My brain won’t let me rest right now, so here’s a ramble. As a result of my private conversations on BNA & the spicy takes I’ve been seeing on Hamilton,

I’ve concluded further that timing is everything

LMM himself said in a Wired video that the musical will have a different meaning in this administration vs an Obama one, so that’s 1 for context.

2, I personally believe everyone who did not hop on the Hamilton hype the first time it happened & are experiencing it out of-

A pop-culture-obligation may not find the meaning in the text that they want.
The musical itself was released at a time when everything it did, especially in the musical theater realm, was unprecedented. It was an actual marvel and inspiration—

& convinced a lot of new audiences, ppl unfamiliar w musical world or historical hip hop, to Try Something New. It was a new intersection.

but now that 5+ years have passed for this Historical musical? Where more ppl are especially not proud of being in this country?

Timing.

Here’s the anime part—
I was thinking abt the pitfalls of some storytelling on Tr/gger’s works/characters, and we came up on why Gurren Lagann (tech Gainax yes) felt more engaging despite it having some of the classic trademarks of the studio.

SO described it as just pure hype—

how? contextually, it took every mecha expectation and turned it to 100

Timeline-wise, GL was NOT bc the first mecha, but I think there could be an argument for it being outstanding on the mecha/action/parody element at its time

(Timing)

I have a lot of thoughts abt BNA but one of them being how it’s unfortunate it came out in this time for me, personally,

bc I’m so inundated with wanting more context/meaning out of a text about Different Types of People that it falls short

Essentially, this is an entire ramble summarized as “your mileage may vary” & genuinely “wrong place wrong time”

I think I’m reacting more to how strongly worded ppl’s reviews are, bc if u don’t like something, then cool. Go off, I guess

If there’s something that you/I didn’t like, then genuinely it’s probably not meant to be.

it’s just gonna take some digging deep about what’s going on around you & compare it to what it was at the time, then continuing that process of reconciling the two.

If you stuck it out this far and are awake this late at night, bless. Hope you’re staying safe and wearing a mask.

Here’s an addendum to this as well:

I personally am super interested to see how much reaction to text is inherently changed by the audience climate - esp when audiences have even MORE context and are more knowledgeable about what they’re watching

The shows I’ve mentioned here are not exceptions & are subject to that judgment completely, as have many other classics that were seen as Transcendant at the time, and are now problematic

The language and critique are evolving with the people and ages

Ppl don’t set out to make problematic content all the time

Most artists are frankly embarrassed by their past and present work.

Just want to think more about the contextual space of where things exist and why they get notice.