Clickbait garbage "think piece" on Hamilton

I shouldn't even dignify this by sharing it, but I saw this ridiculously verbose and ill-informed piece about Hamilton making the rounds on social media today. Apologies if this has been posted elsewhere on the boards -- I did my best to look through the first few screens and didn't see it.



Even if the author makes a couple of nitpicky-but-acceptable political points here and there, I found it to be mostly ridiculous and infuriating. My takeaway is that he hasn't even *seen* the show, and gives no indication he knows anything about musicals -- or perhaps theater -- at all.

It's not garbage IMHO. It's a critique that reads like a thesis. Totally fair for this writer to call out some of the Hamilton incongruities.

I'm glad to see After Eight branching out and getting freelance writing gigs.

A lot of people consider it rape for someone to have had an affair with their slave as there is no real way a slave could say no. Plus Jefferson is supposed to have started the affair with one of his slaves when she was a teenager and he was in his 40s, making her too young to consent these days.

As for my views on the article itself, it raises some good points and some nonsensical ones. I think it's silly to suggest that journalism (political or otherwise) is what has solely made Hamilton popular. I've been watching Hamilton's journey from the start as I'm sure others on this board have. There were three defining moments in Hamilton's success (or hype) where it took a huge jump - 1. the release of the cast recording 2. the Grammys appearance 3. the Tonys appearance. People are connecting with this material that they can consume in their own homes and then choosing to buy tickets. To suggest that you have to pay $2000 to sit in the worst seat of the house is just plain untruthful. The cheapest Hamilton ticket (excluding the lottery) is affordable to many more people than just the 'government elite' as the writer claims. Yes, it's difficult to get a ticket because that is the way Broadway works with in demand shows.

The slavery issue is a conflicting one. This is a musical, it is a 2 and a half hour piece of entertainment, not a documentary. To include all the nuances of slavery and the views of the people that are depicted in the show would make it much longer and much less a piece of entertainment. I don't agree that Jefferson is portrayed to be likeable. He is - like King George III - the comedic villain of the piece. The audience may laugh along with them, but they're not agreeing with their views. I have seen people praising Daveed Diggs but I have not seen any Hamilton fans praising Thomas Jefferson himself. I do agree that Washington's views on slavery are largely washed over, except for two incredibly subtle moments that you probably wouldn't realise unless you read about the intentions of the actors and writers - the 'not yet' in Yorktown and Washington bowing his head in shame when Eliza mentions slavery at the end. Historians are conflicted about Hamilton's own opinions on slavery, with Ron Chernow writing in his biography (that the show is of course based on) that Hamilton was an ardent abolitionist. I can understand the point of view that there should be more focus on slavery, but then this is a musical about the life of Alexander Hamilton who whilst surely encountering slavery throughout his life, seemed to not let the issue impact his life too much one way or the other. If this musical was entitled 'Washington', I would understand their point further.

As for his comparison to the American's Got Talent thing, that's just completely stupid and not even worth talking about. The article also completely erases the fact that Hamilton means a lot to many people of color.

Updated On: 7/26/16 at 01:24 AM

Also the bit where he says 'most of the African-American performers are just dancing in the background'...well yes ensembles do tend to form the majority of a cast.

He's pointedly incorrect about that "most of the African-American performers" thing. Of the main original cast, Renee, Oak, Chris Jackson, Daveed and Leslie are all African-American (I believe Jasmine is mixed). In fact, I counted each member of that cast, and their ethnicities were as follows.

African-American: 12 (3), Hispanic: 5 (2), Caucasian: 4 (1), Asian: 1
(numbers in parentheses are swings / understudies).

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Updated On: 7/26/16 at 02:11 AM

Huh. Well that was a frustrating article. In large part, it's actually an intelligent and compelling read that, I think, raises some incisive questions about racism and diversity in America. He's using "Hamilton" to make a much broader point, which is a perfectly valid rhetorical choice - the problem is that his criticisms of the show are really weak and thus undermine the rest of the arguments he's making. The "Hamilton" stuff ends up feeling shoehorned in as a way of adding "controversy" and thus garnering extra readers. (Hey look, it worked.)

I mean, I could certainly do without the author's condescension. Are New York Times writers and aspirational 15-year old kids really the "worst people in America"? Even as hyperbole, that's a pretty stupid claim. Of course, by making it sound like "Hamilton" is only admired by the "elite," the show becomes easier to dismiss.

Unlike the author, however, I have heard people quoting "Hamilton" - and I don't exactly live among taste-makers and Buzzfeed writers; nor are my friends and family the type of people who have ever felt beholden to those types. To put it another way, I'm quite confident that my nieces and nephews aren't joyfully singing along to "Hamilton" because The New Yorker told them that that's the thing to do.

I also think he misjudges the artistic merits of the show, but that's of course a much more subjective argument. I have no problem with someone criticizing the show - I don't quite love it myself - but his attempts at criticism only seem to reveal his own ignorance of the conventions of musical theater and the realities of live theater in general. Yeah, $1200 tickets are expensive, and I've been critical of the skyrocketing ticket prices (even if I understand the economic forces that drive them) - but I, who am rather decidedly not a part of the elite, still managed to get my tickets for under $200 just a few months ago. He also ignores the producers' efforts to make the show more widely accessible - see, for example, the $10 lottery and the free tickets for schools.

Yeah, most people still won't get to see a production of the show for years - but "wider America" does, in fact, already have access to the show in the form of its perfectly affordable cast recording. And by most accounts, us "non-elites" are loving what we hear.

Anyways... It's a thoughtful piece that invests too much in a weak takedown of a widely loved show - which is too bad, because otherwise it has some interesting things to say. Of course, without the "Hamilton" connection, it's unlikely that anyone here would be talking about it. So... Success?

Updated On: 7/26/16 at 02:33 AM

"And perhaps *I'm* the closed-minded one to put my hands over my ears when someone is this abrasive and obnoxious."

Perhaps. I wonder, though: you used the expression, "clickbait garbage," as the title of your thread. Would you consider that to be "abrasive and obnoxious?"

After Eight said: "Perhaps. I wonder, though: you used the expression, "clickbait garbage," as the title of your thread. Would you consider that to be "abrasive and obnoxious?"

Yes, I probably would. Sometimes I fall victim to the human tendency to fight fire with fire.

Updated On: 7/26/16 at 09:44 AM

I actually didn't finish this piece the first time I saw it because I couldn't tell if it was an ignorant clickbait outrage piece or a satire of an ignorant clickbait outrage piece. I just now finished it because of it positive response here, and I have to say, the author does himself no favors by burying his real points after multiple paragraphs of ignorance and hyperbole. Such as:

1. Someone who can't tell the difference between "when I say ho, you say yo" and Hamilton shouldn't be writing about hip-hop, musical theatre, or possibly any music at all. It's also a common racist criticism of hip-hop that it's all the same and it's all stupid. It's unfortunate that his opening salvo mirrors a racist trope.

2. Only media elites have seen the show? According to a quick back of the envelope calculation, approximately 540,000 tickets were sold in Hamilton's first year. That doesn't include its run at the Public. So, really? Only media elites have seen the show? He also may be completely unaware of the cast album, given how much he carries on about how no one outside of the media elite could possibly be aware of the show.

3. He dismisses the possibility that people actually like the show. It's a favorite gambit of After Eight. It's tacky and insulting when he does it and it's tacky and insulting when Alex Collins does it. Mr. Collins spends many paragraphs speculating about why people like the show and never seems to consider the possibility that people like it because it's really good.

4. He's completely dismissive of the people of color who wrote the show, star in the show, and have enjoyed the show (except for the Obamas). Does he even acknowledge them as people with agency? His sneering dismissal of Hamilton without acknowledging how intensely many people of color have responded to it is pretty ugly.

5. He's been quietly told that most African-Americans in the show are nameless dancers. He has no idea what he's talking about.

On to his actual points:

"Blackwashing" is an interesting issue. I've hoped someone would write an intelligent, incisive article about that potential critique of Hamilton, but this is not that article. His other critiques seem to want Hamilton to be more of a history lesson that it is. I think it's worth discussing what Hamilton leaves out and why, even in a critical way. But this article does it really sloppily and misses so much of the point of the show that it undermines what he's trying to say. A show like Hamilton can serve as a gateway to deeper, more thoughtful reading or writing about Hamilton and the founding era without demanding or expecting that Hamilton itself will include a sophisticated analysis of economic protectionism.

One of Lin's goals was to make the founding era interesting, alive, accessible, as opposed to the dull dry education a lot of us got. He did that (for many of us). And it's up to the audience and teachers and writers to take that interest and channel it and build on it and critique it. I would love to see more critical analysis of Hamilton, but ultimately I think this article is a complete failure.

It's not bad writing, but he engages in some rather obvious rhetorical fallacies regarding this work with what appears to be an agenda.

Minerva, "Chris" is a generic enough name that I felt the need to differentiate (probably because I wrote out that list before I looked at the cast list to count their ethnicities and couldn't recall if there was another Chris in the cast). All the other people I mentioned have unique enough names or are more widely known, I didn't mean to suggest he's less important.

Also, my main issue with the article itself was that it seems as if he's also never seen the show or even listened to the cast recording but is for some reason super-judgmental of it. Why someone would write a critique of something they haven't experienced in any way is beyond me (even After Eight allegedly sees things before giving his overblown opinion on them).

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