As a Puerto Rican who loves Broadway, one might expect me to love Lin-Manuel Miranda. I mean the dude is considered one of the creative geniuses of our time and to boot he is clearly in touch with his Puerto Rican roots. For the first time I got to see someone accept a major award with the Puerto Rican flag in his left pocket as if he were walking through the Puerto Rican Day parade. He's a symbol of Puerto Rican excellence and in that I do have some respect for him. But his art does very little for me.
I saw In the heights before it hit Broadway. Naturally Lin-Manuel gave back to the community by giving free performances for high school students in NYC. I guess my school administration must have felt that the minority students in our school would appreciate the performance. And to be fair, In the Heights is electric. The music was reminiscent of walking through a Latino neighborhood (Dominican or Puerto Rican in this case) just to hear someone blaring Hector Lavoe out into the streets, the old viejitos briskly dancing salsa with invisible partners or lounging in the humid sun while playing dominoes. Or perhaps you could hear the urban side? Freestyle rap that punctuated an entire generation of young Latino teens who were having kids that they were trying to get out of the projects. The point is that In the Heights definitely came from a place of legitimacy. But the story felt torn between pandering to its mostly white audience and staying true to its roots. Leaving the performance I was left with one burning question: Is that really a representation of Puerto Rican culture (read this as Latino culture in NYC, though again mainly Dominican and Puerto Rican?). I'm a Nuyorican through and through, but I felt that instead of writing a Broadway for me, Lin-Manuel wrote a Broadway for people who know about me. He wrote a Broadway for that white friend I beg to go to the parade with me because I'm tired of going with my family. He wrote a Broadway for the girl that asks me to speak in Spanish just so she can be entertained for a brief second. He wrote a Broadway for the people gentrifying Harlem and Bushwick. Ironically enough Usnavi's bodega is being put out of business right now by the people he wrote his Broadway for.
The story of In the Heights doesn't unearth deep complexities or hard truths of being a poor Latino in New York City. The tropes are all tropes we've heard before. The smart Latina who couldn't cut it when she made it to an elite University. Her isolation is hardly felt as she finds herself falling right back with her old flame for the sake of a love interest being preserved. The fixation on the lottery, while completely in line of what actually happens in the city, just serves hastily as a dues ex machina for the inevitable dilemma of what is home? The question of what is home is difficult for a Latino to answer not purely because of geography, but because of situations we are placed in where we are unable to be our complete selves. I'm talking about being called loud when we feel we're at normal volume or the difficulty of admitting you actually like some "white people music," as if its slow rhythms and campy lyrics somehow erase the conga drum beats and the scratch of the Guiro you grew up with. I'm talking saying the Hail Mary in Spanish at a whisper because you wanted to sleep in later and we all know the Spanish mass is always the earliest. The dilemma of the urban American Latino is not whether he can wear chanclas all year round, but instead whether he should call them chanclas or flip-flops.
And that's missing from "In The Heights." Instead everything seems to tie together so nicely. And while I have heard of amazing stories coming from the projects, most of them have been demarcated by tragedy. Tragedy that many of the people from the projects are completely numb to. Sure people grieve, but when you have an 8 to 9 the next day, your grief has a schedule. In the Heights has its bright moments. The song blackout, which serves as a metaphor for the powerlessness of minorities really musters up a unique New York urban aesthetic that can't quite be matched. But then it squanders it. The antithesis of that message is one of getting by in your own way. I just feel like there is more to that. The grit people gain from powerlessness makes them powerful. By making his ending picture perfect, Lin Manuel denies his show that grit. Instead it feels soft.
Hamilton at first sounded horrible to me. I thought Lin-Manuel had finally decided to sell out by taking urban hip-hop aesthetic and hastily pasting it onto a familiar white face, making it palatable for white viewers (and frankly the educated). What seems to be suggested by many critics is Alexander Hamilton is actually a reappropriation of history, reclaiming Hamilton who did not have 100% white ancestry as a founding father that represented the immigrant spirit. And part of me wants to go along with it, until I stop and say why does it have be a white man though? Why? Why not do a Broadway on Toussaint Louverture, the founder of Haiti who led a slave rebellion to free Haiti? Or perhaps a famous person of color in American history. I just don't understand why we need to again draw from a history that is not germane to us? Yet again I find myself thinking Hamilton wasn't made for me. It sounds like my culture. It looks like my culture. But underneath it all, it isn't.
Minorities should criticize other minorities' work. The lens through which this is done I've dubbed as "street aesthetic" or "urban aesthetic", which speaks to a particular intersection of socio-economic status, geography and ethnicity. I feel that Lin-Manuel Miranda is making his mark the only way a minority easily can. By pandering just enough to a normative white liberal audience, while holding onto shreds of his identity through aesthetic choices. I can't criticize him heavily for that, but I also have the right to not sing its praises. We deserve deep and profound art created by people within our community. But we all know what happens when people do that. Just ask Beyonce about how white people felt about art that spoke to themes and notions only important to blacks. Let's just say I doubt Beyonce is going to be earning any genius awards for Formation.
I saw In the heights before it hit Broadway. Naturally Lin-Manuel gave back to the community by giving free performances for high school students in NYC. I guess my school administration must have felt that the minority students in our school would appreciate the performance. And to be fair, In the Heights is electric. The music was reminiscent of walking through a Latino neighborhood (Dominican or Puerto Rican in this case) just to hear someone blaring Hector Lavoe out into the streets, the old viejitos briskly dancing salsa with invisible partners or lounging in the humid sun while playing dominoes. Or perhaps you could hear the urban side? Freestyle rap that punctuated an entire generation of young Latino teens who were having kids that they were trying to get out of the projects. The point is that In the Heights definitely came from a place of legitimacy. But the story felt torn between pandering to its mostly white audience and staying true to its roots. Leaving the performance I was left with one burning question: Is that really a representation of Puerto Rican culture (read this as Latino culture in NYC, though again mainly Dominican and Puerto Rican?). I'm a Nuyorican through and through, but I felt that instead of writing a Broadway for me, Lin-Manuel wrote a Broadway for people who know about me. He wrote a Broadway for that white friend I beg to go to the parade with me because I'm tired of going with my family. He wrote a Broadway for the girl that asks me to speak in Spanish just so she can be entertained for a brief second. He wrote a Broadway for the people gentrifying Harlem and Bushwick. Ironically enough Usnavi's bodega is being put out of business right now by the people he wrote his Broadway for.
The story of In the Heights doesn't unearth deep complexities or hard truths of being a poor Latino in New York City. The tropes are all tropes we've heard before. The smart Latina who couldn't cut it when she made it to an elite University. Her isolation is hardly felt as she finds herself falling right back with her old flame for the sake of a love interest being preserved. The fixation on the lottery, while completely in line of what actually happens in the city, just serves hastily as a dues ex machina for the inevitable dilemma of what is home? The question of what is home is difficult for a Latino to answer not purely because of geography, but because of situations we are placed in where we are unable to be our complete selves. I'm talking about being called loud when we feel we're at normal volume or the difficulty of admitting you actually like some "white people music," as if its slow rhythms and campy lyrics somehow erase the conga drum beats and the scratch of the Guiro you grew up with. I'm talking saying the Hail Mary in Spanish at a whisper because you wanted to sleep in later and we all know the Spanish mass is always the earliest. The dilemma of the urban American Latino is not whether he can wear chanclas all year round, but instead whether he should call them chanclas or flip-flops.
And that's missing from "In The Heights." Instead everything seems to tie together so nicely. And while I have heard of amazing stories coming from the projects, most of them have been demarcated by tragedy. Tragedy that many of the people from the projects are completely numb to. Sure people grieve, but when you have an 8 to 9 the next day, your grief has a schedule. In the Heights has its bright moments. The song blackout, which serves as a metaphor for the powerlessness of minorities really musters up a unique New York urban aesthetic that can't quite be matched. But then it squanders it. The antithesis of that message is one of getting by in your own way. I just feel like there is more to that. The grit people gain from powerlessness makes them powerful. By making his ending picture perfect, Lin Manuel denies his show that grit. Instead it feels soft.
Hamilton at first sounded horrible to me. I thought Lin-Manuel had finally decided to sell out by taking urban hip-hop aesthetic and hastily pasting it onto a familiar white face, making it palatable for white viewers (and frankly the educated). What seems to be suggested by many critics is Alexander Hamilton is actually a reappropriation of history, reclaiming Hamilton who did not have 100% white ancestry as a founding father that represented the immigrant spirit. And part of me wants to go along with it, until I stop and say why does it have be a white man though? Why? Why not do a Broadway on Toussaint Louverture, the founder of Haiti who led a slave rebellion to free Haiti? Or perhaps a famous person of color in American history. I just don't understand why we need to again draw from a history that is not germane to us? Yet again I find myself thinking Hamilton wasn't made for me. It sounds like my culture. It looks like my culture. But underneath it all, it isn't.
Minorities should criticize other minorities' work. The lens through which this is done I've dubbed as "street aesthetic" or "urban aesthetic", which speaks to a particular intersection of socio-economic status, geography and ethnicity. I feel that Lin-Manuel Miranda is making his mark the only way a minority easily can. By pandering just enough to a normative white liberal audience, while holding onto shreds of his identity through aesthetic choices. I can't criticize him heavily for that, but I also have the right to not sing its praises. We deserve deep and profound art created by people within our community. But we all know what happens when people do that. Just ask Beyonce about how white people felt about art that spoke to themes and notions only important to blacks. Let's just say I doubt Beyonce is going to be earning any genius awards for Formation.
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