“In my culture, death is not the end. it’s more of a stepping off point. You reach out with both hands and Bast and Sekhmet, they lead you into a green veld where… you can run forever.”
If you need some cheering up, watch this video of my dad trying to get his jacket back from my stubborn cat😂
[Dad: Cookie… I’m pretty sure I left my jacket on the back of the chair, NOT in your bed. Cookie… can I have my jacket? Hmm? Can I have my jacket? C'mon. Here, let me have my jacket. Here, this is- this is my jacket, okay. Ah… myyy jacket. Cooookie, you’re not asleep. I KNOW you’re not asleep. This is my jacket. Y– *snickers* Here, here, llllet me have it. Pleeease? Can I have my jacket back? Please??? Little loaf–
Cookie: *meow of protest*
Dad: *laughing* Aw, c'mon, little loaf, give me my jacket!]
Your dad is the sweetest man alive. This genuinely did cheer me up a whole lot!
If you hear a piece of media or its creator is bigoted your first thought should not be “can I still enjoy this,” but instead “did I register said bigotry” and “how has enjoying this impacted my own thought process and internal biases.” Your first action should always be to maintain solidarity with the group being discriminated against and working to better yourself and not to look out for your own self interests.
friendly reminder that u can be like “lin manuel miranda created a work of art that was meant to highlight performers of color and made broadway mainstream again and was full of amazing themes and motifs” and still be like “but hamilton is inherently problematic because it glorifies the founding fathers when they should not be treated as people to look up to” like u can and should do that
this post blew up in the few hours since i made it wow so one thing i wanted to address is that some of the replies on this post and others that i’ve seen have argued that hamilton plays largely off of criticizing the founding fathers. and you’re right, it does. but the issue is a lot more fundamental than just the characters within the show calling each other out. when i say that the narrative glorifies the founding fathers, i don’t mean that it shows them as perfect—because to an extent it does bring up some of the bad things they did—i mean that the way that the story is written makes them the protagonists, and therefore as an audience we’re driven to root for them. a lot of that is also contributed to by the way we’ve learned american history in schools and stuff, but what i’m trying to stress is that after falling so in love with this musical, i now have to constantly make a conscious effort to separate lin manuel miranda’s version of the founding fathers from the actual people in history. because they’re not the same people. the plainest example: thomas jefferson was not a black man, he was a slaveowner and a disgusting human being! every single “character” in this show was historically at the very least a white supremacist; almost all of them owned slaves or engaged in the trade. they created a system that solely benefitted rich white men. and yet, every single time i listen to this musical it convinces me that i love them and i want them to succeed. that’s what media does. no matter how much it openly criticizes its characters, the moment you’re emotionally invested in them, it becomes extremely difficult to view them as bad people. i’m not immune to it, and neither are you. that’s why hamilton is inherently problematic, despite the groundbreaking things it did for the industry. that’s why it’s necessary to separate yourself from the text for long enough to say “this piece of media is incorrectly influencing my viewpoint and i need to make a conscious effort to undo that”. i am absolutely not saying you can’t enjoy it; i definitely do. and i believe, despite all of this, that it was well-intentioned. but unfortunately that’s not enough. double check the way you consume media and please, by god, allow yourself to acknowledge when the things you love are flawed.
