What's your name, man?
Jul. 7th, 2020 09:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakLike much of the world, I finally gave into the Mouse over the weekend and got a month of Disney + so I could watch Hamilton. And verily, it did live up to the hype for me. I was a bit afraid it would feel like The West Wing - which I couldn't bring myself to watch during the Dubya years and thus only marathoned starting after McCain had lost to Obama, because the dissonance betweeen rl and fantasy had been too great. But I think the very different format helped; theatre reality - and this was a filmed stage performance or rather three - , the way music and lyrics interlock and are both so fundamental for characterisation, and of course the casting.
Also, the unabashed enthusiasm; it did occur to me that a song like The Schuyler Sisters with its included hymn to New York - "we just happen to be in the greatest city of the world" - which is very much a hymn to NYC of the writer/composer's present, not to the colonial New Amsterdam who wasn't All That yet - is a excellent way to illustrate the difference between inclusive feeling patriotism and exclusive (and hostile) feeling nationalism. Both on a Doylist and Watsonian level, the New York praise in the song doesn't feel like it comes as a dissing of all the other cities, either in America or elsewhere, it comes across as affection and excitement for this moment in this city, and the wish to share this with others, not to build walls between you and them. It's not "you all suck, only we are great", it's "we're so lucky to be alive right now" (to quote from the song). And that's why it charms and endears instead of being irritating at best, infuriating at worst, the way all the flag waving and "U.S.A., U.S.A.!" chants felt long before the Orange Menace illustrated that you don't need intelligence, character, ability, any kind of ethics to become President of the Disunited States, you just need to be good at whipping up hate.
(Mind you: when the song "One Last Time" between Washington and Hamilton slides into Washington's actual farewell address, the stunning difference between the man who spoke these words and the current occupant hits you extra hard. Washington for all that he was a slave owner - something the musical painstakingly avoids mentioning, ditto for the Schuylers owning slaves, and Hercules Mulligan; you could watch it and conclude Jefferson (and Madison by default) were the only Founding Fathers who did - really was on a whole different level.)
In terms of musicals, the idea of the hostile narrator I think owes something to early Andrew Llyod Webber and Tim Rice, to wit, both Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita (Judas and Che respectively); what it shares with JCS specifically is that you can make a case for Aaron Burr as the one who has the most developed arc of the tale, and the best songs. Hamilton himself for all the emphasis on his brilliance with words is more talked about than talking (notable exception where you really do get a showing over telling are the two Hamilton vs Jefferson rap battles, and btw, I appreciate that the second one - about whether or not to help revolutionary France - is actually not a repeat of the first one's clear Hamilton right, Jefferson wrong), and the one big change from how he is at the start is of course his decision to literally throw away his shot at the end, rather than killing Burr. Otherwise he's mostly static in terms of change. Whereas you see Burr and his attitude towards Hamilton steadily souring through two acts till he's arrived at the point where he's ready to kill him. Of course, it also helps that Leslie Odom Jr. is fantastic in the role, whereas Lin Manuel Miranda clearly is a fantastic composer and writer, but as an actor/singer just okay.
Speaking of the performances: in theory, Eliza as the loyal wife and helpmeet should be the most boring and thankless role of the cast, especially in contrast to Angelica, but in practice, I found Philippa Soo so emotionally intense, both in the early giddy joy and in the later heartbreak, grief and anger that I couldn't take my eyes of her whenever she was on stage, which was saying something given who else was on stage during those times. This is also where the close-ups come in great, because for example in "It's Quiet Uptown" you see such a lot happening in her face while she's silent.
Lastly: as when I watched the miniseries John Adams (which btw has a very different take on Hamilton, played by Rufus Sewell, for obvious reasons), I was amused by the fact that any USian reference to George III as a bad overlord reminds me that hardly ever was there a guy less suited to the role of evil tyrant than "Farmer" George. The one in Hamilton works as a symbolic figure (complete with Britpop songs, which was hysterical) of decadent tyranny, which is what he's meant to be, not an actual representation of the rl character. In John Adams, every time they use a historical quote from the colonials about "the King's" tyranny, I thought, "you guys meant British parliament and the various PMs, surely? because the Kings didn't have that much actual power left at that point", but, you knoiw, ranting about Parliament and Prime Ministers just doesn't work as well rethorically. Also of all the Hannover Georges, George III. was actually the most likeable (while sane), which is not to say he was a good monarch; I keep coming back to Byron's characterisation of him in The Vision of Judgment, written when old George had finally kicked the bucket and put in the mouth of Lucifer, as being dead on the money:
"'Tis true, he was a tool from first to last
(I have the workmen safe); but as a tool
So let him be consumed. (...)
Whose
History was ever stained as his will be
With national and individual woes?
I grant his household abstinence; I grant
His neutral virtues, which most monarchs want
I know he was a constant consort; own
He was a decent sire, and middling lord.
All this is much, and most upon a throne;
As temperance, if at Apicius' board,
Is more than at an anchorite's supper shown.
I grant him all the kindest can accord;
And this was well for him, but not for those
Millions who found him what Oppression chose.
Now, if you want a rl flamboyant character having a go at the American Rebels verbally, I'd suggest Dr. Samual Johnson, whose pamphlet "Taxation no tyranny!" contains such gems as:
These lords of themselves, these kings of ME, these demigods of independence sink down to colonists, governed by a charter. If their ancestors were subjects, they acknowledged a sovereign; if they had a right to English privileges, they were accountable to English laws
Or:
Their keenness of perspicacity has enabled them to pursue consequences to a greater distance; to see through clouds impervious to the dimness of European sight; and to find, I know not how, that when they are taxed, we shall be enslaved.
That slavery is a miserable state we have been often told, and, doubtless, many a Briton will tremble to find it so near as in America; but bow it will be brought hither the congress must inform us. The question might distress a common understanding; but the statesmen of the other hemisphere can easily resolve it. "Our ministers," they say, "are our enemies, and if they should carry the point of taxation, may, with the same army, enslave us. It may be said, we will not pay them; but remember," say the western sages, "the taxes from America, and, we may add, the men, and particularly the Roman catholicks of this vast continent, will then be in the power of your enemies. Nor have you any reason to expect, that, after making slaves of us, many of us will refuse to assist in reducing you to the same abject state." (...) If slavery be thus fatally contagious, how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?
This last sentence was probably Johnson's most famous quip about the Americans, and since he did not just talk the talk (he was an abolitionist) but walked the walk (his one black servant got paid, and was in fact made Johnson's main heir after his death, much to the scandal of several white friends), he was entitled to make it. But I'm also fond of "these lords of themselves, these Kings of ME"; surely Johnson rapping this at Hamilton would have fit right in?
Don't get me wrong: I'm not complaining about accuracy. (It's a musical! With limited time to get across a gigantic story!) Not least because I think Hamilton by its very narrative and casting wants to engage the audience in a dialogue by pointing out the dichotomy between its ideals and the (still not completed) realisation of same. (In a way that really would not happen if only white actors/singers played the same characters.) It wants to argue about perception. (Revolution as seen when white or when black people do the rebelling, among other things.) And it is, in totem, such a reminder of what to love about the US other than individuals, at a time when this becomes harder by the day.
On that note, have some links:
Marsha Gessen about Trump and Putin
Born Free, a vid portraying (Dido Elizabeth) Belle from the film of the same name, contemporary to the Hamilton cast and black.
Also, the unabashed enthusiasm; it did occur to me that a song like The Schuyler Sisters with its included hymn to New York - "we just happen to be in the greatest city of the world" - which is very much a hymn to NYC of the writer/composer's present, not to the colonial New Amsterdam who wasn't All That yet - is a excellent way to illustrate the difference between inclusive feeling patriotism and exclusive (and hostile) feeling nationalism. Both on a Doylist and Watsonian level, the New York praise in the song doesn't feel like it comes as a dissing of all the other cities, either in America or elsewhere, it comes across as affection and excitement for this moment in this city, and the wish to share this with others, not to build walls between you and them. It's not "you all suck, only we are great", it's "we're so lucky to be alive right now" (to quote from the song). And that's why it charms and endears instead of being irritating at best, infuriating at worst, the way all the flag waving and "U.S.A., U.S.A.!" chants felt long before the Orange Menace illustrated that you don't need intelligence, character, ability, any kind of ethics to become President of the Disunited States, you just need to be good at whipping up hate.
(Mind you: when the song "One Last Time" between Washington and Hamilton slides into Washington's actual farewell address, the stunning difference between the man who spoke these words and the current occupant hits you extra hard. Washington for all that he was a slave owner - something the musical painstakingly avoids mentioning, ditto for the Schuylers owning slaves, and Hercules Mulligan; you could watch it and conclude Jefferson (and Madison by default) were the only Founding Fathers who did - really was on a whole different level.)
In terms of musicals, the idea of the hostile narrator I think owes something to early Andrew Llyod Webber and Tim Rice, to wit, both Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita (Judas and Che respectively); what it shares with JCS specifically is that you can make a case for Aaron Burr as the one who has the most developed arc of the tale, and the best songs. Hamilton himself for all the emphasis on his brilliance with words is more talked about than talking (notable exception where you really do get a showing over telling are the two Hamilton vs Jefferson rap battles, and btw, I appreciate that the second one - about whether or not to help revolutionary France - is actually not a repeat of the first one's clear Hamilton right, Jefferson wrong), and the one big change from how he is at the start is of course his decision to literally throw away his shot at the end, rather than killing Burr. Otherwise he's mostly static in terms of change. Whereas you see Burr and his attitude towards Hamilton steadily souring through two acts till he's arrived at the point where he's ready to kill him. Of course, it also helps that Leslie Odom Jr. is fantastic in the role, whereas Lin Manuel Miranda clearly is a fantastic composer and writer, but as an actor/singer just okay.
Speaking of the performances: in theory, Eliza as the loyal wife and helpmeet should be the most boring and thankless role of the cast, especially in contrast to Angelica, but in practice, I found Philippa Soo so emotionally intense, both in the early giddy joy and in the later heartbreak, grief and anger that I couldn't take my eyes of her whenever she was on stage, which was saying something given who else was on stage during those times. This is also where the close-ups come in great, because for example in "It's Quiet Uptown" you see such a lot happening in her face while she's silent.
Lastly: as when I watched the miniseries John Adams (which btw has a very different take on Hamilton, played by Rufus Sewell, for obvious reasons), I was amused by the fact that any USian reference to George III as a bad overlord reminds me that hardly ever was there a guy less suited to the role of evil tyrant than "Farmer" George. The one in Hamilton works as a symbolic figure (complete with Britpop songs, which was hysterical) of decadent tyranny, which is what he's meant to be, not an actual representation of the rl character. In John Adams, every time they use a historical quote from the colonials about "the King's" tyranny, I thought, "you guys meant British parliament and the various PMs, surely? because the Kings didn't have that much actual power left at that point", but, you knoiw, ranting about Parliament and Prime Ministers just doesn't work as well rethorically. Also of all the Hannover Georges, George III. was actually the most likeable (while sane), which is not to say he was a good monarch; I keep coming back to Byron's characterisation of him in The Vision of Judgment, written when old George had finally kicked the bucket and put in the mouth of Lucifer, as being dead on the money:
"'Tis true, he was a tool from first to last
(I have the workmen safe); but as a tool
So let him be consumed. (...)
Whose
History was ever stained as his will be
With national and individual woes?
I grant his household abstinence; I grant
His neutral virtues, which most monarchs want
I know he was a constant consort; own
He was a decent sire, and middling lord.
All this is much, and most upon a throne;
As temperance, if at Apicius' board,
Is more than at an anchorite's supper shown.
I grant him all the kindest can accord;
And this was well for him, but not for those
Millions who found him what Oppression chose.
Now, if you want a rl flamboyant character having a go at the American Rebels verbally, I'd suggest Dr. Samual Johnson, whose pamphlet "Taxation no tyranny!" contains such gems as:
These lords of themselves, these kings of ME, these demigods of independence sink down to colonists, governed by a charter. If their ancestors were subjects, they acknowledged a sovereign; if they had a right to English privileges, they were accountable to English laws
Or:
Their keenness of perspicacity has enabled them to pursue consequences to a greater distance; to see through clouds impervious to the dimness of European sight; and to find, I know not how, that when they are taxed, we shall be enslaved.
That slavery is a miserable state we have been often told, and, doubtless, many a Briton will tremble to find it so near as in America; but bow it will be brought hither the congress must inform us. The question might distress a common understanding; but the statesmen of the other hemisphere can easily resolve it. "Our ministers," they say, "are our enemies, and if they should carry the point of taxation, may, with the same army, enslave us. It may be said, we will not pay them; but remember," say the western sages, "the taxes from America, and, we may add, the men, and particularly the Roman catholicks of this vast continent, will then be in the power of your enemies. Nor have you any reason to expect, that, after making slaves of us, many of us will refuse to assist in reducing you to the same abject state." (...) If slavery be thus fatally contagious, how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?
This last sentence was probably Johnson's most famous quip about the Americans, and since he did not just talk the talk (he was an abolitionist) but walked the walk (his one black servant got paid, and was in fact made Johnson's main heir after his death, much to the scandal of several white friends), he was entitled to make it. But I'm also fond of "these lords of themselves, these Kings of ME"; surely Johnson rapping this at Hamilton would have fit right in?
Don't get me wrong: I'm not complaining about accuracy. (It's a musical! With limited time to get across a gigantic story!) Not least because I think Hamilton by its very narrative and casting wants to engage the audience in a dialogue by pointing out the dichotomy between its ideals and the (still not completed) realisation of same. (In a way that really would not happen if only white actors/singers played the same characters.) It wants to argue about perception. (Revolution as seen when white or when black people do the rebelling, among other things.) And it is, in totem, such a reminder of what to love about the US other than individuals, at a time when this becomes harder by the day.
On that note, have some links:
Marsha Gessen about Trump and Putin
Born Free, a vid portraying (Dido Elizabeth) Belle from the film of the same name, contemporary to the Hamilton cast and black.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-07 12:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-07-07 12:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-07-07 12:43 pm (UTC)here. Oh, President Obama...
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Date: 2020-07-07 12:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-07-07 01:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-07-07 03:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-07-08 11:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-07-07 06:21 pm (UTC)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFEL_0UFgIs
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Date: 2020-07-07 01:22 pm (UTC)Five years on, the world is a very different place -- theatres around the globe are shuttered, and the historical figures referenced in this musical have been called into question, as well as LMM himself. But every time I watch this (and I am indeed planning on temporarily subbing for the Mouse so I can watch this again), I'm brought back to those heady early days where NYC was indeed the greatest city in the world, and the US was a shining beacon of light to the world, and this show was the show that would remake theatre and make the world a better place.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-07 06:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-07-07 10:19 pm (UTC)LMM's own annotation to the lyric on Genius.com goes, "New York wasn't even the greatest city in America at the time!"
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Date: 2020-07-08 02:52 am (UTC)The song at the end haunts me, in part, because it echoes something my father, a frustrated historian has always said - history is often in who is telling it or in the teller. And the teller isn't necessarily a reliable one and often has an agenda. There's a heavy commentary throughout that this is being told by unreliable narrators. Part of the back story to that - is that there was a bit of a conspiracy by various people to bury Hamilton's legacy and paint him in derogatory tones. Adams and Jefferson, who hated each other, each hated Hamilton more, as did Madison, and various others. Eliza had to outlive them to keep her husbands legacy alive - and she did. This is stated in the first portion of Ron Chernow's opus Hamilton, which is the source material for the musical. Chernow's biography is kind of controversial with various historians, and when the musical came out in 2016 - there were a lot of "fights" on the musical and scholar boards regarding the musicals historical accuracy, and Chernow's accuracy. Chernow's account according to an Aaron Burr scholar painted the duel erroneously - apparently it was less than clear what happened. Also the duel was not the result of Hamilton's vote against Burr in favor of Jefferson, but rather his nasty critiques of Burr in his newspapers - costing Burr the Governor Election, which was later in 1804. The musical for the sake of time and expediency, kind of overlooks that and makes it about the contentious Jefferson/Adams election.
Hamilton was an abolitionist, but not necessarily to the degree in which Chernow paints him in his biography. Chernow uses a lot of the information that Eliza and Angelica kept. So part of it is source material and which source material is considered accurate.
Now, I didn't make it through Chernow's biography - so I got most of this second hand, my parents read it. And I read the first fifty some pages - which sort of set the stage. I also read a lot of essays about the Federalist Papers, etc, after the musical premiered and the scholarly debate. There are some scholars who are very upset with the musical and felt that it presents a highly inaccurate interpretation of history. But as my father put it - history is in the eye of the historian, and often historian's will view history from where they are currently residing within it, and not from that time period. Projecting a modern perspective.
And that's what I thought was rather brilliant about the musical - it kind of goes there - states broadly and openly that it is viewing the historical narrative through a modern sensibility - with not only the casting, but staging, music, etc. In fact, at one point, Lin Manuel-Miranda steps out of character - and says : "That's actually true" - when they sing "Hamilton was such a Tom Cat, that Martha Washington named her cat after him".
Hinting this may well be the only true item in the musical or not.
It reminds me a great deal of JCS in that respect, as well as Evita, in that it uses the unreliable narrator who has an agenda, throughout. And makes a huge point of showing how we re-interpret our own historical narrative, projecting our own views upon it in the process.
The final song...when I first listened to it on CD - sent chills down my spine and still does. Because it asks who will tell our story? But more importantly, how that effects the way our story is told.
For example? US Text Books tell the story of the American Revolution in a manner that paints Britain as an evil monarchy, with a tyrant King - because that's a simpler and far better story in regards to how the American rebels are depicted. And the musical plays with that - using King George as a device - a jilted lover, poking fun at how US history books portrayed him.
The musical is a biting satirical take on historical narrative, and how the US has made heroes out of its all-too flawed and human Founding Fathers. Not to mention, the inherent flaws in how these "revered men" built the country. Underlining in the process, the lack of women's rights, and the hypocrisy - there's the ditty, where Jefferson, a slaver, repeats how he wrote the Declaration of Independence, containing the refrain, All Men Are Created Equal. And in the "Work" song - Angelica refers to the Declaration as well, noting how women must be included in the sequel. Then ironically, at the very end, Eliza not Hamilton takes center stage and it is her accomplishment that is highlighted - the founding of an orphanage. The first in the NY. But she's barely given a voice, until he's gone, and she outlives him by 50 years, along with the rest - and it is Eliza who tells their stories and is left to redefine the narrative.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-24 06:36 pm (UTC)When this came out I happened to have just read "You Never Forget Your First" by Alexis Coe, which is a not-at-all-reverent bio of Washington that left me with a lot to contend with (she's not even very impressed with the farewell address or Washington's motives for stepping down). There's not really information there that surprised me but it did leave me with a sense of trying to figure out why i want to ask a historian to give me warm fuzzies about historical figures.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-25 05:26 am (UTC)I did watch the clips on YouTube both of Miranda's first presentation of the song Alexander Hamilton to Obama & Co. and of years later the cast presenting songs near the end of Obama's term, and it doesn't just make the connection clear but makes one want to cry some more because of how impossible anything artistic happening in the current White House is.
There's not really information there that surprised me but it did leave me with a sense of trying to figure out why i want to ask a historian to give me warm fuzzies about historical figures.
Well, because we all have our problematic faves, obviously, and like to read stories about them that put them in a good or at least empathic light now and then. :) Having been heavily immersed in a historical (and almost contemporary to Hamilton) fandom for a year now, where slavery might not be a factor but no one has the excuse of fighting for work-in-progress democracy, either, just for good old territorial domination, I can sing a tale. (Especially since historians publishing post WWII about my case have to deal with the fact it was heavily abused by Nazi propaganda.) Incidentally, I read somewhere Miranda regretted not being able to include good old von Steuben in his cast, which reminds me of the obvious Hamilton/Frederician RPF crossover because von Steuben actually went: "You know whom we should have as head of state now we've gotten rid of George III? His cousin, whom I've served with in the Seven Years War, Frederick the Great's equally gay, talented and issue ridden francophile brother Heinrich! Henry I. of America sounds great to me!"
no subject
Date: 2020-08-27 06:45 am (UTC)I'm sad Cabinet Battle III got cut. It really showed Hamilton's darker side, but also gave him "sir, even you, you have hundreds of slaves/ whose descendants will curse our names when we're safe in our graves" speaking to Washington - so still not acknowledging Mulligan or the Schuylers' slaves, but talking about it re: Washington and connecting it again to the question of legacy and who tells the story, in ways that I think add to it. But! Limited time!
I totally agree re: "we just happen to be in the greatest city in the world". A friend and I agreed it made us think of London, haha, which is home - self-involved of us but it kinda illustrates your point.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-27 07:27 am (UTC)