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.
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Date: 2020-07-13 01:14 pm (UTC)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.