I think I know how this happened.
Basically, in 2015, the "woke era" had not gotten white-hot yet when it came to going on a cultural crusade against everything American. That, and liberals hadn't started their 4-year-long temper tantrum yet. At that time, Hamilton was only available to see on Broadway, so only the snooty elites in NYC could see it, and of course, seeing as most of them in that city were liberals and could splurge $160-$600 on each ticket, they thought it was the best thing that ever happened to Broadway shows.
Now that it's available for us "peasants" to watch on Disney+, you get an entirely different perspective on the show. Regular people are finally seeing it for the anti-white, badly-written, insulting fiction that it truly is, and are not pleased with the results. That, and the woke mob (whose rules and goal-posts change as frequently as the direction of dust motes in the wind) decided this story wasn't as satisfactory to them as they once thought 5 years ago.
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Ace_Spade (9577)
4 years ago
I agree with you.
I think that cultural assassins stand ready to move the goalposts continually. They happily laud something in 2015 and push the goalposts there. Hiphop music and diverse casting: that's the stamp of approval. But once the post is there, they can move it up further. Not good enough. Story's "too white." It is the textbook definition of "give and inch, take a mile".
I cannot directly comment on the quality of Hamilton; I haven't seen it.
But your point is very astute: when only a few people see it, it doesn't get opened to mass-critique. Now, I think there's some other elements at play here. There's a psychological thing (don't remember the term for it...) where you justify what you've done if it cost a lot. So, if you drop $600 on a seat to watch Hamilton, you're almost guaranteed to love it because your mind is justifying the expense.
Now, there is something to be said for a production designed to be live which is consumed at home. That does detract from the experience. That said, I watched the Folger Theatre's Macbeth recently and it was superlative! Check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OU0cuGuPSk&feature=youtu.be
With a mass-audience also comes people who want to see the cultural phenomenon but might not be "musical theatre" people or hip-hop fans, so they don't like it. That's not a knock on the show, just that it's now exposed to people who don't like that kind of thing. It's like showing Blade Runner to somebody who hates sci-fi.
Most of the backlash I've seen is coming from the Left, eating itself again, thanks to call-out culture where points are scored when you rip something up for not being "pure" enough.
I've never thought of Hamilton as anti-white. Lin Manuel-Miranda was making a symbolic point about the American story essentially being the immigrant story. I get it. I dig it. I'm a middleground guy. I'm not right wing enough to boo-hoo about "racism" under that circumstance.
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AmeriGirl26 (14495)
4 years ago
That's why I don't think the term "puritan" quite fits the woke mob very well. See, Puritans in the 17th century had a static set of beliefs and cultural norms that did not change until people just walked away from that way of life. The Woke mob changes their views on what is "acceptable" and politically correct, almost every 5 minutes. Sometimes all it takes is an hour for the different people in that crowd to start eating each other, and then the fights break out, only for them to come back together the next week and go after something else they don't like. It's like watching the Skeksis in the Dark Crystal universe bickering and at each other's throats all the time; and yet other times they work as a team despite hating each other, because they are Skeksis and the only creatures that can relate to each other on that world.
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Ace_Spade (9577)
4 years ago
Haha...now I'm just going to think of them as Skeksis.
Yeah, at least the Puritans told people how Spartan, strict, and unyielding were the standards and wrote down the rules...
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aavfreak (3334)
4 years ago
I'm not sure if there is a term specific to this, but it's closely related to the placebo effect.
"Our brains are tricked into thinking a bottle of wine tastes better if we believe it is expensive.
A new study has found that the same wine tastes better to people when they think it has a higher price tag.
The researchers hope their findings will shed light on the placebo effect - a marketing tactic often used to coerce people into buying more expensive goods."
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4789770/People-think-wine-tastes-better-s-expensive.html
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Ace_Spade (9577)
4 years ago
I think I was thinking of the Sunk Cost Fallacy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost
With a little bit of this thrown in:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escalation_of_commitment
But, yes, the wine label thing is similar. I've usually heard Placebo effect referring to actual non-medicinal medicine that works because your brain makes it real like something out of The Matrix.
I've encountered this behaviour at buffets. People think that they get more "value" out of a buffet by eating as much as they possibly can, but for me, my value at the buffet is the experience. So, if I leave a buffet overfull and having gained seven pounds (all in empty calories), my experience is diminished and my money wasn't used to best value. I'd rather eat slower, eat less, and enjoy it more. That's how I get the best bang for my buck.
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aavfreak (3334)
4 years ago
Sunk cost was actually my first thought. However, that has more to do with continuing to spend money on something solely because you've already spent a lot. Not necessarily that you perceive something as better because you paid a lot for it.
In the poker world they'd call it "pot committed." You may know you have a losing hand, but you've already put so much into the pot that you feel compelled to see it through to the end. You'll go broke playing like this.
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AmeriGirl26 (14495)
4 years ago
That actually makes sense, now that I think about it. If people have to pay more for entertainment, particularly if it's something they don't do every day, their minds are going to believe it was better than the everyday stuff, even if it wasn't.
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