Posted on 01/14/2017 9:45:23 AM PST by OddLane
I don't think there's a slight bit of hyperbole or exaggeration involved when I say that Hamilton, the awful musical that millionaire New Yorkers are required by law to throw away thousands watching, represents everything that was wrong with America in 2016. Allow me to make the case.
First, there's the music. I'm admittedly not much of a hip-hop aficionado, but I know shit from Shinola. From my perspective the art form has more or less been going downhill since Strictly Business (the EPMD record, not the Tommy Davidson vehicle), but there have been some highlights worth mentioning, mostly thanks to Ice Cube and an army of Wu bangers.
The point I'm trying to make is that, even to untrained ears such as mine, Hamilton is particularly bad. On first take, I thought it sounded a bit like a University of Iowa freshman—the kind who only listens to "real hip-hop"—attempting his first mixtape. One of my Twitter followers corrected me, however. It's closer to a Braintree elementary school making a rap song for parents' night. The latter description hints not merely at the simple, formulaic quality of the material, but also the cloying, bourgeois quality of it all. From the reference to "ten-dollar Founding Father without a father" to "when the British taxed our tea we got frisky," the whole affair sounds more like something made by precocious children than a professional composer...
(Excerpt) Read more at reason.com ...
One of my favorite songs ever is “What I Did for Love”.
-PJ
I liked phantom, but I was tired and the music with the mood lighting put me to sleep. briefly... hahha
There are a variety of genres of music in Hamilton. I assume you haven’t seen it or heard it.
Troll much?
I was, of course, referencing your comments awa the production.
I reply to your comment, and you accuse me of being a troll.
Let it go, snowflake.
Trading insults. How have we been at this site for 15+ years and not crossed swords?
OMG, I have to watch that again!
When I knew nothing about the play “Hamilton” and heard they his character played by a black man, I had to laugh, because...in the end, it really is just entertainment.
But what really made me laugh was the concept of casting someone like Chris Farley as Martin Luther King...
OMG, can you just hear the caterwauling!!!!!
I wouldn’t call your niece weak minded simply because she is 13 years old, and you don’t know if this will stick with her.
But it is absolutely true that there are many, MANY, weak minded adults who get their history from the television. That is their version of history.
I have not seen it, and I don’t expect to. The deeper issue is that entertainment has become the prime source of knowledge about history for many people.
Entertainment is fine. It can be whatever it wants. I rolled my eyes and shrugged my shoulders, I wasn’t offended or irritated at this artistic license, and I did get a chuckle out of wondering if it would be so “edgy” and acceptable to have Chris Farley play Martin Luther King in a musical.
The part where I DO have reservations is the insidious erosion of accurate and serious historical perspective by movies and plays that are “based on a true story”. For a lot of people, that is their knowledge of history, what they see on the “History Channel” or some movie out of Hollywood.
I think it is serious mistake to dismiss that.
That was a well-executed slap. I like it!
She’s great. I also saw her in “A Day in Hollywood/A Night in the Ukraine”. Did you know that Priscilla Lopez was Donna McKechnie’s understudy in “Company”?
Her rendition of “What I Did for Love” is THE rendition.
Unfortunately, you tend to hear “Music of the Night” or the title song, both of which are terrific. But IMO, the best song in “Phantom” is “All I Ask of You”.
My understanding is that Lin-Manuel Miranda worked hard to maintain historical accuracy, and has clearly acknowledged when something was “compressed” for the play. He worked closely with the author of the book that inspired the play, to ensure historicity.
Were there any things in the play that you found disturbingly historically inaccurate? Besides obvious artistic choices such as the ethnic diversity among the actors ...
Seriously, I’ve seen this play 3 times, and read books and articles on it. We conservatives should be slow to dismiss this work of art as progressive revisionism. It really is quite amazing, in so many way. It makes important history accessible to those who otherwise could not care any less about the founding of this nation.
If you read the entirety of my post, my issue was not with the play itself, per se, since I regard it as entertainment and nothing more than that.
Nothing personal against any of them, but I wouldn’t trust any rendition by anyone in the entertainment industry to be accurate, no matter how accurate they say they want to be.
The innate nature of doing a play like that forces an author to make up dialog. There is no other way to do it, since verbatim conversations are rarely available in historic documentation.
But that isn’t the issue I have-the issue I have is that we have a large portion of the population that views things like this as...history. They just accept it as such.
In the case of this play, I do have an issue with portraying someone like Hamilton as a black man, not because I think black men are bad or incapable, but it is different than portraying Santa Claus as black.
In history, what people did in their life is often a direct offshoot of their experiences in life. While it is true that Alexander Hamilton was a bastard who was defensive about it his whole life (and had it used frequently against him as an epithet by his enemies), I would think that being born and rising to an adult as a black male in the 16th century would be quite a different experience and be a completely different story than than the true story of a man growing to adulthood as a white bastard in the 16th century. And to me, that makes a difference.
Jesus was a real person who existed. He was a white, or at least a Caucasian more than he was black, but that doesn’t stop some from insisting he was a black man, or changing his racial makeup to suit the exigencies of today’s world. I see the same thing in things like this play. It may just be entertainment to me, but to other people, it is history.
That is the issue I have.
Not a fan of Shakespeare’s history plays? ;-)
The role of Hamilton isn’t played by a black man, by the way, either in NYC or Chicago.
And as far as what Jesus looked like, he was Middle Eastern, so he probably looked like a typical Middle Easterner: http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a234/1282186/
Jesus, was, by ancestry and geography, a caucasian, but with characteristic tones and facial varieties of that region, or so I am told.
Anyway, we get off point. My stand is that formal history (and historic theories) are subject to review and pertinent criticism (if that peer review actually happens anymore anyway) where theater and movies are not. Not to mention the difference in impact in a visual portrayal that imprints people.
I am a purist. If Margaret Mitchell wrote “Gone With The Wind” with the lead characters of Rhett and Scarlett as rich white people, then that is what they should be.
It doesn’t mean people can’t do it for entertainment purposes, I have no problem with that. But I maintain that the impressionability of people via either stage play or movies is not to be discounted or minimized.
It is an issue, IMO.
Good God, I just re-read this thread, I am trying to be so serious here...this is where eight years of liberal rule has taken me!
I DO view it as “entertainment”...
By the way, thank you for the link...:)
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