So, as you know, most characters in Hamilton are POC. And that’s amazing!!! I love that!!! It’s already been established that since this is such an important breakthrough for POC in theatre, white people shouldn’t audition for Hamilton. I entirely respect that! But I do have a question relating to cosplaying these characters.
As far as I know, the general rule in the cosplay community is that anyone can cosplay any character, even if their body type, skin tone, gender, eye color, et cetera, does not match up with canon. I’ve always thought that’s a great rule to live by, but Hamilton is a unique case in which I can’t be sure if it applies. Would it really be ok for a white person to cosplay Anthony Ramos’s portrayal of John Laurens, or Daveed Diggs’s portrayal of Lafayette, or Jasmine Cephas-Jones’s portrayal of Peggy Schuyler?
NOTE: I’m talking about cosplay without blackface- if you use blackface to cosplay, please stop that. That’s offensive and disrespectful.
But, in this case, is a white Hercules Mulligan cosplayer just as offensive? Would white cosplayers be taking something away from POC cosplayers by cosplaying Hamilton characters?
NOTE NUMBER 2: I’m mainly looking for the opinions of actual POC on this. Their stance on it is what really matters- and I promise that if you tell me not to cosplay POC from Hamilton, I will respect that and stick to either King George or Samuel Seabury.
I’ve had a lot of thoughts about how race and cosplay interact, and I’ve been watching the “can white fans cosplay Hamilton” question for a while with varying degrees of eyerolling and bile, but since I’m bored and in a relatively good mood, let’s talk about it.
The link I added above have a lot of my thoughts on race and cosplay in general, and most of them are applicable to Hamilton fans as well. But to reiterate, I think your question, while well-meaning, misses the point.
The point shouldn’t be “Is a white person cosplaying X offensive?” as if there is a single blanket definition of “offensive” that everyone agrees on. There isn’t. I think a better question for white cosplayers to be asking (especially with Hamilton but in general when thinking about cosplaying POC characters) is not “can I do X” or “is Y offensive”, but “What is the implications if I cosplay this character?”
You yourself have already parroted a lot of the reasons why Hamilton is important for POC actors and POC fans. You seem to at least intellectually get what’s so important about this show and how it means so much to so many POC fans.
So, let’s take that understanding a little bit further. Let’s take that understanding and apply it to a broader cultural understanding of what happens in pop culture. Let’s take this understanding of a groundbreaking and revolutionary (pun intended) Broadway musical that allows POCs to reclaim a history they’ve been actively erased from, and put it in the context of a white-dominated culture that continues to appropriate and whitewash contributions by POCs (see: Macklemore winning best hiphop album at the Grammys a few years back, see: Scarlett Johannson cast in Ghost in the Shell, etc etc).
You as a singular white fan may not be actively whitewashing or culturally appropriating Hamilton by cosplaying from it (there’s a lot of debate on that too, because POCs are not a monolithic entity, we are many many people with many many opinions), but you are living in a culture and a society (assuming you’re American) where people who look like you do whitewash and culturally appropriate history from people of colour. You as a singular white person may not be actively “taking a role away from POCs” by doing this, but you do reinforce the history of it. And by doing so, some people of colour will be upset and angry. And that anger is incredibly valid. And it is not an anger that can or should be dismissed with just a “well you’re too sensitive” or “my POC friends say it’s not offensive”.
As a Chinese-American cosplayer, I’ve always carried the knowledge that I was never going to look ‘right’ compared to white cosplayers when cosplaying white characters. That I was always going to look ‘wrong’ or ‘foreign’, even if people accepted me, there are things I can’t change like the colour of my skin or the shape of my eyes. I’d always wanted to do a big historical dress, a big ballgown and proper stays and everything for a cosplay, but I’ve always held back because there had always been a part of me that knew no matter how hard I tried I wouldn’t look “right”, that I would always be the Asian X Cosplayer instead of just the X Cosplayer.
And then Phillipa Soo and Hamilton came along, and suddenly there was Eliza Schuyler Hamilton, Founding Mother, with her cheeks and dark brown hair and eyes and an orbital ridge like mine. For once I could cosplay a character in a big ballgown and I would look right. I could look like “The Eliza Schuyler Cosplayer” instead of “The Asian Eliza Schuyler Cosplayer”. And that? That was revolutionary for me. Even as someone who insisted that my race didn’t matter to my cosplay (it didn’t but it did), the realization that I could cosplay someone who looked like me without having to worry about making my features look less Asian? That was huge. That was like a breath of fresh air when I didn’t realize I’d been holding my breath.
So for people like me, the cast of Hamilton being POC is huge.
That being said, I’m not actually here to say “You can’t cosplay X because it’s offensive”. I’m just here pointing out that Hamilton can be as revolutionary for cosplayers of colour as it was for actors. But ultimately, I’m not really here to wave my WOC card around and tell you white people what you can and can’t do. The choice remains yours whether or not to do the thing, to cosplay or not cosplay characters of colour.
The choice is yours, and any reactions you get are yours. Maybe Hamilton is revolutionary for you in your own way, and you want to cosplay from it because it touches you in a way that was formative and instrumental. Not really my call to make you fill out your Marginalized Enough To Ride form, I’m not really interested in playing gatekeeper.
But I will lay out some more of why people could and would be upset by the choices of white cosplayers to do this (especially given that there continues to be a culture of prioritizing white fans over POC fans in fandom, that there remains a culture of popularizing white cosplayers over POC ones, an active culture of shaming black women cosplayers specifically for cosplaying outside their race, etc). And yeah, by cosplaying from Hamilton, white people do end up playing into that culture that prioritizes white people over people of colour. On the other hand, our ladies of Hamilton group included a white Maria Reynolds, a dear friend who joined in not only because she loved Hamilton but because she wanted to be a part of something with us. And friendship and sharing a mutual love of a thing with friends count a lot too.
And for some people (both POC and white), the scales are such that they’re okay with that. For others (again both POC and white), not so much. And it’s ultimately up to you to figure out where on that scale you’re comfortable with, with understanding how race not only informs Hamilton but informs how POCs interact with Hamilton, where you’re comfortable standing for yourself, and where you decide you want to plant your flag.
It’s not about getting an answer to “Is doing this offensive?” from other people and getting an opinion poll to tip you one way or the other, and pointing to that opinion poll if backlash happens and using it to absolve yourself of responsibility. It’s about thinking through the implications of what your choice means both to yourself and to other people and coming to your own informed decision.
Pretty sure “money can’t buy happiness” is meant to actually mean “don’t neglect emotional health and caring for the people in your life in the pursuit of more wealth than you need”, but instead middle-class and rich people use it to tell poor people “don’t strive to have financial security even though I have it”.
