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hrjOver on another blog where we've been squeeing about the hit musical Hamilton, I posted some thoughts I've been having on the above subject line. I'd been dithering about posting them here, but that community has gotten distracted by other events, so I figured if I hoped to have any discussion, this was a good place to repost them.
* * *
There's something I've been ruminating about regarding Hamilton -- something that doesn't in any way take away from the delight I have in the work. It's this: in the midst of examining the question of "who tells your story", and "who controls the narrative", and recognizing the agency of the women who are portrayed in this work, and opening one's eyes to new understandings that come from taking an intersectional perspective on history...
In the midst of all that, I keep coming back to thinking about not just "who tells your story?" but "whose story gets told?"
Within this particular historic and social context, and within this particular artistic and performative context, it also matters whose stories get chosen to be told. Whose stories can be told in particular ways, in particular contexts, and to particular types of reception.
A historian selects a particular subject for study ... no, let's take a step farther back. Our age and context privileges particular people as historians. A historian selects a particular subject for study. A publisher chooses to promote a particular biography outside the siloed academic book market. A talented artist takes note of a particular publication and that work, rather than some other work sparks inspiration. Every step along the way contains both of those questions, yoked in harness: who tells the story and whose story gets told?
That's pretty much the extent of my ruminations. I'm a bit worried that even bringing it up will seem like criticism: don't step outside the safe and narrow unless you're going to be perfectly perfect in every way. Don't be intersectional because it's impossible to intersect every plane in existence simultaneously.
But this question is a lens that I can't help but bring to every piece of history and historic interpretation that I consume. My own amateur historical research is very much focused on the question of "whose story gets told?" and it's not something I can dial down very easily. The Lesbian Historic Motif Project is pretty much entirely about both questions. Whose stories make it into the historic record at all? And who are the gatekeepers who both decide what gets told and how?
Hamilton--for as much as I truly and sincerely love it and the way it has been interpreted--is the story of a man. And, despite the race-bending musical interpretation, a white man. One who, despite his initial disadvantages, was supported and promoted and given opportunities that people who were not white and not male would not have been. And despite the emphasis in the musical on how his legacy was shaped and curated by the women in his life, it is still his legacy and life that we are focused on. And when it comes down to it, we don't focus on the stories of white men because those are the only interesting stories out there to tell.
Whose story gets told? And why? And who else's stories out there are equally fascinating, equally inspiring, that don't make it through all those filters and gates?
* * *
There's something I've been ruminating about regarding Hamilton -- something that doesn't in any way take away from the delight I have in the work. It's this: in the midst of examining the question of "who tells your story", and "who controls the narrative", and recognizing the agency of the women who are portrayed in this work, and opening one's eyes to new understandings that come from taking an intersectional perspective on history...
In the midst of all that, I keep coming back to thinking about not just "who tells your story?" but "whose story gets told?"
Within this particular historic and social context, and within this particular artistic and performative context, it also matters whose stories get chosen to be told. Whose stories can be told in particular ways, in particular contexts, and to particular types of reception.
A historian selects a particular subject for study ... no, let's take a step farther back. Our age and context privileges particular people as historians. A historian selects a particular subject for study. A publisher chooses to promote a particular biography outside the siloed academic book market. A talented artist takes note of a particular publication and that work, rather than some other work sparks inspiration. Every step along the way contains both of those questions, yoked in harness: who tells the story and whose story gets told?
That's pretty much the extent of my ruminations. I'm a bit worried that even bringing it up will seem like criticism: don't step outside the safe and narrow unless you're going to be perfectly perfect in every way. Don't be intersectional because it's impossible to intersect every plane in existence simultaneously.
But this question is a lens that I can't help but bring to every piece of history and historic interpretation that I consume. My own amateur historical research is very much focused on the question of "whose story gets told?" and it's not something I can dial down very easily. The Lesbian Historic Motif Project is pretty much entirely about both questions. Whose stories make it into the historic record at all? And who are the gatekeepers who both decide what gets told and how?
Hamilton--for as much as I truly and sincerely love it and the way it has been interpreted--is the story of a man. And, despite the race-bending musical interpretation, a white man. One who, despite his initial disadvantages, was supported and promoted and given opportunities that people who were not white and not male would not have been. And despite the emphasis in the musical on how his legacy was shaped and curated by the women in his life, it is still his legacy and life that we are focused on. And when it comes down to it, we don't focus on the stories of white men because those are the only interesting stories out there to tell.
Whose story gets told? And why? And who else's stories out there are equally fascinating, equally inspiring, that don't make it through all those filters and gates?
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no subject
Date: 2016-01-21 05:26 pm (UTC)I think about this a lot in my teaching, not only in the materials I choose for my courses but in the way I encourage students to speak and interact and write. Am I suppressing their narratives? Am I favoring others?
Which stories of my own self do I overlook and suppress?
Your questions are important to consider in a number of contexts.
no subject
Date: 2016-01-21 06:22 pm (UTC)It is all so complicated.