(no subject)

[seekingferret]

What IS the political message of "You'll Be Back"? Like, what is "Hamilton"'s position on monarchy and in particular the British monarchy as expressed in "You'll Be Back"? George III is not precisely a character in "Hamilton" the way other characters are, and certainly it's hard to say that this goofy, only occasionally historically accurate song is a character piece exactly, so the song almost has to be there to advance plot, thematic or political arguments.

Is it that King George acted like a creepy, stalkery ex-boyfriend toward the colonies? Is it that monarchy in general is abusive, that something inherent in investing that kind of authority in one person leads to this kind of behavior? Is it that monarchy/the George III monarchy is rather silly and self-important in a way that masks a dangerous edge? Is it that the dangerous threat of absolute monarchy is actually silly and more easily underminable than it would seem at first?

And perhaps more importantly, based on whatever political message we want to read into the song, what is the narrative function of "You'll Be Back" in "Hamilton"? Why does it appear when it does, following "My Shot" and "The Schuyler Sisters" and "Farmer Refuted" where the colonists have already basically decided to go to war? How does it interact with a story that is otherwise a grounded, AMERICAN human drama about navigating the halls of power and trying to effect change in the world? It seems to me that mostly it doesn't. It's a solo from and about a character Alexander Hamilton never meets in person and doesn't have human-to-human level opinions about, and which doesn't reach that character on a human level either. Is the purpose to serve as a reminder to the audience that all of the other characters, the characters who actually matter, have been living with a metaphorical abusive boyfriend this whole time? Is the rest of the musical consistent with the reading?

I think the song is hysterical, and as a work of political satire at a particular historical figure, it is incredibly cutting (though also arguably ableist? Per Miranda “There are nerds who laugh when King George says, ‘When you’re gone, I’ll go mad,’ because they know King George went fucking mad!” I'm uncomfortable with that, I got the reference*, but I don't think George III's probable mental illness is worth laughing over.), but it's not really clear to me what it does in the show. It's not really a show that's litigating the question of whether the Revolution was right, we get a tiny bit of debate in "Farmer Refuted" (which almost immediately shifts to namecalling, as usual), but otherwise the show takes as a given that there's something here worth fighting for, for whatever reason, so why bother with a satirical takedown of George III? Googling says it was according to Miranda the first song written, perhaps he just couldn't bring himself to cut such a brilliant song as he realized what the show was really about?


*Maybe the metajokes about George III are the point? I wrote in my review of Equivocation that because I'm a trivia nerd but not a theater nerd, there's a sort of theater joke that tends to falls flat for me where part of the joke is that only part of the audience, the theater nerd part, knows the context of what makes it funny. Maybe the idea is just that there's a certain image of George III that Americans are taught, and here Miranda is offering a skewed take on that standard image, as part of the general reinterpretation of history- who tells your story- that is "Hamilton".

Comments

[primeideal]

I'm not sure if this counts as "political" (in a 1770s context), but I think one of the points is that George III is the only white soloist/named character. To underscore the difference between "America now" which is multiracial and hip-hoppy, and the "bad old days" that the revolutionaries were fighting against. (Which is also why his melody is more Beatles-esque and simplistic compared to the complex rhyme schemes of Jefferson etc.)

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

Much of what is savaged about George the III's madness ala Shakespeare History play assassination is last I read pretty much at the leeches' door with a flaming sack of pure. They were applying the wrong treatments for what ailed him, and if he'd had less coin to pay them they might have stopped sooner.

The Taxation part was window dressing, because the Colonists were getting price supports domestic Britons were not. The grievances were much more diffuse and unsuitable after the fact for hagiography.

Not sure if porphyry is still one of the attributed conditions he was suffering/if it was some other problem since phototropic problems are apparently more common.

[alexseanchai]

The guy from "Farmer Refuted", isn't he a named character played by a white person? That's someone from the ensemble taking on a bit part, which is different from King George, but still.

[primeideal]

Fair--the phrase Genius.com uses is "principal character," but I'm not sure if there's a technical definition for that.

[coffeeandink]

John Rua, the ensemble member who plays Seabury in the film/the original Broadway recording, is Latinx.

[alexseanchai]

👍🏻

[seekingferret]

That's a good point. I think the reason I read such a confused mixed message is the intermixing between is Hamilton a narrative about 1776, or is it a narrative about modern day politics, or is it a narrative about how we in the modern day understand 1776? In the pure narrative about 1776, "You'll Be Back" doesn't really seem to serve much purpose in telling the story.

[calledtovienna]

I thought that it had a narrative purpose of reminding us that the American Revolution was, in fact, a global event. The American Revolution is a big deal! It is not just some dudes having relationship drama. Which is important, because a lot of the appeal of Hamilton is exactly the way that it gives famous political disputes an air, of, well, personal fanfic-like drama, but the viewer needs to step away from it for a bit to get re-centered and remember that all of this is also very important history from those history books.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

Good catch! It's easy to forget that the Revolutionary War did take place within a geopolitical context, that it was fed by a past and would ripple out into the future.

I don't know if it's still taught this way sometimes, but the peculiarities of the American Revolution versus other colonial wars was big--but iirc they missed the point, which was that it was a war of Colonists aka colonizers and not of the colonized.

What happens when the fish can't see the water and writes about swimming. The default diaspora is discounted.

[calledtovienna]

Hah! Yeah, I had grown up in the ashes of the USSR rather than in the US, so it was always weird to call the American Revolution a "Revolution" in the same sense. It was, and I don't dispute the title, but it was definitely a different sort of uprising.

On that topic, I've been enjoying the Revolutions podcast and learning about the events in, ex., South America and how the American War of Independence influenced that.

Sort off-topic for Hamilton, I guess. I think that the musical tries to sell us on the idea that this was fought for freedom, rather than a slightly different distribution of elite power, and having George III show up briefly kind of helps that.

[seekingferret]

Do you feel like "You'll Be Back" does an effective job of giving global context?

[calledtovienna]

Kind of! I definitely feel more awe when the action shifts back to the US after.

This is with the disclaimer that I have seen the musical in SF a while back, and listened to the soundtrack, but haven't seen the recording yet.

[cynthia1960]

I also want to add that the later George III songs address how to transfer national political power in a new and different way (at that point in time) than having the heirs of aristocrats and monarchs inherit.

[seekingferret]

True, but those songs don't interest me as much because they're not character pieces, they're just slightly spiffed up Greek Chorus bits that don't tell us anything new about George III. "Hamilton" is not really invested in George III as a character.

[jack]

It's fascinating reading opinions on Hamilton by someone who actually already had opinions about the politics of those events!

For George III, I'm not sure I could pinpoint what role it has in the play, but I'd guess, it gives the war an enemy to triumph over, and it portrays the existing political system as bad, showing the Constitution as a good alternative and making it feel like Hamilton's achievements mattered

[seekingferret]

it portrays the existing political system as bad, showing the Constitution as a good alternative and making it feel like Hamilton's achievements mattered

It weirdly doesn't, I think. It could, if it were a Founding Father narrative with a different protagonist, but Hamilton believed in the importance of a strong executive, and that's a thing that the show highlights in a few places, for example in "One Last Time" Hamilton tries to convince Washington not to step aside after two terms. So rather than a clear throughline of "Authoritarian Kings are bad, witness King George, and the Constitution was designed with specific intent to prohibit a variety of problems with monarchy that the Framers had witnessed personally, by limiting the power of any one individual" which is a valid way to tell a story about the Founding Fathers, the repudiation of what George III stands for is a lot less clear.

And of course the show emphasizes and in some cases amps up the intensity of the cabinet battles between political rivals until they seem irreparable, and highlight messy failures that led to early constitutional crises like the election of 1800 with Jefferson narrowly beating Burr, and so George III's songs rather than proving the Constitution a good alternative. seem to call into question the American Experiment.

[duskpeterson]

I found King George (though hilarious) a bit of a straw man because he was so obviously an American caricature of Britons. But he did offer that excellent point about how starting a new nation from scratch is *hard*. One tends to forget that, in retrospect.

[seekingferret]

I found King George (though hilarious) a bit of a straw man because he was so obviously an American caricature of Britons.

That's exactly what's weird about it. Are we supposed to understand "You'll Be Back" as a sort of exemplar of Hamiltonian and/or American polemic against King George, but not actually representing the real King, or as some sort of actual character narrative about King George that's just overly simplistic, or some combination of the two? What is its function in the narrative, why does Miranda insert it at this moment in time?

[duskpeterson]

At this point, perhaps as a narrative indicator that the story isn't over? That the nation still has to be started?

[lokifan]

Randomly found this tab again months later and one aspect I'd get into a bit more is that "You'll Be Back" is very Beatles-esque. Which obviously fits with him being British, but in the context of hip-hop going with American revolution (and Jefferson initially showing up with a funk song, because he's a bit behind the times - "what've I missed?" indeed) might suggest that monarchy is outdated and behind the times - democracy is the cool modern thing. Could even work as a kind of 'British wealth is built on exploitation' reference, maybe, given the Beatles' artistic debt to rhythm and blues.

It also probably pairs with "What Comes Next" in emphasising that these people didn't know, at the time, what was going to happen, and "every American experiment sets a precedent" that was perhaps unintended, and the making of deals etc. Providing a Greek chorus, obviously, but specifically one who's making inaccurate predictions, and thinking he might get America back, I think helps the narrative project of saying these were young, uncertain people in violent times rather than oil paintings, and the USA's victory didn't feel inevitable to them.