, cogent theories about the manner in which Emily lived. And no study needs a peer review about how perfectly Nixon’s signature role encapsulates this iconoclast who ditched polite society for a personal universe of her own reckoning.
The ultimate role research for Emily Dickinson lies in playing the sage and self-determined Miranda Hobbes for six seasons of Sex and the City. Six reasons why after the jump...
Emily Dickinson and Miranda Hobbes ain’t one and the same, obviously, but there’s no doubt these women could hang – far beyond the shallow fact that they’ve both rocked a tight bob.
Consider...
• Ask Miranda and Emily who run the world and they’ll tell you straight up who does (men!) and how they’ve had it up to here with putting up with it – whether in New York’s corporate strip or rural, religiously dogmatic Amherst, Massachusetts.
• They’re curious about their social domain but content with their own values. Don’t waste their time with any of your pre-enforced frivolous notions. Who has room when you’re too busy telling it like it is?
• Move over, Dorothy. There’s no place like home, and stay out of my bedroom. It’s weird when Steve leaves his clothes on the floor by the bed – why ruin the ideal, cultivated nook? You can call it reclusive; they’d call it perfect.
• Love is a grand notion, but why fool yourself? Speak truth to the heartsick masses. They’ll thank you for it. As Emily says, “If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain.”
• You should really take a look in Emily's album of pressed plants from her home garden. You won't see a Cosmopolitan but you will find a cannabis sativa. They both find witchcraft around them every day.
• To combine two Emily quotes that might as well be Miranda's rights:
There is a solitude of space, but my friends are my estate.
Reader Comments (8)
The first 4 seasons of Sex and the City were amazing.
This post is amazing.
Cynthia Nixon was by far my favorite actress playing my favorite character on SatC and I love Emily Dickinson, so I'm really looking forward to A Quiet Passion despite its mixed reviews.
Miranda and Emily Dickinson both represent that voice of common sense:
Emily: " The Truth must dazzle gradually, Or every man be blind —"
Miranda: " Sexy is what I try to get them to see after I win them over with my personality."
I don't care about the reviews, Cynthia Nixon is Emily Dickinson in modern form - I will go out and see this for myself.
LadyEdith - Nailed it. Nixon recently said how much she thinks Emily would've loved Twitter. Can you imagine the wise one liners and pithy shutdowns?!
Oh Those SATC days.
I'm thinking Cynthia Nixon would have been a formidable Abby in Carol, too. Or, perhaps, the "red-haired" affection of Abby was her.
While I was more of a Samantha guy, it is no question that Cynthia Nixon was the best of the four in terms of acting. She was the flower child in that one movie with Tatum O'Neal. I forgot what it was called.