While catching up recently with a friend who is much more active in fandom than I am, she mentioned Hamilton. “Oh, have you seen the show?” I asked. “It’s incredible.” She laughed and responded that she hadn’t listened to a single song, but “it’s on my Tumblr dashboard—every fandom mashes up with it, so it’s like I know it.”
She wasn’t exaggerating: Go to Twitter and Tumblr, and you’ll find an astonishingly high number of Hamilton mashups. Some command their own hashtags, like #Force4Ham (like the above art from Tumblr user pearwaldorf) and #Potter4Ham, while others just pop out at you seemingly out of nowhere: crossovers with Saga, The West Wing, Parks and Rec, Smash, Sherlock, Les Miserables, High School Musical, and probably several others that I haven’t found yet. But the thing is, it’s not out of nowhere. Several key elements combine to explain why Hamilton, for all of its dynamic rhymes and game-changing mic drops, actually acts as some sort of universal donor for fandom mashups.
Fandom has long been a remix culture, certainly from as early as I joined (1999) but likely stretching back decades before that. Part of how fans took in their favorite TV series, books, etc., was the process of mashing up the source material with another element. Photo manipulations, crossover fanart, and the most popular form, video mashups, drew new connections between two seemingly disparate things. I still have fan videos saved on my computer—House set to Depeche Mode’s “Precious,” and a Harry/Ron/Draco (I know) parody video set to Gunther’s “Naughty Boy” that makes me crack up every time I watch it. Then there are fanfiction remixes, which address an existing story from a new perspective, with new dialogue and plot points emphasizing the original author’s themes.
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The Notorious B.I.G., Pirates of Penzance, The Beatles, The Last Five Years… the references are staggering in their variety and number (Slate and Vulture have collected comprehensive lists). Hamilton would not exist in its current form without these musical and thematic influences stretching back decades. Not only is it the creation of a fannish person, but it is itself a fannish creation. That’s why it’s so easy for fans to set Poe and Finn’s emotional reunion to “Helpless” (look into your eyes and the sky’s the limit) or depict Luke’s entire character arc (well, missing The Force Awakens) through the lyrics to “Alexander Hamilton.” The more influences and interpretations you pile on, the more of the story you reveal.
Tag: hamilton
What are the odds the gods would put us all in one spot.
Monsters' Queen 