Hating on Hamilton:

The man, the myth, the... musical?

Today I’m going to talk about Broadway musicals. This won’t happen a lot, I promise.

I’m a pretty standard red-blooded American male. I was born in the late ‘60s and have lived in the southwest region of the US for most of my life.

Which means it’s a fair bet that I have little use for Broadway musicals — and I don’t. Or at least mostly don’t.

For most of my life I would say I thought musicals were at best dumb and useless. At worst, they were just for girls… and for boys who kind acted like girls, if’n ya know what I mean.

But then along came South Park. Matt Stone and Trey Parker clearly love the musical genre and sprinkled that kind of music all through their South Park episodes. Heck, their hit movie South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut is just an animated Broadway musical plus filthy immature jokes, and that thing is awesome!

(Fun fact, the 12 musical notes at the end of South Park episodes, when the former name of their production company “Braniff” is displayed, is from their first movie, an extremely low budget musical called Cannibal! The Musical. It’s hilarious)

So Matt and Trey got me to enjoy the musical genre, albeit in a semi-mocking way. And then my wife piled on, introducing me to a bunch of her favorite musicals. I am still luke-warm about most of them, but must admit that the genre has some gems that are clearly appealing — even to me.

And then on a trip to New York she took me to see Wicked featuring the original cast and I was absolutely blown away. Loved it. Tears streaming down my face in the audience like a little girl.

A little later, on another trip to New York, we saw Matt and Trey’s The Book of Mormon and again, I just loved it.

Which brings me to Hamilton: An American Musical.

On its face, this is clearly a musical I am primed to despise. First of all, it’s a musical, so it’s still more likely than not that I’m not going to enjoy it.

But even worse, it’s about Hamilton, who is, from a libertarian perspective, probably the worst Founding Father there is.

While most of the others were trying to keep the central government small, Hamilton was lobbying mightily for a big, expansive government, fueled by debt, to engage in big crony enterprises that benefit the few at the expense of the many.

A major reason for the big government problems we face today is the fact that Alexander Hamilton (and then Henry Clay, and then Abe Lincoln) carried forward this “American System” that features massive federal infrastructure projects, a national bank, and huge protective tariffs.

Sound familiar?

So the protagonist of this musical is awful. But it gets worse. If you are a history buff, this show should offend the heck out of you because it gets about a zillion things wrong about Hamilton’s life, the Revolutionary War, and the formation of the United States.

And it gets still worse. A whole lot of the music in Hamilton is rap. See above. This here red-blooded American male just doesn’t care about rap music one whit. I’m a classic rock ‘n’ roll guy with a special fondness for alternative and new wave. But rap? Nope. Does nothing for me.

But above all those objections, there’s one glaringly obvious reason to hate Hamilton: An American Musical. It’s the fact that all the Founding Fathers are played by people of color.

In fact, with the exception of a few background dancers who play ancillary characters, the only white male in the original cast is Jonathan Groff who plays (hilariously and brilliantly) the villain, King George III.

Over the last ten or so years, you’ve seen this kind of thing a lot. Producers of movies and TV shows will just inexplicably throw black actors into roles that don’t make any historical or contextual sense, seemingly as part of a DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) campaign.

There’s even been a handful of bizarre re-makes where an entire cast of white actors are replaced by black actors. No joke. It’s a thing.

In this particular case, though, I 100% get Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda’s choice. He clearly wanted to play the starring roll himself. Being that he’s of Puerto Rican descent, it would look kinda weird if the rest of the cast was “historically accurate”.

So in Miranda’s case, the casting choices of Hamilton don’t come across (to me anyway) as “woke” or gratuitous — or worse, a case of some lefty just shoving “diversity” down the audience’s throat.

That’s how I expected to feel about the casting choice but… I didn’t.

That’s partly because the cast was so goddamn good. Particularly Leslie Odom Jr, Christopher Jackson, and Daveed Diggs, who played Burr, Washington and Jefferson/Lafayette, respectively. Those three were incredible.

As was Miranda himself. Again, the whole cast was incredible. So was the music — despite being predominately rap-based. I loved it. I still do. The wife and I routinely re-watch the musical. I play the soundtrack often. It’s that good.

So, that’s my admission to you all. I like Hamilton: An American Musical.

Is there some profound take away from this admission? Not really. Except that you should always keep yourself open to trying new things. You never know. Something you just expected to find revolting might instead become a source of great joy.

Or not. Life is risky that way.

Here’s something you might get great joy from. You also might learn a bunch about American history. Enough to notice all the things wrong with Hamilton, the musical. Check it out — if you dare! Liberty Classroom.

Naturally,

Adam

Keep in touch with me on Twitter(X): @Rerazer