The Love Boat Soon Will Be Making Another Run in My Living Room
Post 2 – Learning from the Old Folks – Friday, August 7, 2026
After posting my first blog, I was tickled to see how many others enjoy watching The Love Boat as I do. I love that we share this affection for the show. I have to concede, however, that I am no pop culture expert or an expert on the show itself. I am in the process of rewatching it, so I may miss a prime example of the topic I am discussing just because I have not run across that episode yet in my re-viewings. My simple plan is to rewatch the episodes with new eyes, which means I cannot provide the insight of a media literacy scholar. I just want to look back and see what an old favorite show might say about my culture and about myself.
Now that I have introduced my concept for this blog series, my plan for the next few posts is to discuss specific aspects of the show I admire, starting with the diversity of characters. The show’s theme song says, “The love boat promises something for everyone,” and I believe they tried to live up to that claim. Certainly, the passengers can’t exactly be considered diverse by today’s understandings of diversity, as they were predominantly straight, white couples with token representation of different ethnicities at times. Among the diverse characters, however, was at least one older couple in each episode, and that is the first observation I would like to explore.
I probably ignored the old folks on board when I watched the original broadcast on Saturday nights, but it is not surprising that I pay more attention to the passengers’ ages now than I did back then, since I’m as old now as they were then. You can find Gen Xers like me all over social media posting the ages of the Golden Girls when that show aired. We claim to do this as a reality check on ourselves, but I believe it is really because we want to reassure ourselves that we look so much younger than they did. And we do look younger than they did at our age.
Gen Xers muse that we have always been stuck at 30, even when we were 17, just like we like to laugh at memories of covering ourselves in baby oil for suntan lotion, but we have also spent plenty of money on face creams to repair the damage done on those afternoons of “laying out in the sun.”
The truth is, few of us are exempt from falling prey to our society’s obsession with youth, even though we try to resist it. We cheer celebrities such as Pam Anderson and Alicia Keys, who speak out against our society’s obsession with unnatural beauty, but we also comment on how young Jennifer Aniston and Jennifer Lopez look.
If we are obsessed with looking young because we associate youth with romance and excitement, then The Love Boat offers a counter perspective, as romance on board the ship knows no age limit. I have yet to see a single episode that did not feature at least one couple over 50, and the storylines varied. On the one hand, the writers center relatable family issues that transcend geography or wealth. For example, storylines often feature parents whose marriages are struggling because of everyday family issues, such as disagreements about children, a job that draws one partner away from the other, or an overbearing grandparent whose opinions cause division in the marriage.
On the other hand, the writers present stories where older people are the center of scandalous or surprising plots. For example, in the episode “The Lady from Laramie,” which aired on November 14, 1981, the writers flip some tired tropes that rely on gender and age stereotypes in a rather refreshing way. To use a concept we literacy scholars use, this episode acts almost like an effort to re-story the movie Pretty Woman long before that movie was produced. The main character in this story is a wealthy widow who rescues a poor gigolo from his career of marketing his attractive body and working as an escort for wealthy old women by offering him an honest partnership in business and love. All of the characters in this storyline are at least in their 40s. This storyline disrupts our ideas of wealth, romance, sexual exploitation, and those stereotypes about gender and age while opening multiple avenues of discussion about these issues.
Choosing to feature older populations might have been a purely practical decision because when the show aired, a huge proportion of cruise patrons were elderly. In fact, according to History.com, when the show premiered in 1977, most cruise lines catered to wealthy retirees, who were their primary customers. So, it makes sense that the show would include storylines with older people, but it also reminds us that America’s obsession with youth alienates and/or ignores a vibrant and significant segment of the population. Watching the show with age in mind might just wake us up to some ways ageism has evolved. How are people over 60 portrayed in the modern sitcom? Do they look much younger than they are? Is romance a part of their lives?
One especially interesting episode directly addresses ageism (S5, Ep. 26 – “The Professor Has Class”). Captain Stubing is excited to welcome aboard a 91-year-old professor, who is world-renowned for his research. Also on board is a former student of the professor who has been hired to replace him, but she soon learns he has no idea the university does not plan to ask him to return next fall. The student and her professor engage in charming discussions throughout the episode, and when she finally tells him that she has been hired to replace him, he is gracious in his disappointment. He even sends a telegram to the university to commend them on their selection, but the former student stands up for her professor. She sends the university a telegram saying she will not accept the position unless she can retain her former professor on her team. Certainly not an exciting story, but a relevant one that takes a clear moral stand for the viability and value of an old person’s life, even as it acknowledges our limited ability to challenge age discrimination in the workplace.
Showing love in many forms among various age groups shows the variety of love itself. Of course, there are the types of love that have stolen our attention throughout time – romantic love, parental love, and divine love. Yet, there is also the love that exists and develops among siblings, between a mentor and mentee, or love among friends. None of these loves, including romantic love, recognize age limits.
The Love Boat may have presented love superficially with tidy resolutions, but the stories provided age representation, from teenagers to folks in their 90s, and we have learned that representation matters. If we see a couple in their 60s rekindle their romantic relationship or iron out an old disagreement, then we cheer for love’s victory and endurance. That’s an inspiring message for anyone battling daily challenges that make romance seem out of reach or unrealistic. Even worse, those daily challenges sometimes make our loved ones themselves seem out of reach, and The Love Boat often features stories of someone reaching out again to someone they feel they are close to losing.
Here is an enduring truth consistently presented by The Love Boat: old people still long for love, affection, romance, and adventure. They desire and deserve to be embraced affectionately as much as any 20-year-old. My longings for slow dancing in the moonlight have waned not one bit since I was a teenager, and I don’t care if young folks roll their eyes when they see Marc and me swaying to the music and exchanging kisses at the outdoor concert downtown.
Maybe I cheer storylines that center older people because I am in my 50s, battling cancer, and confronting my own mortality, but I have also seen age discrimination affect people my age. It does my heart good, as my people might say, to see some old folks dressed up, dancing after dinner, and sharing passionate kisses in the moonlight.
If The Love Boat inspires us Gen Xers to celebrate romance in our 50s and 60s, so be it. You young folks will just have to look the other way if you don’t like seeing us love on each other because life truly is too short to throw away a chance to show somebody that you love them.
P.S. The source info for each photo is provided through a link embedded in the photos, and links within the text will take you to the website where I found the information I am discussing at that moment.
Post 1 – Setting Sail on Friday, July, 31, 2026
Definitely nostalgia, some achy longing for a time when the world seemed to offer me unlimited options, and I dreamed of sweeping romance. It must have been nostalgia that pulled me into watching reruns of The Love Boat. Watching that show takes me back to spending the night at my Grandma Silvey’s house, and I remember very clearly the Saturday night lineup of shows that served as weekend entertainment when I was somewhere around 8 years old. On Saturday evenings, my grandparents always watched Hee Haw and The Lawrence Welk Show around supper time. Later in the evening, some time just after our baths, when we were dressed in our nightgowns, and I probably had pink foam rollers in my hair so I could look pretty for church the next morning since I didn’t have natural curls like my sister, The Love Boat came on. Just before we crawled into Grandma’s bed in “the yellow room,” my sister and I parked ourselves in front of the Zenith floor-model TV in the den, where I imagined my future and fantasized about finding romance on a Princess Cruise.
I loved that show. I loved the romance of it all: the beautiful dresses, dancing after dining, and sweet kisses on the deck while the moonlight lavished a soft haze over the entire scene. My sister used to squeal and clap when actors kissed on screen; I just silently sighed and imagined what a kiss like that felt like. But I knew that with every new episode every Saturday night, I would meet new characters kissing on that deck in the moonlight. Those stories ignited my imagination, as I would sometimes weave them into stories I concocted in my own mind, inserting myself into the drama on the high seas. The show certainly contributed to my understanding of romance as I entered my teen years (yikes!), but its influence reached beyond the starry-eyed fiction of a little girl who was already beginning to feel like a misfit. It had an impact on me personally, but it might be considered a cultural touchstone for Gen Xers in general.
The influence The Love Boat had on the cruise industry is already well documented, as it set off a cruising craze that continues today. In fact, Princess Cruises has launched a series of Love Boat-themed cruises to feed our generation’s nostalgic hunger for the show, even though the original ship no longer exists. The Love Boat impacted history, and I am glad I was able to watch the original show in my grandma’s den way back then, but I find myself rewatching it at least three nights a week now, usually right before I drift off to sleep. What is it about this show that keeps drawing me back? What is it about this moment in time that sends me back, right before bedtime, to an overly sentimental and predictable sitcom about romance on a cruise ship? Those might be my central research questions, if you will allow me to co-op that academic perspective for this informal exploration.
My love of the show goes beyond longing for a simpler time and missing my little sister, so I would like to set a course for adventure, where I might search for some reasons I find pleasure in watching The Love Boat in 2026. I want to approach this adventure from my current perspective as a 54-year-old woman very much in love with the man she married 24 years ago. I also want to think about 8-year-old Kristie and what this show taught her about life and love.
Over the next few posts, I plan to share some observations I have made during my recent retro-viewing-fest, not necessarily to urge anyone to watch The Love Boat again, but to look at what it reveals about our society then and now. I want to see how watching this show during formative years of my life shaped my understanding of concepts such as romantic love, beauty, and luxury, but also how it reflects what my culture values or doesn’t value. How have those values changed over the last 40 years? I hope to share some personal stories, maybe an outside reference or two, and a lifeboat full of ponderings.
For those who are unfamiliar with the show, or who don’t remember the context, here is a quick catch-up before we dig into specific storylines. The Love Boat exemplifies the definition of a sitcom: every episode is situated within the context of people embarking on a cruise, mostly for vacation. The only consistent characters are the ship’s crew, and we grow to love them in their quirkiness, if not for the depth of their stories. In fact, I often wondered how they ended up spending their lives on the ship. We do receive hints of a backstory or two, such as suggestions that Captain Stubing battles alcohol addiction, and Dr. Bricker has a sordid history of multiple marriages. We begin to understand why his marriages have failed as we observe his heated attractions to a new woman on board in every episode. I believe one reason the show was successful was that the core crew, which consisted of Captain Stubing; Dr. Bricker; Julie, the cruise director; Gopher, the purser; Isaac, the bartender; and Vicki, the Captain’s surprise daughter, stayed consistent for the majority of the show’s 10-season run, from 1977 to 1987.
The focus of each individual show, however, is the unique cast of characters who board the ship for a cruise each week, and we travel along with them, as the crew leaves once again from Los Angeles to explore exotic locations such as Puerto Vallarta and Acapulco. Their stories are varied, but they often follow a predictable pattern, and the conflict must be resolved within that one episode, as next week’s episode will feature different passengers (except for the rare “to-be-continued” episodes).
The Love Boat has been the subject of countless criticisms along with some good-natured ribbing, but haters, hear me out. I do not write these posts in a self-indulgent attempt to legitimize my fangirl indulgences. I don’t need to legitimize my fangirl indulgences. I am a grown woman who can watch whatever she would like on my streaming services and post sappy comments all over my social media, if I wish. No, I think I see something worth noticing about this old show that helps me navigate our turbulent, influencer-led, drama-laden, digital world right now. I wonder if you might see something similar or related that we can discuss, so I choose to share my thoughts.
Some criticisms of The Love Boat are certainly worth mentioning, though. I concede that each week’s show contains some overused, trite storylines acted out by network-contracted players who might be considered second-tier actors. I also know the storylines reinforce some gender stereotypes in clearly heteronormative ways, and network executives only begin to include characters who are not white in the later episodes. These are valid criticisms that apply to many television programs in the 1970s, but The Love Boat aired around the same time as All in the Family, The Jeffersons, and M*A*S*H, all of which took some uncomfortable looks at common injustices in modern society. Therefore, it is worth noting that The Love Boat often played it safe when writing storylines that dealt with controversial issues, but I also think we can see that the show did not ignore controversy either. We can commend the moments when the show dipped its proverbial toe into choppy waters, analyze its shallow presentation of the topic, and compare it to how the issue is treated in today’s media. From this, I hope to draw some conclusions about the show’s value, while considering how sitcoms might have shaped our opinions on controversial issues.
TRIGGER WARNING – The next paragraph discusses a very sensitive issue.
Addressing these criticisms is a great way to take a critical look at the show. We can contemplate how the show provides a too-tidy ending in stories that deal with complex issues, for example. We might look at episode 21 in season 8. In that episode, a mom (played by Florence Henderson, a.k.a. Carol Brady) finds out her new husband has been at least what we might call “sexually forward” or “sexually suggestive” with her daughter. We are not sure of the extent of his inappropriate behavior, but we know he is a scoundrel. She leaves him as soon as she discovers the truth, and she apologizes to her daughter, but the show ends with the mom and daughter leaving the ship together, the husband nowhere in sight. No consequences for the predator, who apparently disembarks freely, off to prey on some other woman. We know he will continue his evil ways because we have seen him harass Judy, the cruise director, who had replaced her sister Julie by this point in the series.
In this example, the show’s writers introduce a story that confronts a very real and heinous truth for many viewers, and they clearly portray the predator as a villain, but they do not go much deeper than that. Maybe asking them to do more than that is unreasonable, since we are talking about a sitcom that has to resolve, in less than an hour, three storylines built almost entirely on character sketches. Yet, as I wrote about this episode, I felt the need to add a trigger warning because I know how sensitive the subject of sexual assault is. I wonder how harmful it might be to a survivor of sexual abuse, who might be reading this post lightheartedly, to be smacked in the face with a traumatic memory prompted by my episode synopsis. Watching that episode, which originally aired on February 9, 1985, helps me to think about how far we have come in dealing with sexual harassment and abuse. It also invites me to question how effective we have been in preventing abuse from happening altogether and/or helping victims heal. Do we do more in 2026 than just separating the victim from the predator? Or less?
These are the kinds of contemplations and observations I want to explore in this blog series, which might serve as a framework for self-reflection and cultural commentary. In my next post, I want to begin by listing a few reasons I love re-watching The Love Boat, and I may throw in some anecdotes, some links, and maybe some spiritual insight here and there. I know our first port-of-call, but where the winds take us from there, we’ll just have to wait and see.
I hope you will set sail with me. Welcome aboard, it’s love!
P.S. The source info for each photo is provided through a link embedded in the photos, and links within the text will take you to the website where I found the information I am discussing at that moment.
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In my Forties
By Kristie Camp
As far as conscious memory goes, life in my teens centered on what other people thought – a tight-wire balancing act between wanting to be included because I was loved and wanting to be admired for being different, unique, cool. Having the hip haircut, listening to the newest bands, skipping school with my group, sharing secret memories together. Perception was reality; therefore, I had to craft the perception.
Then, in my twenties, I lived in hot pursuit – always seeking adventure, a passionate love affair, a meaningful and prosperous career, an extended education. Always chasing that mirage of what life was supposed to be.
I spent my thirties as a mom, raising two boys. My life was not my own in my thirties; I lived for them, for my husband, for my job, for my church, for my social standing, for my reputation. Trying to earn respect, seniority, a place of authority.
But somewhere in my forties, I decided that I could go ahead and open the Amaretto coffee creamer even if I hadn’t fully finished the coconut crème coffee creamer.
Somewhere in my forties, I decided to wear my hair as long as I wanted it, sometimes with bangs, sometimes letting the bangs grow out, sometimes braided, sometimes with a headband, and even sometimes hot-rolled. Just because.
Somewhere in my forties, I decided to download the greatest hits of Glen Campbell, Chicago, and Marvin Gaye. And I listened to them all on the same playlist with Loretta Lynn, Bruce Springsteen, and Justin Timberlake.
Somewhere in my forties, I decided to take a Sunday morning and write poetry.
Somewhere in my forties, I bought a blue rain hat with a floppy brim and pink flowers, and I wore it to work on rainy days, all the way into the building, not removing it when I received a second glance.
Somewhere in my forties, I stopped advertising my beliefs, fully intending to live them instead.
Somewhere in my forties, I decided that I could spend $15 on authentic honey-lemon bath wash from a boutique while buying lotion from the dollar store.
Somewhere in my forties, I began buying dresses that hugged my curves, and I splurged on gel-polish manicures.
Now, at 45, I look over the edge, pondering the second half. I look out of my cloudy living room window with only a longing to be in the yard, planting more and trimming more. I examine the blank page on the computer screen, my fingertips itching to tap the keys. I toss a frantic pattern of books, swapping one for the other according to my mood.
Yet, even now, as I look in the mirror, I worry that the cut is too low and the eye shadow too dark. I weigh myself every morning and watch the numbers on my FitBit. I yell at the posts I see on Facebook, but I won’t type a word or say a word. I still keep some book titles hidden, along with a few songs on the playlist.
And the pendulum of guilt swings back and forth, tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.
Duel Purposes
A Reflection on Hamilton in AP English Language
By Kristie Camp
I knew my students would love Hamilton as soon as I started listening to it myself, and I knew I had to get it in my classroom. The more I listened to the Broadway cast album as I walked around my neighborhood for my daily stroll, the more I plotted and planned how to incorporate it into my daily instruction of American founding documents, speeches, essays. Like I said, I knew they would love it; I just didn’t know exactly how deeply the play would affect them.
I first heard about Hamilton from our drama teacher last spring when she staged a school version of In the Heights, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s first Broadway hit, which was a hit with our students, as well. While we were discussing how perfect In the Heights was for our students, she commented, “The guy who wrote this has written another rap musical about Alexander Hamilton.”
“Really?” I asked, perplexed as nearly everyone is when they first hear of the concept behind Hamilton. And sure enough, after she told me about it, I started seeing comments about the off-Broadway hit on social media, and by the time school began again in August, Lin-Manuel Miranda began showing up on talk shows to promote the release of the cast album. So some time around October, I began listening to the album, falling in love with the characters and the poetry and the music itself.
So, when we came to back to school after Christmas break, I had a plan to play one song each day at the beginning of class as our warm-up activity. We would listen to the song, discuss the literary elements of the song, and then move on to our rhetorical analysis of Jonathan Edwards, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and Ben Franklin. And that is how the journey began.
As we listened each day, the students fell in love. I would watch their faces as they listened. At first, they turned their heads in curiosity, surprised by the way they found themselves captivated by the story from the very beginning.
“I thought this was going to be whack, Mrs. Camp,” Zyria said after the first two or three songs, “but this is really good.”
I used the lyrics to teach concepts such as the self-made man and ad hominem fallacy. I used the structure to teach about Aristotle’s definition of tragedy and how the musical very nearly lines up to a perfect classical tragedy (even with the role of the Greek chorus being performed by the ensemble comments). We talked about narrative structure since the antagonist tells the story of the protagonist, and we talked about how the music associated with each character builds a thematic motif for that character that plays its way all the way to the end.
Each day, the kids found themselves more and more enthralled. They picked up on the rap allusions (“10 Crack Commandments” and “Now ya know, Mr. President” and “Let’s go” elicited nods and comments and fist pumps). They went home and listened on Pandora and Spotify and Apple Music and You Tube. They started bringing me stories of parodies they had found online. As we encountered new moments in Hamilton’s life, students would Google the event while the song was still playing and then offer their discovery to the class when the song ended. The short bio we read of Jonathan Edwards before we began our study of “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” mentions that he is Aaron Burr’s grandfather, but when they heard Aaron Burr sing “my grandfather was a fire and brimstone preacher,” they said, “Oh, yeah! That makes sense. He has that ‘going to hell’ stuff in his head.” The play was a hit with my kids just like it is with all the rest of America. Yet, two particular moments in our study stunned me, left me with more questions than answers.
“You have no control / Who lives, who dies, who tells your story…”
First, Maria Reynolds. I set them up for it; they knew Hamilton’s fall was coming. I had taught them about the characteristics of a tragic hero, how his flaw is a positive character trait that nonetheless brings his downfall. We had decided that Hamilton’s desire to “rise up” and establish a legacy, his ambition, would bring his fall, especially after we heard Burr say, “soon that attitude will be your doom.” I thought they were ready for Maria Reynolds.
Halfway through “Say No to This,” I saw jaws drop. I saw heads shake. I saw eyes avert from the screen to their desks. I heard gasps. I heard as many “no!”s from my classroom as from the song itself. As soon as the song ended, they said, “Why did he do that?” and “I can’t believe he did that!” and “Well, he’s screwed now.” The Googlers added, “It went on for three years!” My first period told my 7th and 9th period about what they were going to encounter in English class that day, and even the forewarning from the other students wasn’t enough to dampen or soften the heartbroken (and a little embarrassed) reaction from my students.
Now, my kids are not strangers to the concept of a sex scandal. We live in South Carolina where our former governor told the world he was hiking the Appalachian Trail when he was really flying state planes to Argentina to see his girlfriend while his wife and sons wondered where he was on Father’s Day. They are social media junkies who tell me crazy stories about the sexual escapades of the Kardashians or other celebrities. And who is cheating on whom at Gaffney High School always takes center stage of any nearly any discussion around school. So, why were they so devastated by Hamilton’s indiscretions? I had taught them about Thomas Jefferson’s sexual relationship with his slave, Sally Hemmings. They knew of Ben Franklin’s philandering ways, also, so their shock shouldn’t have come from a mistaken idea that people just didn’t do those things back then.
Had they found themselves so attached to Hamilton as Miranda presented him, so whole-heartedly believed in him, that they felt as betrayed as Eliza herself? I think this may be the case because when we listened to “Burn,” the tears began to flow. The girls sniffed back the tears, and the boys looked away in response to the raw pain in Phillippa Soo’s voice in “Burn.” In fact, many of the boys didn’t know how to handle her wrenching, “You, you, you, you”; some giggled nervously when we hit that part. The rawness of heartbreak was real to them on at least three levels: 1) They have felt betrayed at some point in their own lives. 2) They believed in Hamilton, his dreams and ideals, and feel betrayed by him themselves as if they were there. 3) They commiserated and empathized with Eliza, the wounded wife, the loving supporter, the hero of the story before they even knew she would end up being the story’s hero. In fact, the heartbreak they feel along with Eliza makes the ending all the more powerful because they comprehend the remarkable nature of her strength in forgiving Hamilton and in working to preserve his legacy (and are quite in awe of that strength). At the end, my students said, “Eliza went through it, Mrs. Camp.” They told me, “She lost everyone and still kept going.”
One young man in my 7th period said, “So, who would have thought Eliza would be the real hero of the story?”
I responded with, “Cameron, say that again out loud so the rest of the class can hear you.” So, he did.
Another young man said in response, “Eliza, how can she be a hero? She is woman!”
The rest of the class groaned and responded with comments such as “Shut up, CJ,” but the idea stuck.
Eliza carries on; Eliza is a symbol of strength and forgiveness; Eliza endures. They had found someone to admire in the story even if the protagonist had broken their hearts.
The second moment of reckoning: the duels. They thought the first duel between John Laurens and General Charles Lee was entertaining. They laughed at Miranda’s portrayal of Lee (“Wheeee!”), and they admired Laurens from the beginning, especially since he was from South Carolina, and as a favored son of South Carolina, one who bucked the slave system we are so well-known for. They cheered for him throughout the first act.
The second duel elicited quite a different response. They began to piece together the similar tune of the counting of one through nine in “Ten Duel Commandments” and of Eliza teaching Phillip to play the piano and count in French. Again, they saw the inevitable coming, but they weren’t able to prevent the onslaught of tears when the inevitable arrived. They also knew how Hamilton would die before we arrived at the Hamilton-Burr duel (of course, that’s the part of Hamilton’s life everyone knows). Yet, when the play was over, they sat in stunned silence until someone gathered enough courage to ask, “What would happen if he hadn’t gone to the duel?”
“He would have been dishonored, labeled a coward, and probably blacklisted from society,” I answered.
“I guess I would be a coward then. Who would go to a planned shooting where you know you could die?” This comment or something similar erupted from every class at the end of Hamilton, and we spent the next 5 -10 minutes discussing the history of duels and the notion of honor and what we do today to defend someone’s honor. Yet, questions about the duels kept coming; the duel scenes stuck with them, plagued them for days.
Overwhelmingly, my students were bothered most by these duel scenes, the moments of arranged and gentlemanly violence. My students, who watch violent movies and play video games such as Black Ops, and who listen to popular music that treats death as an expected and somewhat honorable occurrence. My students, who lost a classmate last year to suicide and lost two more friends this year to an accident caused by their friends’ own drug use and impaired driving. My students, who see gun violence portrayed on daily news broadcasts. My students, who come from homes where owning a gun for protection is seen as standard procedure and who live in a town where not owning a gun is viewed as naïve and not smart. My students, who witnessed the hysteria and heartbreak and fear caused by a serial killer stalking our very own town and killing people we knew personally just seven years ago. My students, who just last summer witnessed the gruesome slaughter of innocent church members just miles down the road in a place where they often spend summer vacations and take school field trips. And yes, my students who even own guns themselves and often go hunting in the morning before school even starts – these very students so accustomed to gun ownership and who respect the power of guns and who do not blink when they hear about a murder or a school shooting were silenced and bewildered when they witnessed a familiar duel that actually took place 200 years ago but came alive and played vividly on the stage in their minds. Why?
Could it be that the art itself, the music and the drama portrayed through the lyrics, catapulted a common occurrence into a realm that news broadcasts, and even reality itself, couldn’t capture? Miranda’s story captured their minds and hearts at a level that transformed seemingly abstract (even if common and familiar) concepts such as dying, defending one’s honor, facing death with courage, and showing mercy to one’s enemy into one concrete lump in their throats that just wouldn’t settle and that sat stone cold and still in their bellies when they managed to force it down.
For years, when I taught Aristotle’s definition of tragedy and explained the notion of a catharsis, I taught it as a purging of emotions, a way to express our grief and frustration in a healthy, vicarious way. We would get those negative emotions out, throw them up and walk away clean. Yet, maybe a catharsis is something more. Maybe a catharsis is more of a way to internalize those emotions, a way to connect to humanity by making the emotions raw and tangible, yet able to be expressed freely in a safe place – the theater – where those emotions are welcomed and accepted and celebrated as part of our humanity. A catharsis is more of an awakening when we have fallen asleep to the pain that surrounds us, to the injustice that has become routine.
I don’t know exactly where to go from here; I am in the planning stages of a new unit based on Hamilton’s music for next year. Yet, this new perspective has awakened an old longing in me, too – a longing for that sweet spot of learning, that moment when heart and mind connect to make new meaning that lasts far past a test. I am certain we hit that sweet spot this year with Hamilton, and I know my students will carry that moment with them far past their use of the musical as evidence on their AP exam. In fact, I pray that this year’s experiment was not a moment, but a movement. Thank you, Lin-Manuel Miranda.
Kristie Camp 