"Hamilton" was peak-Obama
Watching it for the 1st time 10 years later
On MLK / Inauguration Day (January 20th), I watched Hamilton for the first time1.
Odd combination of events for sure, but in some ways a very apt day to participate in yet another era of defunct/corrupt American history.2
I didn’t see it on Broadway, I watched the Disney+ special from 2020 (what a time!), but the show itself was from 4 years earlier right before the original cast performances stopped in July 2016 (so innocent!)
And now it’s been 10 years since it began ironically on January 20th (off-Broadway).
My daughters’ have been getting into Broadway musicals since the Wicked movie and my wife introduced them to the Hamilton songs and then my older daughter started learning about the colonies and the Declaration of Independence and probably Hamilton too b/c zeitgeist and New York City reasons.
Because I’m an upper-middle-class college-educated person, I had heard of Hamilton. I remember the buzz and the rush for tickets once the touring show began.
Okay, yes so believe me, that even though my wife had seen Hamilton somewhere and I remember friends discussing the songs, I actively don’t participate in “trends” or at least those type of trends, I also don’t like musicals, it’s weird to start breaking out in song, at least to tell a story, but that’s my opinion.
But because I’m a good father and a devoted husband…I finally sat down and watched Hamilton. There was Lin Manuel Miranda and Leslie Odom, Jr. and Anthony Ramos (spoiler alert — did you know he played 2 sets of characters in the show?)
To be fair to myself, I have seen In The Heights (the movie with Anthony Ramos, the one Lin Manuel Miranda also wrote) and I really liked it, but I really didn’t know Ramos was in Hamilton (this sounds incredulous to big fans of all this, I realize).
Do you remember when people said the big “Ham” lol?
When we were done with the movie/play and my kids were buzzing about it, I turned to my wife and said “That was peak Obama” and there is no way that musical would be as popular today.
It would *still* probably get made, the songs are good and it’s catchy and novel, but it wouldn’t be a hit in the same way.
The critical scorn of making white historical figures into people of color would reach a Fox-News-Turning-Point-USA fever pitch and regular people wouldn’t be as into it.
I’m glad it was made and Obama’s presidency gave a certain permission for that to be made, but it was a cultural moment, unity of a different set, when it seemed like re-writing history was both fiction and fact and now it’s gone.
Obama’s presidency created a cultural space where it made sense—where there was a kind of optimism about America’s past and future, where reinterpreting history with a multicultural cast felt like progress.
Hamilton hit at just the right time: the perfect mix of prestige, novelty, and meme-ability into the most awesome, cool after-school special ever made at a time when the Presidency and who could be part of the executive branch was under review.
It had the same kind of technocratic, “well actually…” skepticism that fueled the rise of Malcolm Gladwell, the same sunny, can-do energy that made Leslie Knope a hero, now cringe.
About 3 days after mentioning this to my wife, I listened to this Indiecast podcast where they were going over the music of 2015 and the host said Hamilton: The Original Soundtrack was the most 2015 thing ever and was also a relic from the Obama age.
I couldn’t find the exact transcript, but one of the podcasters wrote an article mentioning it as a cultural relic at least:
But now? That brand of uplift feels... out of step, for better or worse.
At some point, we are going to take my kids to see Hamilton on Broadway, and pay $150 per ticket for the right to do it.
But even so, Hamilton is a time capsule. A brilliant, wildly successful time capsule. But a time capsule nonetheless.
You may not believe this chain of events, but I will tell it anyway.