The Americanness In Hamilton:An American Musical

The history of the United States of America is a history of immigration.However,the American government's attitude towards immigrant communities has not been always friendly.Even today,immigrants still suffer from all kinds of marginalization,discrimination and exclusion,leading to social problems and conflicts that,often related to political events,would possibly cause violence and bloodshed.This social problem finds a unique representation in Hamilton:An American Musical,a 2015-Broadway musical with music,lyrics and book by Lin-Manuel Miranda,who also plays the leading role.As a second-generation immigrant from Puerto Rico,Miranda pays great attention to the legitimacy of the immigrant community.Both of his two Broadway musicals,In the Heights(2009)and Hamilton:An American Musical(2015),are about immigrants and in the musical genre of hip-hop.The story of In the Heights involves characters in the Latino-American neighborhood of Washington Heights in New York,while the story of Hamilton:An American Musical is set in the American founding era,involving the only immigrant founding father Alexander Hamilton.This thesis analyzes the concepts of liberty and equality as dramatized in Hamilton,discussing Americanness as universally shared by all immigrant groups.Believing in the core ideology of the United States,the immigrant groups in America regard liberty and equality as their lifelong pursuits and practice both generation by generation,even more devotedly than the American mainstream.In this sense,these immigrants are essentially Americans.Through the life of Alexander Hamilton,one of the American founding fathers,and by rewriting the nation's founding history,Hamilton:An American Musical confirms liberty and freedom as core values of the United States and,in theme and style,examines how the historically present immigrant communities have contributed to these concepts that define Americanness.Thematically,liberty in the musical involves positive liberty and negative liberty proposed by Isaiah Berlin,social liberty proposed by John Stuart Mill and philosophical liberty to choose life or death according to Terry Eagleton's vision of tragedy.These ideas of liberty are reflected in the upward mobility of Hamilton the protagonist,in the justice of the American War of Independence and establishment of the Two-Party system,and in Hamilton and Arron Burr's will to transcend the limited life by creating a legacy and Hamilton's pursuit of spiritual freedom.The concept of equality in this musical,on the other hand,involves the problem of inequality concerning female education,the oblivion of immigrant contributions in the orthodox founding history,and the justice of goodness as proposed by John Rawls.The three aspects of equality are reflected respectively in the musical's portrayal of a founding mother on the basis of intellectual equality,in its emphasis on the Americanization process and immigrant contributions,and in its recurring theme of historical consciousness.Artistically,the musical adopts the African-American literary tradition of Signif(y)ing and the musical genre of hip-hop,both of which are essentially concerned with individuality,the original force that promotes liberty and social progress.Besides,the musical dramatizes equality through the emergence of a female narrator in the final scene,who concerns herself with historiography from a female perspective,and through its performance that intentionally shocks the audience with colored casting that chooses actors of ethnic minorities to play Hamilton the founding father and other white historical figures,and double casting that features two different central roles by one actor.The musical suggests that Americanness,with liberty and equality as its core values and key motivations in its making,is inseparable from the nation's immigration tradition and immigrant cultures.Performing the founding history in a contemporary manner with its untraditional casting and musical genre,the musical addresses topical social problems in contemporary America such as immigration crisis,racial conflict and gender inequality.