I'm Andrew Fucking Jackson!

Sometimes our heroes are assholes.

One of the strangest elements of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson (among many!) is its hilarious and revealing central metaphor -- our seventh President as a moody, self-involved, fourteen-year-old emo kid with anger management issues. And he's a cutter. He lives in a ridiculous comic world but he Takes Everything So Seriously. Jackson sings, "Life sucks! And my life sucks in particular!" Not exactly Presidential.

About halfway through the show, after losing his first election, Jackson as Emo Kid confides to the audience...

I'd like to tell you what I'm feeling right now. Because I'm feeling like this whole thing is really fucked and that it's really unfair and frankly it's starting to get on my nerves and it's also starting to hurt my feelings. And, you can say, whatever, that I've killed a lot of people, that I'm a cowboy or a murderer or even that I represent the national character of this country. Because I kind of do. But I'm also a person, a really sensitive person. And, I worked so, so hard for this shit. You saw me. You saw me out there. Campaigning and stuff. And, then to take it away, to take it away so egregiously -- well, it's just unfair and I don't know what else I need to tell you other than that. And I know you probably think I'm an asshole for saying it...

The same story is told in the show's text -- Jackson really was a self-aggrandizing prick in many ways for most of his life -- and also in the show's political subtext -- America passing from the growing pains of national "childhood" into the complexity and internal chaos of national puberty. Here in BBAJ, John Quincy Adams stands in for ineffectual father in Rebel Without a Cause, with Jackson as Jim Stark, the volatile proto-emo kid.

Or maybe he's the daughter in Beetlejuice...

But this is not some silly cartoon. We have several figures in American politics today who are likewise emotionally retarded adults, people like Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, John Edwards, Allen West, and George W. Bush, among others. It's a serious point BBAJ is making, and some of the show's regional productions haven't understood the ironic layer of uber-seriousness laid on top that both makes the show work and makes it so funny.

The first dialogue scene in the show, a quick romp through Jackson's childhood, seems silly and absurdist, but it does a lot of narrative heavy lifting. It sets up Jackson's origin story, so different from any other President so far and from the rest of America's politicians. It sets up Jackson's attitude about taking land, his hatred of Indians, and his anger management problems, here all inheritances from his father; as well as his emotional retardation, trapping him emotionally in early puberty (coincidentally, his age when his mother died, though his childhood is compressed in the show). This scene gets at a very serious point about those times and these, that while most children grow up in a world of discipline, obedience, and dependence, Jackson grew up in a world with none of those. His world was one of violence, chaos, and moral anarchy -- just as it is for many urban kids today. Jackson never got the guidance or the emotional support children need to develop properly. So he remains an emotional teenager, which is the central point of the show.

To further underline all this, we find Jackson quoting TLC's pop song, "Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls" along with the YouTube meme "Boom goes the dynamite!" He's not just a perpetual teenager; he's also a social media user...!

Jackson admitted his shortcomings later in life, “offering examples of his explosive temperament, which in those days were often accompanied by a stream of obscenities and threats of violence,” according to Lynn Hudson Parsons’ excellent book The Birth of Modern Politics: Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, and the Election of 1828. Parsons describes Jackson as a young man: “According to one source, relocating outhouses was one of their major nocturnal occupations. Andrew Jackson was the most roaring, rollicking, game-cocking, horse-racing, card-playing, mischievous fellow that ever lived in Salisbury.” But he was also the American hero who beat back the British in The Battle of New Orleans -- owing in large part to those same personality traits. Parsons writes, “It was not a mere military triumph. The victory came to be symbolic of a young, vibrant America defeating an old, effete Europe.” Young, vibrant, yes, but also reckless and insubordinate.

In some ways, Jackson is another in a long line of musical theatre anti-heroes, like Billy Bigelow, Harold Hill, Joey Evans, Henry Higgins, Rob Gordon, and Macheath. Why are we drawn to anti-heroes? Because we are all anti-heroes at times. Because that's real. And because the anti-hero is a particularly potent symbol of our current zeitgeist. In these complicated, morally ambiguous times, we require complicated, fucked-up heroes, like Tony Soprano, Dexter Morgan, Nancy Botwin, Walter White, and of course the return to the big screen of Bruce Wayne.

But this Jackson is also an anti-hero in that he won't follow the usual rules of narrative. The protagonist has to learn something over the course of his story, but Jackson gets only a glimpse at the kind of self-awareness most heroes achieve by the end of the story -- look at "Being Alive" in Company or "Till There Was You" in The Music Man or "Love Like That" in Passing Strange; and then look at the end of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson. True, there is profound insight in the last song "Second Nature," but that's not Jackson's voice -- as we see from his commencement address at the end, he possesses very little self-knowledge and still fancies himself a creator of "equality" for all, despite his mass murder of Indians and ownership of black slaves. In some ways, Jackson's lack of growth in the story is as much a Fuck You to the rules of narrative as Jackson's actions themselves were a Fuck You to the Washington establishment. As Mr. Sondheim says, content dictates form.

But the character Andrew Jackson in Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson is not really the seventh President of the United States Andrew Jackson. Like Shakespeare did in all his Histories, Alex Timbers has created a fictional character that uses the real Jackson only as a starting place. The character in the show is more a theatrical metaphor, a view of the real Jackson in the form of an emo kid, because (Timbers and Friedman posit) Jackson and emo kids share certain personality traits and making this implicit connection reveals truths about Jackson. This show is less historical narrative than emotional narrative, once again of both Jackson and our nation.

Throughout the show, Jackson pouts, throws tantrums, yells obscenities, and breaks every promise he makes. Jackson is emotionally and morally retarded and he himself must go through the growing pains of American evolution as the nation figures out what it is, what its values are, what its responsibilities are. The country was still working through a lot of this (and perhaps we still are now). Jackson's hero myth becomes the nation's hero myth. Like an American Jesus, Jackson represents us and suffers alongside us, rejected by the Pharisees, but favored by God. As the literal embodiment of American populism, Jackson represents the American experiment and the American people, both literally and literarily. He is shut out of the power structure just as the majority of Americans were shut out. In the election of 1824, Jackson won the electoral vote -- the voice of the people -- but lost the election because the House of Representatives chose John Quincy Adams instead. (They had this power in this case because no candidate had gotten over 50% of the electoral college.) The common man -- in the person of Jackson -- was robbed of this voice.

Adams wrote on the issue of expanding voting rights, “Depend upon it, Sir, it is dangerous to open so fruitful a source of controversy and altercation as would be opened by attempting to alter the qualifications of voters; there will be no end to it. New claims will arise; women will demand the vote; lads from twelve to twenty-one will think their rights not enough attended to, and every man who has not a farthing, will demand an equal voice with any other, in all acts of state.” The horror! Poor people voting!!

But there's also a strong narrative reason writer Alex Timbers created his Jackson in this form. In addition to being a fucked-up history lesson and a sly commentary on today's political scene, the forward action of the show is Jackson's classic hero myth journey, going further and further up the ladder of power, ultimately to a point beyond his talents. Sure, he had a talent for leading people, he had a talent for ruthless violence, he had a talent for fearlessness, and he had charisma in spades; but none of those talents are enough to govern a nation. George W. Bush had all those same talents (yes, I'd argue, including the propensity toward horrific violence, just not in person), but many would argue Bush was ill-equipped for the office of President.

Like Luke Skywalker, Jackson must start his hero myth journey as an impetuous, willful kid, who must learn to grow up; but unlike Luke, Jackson doesn't have a wise wizard to guide him. Or a magic amulet. Or really, even any companions on his journey. He has none of the tools the hero needs to fulfill the hero myth. His life does suck in particular...

Jackson's great, tragic Shakespearen flaw is a lack of self-awareness. He blunders through his life like a bull in a china shop -- exaggerated in the show for effect, but rooted in truth. (When Jackson left the White House, he actually said to a reporter, “After eight years as President, I have only two regrets, that I have not shot Henry Clay or hanged John C. Calhoun.”) Jackson's gut instincts serve him well both in battle and in early American politics, but not in governing. It's only at the end of the show that Jackson gains some self-knowledge, gets just a glimpse of the immense moral gray area his life has been, and he looks back, conflicted...

STORYTELLER: His historical legacy is a complicated one. Some believe he was the greatest President of the 19th century while others believe his tenure was forever tarnished by his forced relocation of countless tribes...
JACKSON: This is not helping right now.
STORYTELLER: ...and the subsequent "Trail of Tears" which resulted in the deaths of many thousands of Native Americans.
JACKSON: (quickly, sarcastic) Great. Great. Good to hear. (lashing out) You know, you're not supposed to know your legacy before you die!
STORYTELLER: Even today, there is still no historical consensus. In the past few years, numerous books and documentaries have raised the question of whether Jackson was"a great President" or whether he was in fact “a genocidal murderer,” “an American Hitler”...
JACKSON: Wow.

Notice the "lashing out" -- not an adult response, even here at the end of his life. Just before that scene, the band soloist sings "Second Nature," a very complex song about how America was born and what it would become, its mixture of greatness and darkness that directly parallels Jackson's own journey. The soloist sings:

And what was it for?
The swimming pools?
The highways?
The ballgames in the dusk, on the battle fields?
A time we were so foolish and so young
No no no no no no…
No no no…
The grass grows.
We take it.
We want it.
It's second nature to us.

That's pretty potent stuff -- We take it. We want it. It's second nature to us. That describes much of America's early history as well as much of Jackson's life. But it's a childish impulse to take whatever you want. It shows narcissism and a disturbing lack of empathy. There was considerable greatness in Jackson, just as there is considerable greatness in America, but the journey has not always been a pretty one.

Maybe the show's point is that our heroes don't come in capes and tights. Sometimes our heroes are assholes. But that doesn't negate the good -- even great -- things they do. Only children believe in fairy tales and people who are All Good or All Bad. A continent is not taken by good intentions, kind words, and good-faith negotiations. It's taken by force. It's taken by murder. It's taken by a religious fervor called Manifest Destiny. We Americans want to eat the steak but we don't want to see the cow being slaughtered. Like the Florida couple in the show, we may condemn the genocide of the Native Americans and Spanish in Florida and Jackson's infamous Trail of Tears, but none of us are lining up to give the land back. We may condemn slavery and those who advocated for it, but will we tear down all the buildings in the South built by slaves and all the family fortunes built on slave labor? We may protest war, but would we rather America had not fought the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and the Civil War? We want our heroes simple and they never are. We want to like them and emulate them, but they're not always likable.

Sometimes it takes an asshole to get the job done.

The brilliant musical 1776 has a similar agenda, but BBAJ goes much further. Timbers and Michael Friedman chose as their hero a man who accomplished great things and moved our country forward in a meaningful way -- essentially giving birth to modern democracy -- and who was also an arguably unstable, grudge-holding, murderous hothead. Now that's something an actor can sink his teeth into.

The adventure continues. And I still cannot get "Corrupt Bargain" out of my head!

Long Live the Musical!
Scott