It’s Hamilton day.
By now you’ve noticed that the biggest musical event in at least my lifetime has come to Disney+. Auspiciously the day before today, July 4th, 2020, the United States Independence Day. Of course, it’s no mistake. Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last five or six months, you know that the United States is going through quite a rough time. It’s not just the US, of course; the global pandemic has touched just about every country on the map and the righteous civil unrest that started in Minneapolis has spilled over to just about every major city across the world as well. In this time of global fear and anxiety, the release of Hamilton’s live capture to Disney’s streaming service was pushed up to July 3rd from October 15th, 2021—a date so far into the future it might as well have been the distant fantasy of flying cars and an interactive Ronald Reagan selling me a Pepsi from Back to the Future II, which I was promised five years ago. The nation needed a pick-me-up, and in the way they could, Disney and the cast of Hamilton delivered it.
If you’ve never seen Hamilton or heard its soundtrack before, you’re probably still aware of it. Maybe you have that annoying friend who loved to point out that he saw it with the original cast. Maybe he saw Lin-Manuel’s penultimate show. If you know me, then you know I was that asshole. That asshole who saw it a second time and still was able to brag about seeing it with the original cast. “I’m not even into musical theater,” I’d say. “Don’t really care for musicals” would roll off my tongue. “Frozen was fine, but it was all songs,” I’d mutter, before ducking. But now everyone can see the amazingly talented original Broadway cast for the cost of a Disney+ subscription. I don’t mourn the loss of exclusivity—I’m overjoyed that this is available to millions more people than could see it in New York. Hamilton isn’t just a great musical, it isn’t just a great story, it’s one of the most important stories that’s being told right now, especially because of the way it’s being told.
Today I watched Hamilton for the third time, this time sitting on my couch in chinos and a long sleeve t-shirt instead of a shirt and jacket, barefoot instead of in brogues. I’d listened to the soundtrack dozens of times on my phone, and my favorite song “Yorktown” dozens more on its own (sadly, this song is censored in the Disney+ version, which got me because it’s my favorite verse in the whole show and it misses a little punch without that fuck in it). And the first thing that struck me is that the show didn’t get less powerful upon repeat viewings the way mysteries become less compelling or comedies become less funny, but rather it was more powerful than ever. Knowing the fates of all involved, seeing this story of men coming together to stand for their principles and fight tyranny had a new meaning to me. Seeing this cast of Black, Latinx, and Asian actors and actresses put on this show does so much more than just the sounds of their voices do when pumped through my headphones. Seeing these actors telling the story of not just Alexander Hamilton, but of the birth and infancy of a nation that was built on the backs of immigrants and slaves carries so much more weight than just hearing it. Especially as I watched a multicultural sea of people mask up and spill on to the streets demanding justice over the entire past month in cities and towns across the world. Now those standing for justice aren’t just men; it’s men, women, nonbinary people, trans people, Black people, Latinx people, Asian people, and tons of white people marching in the streets, young and old, responding to the senseless murder of a Black man, the latest in a pattern of police brutality and militarization, often times racist (particularly against Black people), standing together for change and progress. Standing together against injustice.
Just like Hamilton, Laurens, Lafayette, and Mulligan. And this is why, in this moment, Hamilton is one of the most important pieces of media you can watch.
You can watch Hamilton and simply be in awe of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s genius, who wrote the lyrics and music to the entire show. You can simply hear the connections between the songs and just enjoy how masterfully crafted every single word and note is. When one single word of a song reminds you of another and paints a picture by connecting two different people on opposite sides of fidelity, when Burr cockily notes that Angelica Schuyler’s disgust of him means that they’ve discussed him, when Hamilton poignantly attacks Burr for being a man who stands for nothing and would fall for anything, when the wisdom of Washington telling Hamilton that dying for something is easy and living for it is harder stabs you right in the heart, you can just enjoy this show for how incredible it is. But you can see so much more here.
Miranda could have told the story of the American Revolution. Of Alexander Hamilton’s rise from orphan to war hero at the side of Washington. He could have stopped at “Yorktown” and have told a wonderful, triumphant war story. “Yorktown” is the moment the war movie cuts away and we get to be Americans in unison, winning the war for freedom for all (in a country that still had slavery and where women’s rights were a joke). Later today, I’ll probably fire up Independence Day and get my metaphorical pom-poms out for American excellence and Will Smith’s quips, but that’s not what Hamilton is about. Hamilton doesn’t just tell the triumphs.
Hamilton and Burr are flawed characters and it tells the story of two men who could have been friends, who might have been friends, but who end up standing across from each other with pistols trained. Hamilton is our hero, yes, but Burr is the main character. It shows the importance of perspective in tales of heroes and villains. It tells of Hamilton’s failures as a husband and father, it reminds us that no person who ever had their name on a statue or a dollar bill is perfect. Hamilton reminds us that those we exalt are just like us. That it’s okay to acknowledge the humanity in historical figures rather than canonize them and act as if their legacy is flawless. That it’s okay to be honest about our history. It is flawed, the people in our textbooks are flawed, the textbooks themselves are flawed (we all know the myth of Washington cutting down the cherry tree, but we rarely talk about his slave ownership), that our nation is flawed, and that it’s okay to be flawed, to note our flaws, and to work to correct them. It reminds us that our flaws don’t undo us, but that they are part of us, and it’s dishonest to ignore them. Lin-Manuel Miranda ends his masterpiece not with a shout of victory, but a reminder.
And Hamilton is acutely aware of that fact, stating several times that we have no control over who tells our story and what aspects of our story get told. I’m of the age that my first lesson about Alexander Hamilton was a Got Milk commercial where a peanut butter sandwich and a lack of a glass of milk to wash it down kept an Alexander Hamilton enthusiast from winning $10,000 because he couldn’t clearly get the words “Aaron Burr” out of his mouth. It was an anecdote, an oddity of American history. When I first heard that a hip hop musical was coming out telling the story of that guy, I checked my calendar to make sure it wasn’t April 1st. And yet, what came of it was not just the best musical I’ve ever seen, but one of the most important. I can go on and on and tell you what my favorite songs are and what my favorite lines are, how Hercules Mulligan’s verse gets me off the mat when I need someone to tell to get off the mat, how Hamilton touches on both my hopes and fears, or how it inspires me and leaves me petrified at the same time. But more than anything, I want to leave you with the importance of Hamilton. That in this moment in history, we must note that freedom means freedom for all, that honesty still matters and has always mattered, and more than anything, a few principled people can stand together against any odds and make a difference.