Not being able to stomach opera (one of my many failings), I can't
appreciate "La Boheme." So a more contemporary "Hair"-like musical like
"Rent" is more acceptable to me, as it is to a vast number of people. (I
understand that there's a certain amount of Rentomania going on in the US,
with some people seeing "Rent" as the best thing since remote controls for
TVs.[*]) It's true, as Louis suggests, that "Rent" is >designed to give the
middle-class a voyeur's delight with the travails and joys of the
dispossessed.<
But it's not just that. I can imagine that a Christmas song (sung by actors
playing the homeless) centered on the line "there's no room at the Holiday
Inn" goes beyond voyeurism to stir the sleeping conscience of the
upper-middle class ("upper" because of the ticket price) and the rich. The
play also involves a struggle against an evil landlord who want to evict
everyone. As I said, the musical also goes against the usual US disdain for
"drag queens," heroin addicts, etc. I think that one message is that "the
travails and joys of the dispossessed" are similar to those of the middle
and upper classes, intensified by poverty. (I used the phrase "'bourgeois'
ideas about love" in my original posting, but this is what I meant.)
The middle class element is sucked in partly by the one character (played
by Neil Patrick Harris, when I saw "Rent"; he played "Doogie Howser, MD" on
TV). He's young and a bit naive, and more importantly lives in Alphabet
City mostly by choice, avoiding his parents and trying to preserve his
artistic purity (against sensationalistic "Hard Copy"-type television
"journalism"). He's also the only character without a love relationship.
He's an outsider, living in. (There are a couple of other characters who
seem to be in Bohemia partly as a matter of choice.) He and other
characters are quite critical of US culture as the millenium approaches.
The musical is in many ways a critique of the mainstream.
None of this is especially revolutionary, but it's interesting. A musical
with a relatively liberal line is better than "Cats."
[*] A friend of mine, Robert Adler, invented the remote and thus set the
stage for the currently ongoing collapse of Western Civilization. ;-)
in pen-l solidarity,
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://clawww.lmu.edu/1997F/ECON/jdevine.html
"It takes a busload of faith to get by." -- Lou Reed.
