There's Nothing Black and White about History

There’s Nothing Black and White about History:

Noughts + Crosses vs Hamilton

In my first blog post we flew forward in time with two SciFi offerings, here we cast a consciously critical eye over two re-imaginings of known history. What happens when we re-colour history? Thrilling, incendiary, celebratory, and revelatory storytelling, certainly, but even with the best intentions no story is bias-free.

Identifying bias is inherently subjective, and considering I am a white woman who grew up in Apartheid South Africa, as I sit down to write about racial bias, I am palpably aware of my racial privilege. I cannot hope to speak to the thrill that seeing a colour-reversed history must bring people of colour. I imagine I experienced a hint of it watching Gal Godot’s Wonder Woman: Hell YES – more like this please! But even my beloved Wonder Woman wasn’t without biases (blog to follow). That is all to say, none of what follows negates the value of empowering storytelling. We want these stories. We need these stories. Let’s get better at telling them, though.

Comparing the BBC’s adaptation of Malorie Blackman’s teen novels, Noughts + Crosses, with Lin-Manuel Miranda’s retelling of an American founding father’s story in Hamilton reveals the pitfalls and triumphs of playing with race and history. They both re-colour history, but in very different ways. Where one reverses binaries, the other erodes and destabilises them; one holds with traditional form, the other shatters it; one limits the complexity of its source material, the other foregrounds and amplifies it. Both nod to the ‘President of Literary Colonialism’, and the core playwright I discuss in my PhD thesis, William Shakespeare. Both play with good vs evil binaries and both take direct aim at the identity of power. There is no question both make some thrilling choices and pose some compelling questions. One left me flat, however, while the other inspired me – and here’s why.

Noughts + Crosses takes a series of beloved teen novels and reduces the epic sweep of this storytelling by aging the characters, condensing the storytelling, and intensifying the aggression. Our “pair of star-cross'd lovers”, Callum and Sephy, are primarily separated by their race which dictates one’s position in this society. Here ‘Apricans’ colonised ‘Albion’ seven hundred years ago and, we are led to believe, imposed their culture on the Albions alongside a ridged system of Apartheid-like, Jim Crow-like, segregation laws. The idea behind this world-building being to flip structural racism in order to highlight how it permeates our society today. The irony is that the world-building is influenced at a deeply implicit level by our current biases, which undermines these intentions.

Aprica: the name itself alludes to a vast continent too frequently misrepresented as homogeneous in Western storytelling. As fellow Intersectional Critic, SM, points out: the Apricans appear to have assimilated with Albion culture, not the reverse. Granted, there are some unspecific ‘African’ fashions on display, and odd words popping up, but the dominant language spoken is English, and the system of government represented is English. Noughts + Crosses filmed in Cape Town, a choice praised by UK journalists for giving the series a “boldly African” feel – but as a city Cape Town is known for its European feel. Jozi (Johannesburg), the cultural and economic ‘capital of Africa’, would have been a much stronger choice. Granted, this is a BBC production and they will likely have had UK audiences in mind, but it is available to view outside the UK, including on DSTV, the satellite television provider in most African countries. It’s disappointing then that the society created for Noughts + Crosses, and as a result the intangible form of this production itself, is implicitly dominated by Albion – not Aprica.

In its primary narrative, Noughts + Crosses explicitly demonstrates a ‘forbidden love’ story which directs us to critically appraise the structural segregation that separates our lovers. Although the novels alternate our perspective-taking, such that one chapter follows Callum and the next Sephy, the series leans more heavily on Callum’s narrative. Considering his is a story of systemic injustice, our empathy must fall to him and the Albion ‘noughts’ rather than the privileged ‘crosses’. This is problematic, it leads us to sympathise with the noughts’ struggle which, for me, skirts too close to the Far Right’s cries of ‘reverse racism’ in the UK today. Furthermore, Britain’s colonisation of parts of Africa began only around two hundred years ago, and formal segregation ended in South Africa about 26 years ago. In contrast, Aprica colonised Albion seven hundred years ago and is still imposing segregation on this society. There is something profoundly damning about this: ‘look how much worse the reverse would have been’. Reversing binaries uncritically implicitly re-inscribes them.

Although this story is clearly raging against structural inequality, and does offer a racially diverse cast in lead roles, it unavoidably links power with racial identity. It takes as understood that, were a country in Africa to have colonised the UK hundreds of years ago, that society would similarly have become an unjust and racially divided one. Why? Surely, here is the opportunity to subvert our expectations. Where is the story of racial inclusion, the map for a non-binary social structure? In order to tell a story of racial division, racial difference is inscribed in the casting, dialogue, and narrative.

While I applaud Noughts + Crosses for attempting to demonstrate the damning effects of systemic racism, implicitly, it perpetuates the narratives that support this thinking. We follow a young white man who is disenfranchised by a black elite. This black elite are imagined to have created a world driven by racial thinking, and which continues to impose segregation on the people of Albion to their detriment. Although on an individual level characters are marginally more nuanced than the narrative thrust implies, the storytelling ultimately is far too ‘black and white’. Implicitly through form and structure, Noughts + Crosses offers us only a bleak binary reversal, almost more of a warning than a plea for change. In contrast, everything about Hamilton inspires audiences to envision a truly diverse future.

A great deal has already been written about the shocking brilliance of Miranda’s Hamilton. With such a plethora of praise already heaped on the colour-conscious casting and the thrillingly counter-intuitive lyrics (opening with a description of the titular founding father as a “bastard, orphan, son of a whore”), I will confine my critique to a direct comparison with Noughts + Crosses in the hope it lends clarity to my above argument.

Noughts + Crosses simplistically reverses history, mirroring past structures of racial inequality. Hamilton doesn’t change the history in question (much) either, but it re-casts that history diversely. At the implicit level – the difference is profound. “This is a story about America then, told by America now”. Noughts + Crosses is limited by a black and white picture of society, Hamilton populates its history with actors from a multiplicity of racial and ethnic backgrounds. Binary thinking, with regard to race, is eroded, while the automatic association of whiteness with power is forcefully questioned. Hamilton takes aim at the pedestals propping up white power, too, by reminding audiences these legendary figures were immigrants themselves once (at least within a few generations): “Immigrants… we get the job done.” Through casting and form, Hamilton highlights, even amplifies, the complexity of its source material as well.

Noughts + Crosses extrapolates from history to intensify racial divisions in its storytelling, embedding binary thinking in its narrative. Hamilton does the opposite, arguably silencing binary narratives. Historians have pointed out that Hamilton wasn’t quite as liberal as the musical implies, and questioned whether silencing these realities is appropriate. In particular, voices are raised against Miranda’s choice to build upon Hamilton’s vocal disapproval of Jefferson’s racism rather than address Hamilton’s relative silence in the abolitionist movement. Hamilton also focuses on the elite white founding fathers erasing the role real people of colour played in the American Revolution. But as Romano argues, that’s not how fanfic works. Nor is it how Shakespearean history plays function, and true to this form, Hamilton speaks much more to today than to yesterday. As Hamilton’s biographer, and Miranda’s historical advisor, Ron Chernow points out: “These actors had a special feel for the passion and idealism of the revolution. Revolutions are made by outsiders so it was an inspired decision.” If it was a different production, with a white cast, I’d be adding my voice to those critiquing the slight gloss placed on history. But this production is all about addressing the imbalance in storytelling, in both casting and through the form of the production as well.

"Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?"

Noughts + Crosses implicitly embodies and replicates white colonial narratives: the story suggests structural racism is inevitable regardless of which race is the coloniser, and the form replicates white dominance implicitly through language, political structure, and setting. In contrast, Miranda puts the words of the founding fathers in the mouths of the marginalised, the outsiders, and the immigrants of today; he then strips those long dead white men of their colonial vocabulary, and sets their story to music: hip-hop music. In fact, Miranda blends musical forms in Hamilton, from rap to R&B, hip-hop to more traditional show tunes. There are no conventional scenes here – the music exclusively tells this story, another way form embodies the revolutionary energy of this production. Playing with casting and form allows Miranda’s Hamilton to reverberate beyond Hamilton’s story and Chernow’s biography which inspired the production. In form and casting it shatters traditional storytelling devices and offers us a template for inclusive creative practice moving forward, as well as a vision for a truly diverse future.

Noughts + Crosses is stuck in the binary thinking which has imprisoned us for too long. Hamilton is an inspiring call to co-create, to erode binaries, to blend forms, and to look toward an inclusive and diverse future. In Hamilton there is a visceral feeling that history is happening now. It leaves one with a powerful rush to take action, to join the marches, to fight for the future we want to see, the future we have just seen – no felt – for ourselves. It leaves us inspired. Hopeful.

“and Peggy!”

Remember I said every story carries a little bias? Well, if I ever “meet [Lin-Manuel Miranda], I'll compel him to include women in the sequel. Work!" Gender binaries need eroding too, Lin, how about a female Hamilton in the next cast? We too are “scrappy, and hungry” and deserve more than supporting roles in the new, diverse, inclusive, storytelling practice - Can I get a 'Hell, Yeah!'?