A few of Hamilton's lyrics have been censored for its release on Disney+, but removing certain profanities actually hurts the musical. Since its debut on Broadway in 2015, Hamilton has become a bonafide phenomenon. Now, with the release of the Hamilton movie - a version of the stage show compiled from multiple live recordings of original cast performances - the musical is more widely available than ever before. However, releasing Hamilton as a movie came with restrictions that creator Lin-Manuel Miranda wouldn't have considered when he was first writing the show.
When movies are released in U.S. theaters or through a streaming service, they come with a rating from the Motion Picture Association of America. The institution is notoriously strict when it comes to foul language, and any movie that contains more than one F-word will automatically receive an R-rating. Hamilton has three, so releasing an uncensored version of the musical would technically limit who can see it. This would likely have been the case even if the Hamilton movie had released in theaters as originally planned, but now that the show is available on the family-friendly Disney+, an R-rating would have been a deal breaker. In order to achieve the more palatable PG-13, Miranda agreed to censor all but one of the show's F-bombs, but in doing so, the musical is a little worse off.
Hamilton contains three uses of the F-word across its two acts, and all but one have been edited out of the Disney+ version of the musical. The first utterance comes during "Yorktown (The World Turned Upside Down)" in a triumphant line of Hercules Mulligan's - "When you knock me down I get the f--k back up again!"; the second is in "Say No To This" when Hamilton finishes James Reynold's line of "That was my wife who you decided to" with "Fuuu--"; and the final use is found in "Washington On Your Side" with Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Aaron Burr singing: "Southern motherf--kin' Democratic-Republicans!" For the Disney+ release of Hamilton, the "Fuuu--" in "Say No To This" is untouched and Hercules' F-bomb in "Yorktown" is muted, but the "motherf--kin'" from "Washington On You Side" is replaced with a weird record scratch noise that throws off the line's cadence and ultimately hurts the song.
Prior to the release on Disney+, Miranda explained how Hamilton would be censored, admitting he needed to literally give two f--ks in order for kids to see it. And again, under MPAA rules, Hamilton is required to censor all but one F-word to avoid an R-rating and there's no way Disney+ would have argued otherwise. But in actuality, this version of the musical is without any F-bombs at all. Leaving the "Fuuu--" from "Say No To This" as the only one is silly because the song is already censored by not having Hamilton complete the word. In fact, it's pretty similar to Hamilton's line of "Sit down, John, you fat mother-[BLEEP]" in "The Adams Administration" in that the censoring is played for comedic effect. If the PG-13 version of the musical is only allowed one utterance of the F-word, then it should have been the F in "Southern motherf--kin' Democratic-Republicans!" Of the three, it's the most crucial to its line's musicality and rhythm, and without it, the rhyme of "motherf--kin" and "Republicans" is ruined.
What makes the censoring of the F-bombs even more ridiculous is how the musical is allowed to retain other mature material. Many of Hamilton's songs contain swear words like "a--", "damn", and several variations of "s--t", while "Say No To This", a song about an extramarital affair, is littered with sexual innuendo beyond the "Fuuu--". And yet, all of this remains without a single change, making Hamilton the most explicit content available on Disney+. In the end, the censoring doesn't entirely ruin the musical or take much away from the experience, but it does cheapen a great song and highlight how arbitrary the censoring is to begin with. Hopefully, before too long, an unedited version of the Hamilton movie will be made available on home media so fans can enjoy the show's lyrics as originally written.