talk about rent blease?
the moment i’ve been waiting for >:)
seriously though i have so much to say about rent like there’s actually a whole essay to be written about all the criticisms of it that people have but today is not about that! today is about the good stuff :)
let’s start with mark because mark is So Important to me like. the way he takes his camera with him everywhere and films everything. and that it means that he’s not really a part of anything. “for someone who longs for a community of his own, who’s with his camera, alone?” so true roger. i mean yeah mark doesn’t want to be alone but also he distances himself from other people on purpose because they’re all dying. all his friends are dying. “this could be the year we lose one of them, this could be the year we lose them all” i just. yeah.
it’s like! mark uses his camera as a barrier between himself and the real world. mark thinks that if he tries to distance himself it’ll hurt less when they’re gone. and also the way mark keeps filming his friends and how that means that at least after they’re gone he’ll still have some memory of them?? whatever you do don’t think of mark sitting alone in an apartment with no heat and watching videos from that One Christmas Eve on loop long after all the people in those videos are dead or otherwise no longer in his life. mark cohen is very dear to me i have so many thoughts about him.
unfortunately i don’t have as specific thoughts on the other characters but let it be said that i love them all they’re all very important to me.
one song glory is also something that i think about so much it’s one of those songs which is like. if you catch me at the right time i will definitely cry about this. because roger’s goal in life has always just been to write music and at the start of rent he’s finally in a place where his mental health will let him do that again (“first shot roger, tuning the fender guitar he hasn’t played in a year”). oh also huge respect to anyone who can tune a guitar just by listening to it. i could never.
like, the fact that roger’s goal throughout the musical is to write one (1) song and he doesn’t manage to actually write the song until he’s managed to let himself feel Real Things again and not just kept hiding in his apartment (that being said i’m not a huge ‘your eyes’ fan but give roger a break he’s kind of out of practice). after everything with april and the fact that he has hiv and him trying to stop using drugs, he’s kind of been isolating himself from the world as a way to avoid slipping back into bad habits.
oh, and now let’s talk about roger and mimi’s relationship because i think it’s interesting. the fact that at first roger doesn’t actually want her in his life because he thinks that mimi’s like. a gateway. back into his old bad habits. because the way mimi lives her life is kind of similar to how roger used to (“i used to shiver like that”/“i used to sweat”/“i used to be a junkie”). but still, “no day but today” kind of wins roger over and he kind of needs that perspective in his life. i feel like they have the potential to kind of balance each other out actually. like, roger needs to actually go out into the world and live his life and mimi convinces him to do that. mimi needs to realise that “no day but today” doesn’t mean the same as “it’s a good idea to engage in self destructive behaviours”. roger should be able to help her because this is something he’s been through before.
but also the fact that despite everyone wanting to support her, mimi still ends up destroying herself to the point where she almost dies? like even when benny offers to pay for her rehab in ‘goodbye love’ it still just doesn’t work. mimi doesn’t want to die, necessarily, like, she remembers to take her medicine and all that. but she doesn’t necessarily not want to die either.
as for the others? under utilised, the lot of them. benny really should’ve been fleshed out more like he has such good potential as a character we just don’t see enough of him. like! benny used to be just like the rest of them, they were friends once, and then he got lucky and married someone rich and now suddenly he has money and with that comes power and just. it’s not like this made him a bad person, not at first. just, i’m guessing spending all this time with mr grey and away from people with Actual Morals kind of changed his opinions on things (“what happened to benny, what happened to his heart, and the ideals he once pursued”). the fact that now even when benny does good things (letting mark and roger and the others back into their apartments) it’s for the wrong reasons (good publicity after what happened with maureen’s protest).
i’m sorry i have literally nothing to say about collins but tbf rent itself also doesn’t have that much to say about collins. angel is like. we all love angel, obviously. but also there’s not much to her character? idk a lot of the time it feels like they’re just kind of existing and not doing all that much. also, when ‘i’ll cover you’ happens, they’ve both only known each other for about two hours. however, i can appreciate the fact that angel is basically canonically trans in rent (2019).
and now, last (but not least), maureen and joanne. maureen is literally the embodiment of the promiscuous bisexual stereotype which is unfortunate because other than that i kind of like her. ‘over the moon’ is one of those things which is like. what the fuck. but also is a complete masterpiece it’s such a ridiculous thing to have happened in this show. as far as i can tell, joanne is the only character here who’s competent, and also the only one who had a steady job for the entirety of the musical. good for her.
other things: the life support scene in the movie is awful i hate watching it. angel’s funeral actually makes me cry. rent (2019) really went for it with the set and all the Climbing Things that the actors had to do, unfortunately, no one thought of health and safety at any point and brennin hunt (who played roger) broke his foot. alexi darling from buzzline is super iconic.
finally, to quote drew from kaleidotrope “don’t even get me started on the movie, the movie is just terrible”.
