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this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2023
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chapotraphouse
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i got literally yelled at by some ex friends who were white for saying having rapping slave owners was offensive.
I have to admit that I only knew that Hamilton was a slave owner and that he is played by a black guy. I didn't even know he raps.
hamilton is not played by a black guy! i was referring to Thomas Jefferson played by the (honestly very talented ) davved diggs. theres a scene where he comes in and the slaves are cleaning the floors then they start dancing with him, https://youtu.be/hruG4iDSQAI?si=a4WUZf7zXwQFRq_7. and he even says "be a lamb sally", sally his 14 year old victim. hamilton also raps, hamilton is played by a puerto rican man.
also its all ok because Hamilton and jefferson have a rap battle where Hamilton totally calls him out/s
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/new-research-alexander-hamilton-slave-owner-180976260/
Yep! I told this to a (ex) friend and she started crying and telling me that nothing was good enough for me, and nobodys perfect. gotta love white women tears, I somehow ended up apologizing to her. I didnt use to be able to stand up to close friends. luckily I no longer have white friends. although there is some mayo friend potential at the psl. omg that was a ramble.
Jesus fucking christ.
its so fucking baaaad. imagine if this was good art that cared about black people. you could have had a scene where sally hemmings comes out played by a child and had a long mournful monologue, about her abuse at the hands of jefferson, a "founding father". you could make something powerful that confronts the audience and makes them uncomfortable. But no, she gets a cheap throwaway line in a jazz number. its repulsive.
but is all ok because it impileds Hamilton is TOTALLY biracial so this musical, totally cares about black people./s
Edit: I ended up using this comment as an excuse to infodump but I tried not to do the whole thing where, by infodumping, I am implying that this knowledge is uncommon or that the person I’m responding to is ignorant of it. And it appears that I’ve explained the idea of a leitmotif to a theater kid. My bad, Othello. I just like explaining things. Love your stuff
It’s pretty wild what facts needed to be left out or minimized to make this come across. Being playing by LMM instead of a white guy is a big part, obviously, but the whole idea that he was an “immigrant from the Caribbean” does a lot of heavy lifting there, too.
He was the grandson of wealthy merchants on one side and of Scottish nobility on the other. He was seen as lower status because he was born in the colonies and out of wedlock, but he was very much a colonizer. And his “immigration” was moving from one British colony to another and British colony. He received a decade of private education and tutoring before his mother died and it was that education that he used to be able to go to New York with the purpose of continuing his education.
For anyone who’s not super familiar with musical theater, it tends to make heavy use of callback, reprise, and theme to tie together disparate ideas. If you don’t know what that means, think of the happy music that plays in the beginning of Up. When that same music plays near the end of the opening sequence and that makes you wanna cry? It’s not just because it’s sad. It’s because the music juxtaposes the sadness of the moment with the happiness and hope they’d just lost. It’s that kind of thing.
Hamilton has stuff like this all over and is pretty tightly woven, but there are some dropped threads where you would expect some kind of callback and we just don’t get any. The reason? There were several more songs about opposition to slavery that were dropped because they didn’t play well in the test showings.
Hamilton is truly a story of oppression, as packaged for the privileged masses.
HAMILTON DISCOOOORSE!!!!! WOOOOOOOO
youre new but i see you! some good takes.
for starters let me get sentimental and sincere. as a child with a parent from the Caribbean i 100% saw myself in hamilton as a teen.(wrote my way out meant a lot to me) I related to the character extremely hard being a black loudmouthed demsoc at the time. no one believed in me and i saw hamilton as an inspiration. I was also determined to burn my name into the face of the world. this musical has heart and come from an immigrant perspective (not a black one mind you). and while people in this comment section deride the musical for being "for white people" the people who love the musical the deepest, who make fan art and analyze every song tend to be young queer and black people, and people of color. its good. its meaningful. but its liberal and launders the reputations of evil people. at the end of the day the musical is strangled buy it inablility to meaningfully critique its subjects.
So all those thing you laid out yes but I was referring specificity to when jonh adams calls him "a creole bastard" and yes there were always rumors he had a lil black in him but those were mostly insults to ruin his reputation.
do not site the deep magic to me witch i was there when it was written if many of the scrapped songs were left in the musical would have been very different and thematically constant. It would have been much improved I agree but it wasn't so we have to judge the final product as is. and the musical doesn't center black voices, at no point do we hear a black characters perspective, they are only background characters and political tools. and yes they take a lot of time to say slavery bad but they dont show it. especially since black people (and some queer people) played a huge part of the revolutionary war. its hallow, sweeps the seriousness of the subject under the rug with a quick wave. also sooooo many songs from the second half of the show should have been cut in favor of what did get cut, test audiences be damned.
oh noo you deleted it! you want me to delete this one?
No need to delete it. I put mine back up. I’m just having a weird day and was getting in my head about coming off as annoying.
I also got very into Hamilton for a while, to the point where I was writing out maps of various motifs that came up and itemizing where they were and what that did to the meaning. I think my window into Hamilton was through neurodivergence, of people looking at you like you’re crazy and being simultaneously condescending about your forwardness and obsessiveness but also in awe of a lot of your output and endurance. That said, I keep finding examples of ways that perspective falls short, so I appreciate you being sincere and sharing that.
youre not annoying I promise! do you know how refreshing it is to be able to take a critical look at hamilton with another leftist whos actually willing to analyze its themes??? youre wonderful, never change.
yes yes yes!!! a 100% see that. in fact
When I got sort of out of sorts with a buddy of yours
I may have punched him
It's a blur, sir
He handles the financials?
You punched the bursar?
Yes! I wanted to do what you did, graduate in two, then join the revolution
He looked at me like I was stupid, I'm not stupid
So how'd you do it? How'd you graduate so fast?
It was my parents' dying wish before they passed
You're an orphan? Of course!
I'm an orphan, God, I wish there was a war
Then we could prove that we're worth more than anyone bargained for
oops, I really do know jack shit about that musical
dude i know the whole thing by heart I was a theater/model un kid in highschool, no I am not ok. I had the cd. its the most cringe thing about teen me. i have so much Hamilton facts in my brain its not even funny, ALL of my (ex) friends love Hamilton, and yes the black kids also loved Hamilton but it was an preforming arts school we were not normal, also the black kids wanted more parts and thought this was a great way for them to get more start role once they totally make it to Broadway one day. none if them are on Broadway. i am a cursed being.
I got put in the worst role in theatre plays all the time for being ND and mocked the NT kids for forgetting their lines and generally fumbling up while I said the single line I had perfectly, it didn't help with being a people's person
luckily i got in to the school for poetry. and then i really got into stagecraft and building things.. until they cut our funding, and then they just stopped having cool sets. i was a behind the scenes kid. i did costuming, and stage makeup too.
Are you feeling the freedom yet?
yep..gotta love charter schools. they definitely aren't a scam.
I have the feeling a lot of communism seeds get planted in schools, but not really by teachers indoctrinating the kids, lol
Just as long has you didn't make this we're good
i wasnt i swear! i had standards!
i somehow knew it was gonna be that image. This is one of those things that both fascists and communists cringe at, but for opposite reasons
Damn I feel old now
Hamilton was 8 years ago I have a bachelors degree now
i was germany my first year!! I did my best to block the globlal south from having autonomy. we won an award. I successfully argued that poor countries had too much corruption to manage their own money. but then fucking cost rica and Iran pulled the imperialism victim card and fucked me. next year I was Bolivia and let me tell you i made America cry.... and then france made me cry. oh model un. I lost my virginity and got high for the first time on those trips, I also found my fiance!! good times.
it's like a mixture of being a theater kid with being a kid who plays strat games all night
thats exactly it!
Not trying to sway your opinion, you're entitled to it. From a certain perspective though, having black folks play slave owning founding fathers is sweet justice in the sense that true racists would turn over in their graves to know that a black man was playing them.
There also are not an abundance of opportunities for black opera singers. Tossing aside the race of the characters is a statement. Listen to Leslie Odom Jr, Aaron Burr's actor, thank Lin-Manuel Miranda deeply for creating opportunities and providing "a new vision of what's possible" as he accepts his Tony for best actor. That old white slave owners indirectly led to the success of some crazily talented black folks in my time is something I can dig. You're free to disagree.
Anyway, give it a watch.
https://youtu.be/WbkjsnMEiqE?si=w-6HMrtQq_8RWdja
I love lesslie Odom Jr, so talented, a shame how Miranda treated him. its not that they played the slave owners its how tastelessly it was done. The musical lies about hamiltons actual positions, he was also a slave owner (yes his wifes slaves counts) and a hypocrite in many ways, not to mention Miranda deleting the third rap battle weakens the slavery is bad message. its kinda maddening the musical would have been so much better if he left that scene in calling out Hamilton in some small way (other than being "too honest" and "too horny") aslo dunking on jefferson for being a creep would have been nice. there many more things that ruin the musical. theres a world where the Hamilton musical was well done, where it critiqued its subject even a tiny bit and didnt have the slave owner dance and rap, we dont live in it lol. and yes we desperately need more roles for black performers and Hamilton has changed broadway in a big way and its wonderful I always love to see more black artist shining. but yeah it was always lib shit but it could have been inoffensive lib shit. as inoffensive as liberalism can be lol. I just feel like Miranda showed that he knew what he was doing by refusing to make a single meaningful critique of a slave owner. sorry I keep adding stuff. but who care what dead people think? what are the real life impacts of hamiltons success? the babygirlification of slaveowners.
My only engagement with the Hamilton material is with the Ben Franklin song because I love the Decemberists and Colin Melody sings the soundtrack version, but that song does cast at least a little shade on BF when it makes fun of him for being too horny to do politics right and for being a shitty father.
DO YOU KNOW WHO THE FUCK I AM? yeah thats a good one, that also shouldn't have been cut from the musical. And yeah everyone being too horny to do politics is something the show makes fun of a lot of characters for, they were all very horny. its half of hamiltons downfall
gang
Those are all fair points, I didn't know anything about them...ahem...whitewashing intended scenes.
thanks! i know too much Hamilton info for a lifetime. I was in deep.
ah yes, the old riddle. is putting harriet tubman on the 20 dollar bill based because it would make andrew jackson angry to be replaced by a black woman? or is it cringe to put harriet tubman on the currency that was used to purchase her?
the answer is actually that we should keep andrew jackson on the 20 dollar bill because he hated the federal reserve
Lol, a fair point. I think this somewhat cements this being a matter of perspective. Neither perspective is wrong or right, just different angles while everyone is still wanting whatever is worse for the slave owners, and whatever is best for the black folks. I'm open to having my opinion changed about whatever is the most just outcome.