In 2015, Lin Manuel Miranda, premiered the first showing of America’s Pulitzer prize winning and 2016’s best musical, Hamilton (Hamilton, 2022). The play utilizes high tempo music and intense scenes to narrate the adult life of Alexander Hamilton, the West Indian born statesman and father of the constitution. Upon first glance the play may seem humdrum, but Miranda’s modern twist provides the audience an exhilarating performance that keeps the viewer on the edge of their seat. In general, Broadway plays have always been high culture artifacts due to their niche audience of upper class individuals. For most of society, musicals were most commonly ingested through mundane but cute middle school adaptations, rather than these quintessential performances. However, Miranda’s Hamilton redefined nearly every aspect of what Broadway shows should consist of and what their target audiences could be.
When you hear “musical”, rap is not the first thing that comes to mind. While the music may often be fast paced and engaging, the utilization of rap in a musical was an idea unheard of until Miranda’s Hamilton premiered. In many ways, Miranda’s choice to implement rap is perhaps a metaphor for the character of Hamilton. In society, rap has often had many bad connotations attached to the genre such as promoting violence and misogyny, yet the genre is still loved by members of many marginalized groups due to the ability to express one’s emotions in its purest form. Miranda’s character, Hamilton, exemplifies many of the struggles that most hip-hop artists sing about in their pursuit of success. Hamilton’s utilization of hip-hop and rap may be the primary reason for the show's emergence as popular culture. Kellner (2007) asserts that “mass culture and communications stand at the center of leisure activity, are important agents of socialization, mediators of political reality, and should thus be seen as major institutions of contemporary societies with a variety of economic, political, cultural and social effects”(pp.4). In other words, popular culture serves as a tool to discuss the current political and societal circumstances and how it shapes our lives. By incorporating hip-hop/rap into his musical, Miranda challenged how rap music can and should be utilized in the 21st century. Utilizing music for education and self expression rather than a tool of hate. In this way, Miranda proves Kellner’s point that items in popular culture are “mediators in political reality,” since Miranda’s Hamilton, has caused many in society to reevaluate the role of rap music as a potential tool to relate to the modern generation.
The impact of Miranda’s Hamilton was monumental, not only did Miranda cater to a new audience for musical’s but he merged two forms of culture, popular and high. By incorporating hip hop and rap music into his musical, Miranda was able to integrate two forms of culture that would otherwise not be mixing together: broadway and rap. A large part of Miranda’s ability to do so is his ability to utilize multiple media sources. Most musicals solely operate with one media platform; however Hamilton utilized multiple media forms -- DVD’s, rentable movies, and streaming services like Spotify -- to garner over 3 billion listens across the album. The musical has been extremely popular gaining hype across all social media platforms, which has increased the demand to see the musical across the country, driving ticket sales for Miranda’s musical through the roof. To date, Hamilton has sold over a billion dollars worth of tickets, an exorbitant number that further exemplifies how Hamilton has emerged into popular culture. Storey (2009) defines popular culture as a “hopelessly commercial culture” because as everything gets popularized, it will no doubt be commercialized. By transitioning from a small niche of high culture individuals to commercializing their product, Miranda transforms the theater’s audience from a small subsection of the population to anybody who can stream music or watch/rent movies. Miranda’s production proves that, like rap music, theater can reflect and empower marginalized communities and have a space to be appreciated. Becoming one of America’s most popular and financially successful musicals, Hamilton falls perfectly in line with Storey’s (2009) “widely favored… by many people” belief. Storey (2009) disbelieves in the idea that high culture is “fixed for all time” and Miranda’s Hamilton provides us with a clear example of how niche groups can be influenced by the masses. In other words, high culture will continue to shift and adapt, because all culture adapts over time. If plays can become popular culture, despite their long history in high culture, then almost anything can.
Despite the understood desire for monetary gains, Miranda has accredited much of his desire to produce the show to educate people on who Alexander Hamilton was. Miranda stated in an interview that he saw much of himself in Alexander Hamilton, as many of the struggles Hamilton faced were similar to Miranda’s as an aspiring artist and producer in New York. Miranda stated that he wanted to both educate the world about who Hamiton was, as well as express himself through Hamilton's character. This further exemplifies Kellner’s (2007) view that popular culture stands as an “important agent of socialization.” We all express ourselves in our own individual ways, and for Miranda, he found this through the production of Hamilton. Although the producer may not have meant it at the time, his musical, Hamilton, has served to unite both popular culture and high culture in theater, and may serve as that unifying factor for time to come.
Work Cited:
Shaw, G. (n.d.). How Lin-Manuel Miranda's non-stop work ethic from a young age made 'Hamilton' one of the most successful musicals of All time. Business Insider. Retrieved October 17, 2022, from https://www.businessinsider.com/lin-manuel-miranda-work-ethic-hamilton-success-2017-12#after-he-left-the-show-as-a-cast-member-miranda-kept-the-hamilton-content-coming-with-the-hamilton-mixtape-8
Gibson, K. (2020, July 4). So, why did Lin-Manuel Miranda decide to write a musical about Alexander Hamilton?POPSUGAR Entertainment. Retrieved October 17, 2022, from https://www.popsugar.com/entertainment/why-did-lin-manuel-miranda-write-hamilton-47591527
Kellner, D. (2007). The Frankfurt School. In: Tim Edwards. (Ed). Cultural Theory: Classical and Contemporary Positions. London: SAGE Publications Ltd. pp.49-69.
Negative impacts. impacts of rap music on youths. (n.d.). Retrieved October 17, 2022, from https://impactofrapmusiconyouths.weebly.com/negative-impacts.html
Storey, J. (2009). What is Popular Culture? In: Cultural Theory & Popular Culture: An Introduction. 3rd ed. Harlow, London: Pearson. Pp.1-16
Wikimedia Foundation. (2022, October 11). Hamilton (musical). Wikipedia. Retrieved October 17, 2022, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton_(musical)
Commenter: Carola Agostini
ReplyDeleteAlthough I enjoyed Hamilton, and I agree that it revolutionized the theater landscape, I believe it's important to talk about its representation.
Hamilton is not so much a historical play as it is a reimagining of it. It is fan fiction of how we wished the founding fathers were: modern, progressive, and inclusive. Jenkins describes fan fiction as a text that is created as a way to express counter narratives that viewers develop in response to the original text. “Resistance comes from the uses they make of these popular texts, from what they add to them and what they do to them, not from subversive meanings that are somehow embedded in them”. (Jenkins H. 1988) Precisely this is what happens in Hamilton. Miranda explores counternarratives and resistance in what he adds to the “text” and not so much from historical fact. The diversity of the cast, the rap, the lines condemning slavery (ironically said by characters who were slavers in real life), are all pieces of resistance that Miranda added to the narrative. Although all of this is great, I wonder if it's enough, after all it's not just how we tell a story, it's also what stories we choose to tell.
If we are talking about how it brought marginalized people to the forefront, we must really evaluate the story that he is portraying in this musical. Bringing people of ethnic background to be cast in this story, in my opinion, didn't bring those communities forward. Instead, the casting, glorified and in a way justified choosing to tell Alexander Hamilton’s story. It begs the question as to why representation was such an important part of this musical. Was it as a way to present a counter narrative or was it just for commercial purposes? It could be argued that the use of rap, something very engrained in counter culture, was just coolhunting, a way to make subculture profitable as stated by Powers in his paper about trends. “Cycles of rebellion and “recuperation” ensured that “the fractured order is repaired and the subculture incorporated as a diverting spectacle within the dominant mythology from which it in part emanates.” (Powers D. 2019) In the same manner a diverse cast could be that "spectacle" that deviates from the norm and simultaneously goes back to it. It's a way to market this play as a counter narrative, as rebellion, and ultimately as trendy, in order to make it profitable. My skepticism is even more fueled due to the fact that even with having such a diverse cast , when we look at audience statistics, its primary audience is white upper middle class. This further suggests, as mentioned by Powers, that this production used coolhunting by taking the subculture from minority groups and making it palatable for dominant (in this case white) audiences.
In the end Hamilton was a very revolutionary play for many reasons, whether those reasons were pure or not, can always be debated.