By: Ian Byers
For this last blog entry, I’ve chosen to talk a bit about Ham4Pamphlet, as the whole project is very interesting to me. It is a visual interpretation of Hamilton, but one that is quite varied, as it was made by numerous different artists. However, Hamilton, being a Broadway show, already has a very prominent visual aspect, with its casting and choreography being some of its most praised features. Despite this, fan art of Hamilton is extremely popular. I took some time to think about why this was, and one of the ideas I came up with was that not everyone was able to see a full performance of the show, especially soon after it had premiered. So, it makes sense that many fans who had only heard the songs of the show and seen some clips of the live performance were inspired to make their own visual interpretations of the characters. I don’t know if this is necessarily why fan art of this show flourished, but it’s just an idea I had.
Although I don’t think that the Ham4Pamphlet project as a whole makes an argument about the show, individual pieces of art featured in it do. The entire project, though, shows that people who have different interpretations of the show and its meaning can still work together and collaborate to produce a very high quality fan work. This allows for all fans of the show to get a broad overview of some common opinions on parts of the show, and relate to how these affected other fans.
The illustration for “Your Obedient Servant” was my personal favorite out of all 46. In regards to my own adaptation, this gives me a good idea of some popular ways in which fans of the show like to express their appreciation of it. Hopefully, this will allow me to create something that more people will also be able to relate to and understand, while also adding my own personal touch.