Disney’s presentation of the Broadway blockbuster Hamilton marks a curious cultural turning point: The most heralded production in recent Broadway history has not been adapted into a movie — it’s a digital video recording of a 2016 stage performance — because it has to live up to its hype as an exclusive Broadway event. Hamilton’s celebration by elite media cadres contradicts the essence of cinema as an emotionally intense, unifying popular art form. This version happens at, literally, an emotional and intellectual distance.
Lin-Manuel Miranda conceived a treatment of the life of Alexander Hamilton, one of the Founding Fathers and the first secretary of the Treasury of the United States, to be a showcase of Broadway theater diversity. He followed legendary impresario Joseph Papp’s idea of multicultural, non-traditional performance that broadened the Western theatrical canon by asserting America’s ethnic variety (Papp’s gimmicky casting of Shakespeare in the Park productions). Hamilton recast American history as a racial gimmick: The white Founding Fathers are portrayed by black and Latino actors — an obtuse means of reclaiming American history not for “everyone” but for us vs. them.
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