*The representation of slavery in the musical is one of the things that bothered you the most about “Hamilton.” What is your argument about the way that slavery is seen or not seen?*
My argument is basically that the play does a lot of this thing that we call “Founders Chic” as a representational strategy. This is a way that writers of popular history (and some academic historians) represent the founders as relatable, cool guys. Founders Chic tends to really downplay the involvement of the Founding Fathers in slavery, and this play does that 100 percent. Yes, sure, it mentions slavery a couple of times, but it’s twice mentioned in the context of just slavery existing and Alexander Hamilton being opposed to it. And then a couple times it’s mentioned in the context of abolition specifically, and Alexander Hamilton supporting that. So the 12th line of the play where it’s mentioned, “he struggled and kept his guard up” is the line right after talking about slaves being slaughtered and carted away. But we have no idea what Alexander Hamilton’s attitude toward slavery was when he was a boy growing up in the Caribbean. He worked on a slave ship. I mean, chances are probably pretty high that he was in favor of it; that was his livelihood. So few white people were opposed to slavery, especially white people in the Caribbean. It’s kind of bonkers to suggest that he was somehow suffering and feeling like slavery was an injustice at that time. There’s no historical evidence to back that up. So that’s one example of them presenting it as if, Oh yeah, he was around slavery, but he hated it, and we don’t actually know that that’s the case. John Laurens, sure, was very unusual for being anti-slavery; it’s not really clear that Alexander Hamilton was particularly anti-slavery.
*The Schuyler family had slaves.*
Oh yeah! They were huge slave owners. And one of the points Ishmael Reed made that I loved is that for Elizabeth Schuyler to be a Kim Kardashian of her era involved several slaves preparing her to be so gorgeous at that ball where Hamilton met her. And to say that he didn’t own any slaves? He was fucking poor! Before the Revolution, the dude had no money, so of course he didn’t own slaves. It wasn’t a moral achievement, just an economic reality. Later on, yeah, he does seem to have been anti-slavery, in his involvement with the New York Manumission Society and things like that, so the fact that he didn’t then purchase slaves is one thing. It’s also definitely documented that he used slaves, that he employed slaves. It was really common for people who didn’t own slaves outright to rent slaves.
[…]
*So a huge thing is also the fact that all of the main characters are being played by people of color, but there are no historical people of color represented. *
Yeah, that bothers me a lot!
*How do you think that could have been done, in an alternate-reality version of “Hamilton”?*
I mention in my article that I doubt if he had a historian of color on his staff that this would have happened, but he was working with a sort of prototypical white historian [Hamilton biographer Ron Chernow]. The way that the story of the founding of the country is told erases people of color so consistently, that it was super easy for him to do it this way. So you know, it’s possible it never occurred to him that black people, for example, were involved in the Revolution. Because that’s probably not what he learned in history in school, and it’s certainly not what he would learn from reading Ron Chernow’s biography of Hamilton. And so, it would be very easy for him to just have the impression that there are no black people in this history because they’re just not there.
*Can you explain what the difference is for you between race-blind casting and race-conscious casting, which you argue is what’s actually going on in “Hamilton”?*
Race-blind casting for me would mean something like, We’re going to do William Shakespeare, and we’re just going to cast the roles with whoever is the best person for the part. As opposed to race-conscious casting, which is very much saying, These are parts that are designed for people of color. The musical styles of the singing are not white styles. The dance is not white. It would be so appalling to audiences and the show would have just completely been a disaster if they had cast white people to play all of these roles. We would have been completely disgusted with the show, and it would be this weird cultural footnote that somebody tried to do that. So to suggest that it’s race-blind casting is really disingenuous. And the initial casting calls also tend to indicate that as well, that they weren’t looking for white actors to do these roles to begin with. And Miranda talks about when he was writing the music that he was casting different hip-hop stars in the roles in his head. So from the beginning he wasn’t envisioning that this was going to be a white cast.
*And you identify differences in the way the actors were deployed, in terms of musical style.*
I think that comes out really strongly with King George, who is the only major character who’s portrayed by a white actor [Jonathan Groff], and who sings Beatles-style songs, and is obviously representing the Empire, England, as opposed to the revolutionaries, who are all people of color. … And then in terms of the female casting, the female character who sings in a more hip-hop and R&B style [Angelica Schuyler, played by Renée Elise Goldsberry] is black, and the female character who sings more Broadway-style ballads [Elizabeth Schuyler, played by Phillipa Soo] is Chinese American, but she definitely reads as white, and I think that is not a coincidence.
*Your critique is not just about the way the roles were cast, but also about the way that the supposedly “color-blind” casting has been deployed as a way to buttress the credibility of the project.*
Totally. Basically what the supposedly color-blind casting does, is it gives “Hamilton,” the show, the ability to say, Oh, we’re not just telling old, white history. This isn’t your stuffy old-school history that’s just praising white people. Look, we’ve got people of color in the cast. This is everybody’s story. Which, it isn’t. It’s still white history. And no amount of casting people of color disguises the fact that they’re erasing people of color from the actual narrative.
*Can we talk about the question of the bootstraps narrative a little bit? The musical relies on it, and it’s grafted on this hip-hop aspect of the story …*
This idea that if you’re smart enough, you can write your way out of the projects, kind of a thing? I do think it accounts for why the musical has been so popular among conservative commentators, who fucking love it. The bootstrap ideology is just super strong in how it’s presented; it’s emphasized over and over and over again from literally the very first line of the show, the idea that this man is coming from nothing and he pulls himself up to become this incredibly important person, and that he does it through the power of his mind. One of the first lines says that Hamilton “Got a lot farther by working a lot harder/ By being a lot smarter/ By being a self-starter.” It’s this idea that we have in this country that the American Dream is achievable if you work hard enough, and if you are poor and unsuccessful, it’s because you didn’t try, and therefore you deserve what you have, or rather what you don’t have. And it fits, frankly, with what Miranda said about how he identifies with Alexander Hamilton. In interviews, he’s repeatedly said that he wants to be like him, he looks up to him; in one interview, he also compares him to his father, a political power-broker in New York state, and in some ways you could say that Miranda’s family fits into that bootstrap narrative. His dad came as an immigrant from Puerto Rico and was successful, and you know, his son went to Wesleyan and became Lin-Manuel Miranda! It’s a politically dangerous narrative, because it has the tendency to obscure the ways in which so many people are blocked from those kinds of opportunities.
*My last question is: What’s it like to criticize something that everyone loves?*
[Laughing] Honestly, I haven’t been getting a bad reaction. I’ve only been hearing from people who like the article. I actually heard from [writer] Junot Díaz last night, he just wrote me out of the blue and said, “I love the article, it was really important.”
*That’s amazing!*
Yeah! And I honestly haven’t heard from anyone who says something negative about the article. I think enough people today are exposed to the idea that all your faves are problematic, that there’s no such thing as pop culture that isn’t biased and hugely problematic in all kinds of ways. So I think that helps. I have a good friend who’s a huge fan of the musical who has not mentioned this article to me, though I know she’s read it! I think that’s partially because she doesn’t know what to say because she loves it so much. The last of the four responses to the article that the National Council on Public History is publishing is by [historian] Annette Gordon-Reed [author of several books on Thomas Jefferson and the Hemings family], and her response is awesome. She makes it really clear that she loves the musical, and it’s also problematic in all the ways that I describe.
And that’s how I feel. I’ve listened to the soundtrack I-don’t-know-how-many times. I want to see it again. I think it’s an awesome show. I grew up doing musical theater, and there’s part of me that still fantasizes about being on Broadway. And from the perspective of the theater and working actors, it’s incredible to have a show like this that foregrounds people of color so much, and that it would be such a massive hit that’s going to be touring forever and have regional productions, this is really incredible. It’s an awesome opportunity for so many actors. And I don’t want to downplay that, either. That’s the case with all important cultural works, right? They are not ever all bad.
interview with Lyra Monteiro, A Hamilton Skeptic on Why the Show Isn’t As Revolutionary As It Seems (Slate)
this interview brings up a number of historical & artistic points that are very good to bear in mind when receiving the show & looking at the show in cultural context…
but at the same time, much of it (the bootstrap narrative is the part that I agree with) seems to miss the point. it’s so focused on the past that it fails to account for the present & is largely critiquing the show for not being a completely different show from what it is. Hamilton is not a show that aims to say “we were also there then,” but rather one that says “we are here now.” (look around, look around.) it tells the story about how all the hip-hop outsiders can grab their power & build a nation.
one’s fave will always be problematic & that’s a good thing to remember. & certainly the mainstream media likes to simplify things terribly & puff itself up with how the slightest bit of diversity is absolutely revolutionary. but critiques in this vein tend to presume a lot of ignorance on the part of the artists (who certainly have not forgotten about the issue of slavery, nor ever claimed heroism on that account) & to carry a weird vibe of “[this particular piece of media itself] doesn’t actually mean anything” that is incredibly dismissive toward the people to whom it is, in fact, something very meaningful.
(via thefederalistfreestyle)
You’re never going to understand why this hurts Black people, if you use the ones involved with Hamilton as a buffer to righteous anger about the humanization of brutality and slave owners. Like…whether it means something to you or them really isn’t important in the larger picture, is it? This is a narrative that compounds on anti Black historical perspectives and cites them for it. Annette Gordon-Reed hit the nail on the head.
It’s complicated. One could argue that audiences should be allowed to suspend disbelief and let, say, Daveed Diggs (Thomas Jefferson and Lafayette) do what all actors do: step out of their actual identities and pretend to be other people. The difficulty is that this suspension cannot be total. We must notice that the actors are black, or the play’s central conceit does not work. We are asked to be open to their blackness so that the play’s touted message—that the founding era also “belongs” to black people—gets through. At the same time, we are presumably not to be so open to the actors’ blackness that we feel discomfited seeing them dancing around during the sublime “The Schuyler Sisters” proclaiming how “lucky” they were “to be alive” during a time of African chattel slavery.
There is no question that having a black cast insulates the play from criticisms that might otherwise appear. The genius of black music and black performance styles is used to sell a picture of the founding era that has been largely rejected in history books. Viewers (both white and black) can celebrate without discomfort because black people are playing the men who have been, of late, subjected to much criticism. Imagine Hamilton with white actors—there are white rappers, and not all of the songs are rap. Would the rosy view of the founding era grate? Would we notice the failure to portray any black characters, save for a brief reference to Sally Hemings?
This last point takes us to Monteiro’s critique of the casting, which is more detailed and far stronger than Reed’s. I don’t read her as saying that having a black cast is presumptively wrong. The problem is that the use of black actors excuses the failure to portray black historical figures. Viewers don’t notice that there are no “black” characters because the stage is full of black people. She is also right in saying that selling the cast as depicting “Obama’s America” or “America now” does, unwittingly I think, suggest that the revolutionary period was “white.”
Monteiro’s view that the play does not, as some have said, employ color-blind casting is fascinating. Race is not just about skin color. As she correctly observes, the actors sing in particular “racialized musical forms,” with some who “read as white” singing the “‘white’ music of traditional Broadway” and others, who “read” black, singing black musical forms.
Conforming to American gender and racial rules, the “black” Angelica Schuyler is dynamic, aggressive—“fierce” as the young people used to say–while her “white” sister Elizabeth is demure, ladylike, and, evidently, marriage material. Despite being in love with Angelica, Hamilton marries Elizabeth. Now, Miranda had to change some details to get us to the excellent tune “Satisfied.” The real Angelica Schuyler was married by the time Eliza married Alexander. And despite the play’s breaking of casting barriers, the Hamilton family—including wife and son—read as “white,” in the midst of other “black” characters.
Finally, even if there is only one black character in Hamilton, slavery and race do appear, but primarily to establish Hamilton’s “goodness” for modern audiences. He is depicted as an ardent abolitionist, which he was not. The Manumission Society, of which he was a president, was extremely moderate and not at all an abolitionist outfit. Hamilton is said to have owned two enslaved people and bought and sold them for others. He was much better than other founders on the question, but almost certainly did not believe that the colonists would “never be free” until people in bondage had the same rights as everyone. The John Laurens character sings those words, but the Hamilton character verbally agrees to them. The audience is able to feel better about the era because there was some antislavery sentiment, and they can supposedly draw a direct line from that to where we are now.
This is a narrative that points to Black actors (limited still in theatre) and says ‘We can make them villains too! Let’s make Aaron Burr Black so they feel included’. No one said they FORGOT. We’re just wondering how it’s any better just because of that. We’re wondering why it was made to start with. Why keep a lie going?
Annette Gordon-Reed, Hamilton: The Musical: Blacks and the founding fathers (NPCH)
@fandomshateblackpeople these fans, I swear.
