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Civic Imagination

Hamilton: An American Musical

"Hamilton" is a Broadway musical about the life and legacy of Alexander Hamilton. Alexander Hamilton is one of America’s founding fathers: he was the first Secretary of the Treasury, he founded the country’s financial system, he was a primary contributor to the U.S. Constitution, and he was an illegitimate immigrant from the Caribbean. Lin Manuel Miranda, the writer and creator of "Hamilton," successfully makes this 250-year-old story contemporary and accessible by setting it to modern hip-hop music and choreography. The musical begins when Alexander Hamilton migrates from the Caribbean to New York City in search of a better life. Hamilton has to overcome systematic discrimination and obstacles because he is an illegitimate child, an orphan, and an immigrant. However, his unrelenting perseverance and fierce intelligence allows him to quickly rise to the top. He graduates from college two years early, marries a rich socialite, becomes George Washington’s trusted advisor, leads forces to victory during the American Revolution, and becomes the Secretary of State all within a few years. Unfortunately, Hamilton’s bold ideas and unorthodox political beliefs create tensions between him and the other founding fathers. He receives strong resistance from Democratic Republicans including Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Aaron Burr, who incessantly contradict and plot against him in order to unravel his accomplishments. Hamilton’s flash of success is extinguished when he is exposed for having an affair with a married woman and when his oldest son is killed in a duel. His tragic downfall is concluded when he gets into a fight with the increasingly envious Aaron Burr, who challenges Hamilton to a duel and ends up killing him. The show concludes with Hamilton’s wife and his contemporaries mourning his death, celebrating his accomplishments, and providing commentary about the subjectivity of history and storytelling.

I first encountered “Hamilton” about six months ago when it was starting to get increasingly famous in the USA. The musical was always fairly well known, but it only started to become a nationwide sensation within the past year or so. One of my friends at college who knows I love musical theater introduced me to the show in February, and I have been listening to the soundtrack ever since. “Hamilton” fascinates me because it bridges a 250-year gap between the American Revolution and modern U.S. youth culture. Of course every child in the U.S. knows the story of the American Revolution and the founding fathers—how the British monarchy was oppressing the colonies, how several smart men wrote a document declaring America’s independence, and how American rebels fought off the British army and officially secured freedom for America. However, “Hamilton” was the first time I truly felt connected to and inspired by the story of the American Revolution and the people who were involved in it. By utilizing a music style that I can connect with, “Hamilton” resonates with me in a way that a simple U.S. history textbook never could.

“Hamilton” is a story that has the potential to inspire people of all ages, races, nationalities, and socio-economic statuses. It is a poignant success story of an immigrant who started with nothing and built his own legacy stone by stone. His story is one of hope for immigrants coming to a new country in search of a better life. In addition, Alexander Hamilton exemplifies the power of the pen, and how knowledge and education is the key to success. This theme of the musical shows that we must place education as a paramount priority for refugees, IDPs, and other at-risk citizens.

http://www.hamiltonbroadway.com/ Hamilton Official Broadway Website
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wboCdgzLHg A short documentary about "Hamilton"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Y5KuohVJMQ Cast of "Hamilton" performing at the 2016 Tony Awards

Hamilton, Musical, Broadway, American, Revolution, American Dream, Immigrant

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5. Chef "Chef is a film released in 2014 that was written and directed by Jon Favreau who was inspired by his own career in film and love of the culinary arts to create a movie about a popular chef who needs to find his creative spark and fall in love with cooking once more. The film begins in California where Chef Carl Casper lives and works. After receiving a brutally negative review from a well regarded food critic, Carl reevaluates his job at a fancy restaurant in California. He realized that sticking to a strict menu has taken away a lot of joy from the profession he used to love. After he quits his job, Carl heads to Miami, Florida with his family because his ex-wife, Inez, needs him to watch their son, Percy, while she works.
6. The Lion King
7. The colonial city
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13. Sanjay's Super Team This is an animated short film from Pixar directed and written by Sanjay Patel who based it off his experiences as a child. The story revolves around a young boy, Sanjay, and his father, an Indian-American migrant. Sanjay is watching his favourite superheroes on TV while his father is praying by the shrine in the same room. His father urges him to join in the ritual but Sanjay refuses so he switches off the TV and takes his toy in order to force him into it.
17. The Infinite Forking Possibilities of the Future
21. Zootopia: Disney's Introduction to Reality for Children
23. SkyNet: the danger of Artificial Intelligence
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27. Be kind to yourself
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5. How the tortoise got cracks in his shell
11. My Dad
13. Sanjay's Super Team This is an animated short film from Pixar directed and written by Sanjay Patel who based it off his experiences as a child. The story revolves around a young boy, Sanjay, and his father, an Indian-American migrant. Sanjay is watching his favourite superheroes on TV while his father is praying by the shrine in the same room. His father urges him to join in the ritual but Sanjay refuses so he switches off the TV and takes his toy in order to force him into it.
14. Freedom Writers: Bridging Racial Divides Through Writing Freedom Writers (the movie) is based on a true story of a school in Long Beach, California. The main character, Erin Gruwell, is a new teacher at Woodrow Wilson Classical High School and placed with the students who are considered at-risk and unteachable. These students were almost entirely comprised of minorities, with the exception of one student. With such a diverse class and a group of students who had no apparent desire to learn, the film explores the real-world challenges that Gruwell faced trying to get her students to come to class wanting to learn, if they would even want to come to their classes at all. The class divides itself based on race, and fights and arguments breakout regularly. The class later finds common ground on their feelings and discussions around The Holocaust. Her students become inspired to break free from the things that originally divided them, most notably with one character speaking out against someone who she was being forced to lie for during a trial. She tasked her students with writing in a diary and then compiled those journals and writings into a collection of them all in “The Freedom Writers Diary.”
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A 28-30 year-old man boards a train and sits in an empty compartment. He is a weary traveller who has spent countless days trying to find transportation to reach his destination. While en route, he falls asleep and is visited from travelers from past and present journeys of who had boarded this particular train. The first visitor is Alexander Hamilton; a migrant from the Caribbean who traveled to the United States in the 1800's. He recounts his experience of traveling to a new country and achieving his dream of creating something that would outlive him. The second visitors are Art and Vladek Spiegelman; a father and son who share their story of how they migrated to a new country after the Holocaust events of World War II and their struggles of adapting into the culture of a new nation. The last visitor is a woman who comes from the Middle East who arrived in Vienna a year ago. She tells her story about the journey she experienced to reach her new home as well as the issues she's experiences now as an outcast from a land that she's still not fully settled into yet.
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