Will the Social-Justice Mob Cancel Hamilton?
On this Independence Day, Disney is giving America a big birthday present: the musical Hamilton. Upon handing over $ 75 million, the company will stream a filmed version of the mega-hit Lin-Manuel Miranda Broadway on its Disney + channel. It could be exactly what the doctor ordered as an antidote to the nation’s gloomy mood, or it could be the opposite – yet another cultural touchstone torn open and spat out by the vortex of the Great Awakening.
This second scenario may sound absurd. After all, Hamilton is the beloved masterpiece of the diversity revolution, an ode to the multiracial future of the country and to “immigrants” [who] do the job! “The cast was almost entirely un-white, with one notable exception: a pugnacious, crushed King George III. Miranda himself, son of Puerto Rican parents, played the musical’s eponymous hero, Alexander Hamilton. The audience loved the mischievous Chutzpah, casting black actors like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, and the clever rap couplets that create the thrill of a youthful revolution. “Rap is the voice of the people of our generation and the people of color,” said Miranda, winner of one MacArthur Scholarship for “Geniuses.” Hamilton won a Pulitzer Prize, a Grammy, and 16 Tony Awards. The show grossed well over $ 500 million. Beyoncé, Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, Stephen Sondheim, Jay Z, and a long List of other lights are among his fans. On social media, followers count the days and minutes until the TV event . What could go wrong?
The madness of this Jacobean moment is so great that a progressive musical from 2015 now looks curious – even problematic. Hamilton is a rousing, unabashedly patriotic work; “American state of emergency [set to] Hip-Hop, ”as Terry Teachout put it in his Wall Street Journal review. Since the audience first jumped up to greet the show, the story that Miranda relied on has been overthrown, like so many statues. The New York Times has confirmed the view that the birth of the nation, celebrated in the play, took place not in 1776 but in 1619 with the arrival of the first African slaves on American shores. Following the curriculum now endorsed by the filing paper, educators prepare to teach the youth that the American Revolution was conducted for the primary purpose of protecting slavery and that the revolutionaries that Miranda celebrates have finally signed the Constitution whose main purpose was to codify Black’s enslavement of the people. Can millions of teenagers and their parents continue to sing the name of one of the Founding Fathers happily and in good conscience?
Equally problematic for the present moment is Miranda’s embrace of the American dream. “[T]he ten dollar founding father without a father / got much further by working much harder / by being much smarter / by being a self-starter; “The cast raps on the opening scene. But every red-blooded progressive knows that the American dream of upward mobility is a myth held to blame the poor for their own sad state. “[A]no other immigrant coming from below? “Sounds like false news – or false consciousness.
So some black scholars saw the show from the beginning. Shortly after the musical opened, Harvard historian Annette Gordon Reed listed her sins. Hamilton was not a man of the people, she argued; He was an elitist and a crypto monarchist. He wasn’t innocent of racism either; He bought and sold slaves for his in-laws and, although he was the founder of the Manumission Society, had at best a tepid interest in abolition. Additionally, the musical is silent about the fact that George Washington owned slaves, an omission that even third graders can easily spot these days.
The playwright and MacArthur scholar Ishmael Reed has devoted himself in recent years to de-platforming the musical, which he compares to the Confederate nostalgic Gone with the Wind. He believes the show’s multiracial cast distracts audiences from the brutal reality of American racism. Last year he directed a play called The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda, in which the spirits of slaves and Native Americans come back to correct the lies of the confused Hamilton creator. “I think the fix would be to close the show,” he concluded.
Hamilton critics aren’t limited to classic cars. “I can’t believe Lin-Manuel Miranda convinced me the founding fathers were good people,” one young woman tweeted last week. When Miranda brought his musical to Puerto Rico to raise money for the affected country after Hurricane Maria, students and employees at the University of Puerto Rico, where the production was to be staged, rebelled. “He wants to help the community of Puerto Rico as a whole? He has to sit down and talk to us and stop acting as a white savior, ”one activist scoffed. And so can – and will – be accused of the white privilege of a very progressive Hispanic rap artist.
Should Hamilton attract the social justice mobs now that it is streamed over the cable, skeptics of the Awakened will be tempted to enjoy yet another example of the revolution eating itself. That would be a mistake. Miranda faces the tragic dilemma familiar to the intuitively temperate man caught in an extreme moment. Recently a group for “Change for BIPOC [black, indigenous, and people of color] Theater Makers ”has circulated a petition calling for more diversity on Broadway. 80,000 signatures have already been collected. “We watched you [the white powers-that-be of Broadway] pretend you don’t see us, ”they write. “We have seen you amplify our voices when we are announced by the press, but we refuse to defend our aesthetics when we are not, so that our livelihoods can be destroyed by a monolithic and racist-critical culture . ” Miranda has yet to sign. But the progressive who has turned his considerable talents into capitalist gold is faced with a choice of signing or losing his Black Lives Matter loan.
Miranda is a unique cultural figure, a wizard who brought diversity to New Jersey matinee clubs and Midwestern tourists while enlivening American history for Bronx high school kids. His friendly, open demeanor and mild nerdy – he loves American musical theater – undoubtedly contributed to its crossover appeal. For years the author has published “g’morning” and “g’night” tweets, “little pep talk for me and you,” as he puts it, which fans adore for their sweetness. Last year he starred in Mary Poppins Returns Bert the Cockney Chimney Sweep, a role previously owned by old-school actor Dick Van Dyke. Somehow he manages to be both human and resolutely progressive. In the days of corporate wokeness, Disney and Miranda seem to be in tune with each other.
Unless it’s canceled.
Photo by Cindy Ord / Getty Images
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