Three Reasons Spongebob the Musical on Broadway is better than Hamilton:
It’s not about slave owners.
An official television production was put on Nickelodeon for people to watch for free, and can currently be found on YouTube or Xfinity (until February 5th), making it far more accessible for people who can’t afford Broadway tickets.
It’s not about slave owners.
With Hamilton, they literally condemn slavery. Lin makes it a POINT to show that what these guys did was not cool.
Laurens is constantly singing “slavery is bad!!!”
Eliza Hamilton may have owned slaves, but she was a FREAKING abolitionist later in her life. She made it a point to say that she WAS AGAINST slavery.
Thomas Jefferson is made a mockery out of, to finally condemn him and they bring it up.
It is about slave owners, but they do CONDEMN the slave owners.
In the finale, when Eliza brings up slavery, Washington puts his head down in shame and steps back, another nod that Washington was NOT all that great. They make the final time we see him ABOUT the fact he was a slaveowner.
And the reason why Lin casted Daveed into the role of Thomas, a slaveowner is actually pretty freakin genius. In media, you’re used to seeing “white person owns black person” because that’s what happened. But we’ve kinda become desensitized to that a little because that’s what we’ve been seeing. Lin casted a black guy to play the slave owner and there’s a disconnect.
There’s supposed to be a disconnect.
It’s like “wait what?!? Why is the black guy owning the black people??? That’s not right! They’re the same!” Yeah, because we as humans are the same. We are ALL humans and racism should not exist because we are all the same!
This might be the dumbest Hamilton take I’ve ever read on this site, which is saying a lot because this is a website of dumb takes about that stupid goddamn play.
First let’s end the baseless lie that Hamilton the Musical condemns slavery. I have listened to this musical more times than I can count, seen it multiple times in person, and the closest it comes to “condeming” is a throw-away line to Jefferson from Hamilton about how he doesn’t “pay for labor”. One slave owner sorta kinda maybe pointing fingers at another slave owner in an argument that ultimately says nothing about the moral depravity and real lasting impact of slavery and the role of every one of these men and women played in keeping it alive for so goddamn long is not in any way a condemnation. Neither is a white man whose anti-slavery impact was basically nothing saying “but wait, isn’t slavery, like, bad” to a bunch of white people who kept on owning them anyway. But it is the extent of this plays brave and bold stance on slavery.
Hamilton is split cleanly into good guys and bad guys. Only bad guys like Jefferson are vaguely associated with slavery (and again that still only happens all of twice in the whole damn second half of the play, not every other word like these people would have you believe) while Washington and Hamilton and his family are the “good guys”, so it doesn’t come up at all, or worse they are laughingly painted as staunchly anti-slaverly. Most of these people either owned slaves or, as in Hamilton’s case, actively participated in the slave trade, a fact that conveniently never gets brought up. Washington’s slave ownership is not once mentioned, nor is any of the Schuyler family’s. How the fuck can a play condemn slaverly when it won’t even be honest about which characters were slave owner?
Hamilton doesn’t even do the bare minimum as a social commentary, as evidenced by the fact that most people walked away with even bigger hard-ons for the founding fathers, calling them their precious cinnamon rolls and drawing woobifyed pictures of them them as anime chibis and flower crown children. Go into the Hamilton tag right now and you’ll see hundreds of examples. Missing from all that: any actual, meaningful analysis of the slave-owning history of these men and women. Because this play only served to comfort people’s already held beliefs that the slave owners who colonized this country were really good people deep down who just made the itty bitty mistake of owning people, when that is the exact opposite a play about slave owners should make you feel.
To be honest I’m too tired to argue. So go ahead, freedom of speech and all that jazz.
Lmfao, you’re the one who started all this with your breathless defense of slave owners, don’t get all pouty because your opinion is demonstrably shit and easily refuted. It’s an ugly look.
