I grew up in the Chesapeake Bay area of Virginia. When I was a kid, my local history was basically American history. Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and James Madison were gods who loomed large over it all.
When I first heard about Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton five years ago, the idea of it kind of repulsed me. I like hip-hop well enough, and the idea of racial recasting doesn’t bother me. But something about the whole project seemed sacrilegious or blasphemous to me as a native Virginian who had absorbed Monticello and Mount Vernon as parts of myself (for better or for worse). It just all seemed…wrong.
I resisted the idea of it for a long time. But I finally listened to the soundtrack a few years ago and started to understand the appeal. It was really smart, and Manuel offered an interesting take on the Founders that made me think about the messiness and intricacies of America’s origins differently. The way Jefferson was handled still pissed me off a little, but the overall project was engaging enough to look past it.
Kristy took Conor and me to actually see Hamilton a year ago today in Kansas City, and my understanding of it was completely transformed. It’s not just the lyrics and the music. The way Miranda layers storytelling (from past to present and back again), the intermingling of personal narratives, the sparse set and elaborate choreography, the way the didactic turns to humor and then to serious storytelling in the span of a single song, the way the lights amplify emotions and crescendos, the way American history is woven into lived-in human experience (with all its ambitions and hunger and weaknesses and successes and failures)…all of it came together in a meaningful way when I saw it live.
And now, a year to the day after we saw it live and a day before Independence Day, Hamilton is on Disney+. It’s important that it’s arriving today. Lin-Manuel Miranda has said that part of the reason he wanted to give this to Disney+ is because he wanted to make it more accessible. His show is great, but it’s incredibly expensive. So as much as the show is a cultural powerhouse, it’s not something everyone can really experience. Starting today, the streaming service that’s found its way into most American homes will change that.
Hamilton’s launch today is also important because of the cultural moment we find ourselves in. In the wake of George Floyd’s and Breonna Taylor's murders and a justified resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, we’ve been having a much-needed and much-deferred conversation about the role of history and memorialization in America. As a native Virginian, it’s a conversation that makes me uncomfortable. (And that’s a good thing.)
On the one hand, I have no patience with memorials and monuments to Confederate soldiers. They were traitors to America, they tried to tear the country apart because they wanted to hold onto slavery, and they lost. On the other hand, I’m not on board with erasing monuments to the men whose ideas shaped the founding of America (even if the hands of slaves literally built the country). Men like Jefferson and Washington and Hamilton are the reason America became what it did. They’re the reason we’re celebrating the Fourth of July tomorrow.
But these men were also deeply imperfect, and we should be completely open to a fuller reconsideration of them—their genius, yes, but also their flaws and failures and humor and ridiculousness. That’s part of what we get from Hamilton. That’s what makes this strange, beautiful musical so perfect for our time. Miranda isn’t burdened by restrictive deference, and his racial recasting makes us think about the social intricacies and complications of our country’s history (right from its beginning). If we can tell the story of America, but let go of a lot of the intellectually dishonest reverence for the godlike stature of the men who made it, then I think we can have a fuller, better picture of who we are as a country. And THAT is something worth celebrating on the Fourth of July.
I know I’m late to the Hamilton party, and I’m probably not saying much that anyone else hasn’t already thought. But I’m grateful that Kristy and Conor (who had been singing the soundtrack together for years before I caved) pulled me along on this ride, because I wouldn’t have gotten nearly as much out of it. And I probably wouldn’t have given it much of a chance. But I’m incredibly glad I did.
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