Nov
I Finally Listened to Hamilton The Musical. Y’all Have Lost Yo Minds.
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Picture this: Young, scrappy New York native Lin-Manuel Miranda, hot off the heels of In the Heights, proposes to write his next musical, based on the life of Alexander Hamilton. But there’s a twist: The cast will be all-black. He presents it to one of his trusted mentors. But this person is also a native New Yorker. An old-school-James-Baldwin-reading-Schomburg-Center-attending-
“But you don’t understand. I’m transgressing race by placing people of color at the center!”
Devastated, Lin-Manuel runs home to Washington Heights, cries on his long-suffering girlfriend’s sister’s shoulder, and swears he’s going to prove his mentor wrong. He pulls out his dog-eared copy of The Fountainhead, and finds renewed energy.
Later, to clear his head, Lin-Manuel plays his favorite music list: Eminem, LL Cool J, Nas, Jay-Z, Biggie, Tupac, Salt -N-Pepa. Then it hits him: I’ll do a hip hop musical! About Alexander Hamilton! With an all-black …ethnically ambiguous … diverse cast! They’ll see that the founding of America belongs to all of us! Not just the old white guys! Because people of color didn’t exist then!
In that time, Lin-Manuel has been given a MacArthur “genius” grant, the soundtrack has become a massive hit, Tonys have been awarded, and the show plans to go nationwide.
After more than a year since its debut, I finally decided to download the Hamilton soundtrack and find out what all the frothing at the mouth is about.
OH EM GEE. Y’ALL DONE LOST YO MUTHAF%?!N MINDS!
I don’t really believe everyone has lost their minds. The songs are catchy and well-performed. And the rappin’ Founding Fathers have gotten a lot of accolades, mostly for it’s diverse cast. But I will put myself among the small constellation of outliers who are not here for this show. When I listen to the soundtrack, I’m left with narrative, story, and characters. By those measures, not only is this breakout from the Public Theater shockingly unrevolutionary, it is incredibly regressive, irresponsible with history and casting, and a stiff approach to hip-hop.
But What About Native and African People During Hamilton’s America, Yo?
I know I’m being cynical. But this “high-school-history-project rap” has got me at peak-upset. The history of Hamilton covers 1776 from 1801. I have to imagine what “freedom” looks like for the Iroquois League or African slaves is very different than what the two-and-a half-hour show proposes. Imagine what the making of the U.S. would look like if — instead of having an affair with Maria Reynolds — we add one woman from the Oneida working along side English colonizers for peace. Or rather than — wistfully sing about taking a break upstate — we add one more African American child born into slavery singing the fear of simply being a kid. Much like my critiques of Aperture #223, Vision & Justice and the documentary Helvetica, there are missed opportunities to expand the written and visual narrative.
Three narratives of human struggle define the making of the U.S.: The indigenous narrative, the immigrant narrative, and the slave narrative. Hamilton uplifts the immigrant narrative, at the unnecessary cost of the indigenous and slave narratives.
The Panic of 1837, Minstrelsy, and Bamboozled
The end of Hamilton‘s period marks 1801, the presidency of Thomas Jefferson and Vice President Aaron Burr — Hamilton’s intellectual and personal rivals. But it was the period less than 40 years later that I’m interested in investigating.
The Panic of 1837 was one of this country’s early major economic recessions, lasting through the mid-1840s. At the time, many blamed Pres. Andrew Jackson for government oversight. History also shows us that when white people become economically unstable, it’s easy to convince them that as a group, “others” are the problem: Black, Mexican, Chinese, and Native people. Something else also started in the mid- 1830s: minstrel shows.
Minstrel shows, as a form of colloquial entertainment, often depicted still-enslaved black people as poor, lazy, simple, and oversexed. But they also depicted “free” Northern black people as dandies, tragic mulattos, and soldiers not quite acceptable enough for white society. This was a clear message: Race will always trump class. You can try to escape poverty like us, but you will never be as good us.
As cultural consciousness shifted away from racist depictions of black life, the country still needed a healthy form of entertainment. We had talented black and white performers, so what could we do? Enter vaudeville, which lead to the contemporary Broadway musical.
I’m not saying Miranda’s Creole-Quadroon–Mocha-Caramel-Honey-Fantasy is intentionally exclusionary. I’m saying that these two periods of time are too close together to be this irresponsible with casting and acting choices.
Renée Elise Goldsberry’s Anjelica can tell herself she is like a Kardashian, but the time period set makes her look like a tragic mulatto.
Daveed Diggs’ Thomas Jefferson may be behaving like a preening rock star a La Prince or Mick Jagger, but the time period set makes him look like a dandy.
No amount of transgressiveness will change that.
”I’m not the Fun Police, y’all. I get people want to enjoy things. But when politically influential people continue to promote something so politically problematic, it speaks to how we consume pop culture as low culture, beyond the need for sufficient criticism.
And I want to be clear what a minstrel show is, and what it ain’t. A minstrel show is a form of entertainment designed to A. reinforce black inferiority by, B. intentionally limiting expression of their full humanity. It isn’t just blackface and/or any media featuring black people acting in a way you don’t like. Which brings me to the complicated prescience of Bamboozled.
Spike Lee’s 2000 movie about a young Black TV exec. who — frustrated with his boss and wanting to get out of his contract — devises a scheme to create a contemporary minstrel show where he’ll ensure to be fired. Instead, the show becomes a immense hit.
In one striking scene, Pierre Delacroix pitches the show to TV exec. Mr. Dunwitty, played by Damon Wayans and Michael Rappaport, respectively. Note the slow looks of shock when Sloan Hopkins (Jada Pinkett-Smith), Womack (Tommy Davidson), and Manray (Savion Glover) realize how debased Delacroix is willing to go.
Now you see where my cynicism about Hamilton comes from.
We’ve been took! Hoodwinked! BAMBOOZLED!
Before writing and researching this essay, I used to follow Lin-Manuel Miranda on Twitter before listening to or watching a single lick of the hit musical. But every time Lin-Manuel Miranda fixes his mouth to explain his recent masterpiece, he gives me Pierre Delacroix-tease. In Bamboozled, PR expert Myrna Goldfarb gives Delacroix talking points and strategies that are chillingly consistent.
So are you saying Hamilton the New Millenium Minstrel Show?
This is not a minstrel show in the most traditional sense. It does not attempt to show one dimension of blackness, and suggest inferiority. It does not have Mammy, Zip Coon, or Jim Crow. And most importantly, it does not have white people in blackface.
But in historical and present terms Hamilton has all the indicators of a contemporary minstrel show: the removal of blackface as a visceral trigger. An idyllic sense that we may suffer, but we’ll be alright. And, from the jump, black lives don’t really matter.
And I take big issues with Bamboozled as well. In addition to making commercial hip-hop the scapegoat of why the kids don’t pick up their pants, the movie derails itself by weighing too much on the use of blackface, rather than the slow process of accepting dehumanization.
We cannot continue to fall for the removal — or presence of — mere symbols as signs of regress or progress.
Hip-hop in Hamilton
Hip-hop is an expansive genre of voices and perspectives. For every Nicki Minaj there’s a Missy Elliot. For every Little Brother, there’s an Eminem. For every Scarface, there’s an Outkast.
Yet when black depictions of hip-hop are used, caricatures and mannerisms of hip-hop are exploited in the pre-revolutionary poetry-slam.
”Whether or not its audience knows the complex histories of Native people slaughter, chattel slavery, minstrel shows, and hip-hop marginalization, we’re all expected to ignore that to enjoy a lil’ swagga
And in Hamilton, hip-hop has and continues to be a safe space for respectability politics, valuation of women based on skin tone, and sexual violence against black women. I can get into the Schulyer Sisters, but what really hurts is seeing Thomas Jefferson, played by Daveed Diggs. Thomas Jefferson owned Sally Hemings, an enslaved black woman and mother to six of his children. Replacing Thomas Jefferson with a black man does not erase the fact he is a man. In addition, Sally is written in off-stage, so she has no voice. Thereby leaving how we’re supposed to feel about her up for interpretation. Again, another missed opportunity to give her physical presence. If anything, it’s an assaultive reminder that white men are not the only men who casually gloss over sexual violence against black women. When I see Daveed Diggs bopping along singing, “Haven’t even put my bags down yet/Sally be a lamb, darlin’, won’tcha open it?,” it’s just as gleefully mysogynist as “Ain’t No Fun (If My Homies Can’t Have None).”
Male Aggression is Still Not Revolutionary
This prick is askin’ for someone to bring him to task…
I’ll pull the trigger on him, someone load the gun and cock it…
[JEFFERSON AND BURR]
It must be nice, it must be nice to have
Washington on your side
— Select lines from “It Must Be Nice To Have Washington On Your Side”
One other facet of Hamilton is how unprogressive it is with how it uses hip-hop to tell a time of immense violence and conflict.
Nothing changes.
But even I’m conflicted by this. The songs are earwormingly catchy. The actors are so talented and handsome. So how do the black performers of Hamilton feel? Daveed Diggs and Leslie Odom Jr. feel about portraying Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, respectively.
I mean, this is impressive.
It’s clear these men are very talented. They’ve still inflicted immeasurable amounts of harm by simply embodying the same heterosexual male aggression celebrated in wartime, political discourse, and battle-rapping. They still use emasculation to defeat one another in argument. They still use gun violence as a solution to freedom. This is stuff hip-hop fans — particularly hip-hop feminists — have been trying to constructively unpack and dismantle for at least 20 years. Remember that patriarchy doesn’t just hurt women; it hurts men.
”This country was also built on the presumption that how black people feel about their full humanity is always up for debate, a source of rich entertainment, and defined by only one black person (usually male) within close proximity to whiteness.
A much better contemporary depiction of hip-hop is the Netflix original series The Get Down. The six-part season one series uses the city’s politics as a backdrop that create the circumstances hip-hop produces. Even as a work of fiction, there is more truth in The Get Down. Men and women, girls and boys, are multifaceted. Most distinctive is the kids themselves –while fictional — get to tell the story.
Audio: KCRW’s The Treatment Baz Luhrmann: The Get Down
And that bootstrap narrative pervasive throughout the musical is ironic, considering that both conservatives and liberals have used that to finger wag at a younger generation for decades.
Telling young people that they are the best Americans when they pull themselves up by their own ability has been historically denied from — White/Black/Latinx kids from the South Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Long Island — kids who would go on to create hip-hop. Only to turnaround and use the genre they created to express your own bootstrap convictions?
Nah, son.
I don’t care if you are Nas or Questlove, do not take Black American vernacular, hip-hop — forms of the English language that have been historically set as inferior by the very people who created our political systems — and use that perpetuate revisionist history where Black pain, Black bodies, and Black opportunities have been erased.
In simple terms, both Hamilton and Bamboozled are failed satires, because the right targets are not sufficiently and clearly mocked.
“Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story”
In my essay, “What Sylvia Harris Means to Me,” I stressed how important it is that women like me must tell our stories, or else they will be left to those who either misrepresent us, or ignore us altogether. Historically, that’s what happens. But I thought that in 2016, we would not broadly celebrate a musical about the revolutionary war that does not include Native or slave stories. And many supporters suggest any negative criticism of his work is in fact the work of Hamilton: sparking insightful debate and freedom of expression, as promised by our founding fathers.
I highly doubt Hamilton is sparking any kind of healthy discourse. I would’ve been told to “Talk less.”
This country wasn’t simply built on the Founding Fathers mythology. It was built on the extermination of indigenous people for whom “young and scrappy” could also be heard as “arrogant and selfish.” This country was also built on the presumption that how black people feel about their full humanity is always up for debate, a source of rich entertainment, and defined by only one black person (usually male) within close proximity to whiteness. In an effort escape the fixed trappings of dehumanization and colonization Hamilton argues that different casting and hip-hop culture alone upends all that very real and ever-cyclical history. Whether or not its audience knows the complex histories of Native people slaughter, chattel slavery, minstrel shows, and hip-hop marginalization, we’re all expected to ignore that to enjoy a lil’ swagga. But it’s not the musical itself often making that dangerously irresponsible argument. It’s the fans.
I’m not the Fun Police, y’all. I get people want to enjoy things. But when politically influential people continue to promote something so politically problematic, it speaks to how we consume pop culture as low culture, beyond the need for sufficient criticism. And throughout this piece I was very deliberate in using African American Vernacular English (AAVE) because these are my opinions. I am not recreating important political history, then trusting my audience to do the work of looking for the historical race, class, and gender underpinnings.
I’m not that irresponsible.
Special shout out goes to writer Jay Caspian Kang, whose brave tweet inspired this essay. You are SEH. BREV.