How The Internet Fell Out of Love With Lin Manuel Miranda

so back in like 2015 this was like my junior year of high school my history teacher came into class one day and he was like guys they're making a hip-hop musical about Alexander Hamilton and we were all like that sounds like the most horrible [ __ ] I've ever heard who would who would want to listen to that and here we are I think it's safe to say that over the last I don't know five years or so all of the stars have aligned for lin-manuel Miranda if you somehow don't know who he is he is a songwriter playwright and producer known mostly for his massively successful Broadway hit Hamilton Lynn is a generational Talent born in New York City in 1980 to a Puerto Rican American Family he got involved in musical theater at a young age and very clearly pulls a lot of Latin and Hip-Hop influences into his work this is very evident within his first musical in the Heights the story of A dominican-american working class Community set in Washington Heights in the Heights is sort of an underappreciated success although it did get a relatively well received Broadway run and most recently a flashy film adaptation which we'll talk about a little later but the real success for Lynn came in 2016 when his musical Hamilton came to Broadway after a well-received Off-Broadway run the musical is a hip pop inspired story about Alexander Hamilton following him as the main character throughout the American Revolution and the formation of the United States government throughout the story he interacts with a number of other historical figures including George Washington Thomas Jefferson and his adversary Aaron Burr who ultimately becomes culpable in his death in a duel at the end of the show so here's my opinion on Hamilton I've seen it live I still think it's very good I think the standout aspect of it is obviously the music because the show is entirely sung through there's virtually no lines in it that aren't sung or wrapped and the way the rap is used throughout the score to convey the story beats is honestly really impressive even the more traditional musical theater songs and ballads are really unique and Well Done certain numbers from the show have a lot of replay value for me and plenty of other people to this day and the original cast is just fantastic Leslie Odom Jr David Diggs and Felipe Sue among others played a huge part in making the original production the Juggernaut that it was the framing device of the show being that these historical figures who are slave owners and colonizers are being portrayed by actors of color has received some criticism over the years both by dumb bigots who don't understand how casting works and by people with actual good points and analytical arguments who are significantly more equipped to speak on that subject than me here are some places to start if you're curious but at the time Hamilton debuted this was super groundbreaking additionally the show sort of hit at the right time politically as many tend to associate it with obama-era optimism after all Lynn performed the musical's opening number at the White House years before the full show even existed get your education don't forget from Once you came and the world is gonna know your name Alexander Hamilton his name is Alexander Hamilton and there's a million things he hasn't done but just you wait just you wait in fact I'd go as far as to say that Hamilton at its peak became synonymous with the Obama Clinton Democrat machine in 2016. Lynn was constantly performing at political events and the entire apparatus was basically an extension of the Hillary Clinton campaign you're registered to vote and it's on your post that Hillary sign up on your lawn number two call someone decided with your crew your cousins in Ohio maybe try and flip on blue the show during this time represented cheery optimism about the best of what America had to offer while seemingly ignoring a lot of what made America ugly but we didn't have to think about that we were about to have our first woman president and the biggest debate going on was whether or not to call Bill Clinton the first gentleman or something else and then Dana you were you wanted to be precise to go ahead that's right CNN can report that Hillary Clinton has called Donald Trump to concede the race Hamilton's place in the world after the election of Donald Trump became different the work became more of a resistance cry for certain groups of people and whether or not it really had the right to be one was certainly debatable but the cultural critique over Hamilton and by extension lin-manuel Miranda's place in the cultural conversation at large didn't come until much later because at this point there were bigger fish to fry one thing's for sure though Hamilton made a lot of money throughout this time it cleared all of the major Tony Awards and getting to the Richard Rogers to actually see the damn thing was virtually impossible if you weren't extremely wealthy people were busting down the doors to see the show which is a once in a generation sort of phenomenon for something as dorky as a Broadway musical contrast this with several years later as Hamilton became more accessible in multiple ways prices for the show eventually did come down which is how I was able to see it with my family in 2021 right after Broadway had opened back up up again Additionally the musical could be enjoyed and accessed in the comfort of people's homes during the pandemic as lin-manuel Miranda allowed the pro shot to be distributed on Disney plus which likely made nisdi a lot of [ __ ] money Hamilton's critical and Commercial Success propelled lin-manuel Miranda to the spotlight and in the crosshairs of many media companies who were looking for musical projects to develop which is just funny in itself because even though Lynn was the leading man in Hamilton he's not a typical leading man if you put him up against any of the original cast members of Hamilton or even the actors who replaced him on Broadway as Alexander he really is lacking in the vocal department but everyone gave him a pass because of his skills and the writing and rapping and composing so by this point Lin had a lot of public visibility he proved himself to be a hit maker and he already had ties to Disney with the aforementioned release of the Hamilton Pro Shot on Disney plus so basically over the last three years he's become Disney's guy and that has achieved rather mixed results as far as his reputation goes so before we get into the Disney stuff I just wanted to take a minute to talk about tick Tick boom which is the movie that lin-manuel Miranda directed about Jonathan Larson who created rent uh the movie came out in 2021 it is a musical and it is fantastic I didn't know like where else to put it in this video but I really wanted to talk about it because it is a movie that I love and also it is a movie that my boyfriend Brian loves and I asked him about it and him and I basically have the same opinion about it so I'm gonna play that for you now here we go Ryan what thoughts on Tick Tick boom go um it's one of the best um movie musicals I think maybe ever made definitely last like 20 years top five um Linda Miranda directed the [ __ ] out of it and that's like probably the best thing he's done by far since Hamilton it's the one thing I don't dislike and I love I appreciate him for tick Tick boom and Hamilton I did not see in the Heights uh Andrew Garfield's amazing um he should be he should focus his energy on directing more movie musicals not writing terrible songs in Disney Live Action remakes I have the same opinion as like I was gonna say my opinion but that's also my opinion sorry no it's okay you did a good job do you still get like the YouTube money for what I say yeah that's how this works okay cool I'll buy you dinner though sweet okay so lin-manuel's first [ __ ] get off the pop moment came in 2016 with a development of Moana which he was actually hired to work on two years prior and he definitely did deliver how far I'll go the classic I want song in the film won a ton of awards and was very well received overall additionally it was the first time that you could directly see his very specific influence in the song you're welcome performed by Maui played by Dwayne The Rock Johnson the song is catchy and fun and it most noticeably has a Hamilton style section of rap and upon first listen many fans who now knew Hamilton at this point were like oh yeah that's cool he's doing the Hamilton thing and surprisingly Dwayne The Rock Johnson actually performed the whole bit pretty well overall Miranda's influence on the project was more of a fun novelty than anything else but the real King maker came a few years later with Encanto so the thing about Encanto is that it has a paper thin plot the whole story if you lay it out doesn't make much sense however the movie has a lot of charm to it a lot of unique charm there's a lot of really cool character design and there's a reason why people gravitate to it and I think it would actually make like a really good like mini series on like Disney Plus or something I think like if they want to do more in Kanto stuff that that's like what they should do but the main thing that people gravitated toward within Kanto and I think one of the big reasons it became the phenomenon that it did was because of the music we don't talk about Bruno was an inescapable hit for a full year this tends to be forgotten about due to other events but the song was performed at the Oscars the year that the movie was released even though it wasn't the Encanto song that got nominated for an Oscar and here's the thing when you run it back and listen to it it's easy to understand why it became so popular the thing is a total earworm it is a lot going on a lot of characters a lot of really catchy Melodies throughout it has the fun fast talking rap section performed by Dolores which is just magnetic and the song culminates in this interesting layering of all the different motifs on top of each other it very much reminds me of the end of non-stop in Hamilton the cultural context of Encanto also lends itself quite a bit to lin-manuel Miranda's style of musical score and production it's got a lot of quirky characters which is why Bruno's little fast rap part at the end performed by John leguizama works pretty well although it's evident by this point that some of these little rap verses are starting to sound very samey additionally in Kanto is a movie that is very much inspired by Latin culture and tradition so Miranda's influence in the music makes a lot of natural sense here's we run into the issue Disney has an extensive backlog of iconic music for many of their films especially their animated Classics and Disney especially recently has a tendency to not leave well enough alone as they insist upon desecrating the legacy of their original masterpieces by [ __ ] out soulless live-action remakes sometimes they decide to take out the music altogether which is certainly a choice but one of their more recent choices for the live-action remake of The Little Mermaid was to include the original works from the original film and then basically have lin-manuel Miranda fill in the gaps and this doesn't work if you're already working within the confines of a pre-existing score because the last thing that The Little Mermaid needs is a fast-paced rap that seems like it's running away from itself as it happens and yet hey Brian yeah what do you think you're doing here right now you didn't tell me I didn't tell him um so I want to just like get your reaction to like this this like piece of music that I found that's like absolutely fine it's like absolutely fire like I'm just gonna it's fire yeah it's fine it's fire okay cool [Music] I I told you I never wanted to hear this again after we saw the movies [Music] [Music] it's not gonna do that no no so thoughts on scuttlebutt thoughts genuinely brought the movie down so much lin-manuel Miranda needs to be stopped and the sooner we stop him the better I don't know I think it was pretty fire personally no you did so this song has brought Lynn back to the spotlight yet again with many people eager to take shots at him for doing this in every Disney production that he's been a part of and with the two examples I gave earlier Moana and Encanto it wasn't quite as noticeable but this bordered into unforgivable territory for some people and is that fair I don't know I mean you can't say he doesn't have range he has created songs for other projects that don't sound like this maybe some studio exec asked him to create scuttle's song in this style and that's what he did but I think this is dangerous territory for him as the more poorly these Style songs are performed in these movies the worse it's going to reflect on him and appear more like a gimmick and anytime something goes wrong with a modern day Disney movie involving music he more often than not becomes the scapegoat for what fans of these re-adapted or post-modern original Works don't like about them for example the removal of the body language line in Ursula's iconic Poor Unfortunate Souls number run people the wrong way myself included and Lynn got a lot of [ __ ] for that creative Choice even though it may not have necessarily been his doing but in a lot of ways he has become synonymous with what people especially gen Z dislike about the movie and theater industry and the way those things intersect while Millennials seem to hold him in much higher regard for his previous work a cringe Purgatory if you will Lynn has also taken sort of a secondary character arc on Tick Tock where gen Z teens like to make fun of him and his mannerisms and I mean once you have a dedicated impression guy of you you're kind of just losing the war permanently foreign [Music] [Music] and this conversation of course doesn't just stop at Disney outside of his work with the mouse Lynn has done a handful of other projects and with those projects has come an equal mix of adoration and controversy when in the Heights came out in 2021 Lynn took a lot of flack for the casting of the film due to a lack of representation for darker skin afro-latino characters on screen Lynn acknowledged that criticism with the following statement I hear that without sufficient dark-skinned afro-latino representation the world feels extractive of the community we wanted so much to represent with pride and joy in trying to paint a mosaic of this community we fell short I'm truly sorry additionally he came under Fire after bringing Hamilton to Puerto Rico following the devastation of Hurricane Maria because of his passionate advocacy for the promesa ACT the promesa ACT also known as the Puerto Rico oversight management and economic stability Act was a 2016 federal law that was seen as a means of debt relief for the island the ACT gave way to a fiscal oversight board comprised of seven U.S appointed not Puerto Rican elected members and ended up issuing a lot of budget cuts and many argue that the ACT did more bad for the island than it did any good here's an article about it if you want to read more I'll link it in the description down below and of course things really came full circle back in 2020 following the murder of George Floyd when cancel Hamilton began trending online around the time that the pro shot was released critics of the musical had called out Lynn for the fact that the show tends to overtly glorify some characters who are slave owners Lynn responded to that backlash with this statement all the criticisms are valid the sheer tonnage of complexities and failings of these people I couldn't get or wrestled with but cut I took six years and fit as much as I could in a 2.5 hour Musical did my best it's all fair game so what's the takeaway here I guess it's that once you make a cultural phenomenon like Hamilton ever intense lens forever and ever and different groups are going to be frustrated at you whether you're being called out for a lack of representation or historical accuracy in your work or you're getting too much of a pass on your mediocre singing skills despite being a prominent fixture on Broadway or you made Aquafina rap and that's just too much of a mortal sin for anyone to bear I give Lynn credit for dealing with all of his criticisms and public shortcomings in a good enough way because it very easily could have gone the direction of him losing his mind and having a manic episode and jerking off in the street like the Kony 2012 guy love him or hate him lin-manuel Miranda is going to be a fixture of Pop Culture going forward and he's got the musical talent and he seems like a nice enough guy so is it the worst thing in the world that he's going to be heavily involved in the things we watch and listen to or is he just a little cringe and can we forgive that I don't know I'm sure you'll let me know in the comments and while you're down there tell me what your favorite ice cream flavor is mine is cookie dough see you next time bye foreign [Music]

Channel: kayla says

Views: 597,724

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Id: vVqp4giZLdY

Length: 17min 28sec (1048 seconds)

Published: Sun May 28 2023