![]() Embodying the political project of nationalist neoliberal multicultural inclusion, the musical suggests that all U.S. Hamilton indexes the tenure of Barack Obama, the first black president whose election symbolized antiracist progress. When Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton opened on Broadway in 2015, Democrats and Republicans embraced this racially diverse musical historicization of the founding fathers of the United States. Although The Fortress of Solitude importantly highlights the unequal socio-political context for white versus black Americans and imagines interracial intimacy through superheroes and songs, the musical ultimately brings the focus back to whiteness, which is too often the case when artists and academics theorize race and racism. Even so, Friedman and Moses, white artists themselves, have crafted these black-sounding songs, and the storyline thus draws meta-theatrical, critical attention to the very material conditions of creating this musical. While the book centers on Dylan, the score centers on black voices and the possibilities for racial harmony. By making Dylan the narrator, Friedman and Moses illuminate how white protagonists shape narratives, appropriate blackness, and disavow their complicity in racial hierarchy. Meanwhile, Mingus, who is black, ends up in the prison industrial complex. But due to his white privilege, Dylan enjoys success, becomes a music critic, and tries to save and profit off of Barrett’s music. The Fortress of Solitude takes place in 1970s Brooklyn where Dylan becomes friends with Mingus, whose father Barrett was a renowned soul singer. Based on Jonathan Lethem’s novel of the same title, the musical premiered at the Public Theater in the fall of 2014 and was soon overshadowed by Hamilton. ![]() This chapter analyzes the power dynamics of storytelling when white artists and characters dramatize black lives and music in Michael Friedman and Itamar Moses’s The Fortress of Solitude. ![]()
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