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Hamilton though, being an expensive broadway musical, mainly influenced the opinions of young white women and homosexuals. By casting all the villain characters (British) as white and making the protagonists non-White, it set up clear tension between the two with one side coded as losers. Hamilton reads to me as an obvious example of taking a positive white story (that everyone learns about) and subverting it shamelessly so that the viewer’s feelings can be altered for a social-political purpose. In this case, regardless of some original intention, the effect was that white girls and gays from affluent families were shown a revisionist story in which their white ancestors were evil and the heroes of a tale they heard as children were changed to an array of black and mixed race characters who speak, act, dance, and sing their stereotypical cultural art forms. The positive valence for these minorities increase, that of their white ancestors decrease, and they are left being less interested in the American Revolution (who are filled with the well-mannered white people specifically portrayed as bad).
There were black British characters in Hamilton (see here where the British soldier is a black woman). Also, the primary antagonist is Aaron Burr, not King George III, played by a black man. Unless by "all the villain characters" you literally mean just King George III, which makes me confused on the plural.
And King George III is played by Jonathan Groff, who is quite openly gay.
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Antagonist is not synonymous with villain. Aaron Burr is Hamilton's antagonist, but he's never the villain.
If there is a "villain" in Hamilton, it's Thomas Jefferson (he was certainly the villain from the point of view of the real Hamilton) - who is also played by a black guy.
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Fair that the two are not synonymous, but Burr is also portrayed as a villain, albeit a sympathetic one.
Edit: Sorry, I misread you. What would be sufficient to show that Burr is a villain and not just an antagonist in Hamilton? At the bare minimum, a whole lot of viewers seem to identify him as a villain, so if the casting choices were made to avoid having audiences see a black actor as a villain then they failed.
In order to be a villain, he would have to be villainous. He would have to portray values that are antithetical to the values of the audience, such as acting in a cruel and wanton manner.
I would argue Burr is closer to a foil than a villain, whose role is filled by George.
Thank you for clarifying.
I thought Aaron Burr's ambition, portrayed as unbridled by beliefs, principles, morality etc was supposed to be that.
Honestly his Act 2 character reminds me of Commodus' lines in Gladiator (obviously Commodus is a far more straightforward villain for a whole host of other reasons, but his virtues are similar).
Fair enough. Maybe he's more villainous than I gave him credit in my one viewing of the staged musical.
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