In the Heights
A Musical Review & Reflection
This Week
Intro Letter - Three comments from three readers about last week’s newsletter
Hot Takes - Thoughts on Juneteenth, The 1619 Project, and Critical Race Theory
Feature - In the Heights: A Musical Review & Reflection
Post(erity) - A concise review of the Hamilton musical movie from last summer
Fresh & Random Linkage - Um, fresh and random linkage
Dear Reader,
Last week’s newsletter of reader statistics and graphs surprisingly hit 50% in readership this week. I didn’t realize stats were your thing. This reader’s Twitter comment was funny:
“Really enjoyed the survey/feedback, oddly enough. Would not have thought that going in.”
Here’s a reader’s feedback with a technical suggestion:
“One possible suggestion for user experience might be the creation of some manner of ‘table of contents’ near the top that is hyperlinked to different headings/stories throughout. Or, even if it's not linked, lets potential readers know what they're in for?
Granted, I am zero help from the tech side of things, as I'm not sure how such a thing would work within the Substack medium, but I think it might allow for quicker access to folks who only want to check certain things out? Yeah, yeah, I know most people are used to scrolling forever, so I'm probably just talking out my wazoo.
But I'm someone who reads these piecemeal over the week (by necessity). So, from a selfish perspective, yeah, it would be cool to be able to click straight to where I left off. I dunno. Pretty niche, admittedly. Keep up the great work!”
I’ve heard the ToC suggestion before, so I’ve included one above; unfortunately, Substack has no functionality to link the ToC to the various sections of the newsletter, but I’ll keep checking.
And from a different reader who had some thoughts on content:
“Someone had a remark (though not a harsh one), about not ‘judging’ LGBTQ, etc. I’m not sure of their religious affiliation, or if they believe in God at all, but this misconception of love has to stop. My children may enjoy playing with knives, but because I love them, I don’t allow it to happen. It is directly contrary to God’s nature to both love us and love our sin; therefore, it seems false to assume that just because someone has fallen into a sinful lifestyle, it is our job to not only love them, but also adore the poor choices they make.
Just to confirm, I love receiving the email every week, regardless of the day it arrives or its length. Quite frankly, the only fault I can find is your support of the St. Louis Cardinals, but that’s okay because it is better than the Yankees.”
Wholeheartedly agree with the “love is love” sentiment; without distinctions as given by “the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God” (Exodus 34:14) due to his distinct love for us, “love is love” means nothing. (Ask my wife if she thinks there should be a difference between me saying I love her and me saying I love my neighbor; they’re the not the same.)
However, I’m not buying the endorsement of the Cardinals “because they’re not the Yankees.”
As always, thanks for reading.
Craig
P.S.: Comments are open below if you’d like to leave yours. You’re also welcome to email me directly with feedback, ideas, links, etc. at cmdunham [at] gmail [dot] com.
Hot Takes
“Senate Unanimously Approves A Bill To Make Juneteenth A Public Holiday” - Now that the House and the President have signed off, Juneteenth - the once unofficial celebration in honor of the emancipation of those who had been enslaved in the United States - will become a federal holiday. I’m glad for this because it’s good news and consistent with the hope and intent of our nation’s Declaration and Constitution, both of which are under fire these days.
For example, don't miss the incredible example of media bias at the end of the linked article above - not even an attempt at subtlety:
“The recognition of Juneteenth as a legal holiday comes amid a broader national reckoning on race and the racism that helped shape America.
Academic calls to more critically examine the lens through which race has molded public life, including in economics and the justice system, have prompted backlash by some Republican lawmakers who say that viewpoint unfairly villainizes white people and overstates the extent to which racism is foundational to American society.
Republican legislation to limit teaching a historically accurate picture of U.S. history in public institutions has advanced in some half a dozen states.”
The assumption the writer is making is that what Republicans are trying to ban is historically accurate, no questions asked. I'm not saying Republicans are right to ban it, but I'm definitely not saying The 1619 Project is historically accurate (for one fair evaluation, read this Inside Higher Education article.)
Juneteenth marks when enslaved people in Texas learned they had been freed under the Emancipation Proclamation. “Don't Ban Critical Race Theory in Education. Embrace School Choice Instead.” - The following is possibly the best solution I’ve heard proposed with regard to Critical Race Theory. In a nutshell:
“Conservatives in Florida, Idaho, and the nation's capitol are attempting to block public schools from teaching Critical Race Theory, an ideology that holds that racism is historically fundamental to how America's political, legal, and cultural institutions are structured.
…School choice is the ideal way to address these concerns—certainly better than either a mandate or a ban. Letting families choose which schools their children attend means letting them decide what curricula those children will encounter, without either side of this culture war getting a veto over that choice.”
I’ve never been a fan of mandates or bans as meaningful ways to learn much of anything, but if funding can follow the students, would letting it play out so that families can more easily choose how their children learn American history be all that bad? When considering the alternatives, I’m open to this one.
One voice I’ve found helpful on all things CRT is John McWhorter’s. Here’s his latest Substack piece: “You Are Not a Racist to Criticize Critical Race Theory.”
Scholar and author John McWhorter.
In the Heights: A Musical Review & Reflection
Watching a musical is like watching a baseball game - you either love it or you hate it.
My postulate goes like this: the degree to which you love or hate musicals or baseball corresponds to the frequency and quality of experience of either during an earlier time in life. If you never theatrically went beyond the Sunday school Christmas play or athletically past the summer T-ball leagues, odds are you’re not a fan.
But that’s okay: I love musicals and baseball so you don’t have to, which brings me (like a curtain call or a walk-off homerun) to this week’s feature on Lin-Manuel Miranda’s film version of his pre-Hamilton production, In the Heights.
Inspired by growing up in a family who had emigrated from Puerto Rico to north New York City’s Washington Heights neighborhood, In the Heights was Miranda’s first show to play on Broadway before Hamilton solidified his credentials on the Great White Way. After writing the soundtrack for Disney’s Moana, Miranda co-starred in Mary Poppins Returns as Jack, a lamplighter and former apprentice to Bert, the chimney sweep played by Dick Van Dyke in the original 1964 film.
His next project (conveniently launched earlier this week on the heels of all the Heights hoopla), is an animated musical for Netflix about (get this) music called Vivo. But we can talk about that one later. Let’s discuss In the Heights.
The Show
Being a musical theater fan who loves to see younger generations catch the bug, it’s hard not to appreciate Miranda and his contributions of the past decade. True to form and right off the bat (sorry, baseball phrase), there is much to like about In the Heights.
The show is generally well-cast (though Leslie Grace didn’t do much for me in her role as as Nina Rosario, “the one who made it out”), with Anthony Ramos, who played Miranda’s son on-stage in Hamilton, convincingly coming of age as the young Usnavi, a 30-year-old corner store owner trying to decide whether to gut it out in Washington Heights or move back to the Dominican Republic (from whence he emigrated with his parents when he was four) and pursue his dream of owning an oceanside bar.
Along the way, we’re introduced to his friends, his desired-to-become girlfriend Vanessa (played by Melissa Barrera, who is very talented), and his extended family, including the matriarch of the barrio, Abuela Claudia (played by the wonderful Olga Merediz, who reprised the role she originated on Broadway). In addition to Miranda and Hamilton alum Christopher Jackson (George Washington) making rather throwaway cameos as rival street vendors, the only other actors one might recognize are Latino actor Jimmy Smits, who plays a successful and supportive entrepreneur, and Latino musician Marc Anthony, who plays one of the few down-and-out characters portrayed in the film, the alcoholic father of Usnavi’s cousin, Sonny.
The show, then, is a study of the interactions and relationships of the characters living their everyday lives, all set to a fun and fantastic Latino soundtrack with Miranda’s clever lyrics supplementing the dialogue. Unlike Hamilton, which is virtually all music and lyrics, there are several non-musical scenes in In the Heights, which are well done and bring more emphasis to the songs when they come in (though of all the songs, the let’s-sing-while-we-dance-naturally-on-the-side-of-a-building tune, “When the Sun Goes Down,” from Corey Hawkins and Leslie Grace was my least favorite).
What makes the show powerful is the way Miranda taps into and explores the universal longings and dreams of our humanity against the antagonist of life’s uncertainties, represented in the show by the Blackout of 1999. This is where Miranda as a composer and lyricist is at his best. The details and descriptions of his familiar Latino neighborhood do not take away whatsoever from a non-Latino audience member like myself being able to ache with and relate to the Latino characters as they wrestle with questions of purpose and provision, hope and happiness, love and life.
Creatively directed by Jon M. Chu (Crazy Rich Asians) and choreographed (especially the swimming pool dancing in “96,000”) with energy and precision by Christopher Scott, In the Heights is right up there with West Side Story (a new version of which is coming in December from Steven Spielberg) and its storytelling about the humanity teeming within a New York City barrio that touches those of us who live elsewhere.
The Question
As enjoyable as the show is (never mind its low opening weekend numbers - people are either still scared of Covid or don’t like baseball, remember?), it did raise a question for me, piqued by this lyric rapped by Carla in the song, “Carnaval del Barrio”:
“My mom is Dominican-Cuban
My dad is from Chile and P.R. which means:
I’m Chile-Domini-Curican...
But I always say I’m from Queens!”
The question: When do we all put away the hyphens and just get to be Americans?
The idea of the “hyphenated American,” of course, is not a recent development; it goes back some 130 years to the 1890s, when hyphenated labels were used to derogatorily describe those immigrants coming to the U.S. Negative connotations aside, it’s perhaps understandable how these hyphenations got started (people love to name things); it’s unfortunate, however, that the hyphenated names have still not gone away.
From my perspective in the here and now, it would help if American Caucasians stopped using hyphenated language to speak about other (especially if the use is derogatory). Hear the words of President Theodore Roosevelt in 1915 on the topic:
“There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all…
The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic…
There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else.”
Strong words from the one who spoke softly and carried a big stick. And, depending on the color or thickness (or both) of your skin, maybe a little too direct if you’re always trying to keep track of what kind of Americans you’re bumping into on a daily basis. Why not just try thinking of every citizen with whom you come in contact as an American and see if that changes something in your head or heart?
Some Controversy
But (and here’s what struck me while watching In the Heights), in addition to the need for white Americans to more fully embrace their colorful American brethren by dropping what’s on the front end of the hyphen, it would help if non-Caucasian citizens stopped referring to themselves as hyphenated Americans - African-Americans, Mexican-Americans, etc. - as well.
The visual of this labeling in the movie was the one thing I didn’t care for in In the Heights. In the staging of the song quoted above, dozens and dozens of flags were strung up in the courtyard to represent the various countries from which all had emigrated. Ironically (and unless I missed it), there was not one American flag pictured to represent the United States, to which all these families had immigrated.
All this seemed strange and unfortunate as a missed opportunity for unity, but then life imitated art earlier this week when Lin-Manuel Miranda found himself apologizing for a lack of Afro-Latino representation in his movie musical. His tweet:
Two days later, Rita Moreno - she of West Side Story fame and a producer on the upcoming reboot - issued an apology for her comments on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, for giving this spirited defense of Miranda and In the Heights:
Miranda has practiced the art of the grovel before, and he is enough of a media darling to get a(nother) free pass in this situation. Moreno has a new documentary (that Miranda co-produced) and will probably be fine out of respect for her age and legacy.
But were apologies really needed? When will enough be enough for the “unless I feel seen” crowd? And to what degree are we complicating matters by using hyphenated labels that, in my view, make worse than better the problem of racism in America?
The Resolution
Serendipitously (or not), and as a final word on some of this, I came across a passage this week from Dutch Reformed theologian Herman Bavinck (1854–1921). Imagine my surprise when I read his thoughts commenting on the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11:
Revisionist histories, unfettered wokeness, “feeling seen” - none of these are the modern Towers of Babel that will bring us together. The strong tower we need is Jesus; the path is repentance; the fruit is conversion and good works; and obedience is living in the same light together as part of this redeemed family of God.
No hyphens allowed.
(Note: In the Heights has a degree of profanity that’s unfortunately not little kid friendly. FYI.)
Post(erity): Hamilton
Each week, I choose a post from the past that seems apropos of something (of course, you’re always welcome to search the archives yourself whenever you like).
This week’s Post(erity) - a brief review of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton - is from last summer, when the show helped launch Disney+. (Note to my wife: remember when we were going to get the Disney+ trial just to watch the show and cancel?) An excerpt:
“The show itself…merits its Shakespearean comparisons in terms of lyrical language (seriously), and the music's melodies and rap rhythms still sound as fresh five years since the show's opening and original soundtrack in 2015. The precision of the cast performances - both vocally and theatrically - are stellar with one exception: Miranda, the show's creator, who also plays the lead role of Alexander Hamilton.”
Fresh & Random Linkage
“The Muppet Great Gatsby Exists — in Script Form” - I just want to see a picture of Animal on the billboard ominously overlooking everything.
“Superhot 'Dragon's Breath' Chili Pepper Can Kill. Here's How” - I fully expect to see this made into weapons grade for a future James Bond movie with Vladimir Putin as the villain.
“A Hole in the Head: A History of Trepanation” - This article gives new meaning and understanding as to why I don’t need another one.
Until next time.
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