San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Look around — diverse show is America today
On July 3, Disney+ began streaming a filmed production of “Hamilton,” the Broadway hit about the $10 Founding Father without a father.
For those paying attention, last weekend provided the most stark history lesson since Schoolhouse Rock’s “No More Kings.”
Access to “Hamilton” came the same day President Donald Trump gathered supporters at Mount Rushmore to deliver a holiday message that amounted to a divisive re-election speech. It’s worth noting that during a pandemic that has limited gatherings, such as weddings and funerals, from coast to coast, the president is still hosting public rallies.
By comparison, it has been reported that the Disney+ direct-to-streaming release of “Hamilton” was moved up about a year from its planned release in theaters because of the COVID-19 crisis. If the point was to keep people in front of the TV instead of gathering under the glow of fireworks, it appears to have worked. At 458,796 reported downloads in the United States from June 3 to June 5, Disney+ downloads were 74 percent higher than they had been in the four weekends leading to the holiday weekend. That’s a lot of households microwaving their hot dogs at home.
In “Hamilton,” writer, composer and star LinManuel Miranda takes the story of Alexander Hamilton, the nation’s first secretary of the treasury, and tells it using a variety of musical stylings performed by a culturally diverse cast. Since its Broadway opening in 2015, the breakout musical has been hailed as a brilliant show, even with criticism for glossing over the terrible role slavery had in the formation of our nation — criticism Miranda calls valid. In fairness, Miranda tweeted there’s only so much one can fit into a 2-hour, 40-minute show, and “the sheer tonnage of complexities and failings of these people I couldn’t get.”
He was able, however, to capture the revolutionary politics of the day on the stage, as well as the all-toomortal machinations, romances and heartbreaks, with quick-witted storytelling and the music modern America has come to love. Alexander Hamilton’s rapid-fire intensity feels like Eminem; his wife, Eliza, harmonizes like Beyoncé; and pre-presidential Gen. George Washington drives with the rebellious heat of a pre-Kardashian Kanye West. The musical styles, the faces of the performers, the very human story arc and the familiar historical points all add up to art to which young people can relate because it is familiar.
Many of the same young people probably can’t name the four faces on
Mount Rushmore. Those who can might also be aware that the faces of Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt are carved into a mountain in the Black Hills known to American Indian tribes as the Six Grandfathers. That name is said to have been symbolic of north, south, east, west, above and below, and was one of the many sacred areas in the Black Hills, which were designated to the Sioux in the Treaty of 1868.
Of course, that was before miners found gold in the Black Hills. The treaty was forgotten, the Six Grandfathers became the four presidents, and the United States had a grand monument to democracy. Here, the sheer tonnage of complexities and failings of America are literally set in stone, unlike the oral history of the Native American tribes whose jealousies, romances and heartbreaks weren’t recorded in English because English didn’t exist in their world.
Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and T.R. It isn’t hard to see why this complex place was used as a backdrop to a message of American power. But the four presidents in South Dakota only get about 3 million tourists a year, and a great deal of those come from other countries. Mount Rushmore is a grand monument to the past, but it is also emblematic of our past.
In contrast, “Hamilton” is emblematic of our future, of America’s real power. There is something there — a song, a job, a message or maybe just an evening of entertainment — for everyone.
Most important, it’s accessible; a month’s worth of Disney Plus costs less than $10.