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HAMILTON's DRAW 1 Hamilton's Draw Using Narrative Coherence

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HAMILTON's DRAW 1 Hamilton's Draw Using Narrative Coherence Running head: HAMILTON’S DRAW 1 Hamilton’s Draw Using Narrative Coherence and Fidelity to Explain Mainstream Popularity Logan Glass Willamette University Author Note This paper was prepared for Rhetoric 341W, taught by Professor Collins. HAMILTON’S DRAW 2 Abstract How does an artifact – a movie, a book, or even a person – enter popular culture? The process of rising to fame is so complex, affected by so many factors, it’s tempting to argue that there’s no pattern in fame at all. However, narrative theory provides a concrete approach. An artifact may become widely known because it constructs a narrative that resonates with many viewers. That narrative becomes the key to understanding the artifact’s popularity. This paper uses the 2015 musical Hamilton to illustrate this type of analysis. The musical’s foundations in the American monomyth and its hip-hop presentation create potent narrative fidelity and coherence, which captivate audience members. Drawing on these findings, this paper suggests that in the future, investigating the ways coherence and fidelity function in pop-culture artifacts may explain those artifacts’ significance to the culture in which they exist. Keywords: Hamilton, pop culture, coherence, fidelity, hip-hop, rap, monomyth HAMILTON’S DRAW 3 Hamilton’s Draw Using Narrative Coherence and Fidelity to Explain Mainstream Popularity Trends are often baffling. A single facet of pop culture will rocket to fame, and before anyone realizes, it’s everywhere. It’s the must-have toy, the must-see commercial, the must-hear jingle – and often, its sudden popularity is completely inexplicable. Reactions often vary: some love it, some hate it, and some become exhausted by its constant presence in their lives. But in any case, everyone is talking about it, and no one knows why. One perfect example is Hamilton, the historical hip-hop opera that took over Broadway in 2015. Constantly talked about, widely praised, sometimes criticized, the show became the must- see ticket on the most prestigious stage in America. That’s extremely strange, because it’s the first historical hip-hop opera in a culture that associates both history and opera with obscurity. By all accounts, Hamilton should be a niche interest, not a national phenomenon. But is its place in contemporary social consciousness all that strange? Or is there occasionally method in the madness of fame and virality? In other words, can one isolate the reason Hamilton has become so popular? This study seeks to do exactly that. It argues that Hamilton’s popularity is based on its narrative – specifically, the narrative’s similarity to familiar cultural myths and the tools it uses to increase the audience’s connection to the story. Ultimately, the musical meets two key criteria for an audience’s favor: coherence as a unified story and fidelity to audience expectations. In analyzing this musical from the perspective of narrative theory, this paper demonstrates one way to answer a familiar question: why does everyone suddenly care? HAMILTON’S DRAW 4 Artifact Description Hamilton is a fictionalized account of the life of Alexander Hamilton, a key figure in founding the United States of America. In the first act of the show, Hamilton leaves his Caribbean homeland for the American colonies and meets a group of revolutionaries: the Marquis de Lafeyette, John Laurens, Hercules Mulligan, and Aaron Burr. Hamilton believes that the colonies need an immediate and decisive revolution. However, Burr is more cautious, advising Hamilton and his new friends to be less aggressive and to take a subtler approach to colonial independence. As the show goes on, Burr acts as Hamilton’s foil and rival; where one succeeds, the other fails. It’s worth noting that Burr serves as the narrator, framing Hamilton’s life as a rise and fall Burr witnessed firsthand. Surprisingly, Burr’s regrets about his own actions lead him to portray his bitter enemy in an admirable light, notwithstanding his opening lines describing Hamilton as “a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman.” Hamilton also meets the three Schuyler sisters, Angelica, Eliza, and Peggy. Angelica and Eliza both charm him, but Angelica convinces him to marry Eliza, the more sensible match, even though it breaks Angelica’s heart. Shortly afterward, Hamilton rises to fame in the Revolutionary War, fighting alongside his friends and General George Washington against King George III. Throughout the act, he announces his intention to prove his worth, rise in status, and leave his mark on history. In Act II, having survived and won the war, he encounters new challenges. Thomas Jefferson missed the war but has returned from France to help his friend James Madison fight Hamilton in matters of state. Jefferson, Madison, and Burr each have a vision for the new nation, and Hamilton must square off with them at every turn. Occasionally, he relies on now-president Washington for support, but after eight years, Washington abruptly leaves office and renounces HAMILTON’S DRAW 5 his political influence. Adams takes the office and fires Hamilton, then also chooses to leave the presidency behind. Now, Hamilton is caught between Burr and Jefferson as they clamor for the role. At the same time, Hamilton publicly reveals his affair with another man’s wife, Maria Reynolds, to explain his suspicious behavior and escape false charges of treason from Madison, Jefferson, and Burr. Because of this shame, Hamilton will never be president himself. Then his teenage son Philip is killed in a duel when Hamilton’s advice for deescalating the fight fails. Between that tragedy and the affair, it takes years for Eliza to recover her trust in her husband. In the end, fallen from grace, Hamilton dies in a duel himself – shot by Burr. The surviving characters, including Eliza and Burr, eulogize him: yes, he left his mark on history, but he also left his mark on them. This story is presented as a hip-hop opera: the plot is almost entirely conveyed through rapping, although the genre varies to accommodate a scene’s mood or a certain character’s personality. For instance, Angelica raps as fast as Hamilton, because she’s his quick-thinking intellectual equal, but Eliza sings to counterbalance his brash, decisive style. Likewise, Jefferson is an older politician, from the generation before Hamilton’s, so his introductory song “What’d I Miss?” is a leisurely jazz number to Hamilton’s newer, light-on-his-feet rap. In line with this musical heritage, the show’s original cast was composed mostly of black and Latinx performers. Mostly, the few white actors played antagonists, like loyalist Samuel Seabury and King George III. The show was created by Lin-Manuel Miranda, an American composer and actor. Inspiration came from the 2004 biography Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow; Miranda was drawn to the story of Hamilton’s life and consulted the book as his main historical source. He HAMILTON’S DRAW 6 first performed a song from Hamilton in May 2009 at the White House Evening of Poetry, Music and the Spoken Word. The full show debuted in February 2015 and moved to Broadway in August of that year. A follow-up album called The Hamilton Mixtape, Miranda’s original name for the musical, was released on December 2nd, 2016. It featured unreleased demos from the show’s production and covers of the musical’s songs by popular artists. The musical was a critical favorite and a box office hit. Starting in September 2015, a month after it moved to Broadway, it was constantly sold out, and ticket prices climbed. Thus began the recurring ticket lottery called “Ham4Ham,” wherein a small group of winners could purchase front-row tickets for $10 each – a Hamilton for Hamilton. The lotteries were accompanied by miniature performances by the cast. At first, these performances were live, but they were also broadcast online after the crowds for the in-person shows grew too large and interfered with traffic. The founding of the United States of America is inherently a political story, so there’s no shortage of controversy around Hamilton. In fact, Miranda included certain aspects of his own politics in the show itself. For example, in the final song about the Revolutionary War, French- born Lafeyette and Caribbean-born Hamilton pause and reflect on their imminent victory, crying, “Immigrants! – We get the job done.” And on The Hamilton Mixtape, performers K’naan, Snow Tha Product, Riz MC, and Residente rap about their own mistreatment as immigrants in the song “Immigrants (We Get The Job Done),” sampling Lafeyette’s and Hamilton’s line from the musical. In these ways, the show and its associated media frame immigrants and their social contributions as essential to the nation’s construction. This was a bold stance during the 2016 election cycle, when controversy over immigration to the United States escalated. HAMILTON’S DRAW 7 The cast and crew have even challenged politicians in person, like Vice President-elect Mike Pence, who attended a Broadway performance of Hamilton on November 18th, 2016. After the performance, actor Brandon Victor Dixon, whose character Burr became Vice President by the end of the show, delivered an onstage message from the cast directly to Pence. The statement implored him “to uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us.” Controversy erupted about the message’s propriety. Some supported the cast’s statement, but others, like President-elect Donald Trump, decried it as a personal attack. And finally, while published works from historians demonstrate mixed feelings about the historical accuracy of Hamilton, they generally agree with advocates of racial equality that the show falls short in addressing racism. Many argue that casting people of color in the roles of white people draws attention away from real people of color at the time who could have been included as characters.
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