1. The Interested Story-Teller

Alexander Hamilton walked down the ladder carrying a book in one arm and a sac in the other, curious and thrilled. He just finished the journey from an obscure Caribbean island to New York. He walked into the crowd, and vanished into the dark. The ensemble narrated,

“The ship is in the harbor now, see if you can spot him.
Another immigrant, comin’ up from the bottom.”

(“Alexander Hamilton”)

Hamilton and Burr each sat on a chair looking into distance, singing about their new born children. Coming back from the revolution they just won, they suddenly turned from fearless war heroes into helpless new fathers. Both being orphans, they so sang,

“My father wasn’t around. I swear that I’ll be around for you.
I’ll do whatever it takes. I’ll make a million mistakes.”

(“Dear Theodosia”)

These are two scenes from the musical, Hamilton. Lin-Manuel Miranda, the mastermind behind the musical talked about how he related with Hamilton. Miranda’s family were immigrants from Puerto Rico living in New York. He grew up with the same American dream that Hamilton had: “In New York you can be a new man.” Also like Hamilton, he had a lonely childhood. Miranda’s father came to the United States for his PhD studies, and was busy raising the family. Miranda recalled how he “learned to keep [his] own company,” reading and writing. In 2014, as Miranda was writing the play, his son Sebastian was born.

It is then no surprise that Miranda signified these two episodes in Hamilton’s life in the play- and no surprise that Miranda decided to write about Hamilton in the first place. As I talked about the play with Professor Fitz, my other history professor, she said, “It is an amazing show, but the historian in me would sometimes jump out and say- this is not what I would stress in his life!”

That is to say, Miranda is telling a wonderful story, but it is by no means an objective story. In fact, there could be no “objective” stories be told: Even if Professor Fitz wrote her own version of Hamilton, it would inevitably betray her own point of view.

The point of view of the author leads to limits in observation. As Kant makes clear, every statement essentially has to be a judgment, with the potential to add “I think” to the front, for it necessary comes from a human perspective. Limited by our finiteness, we never see what happens when we are not looking, and we can never truly put ourselves in someone else’s shoes. That is, reality is always messier and more mysterious than any story.

Miranda himself made this clear in the song “The Room Where It Happens,” which talked about a deal Hamilton cut with Jefferson and Madison:

“No one else was in the
The room where it
happened.
No one really knows
how
The game is played.
The art of the trade,
How the sausage gets
made.
We just
Assume that it
Happens.”

(“The Room Where It Happens”)

Then Burr started narrating the situation, with every sentence starting with “Thomas claims,” for the only source was Jefferson’s account.

In addition to the subjectivity in observation, and more importantly, there is another layer of subjectivity in story-telling. Susan Sontag talks about photography as “selective transparency,” and prose and painting, “selective interpretation.” Even in photography which seemingly resembles the reality to the utmost degree, the artist necessarily selects. Sontag gives the example of Farm Security Administration photographic project, and how they “would take dozens of frontal pictures of one of their sharecroppers subjects until satisfied that they had gotten ‘just the right look’ on the film.” (Sontag, 6)

As a result, even if you get all the details right, the time, the action, you have the recording or the video tape, you cannot “simply” tell the story because every story, like every photograph, has a frame. The story-teller gets to posit the frame, from his or her own perspective even when unconsciously so. You pick and choose, zoom in and zoom out, and put things in order.

That is, as Bell Hooks sharply points out, the story-teller is always an interested one: the stance is always set already, however subtle. Miranda led us through Hamilton’s life, watching how hard he worked, and the human struggles he went through from loss of friends and family, to test on his fidelity. And such stance influences the audience: We are rooting for Hamilton because Miranda is, just like the audience was rooting for OJ Simpson because the press was (Hooks, On OJ Simpson).

 

2. Who Has the Mic: The Unevenly Distributed Story-Telling Power

George Washington, the man who was always taller than everyone else around him, spoke a monologue as everyone else froze:

“Now I’m the model of a modern major general,
the venerated Virginian whose men are all
Lining up, to put me up on a pedestal,
Writin’ letters to relatives
Embellishin’ my elegance and eloquence.”

(“Right Hand Man”)

Later, he told Hamilton:

“History has its eyes on you.”

(“History Has Its Eyes On You”)

For people like Washington and Hamilton, history indeed has its eyes on them: Today we still learn about them in textbooks, and even see their life’s anecdotes as important.

However, history does not have its eyes on most other people.

Before Washington entered the scene, the ensemble sang:
“Thirty-two thousand troops in New York harbor” – these were the silent thirty-two thousand. (“Right Hand Man”)

Before Thomas Jefferson came down the ladder, people in white gloves were busy pushing the ladder, and cleaning the floor and handle- these were the silent African slaves.

(“What Did I Miss”)

As Stuart Hall points out, the means of culture making is concentrated in the few, who makes the “power-bloc,” while the rest makes “the popular forces.” (Hall, 238) Bell Hooks draws the line with the term “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy,” which can shed light on both Hamilton and Washington’s time and our time (Hooks, “White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy”).

At Washington and Hamilton’s time, most women and African American were illiterate, and few people had the leisure to write, even fewer had access to publication. Even when literacy and access to publication are more prevalent today with basic education and internet, and thus people excluded from the dominant class are provided with instruments to tell their stories, the dominant class still, not unlike centuries ago, has the microphone for their stories to be heard, enshrined by the school and education system as well as literary and scholarly apparatus (Hall, 234).

 

3. The Redrawing of the Line: The Power of a Good Story

Although Hall stresses that the relationship between the power-bloc and the popular forces persists throughout history, he also acknowledges that on the one hand, it is not unilateral, and on the other hand, it is not static. The definitions that the power-bloc makes “do not function on us as we are blank screens,” as there are tension and resistance when the people carve out their space (Hall, 233). When they succeed, they redraw the line between the forces: “Today’s culture breaks can be recuperated as a support to tomorrow’s dominant system of values and meanings.” (Hall, 236)

Usually, the resistance and mobility are accomplished by a good story.

A man can be lifted by a good story, for the microphone does not only go to the powerful, but also goes to the extremely talented (and lucky, perhaps). Hamilton sang about his transformation from a penniless boy to the center of power:

“When I was seventeen a hurricane
Destroyed my town.
I wrote my way out,
Wrote everything down far as I could see.
I wrote my way out.
I looked up and the town had its eyes on me.
They passed a plate around.
Total strangers
Moved to kindness by my story.
Raised enough for me to book passage on a ship that was New York bound…
I wrote my way out of hell.
I wrote my way to revolution.”

(“Hurricane”)

A group of people can be recognized with a good story, for articulation, or the strive to be heard, is already resistance, and a good story humanizes and connects. In 2010, as a series of LGBT teenager suicides took place, thousands of LGBT people uploaded videos with the title “It Gets Better,” narrating their experience and encouraging the young. The population that supported same-sex marriage increased almost ten percent from 2010 to 2011 after the project (Fenrich, “It Gets Better”).

An art form can be transformed with a good story for the intertwining relationship between form and content. Miranda employed Hip-hop for the most of the musical Hamilton, applying an art form largely viewed as rebellious and popular to a mainstream “high art.” When he told President Obama that he was going to “rap about Hamilton,” Obama responded, “Good luck with that.” (Miranda, Hamilton’s America) However, as the form of hip-hop worked perfectly with the story of Hamilton, it is accepted by the world of musical.

Most of all, an ideology can come to dominance with a good story, for knowledge is linked to power (Said, 220). In Hamilton, Angelica Schuyler, Hamilton’s sister-in-law sang about how she read “‘Common Sense’ by Thomas Paine,” and wanted a “revelation” to have all men and women to be equals. Before “Common Sense,” changes were already taking place as the popular forces were demanding more power, and starting to grow skeptical about the system of difference and deference. However, it is only when a name and an account is given that a real change takes place: Only when empowered by the idea of “equality” can the unrest and discontent among the common acquire a standing point, and consequently thrive. And then a shoe-maker who was too nervous to meet John Hancock before revolution could ten years later stop a gentry from beating a child on the street, and tell the gentry “I am as good in credit in town as you.” (Fitz, “The American Revolution”)

As a result, although the power relations between the power-bloc and the popular might remain, the line can be redrawn, and the population included can expand. Our time seems to show some promising characteristics. On the one hand, with the democratizing means such as the internet, the power of story-telling while still unevenly distributed is spreading broader. On the other hand, with the idea of democracy, today we are having more debates to include the people into the narrative, just as Eliza, Hamilton’s wife sang in “That would be enough”: “Oh, let me be a part of the narrative, in the story they will write someday,” and just as people posed questions whether Hamilton and the movie Lincoln are making history all about the great men, and neglecting the part of the commons, from the soldiers fighting and dying for the revolution, to the slaves risking their lives to run to Union line for their freedom. That is to say, on the one hand the people have more power to make announcements that they can be heard, on the other hand have more support of public opinion that they should be heard.

 

4. The Role of the Audience and the Critic

Washington gave Hamilton his last lesson: “You have no control who lives who dies who tells your story.” (“History Has Its Eyes On You.”) I see the core question of the play in this sentence:

“Who tells the story?”

On this question, I agree with Pauline Kael on the affirmation of subjectivity: Everyone should tell their stories (Haberski Jr., 122). Both Hamilton and an unknown soldier should write their diaries.

As everyone tells their stories, we would be constantly receiving numerous subjectivities; As power still concentrates in the hands of the few, the attention would be disproportionally directed to them. Knowing all stories would be subjective, we should not dismiss the subjectivity but instead look at them critically: A comprehensive understanding of the world requires not only the information people deliver, but also the context of the information. Then the people should be consciously aware that all information comes from a finite and interested human, thus nothing should be taken as absolute truth but rather be put back into the context. In a sense, all audience ideally turn into critics.

As the people have the responsibility to equip themselves with literacy and critical thinking (Hooks, “Transformation”), the critic now shoulders the responsibility to inform and empower. On the one hand, they should “reveal the exact places- and displacement” of the numerous subjectivities, parsing out the power relations and accounting for where everyone comes from (Said, 221). On the other hand, they should specifically point out the power-bloc, and promote the voices of the marginalized since voice directly relates to power. While accounts that center around the powerful are “realistic truth” in the sense that the world, indeed, is centered around those who have tremendously more leverage than others, and it would be ignorant to deny the influence of power and give everyone an equal stance, it is valuable to land on some “affirmative truth” to prevent the vicious cycle of marginalization. That is, the critic should pay special attention to the marginalized, give them the microphone and help them be heard. In fact, Miranda set an example of “affirmative truth”: His cast was mostly non-white, including all the founding fathers, for he believed that the cast should represent what America is really like with all its diversity. He devoted much attention to the talent and dedication of women, from the wit of Angelica Schuyler to the selfless contribution Eliza Hamilton made for anti-slavery movement and social services. In other words, the critic navigates the audience on where the stories come from, and contributes in shaping how the stories should be.

An inquiry into Hamilton substantiates the idea that stories, told by all the interested story-tellers reflect power, and that the stories have power. Then in a time when we value diversity and equality, stories provide an approach to aid to such ends: To democratize stories, so that everyone has a voice, and everyone can be empowered by his or her voice.

Bibliography:

1. Lin-Manuel Miranda, Hamilton the Revolution. (The source for all lyrics)
2. Lin-Manuel Miranda, Hamilton’s America. Documentary.
3. Susan Sontag, On Photography.
4. Bell Hooks, Cultural Criticism and Transformation.
5. Edward W. Said, The World, The Text, and the Critic.
6. Hall Stuart, People’s History and Socialist Theory.
7. Raymond J. Haberski Jr., It’s Only a Movie!: Films and Critics in American Culture.
8. Lane Fenrich, “U.S Gay and Lesbian History.” Lecture.
9. Caitlyn Fitz, “North America and the United States to 1865.” Lecture.