My ex girlfriend Michelle loved to listen to
Rent on CD and I was always appalled. The lyrics of Rent sound like someone is just reading it out of the paper. No lyricism there at all. I refused to take her to New York to see it, and I love Broadway. I am finally watching the DVD and it is even worse than I could have ever imagined.The best thing about
Hair is that it isn’t as heavy-handed and thick-fingered in its message as the abominable
RENT.
Rent is too insubtle, too pedantic, too rife with hyperbole, too grotesque, too black and white. The premise is amazing, but the musical is too focused on preaching to the choir and not enough time to educate the masses of asses on sundry important social issues, for both conservatives and liberals.
Read something, even out of the Wall Street Journal or the FT to the tune of a loping, awkward, highschool musical, and it sounds like Rent.
Rent is schoolmarmish while Hair is just out there, exposed. Rent tells you what to think while Hair lets you think for yourself.
Amen to that.
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{ 36 comments… read them below or add one }
YOU are fucking stupid. You obviously don’t know a THING about Rent!. Regardless of if the lyrics are “abominable” or not, (which they’re not, they’re AMAZING), it’s a story of love. Jonathan Larson was telling the story of his life and friends in their fight against AIDS. Don’t judge something until you TRULY know it.
u are so fucking stupid if you think that rent sucks. rent is the most beautiful, amazing, thoughtful thing to ever hit broadway. if its so bad why do you think it has been on broadway for 11 years? Jonathan Larson is a genius to write these lyrics and after he died at the age of 36 his lyrics came even more to life. if you take a second to really try to understand what the lyrics are saying you will understand why this show/moive is outstanding. and btw you shouldn’t swear offf the rent becuase you didn’t like the movie because most people think that the show is much better. and why at all would you think its grotesque? its true and its real. people are really gay, people do really ahve aids, people are really suffering to make it through the night without their power being shut off. this show is a calling to all people trying to make it out there. rent is not only a movie/show its a voice. and you must have the wrost taste in music if you were appalled by these AMAZING!!!!! lyrics.
I saw “Hair” in the 70′s. Thanks for relieving me of any “I Have Not Seen Rent” guilt. I am at peace…
If you are ever tempted to see RENT or rent RENT, then just see HAIR or rent HAIR instead.
U are really Ignorant. Rent Is the best Show/Moive ever. The Lyrics are amazing and everything else is great about rent.
I will respect your opinion that you think it sucks, but I ask you,… why? Yes, you think it’s ‘amateurish.’ You liked ‘Hair,’ yet you don’t like Rent, which puzzles me… most people are opposite, or like both quite equally. Most who don’t like RENT don’t like it because one or both of two reasons: 1.) They think that the charaters are spoiled and that apartments in NY are hard to come by and they should be happy with what they have, or 2.) They can’t understand it, Oh, and I forgot the ‘it sucks compared to ‘La Bohiem’ but for some reason, I don’t think you are and opera lover… but please, I am not trying to be immature, and just tell you that you are stupid for not liking it, but I seriously want to know: WHY? Thank you,
Shiloh
you are so right. randomly talk/sing anything out of the paper to a made up tune that can barely be called a tune – that’s Rent!
Sam888 »
I feel vindicated by your comment! Thanks so much! It is true, it is true!
the Lyrics of Rent are lacking a bit in lyricism because rent is a rock OPERA. You say they sound like they are read off a page, there is a reason for that. It’s dialog set to music, like all opera. you’ll find the same thing in “Pirates of Penzance”, Nabucco” or any other opera. Also I fail to see how Rent is “Black and White” I think that Rent creates more grays than anything. All the character with AIDS seem like good people, but they did have to do something morally questionable to get the disease in the first place. In Rent, no one is innocent, but that does not mean they are bad people. That hardly seems like black and white to me.
I say nothing in regard to Hair because I have never seen it, and I don’t want to make it seem like I know more than I do.
Lyssa » You’re wrong. Pirates is a very lyrical opera! Here’s an example that countermands your argument (this is fun):
Now that was pretty lyrical!
Lyssa » Oh, and PS: Rent is a simple Broadway Musical.
I don’t care what all these other people are saying, I agree completely with you. I can’t stand Rent, for your exact same reasons, plus the fact that the characters are superficial and too stupid for me to even care about. By the end I was hoping everyone would get AIDS and die.
I think I’m about the only teenaged girl in the world who hates Rent, but there you are.
You stepped over the line with the comment, “I was hoping they would all get AIDS and die”. You made it very apparent that you are an ignorant little teenaged girl. There is absolutely nothing entertaining about AIDS and you showed how immature you are with that comment. AIDS is a very real, horrible disease. If you ever had to watch someone that you love suffer through it, you would understand this play more. I can respect you not liking RENT, to each their own, but that comment was just too much!!
yes AIDS is real. but the characters are not real, they are just that: characters in a fictional story. as such, who cares if they get AIDS and die. Anna did not step over any line. She didn’t say ‘I hope real people get AIDS and die’. She’s talking about fictional characters that never existed. Drop this holier-than-thou bullshit.
Anna » Anna, you *are* the only teenaged girl who hates RENT, and that’s a fact! :)
Rent blows.
You have a bunch of whiny bohemian losers, who think that they are too good to work for a living. Angel gets his/her money by killing animals, Mark actually gets a real job then says “No I’d rather starve cause then I can bitch about how unfair the world is” Collins (a university professor) decides in the end of the movie that he’d rather resort to thievery and reprograms and ATM so he can get money whenever he wants. Being a thief doesn’t piss me off so much as the fact that he’s so deluded, he believes he’s taking what’s owed to him.
Mimi wants Roger who doesn’t want her because of her hedonistic ways which is what got his previous girlfriend killed, but hell “Forget regrets” and all that crap. Let’s do drugs, f**k as many people as we can, contract STDs, lie, cheat, steal, and whine that the world doesn’t understand our art/suffering.
NO DAY LIKE TODAY BABY!! WOOHOO!!
Amen, Brother Davidson!
Rent seems kind of corny to me.
The most interesting thing about Rent is, in my opinion, what other people say about it. For what it’s worth, here’s my opinion on the show, and on a generation’s perception of it.
I’m in graduate school, studying music composition and conducting. During my undergraduate years, I studied musical theatre composition for five semesters, which gave me a very scrutinizing look at the way composers have brought the craft of art composition (“classical,” if you like, but please don’t) into the popular sphere. Not every composer does this, but the musical theatre that has stood the test of time—by which I mean survived for many decades, across generational gaps and massive shifts in culture—has music that shows craft, nuance, and deep understanding of theory.
Rent’s music, like Hair before it, deliberately ignores much of this, which is part of the point, of course. It’s a rock show for a rock era. This isn’t a bad thing, nor does it mean the music is doomed to fall into obscurity. It does mean, for a young musical theatre composer like myself, that there isn’t a whole lot there to emulate. The harmonies and melodic structures of Gershwin and Loesser are beginnings, while Larson’s bland power chords are endings from which I have little to learn.
More importantly, though, I’ve learned something about postmodern culture from Rent. Many people, including dozens of my friends from high school theatre, loved it partially because it had a punk-ish aura about it of breaking the rule of the establishment in favor of an anything-goes-as-long-as-I-think-it-up world view. This appeals to my generation, the postmodern individualistic generation: what we do doesn’t matter, as long as it’s our own. Any established cultural entities for which others have respect are automatically targets for our derision, to be broken down (within our circles, at least) and replaced with absolutely nothing.
Rent’s characters, like the music and film they create, are devoid of the cultural perspective that puts an individual in touch with the rest of civilization. This is a major reason that the show is so unconvincing dramatically—it is very hard to care about a character that has little substance to relate to. The thing most people seem to relate to in Rent’s characters is the fact of their struggle itself, which is touching, but has its own serious limitations. People like to identify with this sort of thing because it lends one self-importance—when we sympathize with Roger and Mark, we are cool enough to enter their world. When we don’t have a struggle ourselves, we don’t truly appreciate the fight; I might add that if you’re fighting to gain respect for behavior that could get you killed (STDs and drugs are OK as long as “no one understands me”), your priorities are a little out of whack.
The world of Rent, in my opinion, is not one I would enter, given the opportunity. It is a world that requires one to lose touch with most of society. It demands a postmodern devaluation of many of the elements that I consider wonderful in life, including an artistic tradition. (Of all the cultural norms discarded by the show’s characters, this one bothers me the most, because in truth all art that really matters to anyone is art that becomes part of its tradition by simultaneously breaking old habits and understanding them.)
I was given a chance to enter this world when I saw Rent on Broadway, a number of years ago. I walked out of the theatre stunned. For a show of such cultural fireworks, at the altar of which many of my friends bowed their heads, I was expecting the character depth and subtlety of Williams or Shakespeare, the social commentary of Sartre. Instead, I got three hours of the same three chords, obscured by a lot of yelling about how ignoring other people besides your tiny, isolated world is a great way to live. I couldn’t relate to anybody or anything I saw on that stage. I felt completely unmoved. It was probably the most disappointing dramatic experience I’ve ever had in New York City.
It’s interesting to look for these postmodern “valuations” behind the words of many Rent fans on the Internet. Personally, I’ll stick with art that is truly avant-garde (and therefore is truly art)—I’ve recently gotten into Charles Ives, and if you want your dose of “the world doesn’t understand what it’s done to itself,” you can’t get much better, except maybe Gustav Mahler. Remind me, though, to turn it off long enough to write my landlord a check at the end of the month. I can barely afford it, and that makes me mad, but that’s part of the wonderful variety and challenge of life.
I have never encountered someone who shares my sentiments exactly about RENT. Good to know I’m supported in my dislike, for the very reasons you mentioned. Well put!
Ah, birds of a feather, we are. :)
Never was a huge fan of RENT> I tried to watch the movie 3x .. and could “not” get through it. I loved A Chorus Line. I even loved the movie HAIR and other revivals of it.. it was ground-breaking.. each had a significant story to tell that bound the characters together.. but Rent– it lost me someplace along the way.
but then again.. it’s just me talking.. I am the one that would be Fiona (Burn Notice) IRL..
umm Chris .. where did you get the little bugs that are off to the right? I like them in general ( I personally would pick a different bug for me.. but that’s not an issue really). it’s just different.
ps.. podcast.
I’m with you. I wanted to like it and I was lucky enough to be in a fantastic audience but I just wasn’t moved by it as much as I expected to be. I felt like the cast was amazing and was being held back by a story that should have been more complex, subtle, or something. I enjoyed the vocal work but while Rent is my contemporary story, I was more moved by Hair.
I am in the interesting position of having seen the play (many times), working in it (overseeing microphones and sound), and completely disliking the show. I found the characters, not only to be un-relatable, but also unlikable. They flaunted the rules put in place by our society (many of them were damned for this) while also criticizing us (and I mean everyone who can afford to view this post) for condemning their life style. Ironically, one of the lyrics in La Vie Boheme, says how they “[hate] pretension” when they, themselves, are about as pretentious as one can be. They are poor, freezing, AIDS infested, drug addicts who think they are better than everyone else.
The work seems to be more about the shock and awe of having gays, drugs, AIDS, and an orgy all in the same “performance.” I personally am very offended by they way normal people were portrayed in the show (The police officers, the priest, the business investor…).
Also, the ending was obviously edited after a poor initial screening because it is incredibly simple and poorly developed, even when compared to the rest of the work. Mimi was originally supposed to die, and that should have been retained in the story. Or would showing an audience the consequence of taking illegal drugs in an unsafe manor be counter productive to the “message” or “morale” they author was trying to make.
Wow, that is the best comment of the year. Agree with you. I didn’t even go into such socio-economic insight. In fact, the play/musical surely does “empower” people to remain in filth and depravity.
Rent is a GREAT movie/musical about a bunch of jobless squaters/fags bitching about how hard-working successful people refuse to let them live in apartments and lots for free. Awesome awesome, and all you people are geniuses for loving RENT! Personally, I’m all for AIDS ridden faggots dressing up like women, spreading disease and stealing apartment space, to the point where they BREAK in to the apartment. And you know what, There is no future, not for you fucking liberals. Go vote for Gay rights! WooHoo!
First off, this comment is COMPLETELY ignorant! AIDS is not an epidemic to hit only gays or drug addicts! This is offensive to me as my brother-in-law died of it, and he was neither! It is a horrible disease, one that I would not wish on my worst enemy!
Second, I am FAR from liberal. Very much the opposite. But politics have NOTHING to do with the story of RENT. It is not just about the issues previously mentioned, but one of friendship, love, and cherishing those arond you. Sounds to me that you are just a close-minded person who doesn’t approve of things that are different than what you believe. The way that I look at is, I am not perfect, by far, so how do I have the right to judge at all? You need to learn the gift of love, not hatred.
I think the main problem although I haven’t seen the play, is that it fails to communicate the social conditions experienced by those people in that period in time. Which was during the crack cocaine and aids epidemics.
If you lived in those conditions and had no rich parents to bail you out, then you’d need to work a crappy job, live in crappy apartments with no heating, be surrounded constantly by pimps, prostitutes, muggers, homeless, gang warfare and crack addicts. This wasn’t any of your ‘fault’.
Then either through needle exchange, or blood transfusion or unprotected sex, you contracted aids and life just got alot worse. (AIDS during that times was a death sentence, no miracle drugs like today)
And lets not forget drug addiction. Like anyone here hasn’t taken drugs. Problem is crack cocaine was a new drug and it’s addictiveness was not well documented. People weren’t educated, so you had tragic cases like Mimi. (I presume)
Now that Vanessa Hudgens is starring in it, I’ll have to see it. But for everyone else, they should keep in mind it’s origin in history. These people lived in conditions most people have no conception of.
What exactly do you mean “Like anyone here hasn’t taken drugs?” I have never taken drugs, smoked, or excessively consumed alcohol to the point of intoxication. As for your social and economic conditions point, being poor doesn’t mean that you have to be stupid. Every main character was the architect of their own demise. Mark was a pretensions idiot who gave up a promising career for no good reason. Roger did drugs, shared needles, and got AIDS. Mimi, also did drugs, shared needles, and got AIDS. Collins was a college professor, lost his job for over crackpot theory, and had unprotected sex. Angel also had unprotected sex. (If your version contained the scene Contact, then everyone had unprotected sex with AIDS infected people) I feel no sympathy for any of the characters and they all got what they deserved and also what they asked for. Every person there had the potential to achieve wealth and greatness, and they all gave it up. Benny even gave them a second chance, and they threw it back in his face.
rent IS black and white. though many of the songs are beautiful and “no but today” is a beautiful sentiment, jonathan larson failed to explore the fact that the “institutions” of these characters’ lives were not the only corrupting forces. many are drug addicts and had unprotected sex, pointing to their own self-destruction. if larson were less heavy-handed in his morals, rent might have been more interesting. this is coming from a high-schooler who is in the production week of rent as maureen, so i’m not just criticizing it for no reason. i see the strengths and the weaknesses.
For all of the people who bash this post, why dont you take a look at the big picture.
RENT is all that is wrong in our society. Let’s rebel against a society by not paying our rent. they are products of their own lack of productivity, will power, and selflesness. Instead of pulling themselves up, and enjoying their lives they aimlessly bitch about it. RENT is the only broadway show I have ever got up and walked out of.
It’s five years after this blog was originally posted, but I just recently saw Rent with a former friend of mine. I say “former” because it was this movie that put my disdain for her over the top. I won’t get into the backstory about this former friend, but I will tell you that she leans liberal, thinks Michael Moore is God, is belongs to a union that supports the CPUSA (Communist Party USA). Me ~ well, I’m a Constitution-loving social moderate, fiscal conservative, and former Army Infantry solider who owns my company ~aka, a Republican.
Some of the posts here say that Rent isn’t about politics. I beg to differ. The people who seem to love it the most are liberal socialist wannabees. I could barely sit still watching the main characters indulge in homosexuality, heroine and thievery. It pissed me off to watch them insult and defame hard-working citizens who (a) protected society, (b) had faith in spirituality, (c) built companies, (d) paid taxes, and (e) enjoyed the fruits of their labor.
What did the main characters do when they were around the people from (a) to (e)? They shit all over them in song while dancing on their dinner plates. Then, they whined about not wanting to “conform” to the very standards that they complained about not having by their own choices…as though drug-addicted, AIDS-infested, non-achievers who consistently made bad choices actually deserved to be treated with respect.
I think the entire concept of Rent should be thrown in a fire and its name never be mentioned again. No wonder liberal socialists liked the play and movie so much. The entire concept is about how the “haves” are expected to fund the “I choose to have nots”.
Sounds like politics to me.
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I am sure you realise that I completely support your words and your perception, though I don’t think I would have gone as far as conspiracy. That said, I do think that programs do program and that a lot — millions by now — of young minds have been influenced by the mission and ministry of RENT. Rent is about politics. Even if it wasn’t written with such savvy by the deceased author, it surely have been taken and interpreted that way — and used that way. Thanks for your comment, JJ
My friend and I went to New York City a while back and we bought tickets to see RENT. We were so excited because we had heard so many wonderful things about the play from our friends back home. We waited for this fabulous show to being as the curtain was drawn, and for the next two hours, we waited, but the good show we were expecting never arrived. No matter what the contents, I am a sucker for a good story. My favourite musical of all time is Les Misérables and I have seen it ten times (this summer it will be eleven times.) I know the words to each song from the beginning to the end of the play, and I blubber like a baby at the end, each time, without fail. I feel that there are a few character and plot parallels between the two aforementioned plays, but what RENT was really lacking was a solid story. The actors and singers were supremely talented, the dancing and the set were great as well; it was the story that was the killer for me. While the lacking plot was perhaps a tribute to the show’s “La Bohème” inspiration, I remain unimpressed with RENT’s “no plot” tactic. There was never any continuity, and the plot jumped from story to story with no effective transitions. For instance, after an elaborate, seven minute song was complete, the guy with the glasses (can’t even be bothered to remember his name), would come to the side of the stage and let the audience know, in a thirty second aside-in-song, something along the lines of “by the way, his girlfriend was dying of AIDS, and now he has it to, and he’s going to die soon…” – you just had SEVEN MINUTES to establish what was going on in the play through song, OR you could make the story flow after the song to include the information you were talking about with an effective transition. Instead, the audience got a singing version of brackets or ellipses. In a book, the author’s message is lost through the overuse of subtext, brackets and ellipses, and the same rule applies to musical theatre. Drawing from Les Misérables for the sake of my argument, Jean Valjean never popped up at the side of the stage and sang “by the way, Fantine is dying in a hospital and her daughter needs to be saved”; the audience knew about this part of the plot because the story was seamless.
Furthermore, I agree completely with any of the above posts that the characters were over sensationalized. When Angel came out on to the stage, everyone began screaming and cheering; she even got a standing ovation for her on-stage appearance. My friend and I just sat there confused because we had no idea who she was, or why we should care so much about her hyperbolized entrance. Much like we waited for the “greatness” of RENT’s story to grace the stage without follow-through, we waited for Angel to portray the traits that warranted her immediate acclaim from the audience. Like the good show we thought we would see in RENT, Angel’s depth as a character was never produced. In fact, when she died, my friend said to me “are we supposed to care that she’s dead?” and he was literally hissed at by some teenaged girls that were seated in front of us. We didn’t care that she was dead because she was on stage for about ten consecutive minutes. Sure, they were ten fun minutes, but we never got a chance to get involved with her character. A RENT-fanatic friend of mine explained to me later that Angel helped some guy see that he was actually gay, and that’s why she was so great. However, the story never revealed the depth of any of her relationships, or any of her struggles in a fashion that provoked any audience sympathy from my end. I’m not about to give a character a standing ovation, weep over his/her demise and revere his/her plight simply because their persona is socially controversial or extravagantly enthusiastic. All of the characters from RENT were one-dimensioned stereotypes, I had no connection to them.
Overall, RENT was a huge waste of my time and my money. The only “regret” I have is that I cannot “forget” the blandness of that show, and the two hours of my life that were taken from me, I will never get back. I guess my friend and I did cry at the end of the show, we shed many tears of happiness that our endurance of this rubbish had come to an end. Make no mistake, I am all for an underdog story that revolves around the oppressed predicaments of the poor and the downtrodden. All I require from musical theatre is a solid story to raise some empathy about the message that is being delivered. I’m also for complex stories that challenge me to think and reflect. However, it is hard to think and reflect about too many intertwined and yawn-inspiring plots that parallel the Dr. Tangle game where people overlap their hands in the middle of a circle, and Dr. Tangle is left to decipher a way to get everyone in a perfect circle once again. In this case, I relied on the plot summary in my RENT program to act as Dr. Tangle, by permitting me to follow the storyline and to keep me awake despite my desire to sleep due to intense boredom and utter confusion over the events of the production. RENT reminds me of a drawing a four year old would give to their parents. It has too many colours, and the page is ridden with unrelated crap that is difficult to follow. But, at least when those drawings get underway, the four year old creator has something specific and creative in mind for his/her parental audience; nothing about RENT was specific or creative. My friend and I almost lost our tickets for RENT. We destroyed our hotel room to finally find the tickets, hailed a cab and then ran through the streets of NYC to make the curtain of the play. We huffed, puffed and laughed at ourselves in our seats as we waited for the show to begin. At least that one fond and amazing memory is something I will carry with me for the rest of my life. Ironically, for that, I have RENT to thank.
oh – and I’m sure if any RENT fan reads this comment later on, he/she will tell me that it’s supposed to have “too many colours” because it’s edgy, groundbreaking, ya da ya da ya da, and I just don’t get it. I definitely do get it, and it still sucks. I also found it hilarious that everyone who told you that you were “fucking stupid” for your opinons of RENT (or something along those lines) left you messages that were ridden with spelling and grammatical errors. Look before you leap, folks.