what drives me crazy about hamilton is that lmm, someone who seemingly has a surprisingly cogent understanding of some aspects of neocolonialism judging by 21 chump street, collected a cast of some of the greatest singers and actors in musical theater at the time. and he went "okay. im going to write founding fathers fanfiction. you know, about the men who singlehandedly led to unforeseen amounts of death and destruction through the creation of the american empire? yeah so the idea is um. what if people of color were considered in americas creation. what if. what if the colonized could do colonialism." like. hello? why would you do that. why would you WANT to do that.
this is mostly because i heard wait for it again for the first time in like. quite a few years. and its justā¦ its so good. leslie odom jr is such a genuinely good singer. the lyrics are well written. the orchestra is incredible. why did you have to make it about the founding fathers?
okay I gotta talk about this, I know I've talked about it before, but this absolutely drives me up a tree for a very specific reason.
okay. listen. we here on tumblr dot gov, the people reblogging and engaging with this post, are likely to be, by United States standards, pretty far left-wing. as in, we do not venerate the founding fathers, and we do not see the American Revolution as being an important, bordering on sacred, event. in general, rather than heroes, we tend to see the founding fathers more as what they were: slave-owning colonizers.
this is a major difference between how we view the world and how many -- if not most -- USians, particularly conservatives but also just the average USian in general, view the world.
the founding fathers are the closest thing the united states on the whole (especially the white and conservative parts of it) culturally has to, like, folk heroes, bordering on demigods/saints, and the american revolution has been and continues to be THE epic story of how our brave, noble, underdog heroes/demigods/saints defeated The Oppressors and saved the day.
like if you're not from this culture I really cannot stress enough how extremely present and important this is to USian society. it's straight-up one of the cornerstones, possibly (probably) the most important cornerstone, of the national identity. to the average (non-minority) USian, to fuckin Joe Mailboxfucker or whatever, on some level, the founding fathers are just accepted to be underdog heroes fighting against oppressors.
is this an accurate viewpoint? I mean... lol. lmao, even. no, it's not accurate. I don't think Sally Hemings would exactly describe Thomas Jefferson as a "hero", for chrissake. but the important thing in this discussion isn't that it's true, the important thing is that it's how the average USian is raised to view the world.
Joe Mailboxfucker doesn't think about the founding fathers very often. he doesn't think about history or politics (or at least what he thinks is politics) very often at all. he spends his day, y'know, suffering under capitalism, like anyone else, going to work, getting tired, talking about sports or video games or tv shows or music.
but when the founding fathers do arise in Joe Mailboxfucker's mind -- whether he sees a satirical bit about them in a How I Met Your Mother episode, or happens to watch a Facebook reel about a new statue going up in his city, or whatever -- he just kinda defaults back to what he's been taught all his life: the founding fathers were underdog heroes fighting against oppressors.
that's what every single avenue of education Joe Mailboxfucker has ever encountered has told him. he's never had cause to read a book about colonialism. he doesn't have a tumblr account to read about the history of racial oppression. he's probably never heard the name Sally Hemings. there is no point in his life where he has been presented with the founding fathers as "the men who singlehandedly led to unforeseen amounts of death and destruction through the creation of the american empire". that concept has simply never occurred to him.
he's just an ignorant guy who has the associations he does because of, well, the entire shape and structure of his life. does he suck? idk, maybe. should he do better? yeah. does he know he should do better? no, because the entire stucture of the world around him is designed to reinforce this state of, like, peaceful subservient ignorance.
so... here's the problem:
lin manuel miranda did not Just So Happen to make founding fathers fanfiction. he didn't stumble into it, he didn't make a mistake or a misstep, he made an extremely deliberate choice to write a version of the american revolution where the founding fathers are all POC and King George is white. because miranda had the following extremely intentional and clear thesis:
"people of colour in the United States in the 21st century are just like the founding fathers."
now, again, as left-leaning people, that thesis sounds BUTT FUCK INSANE to us. what the fuck do you MEAN poc are like the founding fathers??? the fuck are you talking about???? what fucking bizarro world are you living in?????? as OP said: this is, to us on the political left, essentially saying "what if the colonized could do colonialism". which is genuinely a terrible idea for a play.
but here's the thing.
the vitally important thing to understand hamilton:
Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton is NOT FOR YOU.
lin manuel miranda did not write Hamilton for leftists.
lin manuel miranda wrote Hamilton for Joe Mailboxfucker.
the average leftist, upon being told "people of colour in the United States in the 21st century are just like the founding fathers", hears "this motherfucker wants me to believe that POC are slave-driving, colonizing bastards."
Joe Mailboxfucker, upon being told "people of colour in the United States in the 21st century are just like the founding fathers", hears "people of colour in the United States in the 21st century are underdog heroes fighting against oppressors."
and lin-manuel miranda's hope is that Joe Mailboxfucker hears that and that it maybe MAYBE is gonna REGISTER on some level, and that it might open up some avenue in Joe Mailboxfucker's mind, some potential new direction for him to go down, SOMEthing. like, if nothing else, at least it's a thing he's heard now.
that's why Hamilton is founding fathers fanfiction. it's because lin-manuel miranda is trying to communicate extremely basic social justice principles to a demographic who essentially lives on a different planet from you.
and then, y'know, in 2016 the play got really popular with teenagers who would grow up to be communists, I guess it might've missed the mark a little bit, whatever.
tl;dr the central thesis of the play is trying to communicate a genuinely progressive (albeit extremely basic) idea, but the whole work is operating on the assumption that the viewer is largely unfamiliar with this kind of progressive idea, so anyone who has more than an absolutely rudimentary grasp of progressive politics is going to see it as regressive, in kinda the same way that a 45-year-old linguistics teacher is going to see a "How To Learn Your ABCs" preschool book as inane and needlessly limiting when it comes to the nuances of English pronunciation. this is because the play is written for people who don't have a rudimentary grasp of progressive politics.
