News Reporter: Act Four: #HamofThrones and the pleasures of mash-up culture

Friday, 27 May 2016

Act Four: #HamofThrones and the pleasures of mash-up culture

Alyssa Rosenberg on culture and politics

A screenshot of Lin-Manuel Miranda's tweet kicking off the #HamofThrones hashtag. (Credit: Alyssa Rosenberg)

A screenshot of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s tweet kicking off the #HamofThrones hashtag. (Alyssa Rosenberg)

As someone who spends all day on the Internet professionally, I normally try very hard to avoid descending down web-based rabbit holes in my free time. Some of that is because web-based rabbit holes are often miserable places, full of bad behavior and worse emotions. But on Wednesday night, I found one I couldn’t resist.

The cause? #HamofThrones. The Twitter hashtag has been gestating for a while, but on Wednesday night, “Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda sent it into overtime with a Tweet juxtaposing a line from his blockbuster musical about the founder of the American financial system with an image of Jon Snow (Kit Harington), a recently resurrected protagonist on HBO’s sprawling fantasy epic “Game of Thrones.”

With that lift, the Internet was off to the goofy races, drawing parallels between Alexander Hamilton and the persistent and much-maligned “Game of Thrones” character Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage), comparing Aaron Burr and the sneaky Petyr Baelish (Aidan Gillen), and joking about a “Game of Thrones” incest subplot and the preferred location for duels in “Hamilton.” I couldn’t resist myself: I make a living off my enthusiasms, but even by those standards, a game involving freakish recall for song lyrics and the details of fantasy novels is particularly up my alley.

But as much as #HamofThrones was a delightful little game to play on Twitter on a Wednesday evening, it was also a reminder why mash-up culture is so deeply appealing. Beyond the aesthetic joy of watching two seemingly unlike things fit together, mashing up two complex stories such as “Hamilton” and “Game of Thrones” is a great way to point out not just how many issues but also how many character tropes thread their way through some of our most popular fiction.

Both “Hamilton” and “Game of Thrones” are about civil wars, debt and slavery. And where those themes occur, you’ll have multiple claimants to power; people who rise through their ability to understand complex financial issues and the people who address them; talented people who feel terminally overlooked; people whose liberation struggles get put off; and many other things. None of this is to criticize “Hamilton” or “Game of Thrones,” or to suggest that either of these wildly original works is in any way derivative. Rather #HamofThrones is a cheeky reminder that no matter who lives or who dies, we’re all grappling with some of the same essential stories.