Pulled up from the comments again (RENT)
I just can't seem to keep my sentences from spilling over those little boxes blogger gives me to write in. I don't know if the problem is me, or the boxes.First, the tangential observation: RENT was literally the very first time I heard of Heidegger. Sad, even a little frightening, but true.
I was not, in fact, raised on Monty Python. I watched a lot of Flying Circus, but it was hit and miss because the show was on during the day, so I only saw it when I was home sick. Somehow I wasn't exposed to the Philosophers Song until college.
Right, and with that taken care of:
On why Priya should stop talking shit about RENT before I blow a gasket:
*rant*
I should preface this with the observation that I never seem to be quite financially stable enough to do what I want when it comes to theater. It was true in 1996, and it's true now, when I don't have the $1000 that the upcoming Anniversary concert requires, or the time and good luck to get one of the $20 lottery tickets for the show. They keep moving the goalposts.
Maybe it depends on when you first heard it--in 1996, when everything else was Les Mis and Cats and utter crap? Fun crap, entertaining crap, but crap nonetheless?
Later, when every other show in the late 1990s was some sort of copy of it?
In college, fresh from four years of working on R&H musicals
and not fitting in anywhere,
when people you know are suddenly sick
and nobody wants to talk about it,
because you're in Ohio and
they're always a bit behind there,
and you get the chance to see
this thing that you've heard about,
and that people are passing around bootlegs from
with unusual enthusiasm,
and you can't because $80 is way too much
money to throw away on a trip to NYC
when it could be enough to buy third-hand books for classes
if you can't find the readings in the library
and the idea that you might be able to use a computer
to get the readings
is laughable because you're lucky that you got
to take a typewriter to school,
and you realize that you really are poor now,
not just because you choose to be
but because you can't help it
and RENT is about people who don't have anything either
but each other?
In grad school, when *of course* the world sucks
and you hate the people who created the rules
and there isn't anything so exciting about a musical
that says these things
and anyway, isn't the point to feel superior
to the masses of people who love pop culture
and just happen to be the people you came from?
After listening to the Clash when your friends loved NKOTB?
After growing up in the Midwest,
where there were two possible dreams:
growing up to be your parents,
or going to New York?
When you wanted to be Mimi
but were always going to be Mark?
When you wanted to be in love with Roger,
but, again, you were always going to be Mark?
Or maybe you never fell in love with La Boheme in the first place, so you never had to think about what happens when something that isn't supposed to be that wonderful happens (and let's face it, La Boheme was not the greatest opera ever, but it was fresh and pushy and about the kind of people only talked about in whispers and the Victorian equivalent of edgy) at the right time and speaks to the right people and becomes more than it should be according to the people who know these things? Twice?
Seriously, I'm all for griping about pop culture and most of my sacred cows are fair game, but this was a big deal to me. So, while I'm happy to go along with a large amount of good-natured bemusement, I also am not going to change my mind about this. I suspect that you either connect with it or you don't, and in this particular case I'm not that interested in hearing about why people don't. I'm really not, for a bunch of personal reasons and a few aesthetic ones, because I do know just a bit about American musical theater and RENT was, in fact, important to that history, despite its musical flaws.
And there are people I've misplaced, and this show is tied to how I feel about that, and about them.
It's bad enough that I can't stand to watch Phantom of the Opera. I'm keeping this one thing. This is what I have left from that day that I realized that there was a difference between where I came from and where I was going.
So, P, you're fabulous, don't ever change, and you can talk all the shit you want about Farscape and LFN and Anne Rice and West Wing and fanfic and all the other cheesy stuff I find fascinating, but in this one case, Back. the fuck. off.
*/rant*
posted by Elizabeth @ 1:34 PM
12 Comments:
Not sure if I even dare to comment in case I get my head bitten off but I would like to point out that the reasons Rent resonated with you, E, are why I didn't much like it.
Your comments about MP are what Rent was to me. I wasn't exposed to it until college and found it (still do when I saw it last year) remarkably cheesy. It's college in musical form-- pretentious kids singing and making films about Bohemia and playing at being homeless. What's the fun in that? Homeless folk usually don't have time to faff about singing songs and having beepers go off to remind them to take their meds.
These were people I would find in college--singing songs about Bohemia, making clever plays with words, fancying each other, going to protests.
For me, Rent was NKOTB--a bunch of fairly well-off (usually very beautiful) young people singing about life (and death). Not that there is anything particularly wrong with either but we get that sort of stuff in Indian TV shows all the time and, hey, it doesn't make me want to go watch those either.
So, yes, I just don't get it, even without getting into its importance to the American musicals. Rent wasn't about people not having anything. It was (is) about people having time to sing/write/make films about not having anything--actors playing parts and I can't get past that.
I do have friends (the ones who took me to see it in NYC) who also seem to look upon Rent as one of the biggest things since sliced bread, E, so maybe (heh) it's an American thing.
Deliberately othering myself,
Priya
Rent was a good show, but it's got nothing on Chess. IMHO. :-)
And I completely agree that almost anything that drove Les Mis and associated crapola out of the popular Broadway consciousness would have been a good thing. (I nominate Les Mis for the Most Over-Rated Musical Ever award.)
It's fascinating to me how we tend to keep a soft spot in our hearts for things that we were exposed to at a certain age or time of our lives, and deliberately refuse to allow our critical sensibilities to operate in the same time-zone as those cultural artifacts. Which is why I am completely incapable of having a rational discussion about anything related to Star Wars, and don't even try to get me to critique any of Lucas' creative decisions in public. Or usually in private.
Along those lines, don't try to tell me that The Greatest American Hero wasn't a very good TV show either. I am likely to become very cross indeed.
If I were you, Priya, I would fear that as well, given that my general requirement to talk about the flaws of the show (and yes, I freely admit that it has flaws!) is a basic agreement that it isn't pointless dreck. And you've made it clear that you don't fit into that category.
1. I didn't say (and no one involved with it ever has, as far as I know) it was about homeless people, or people with nothing, nor is it. It is about people who do, in fact, have something. Even though everyone assumes that they don't, and fail to see why they want to live the way they do.
Hence the difference between "La Vie Boheme" and "Christmas Bells." The repeated calls from Mark's mother. The lunacy of Maureen's protest show.
There's no deliberate cognitive dissonance in NKOTB. Or, for that matter, with the sort of college students that you seem to have met, and who presumably had very little to say to me or anyone else who lived in the co-op dorms.
2. If it were about the homeless, or native New Yorkers, for that matter, rather than the difference between the main characters and people who really *don't* have anything, it wouldn't be called RENT, and several scenes that are missing from the movie but crucial to the show would have been left out alltogether. So let's not make any assumptions about a lack of reflexive awareness on the part of Larson, the cast, or the audience, okay?
That's really much of the appeal--that the show itself is well aware of the difference between real life and the theater, and between people who choose to be bohemian and people who really don't. It isn't as simplistic as you assume, and that's really the criticism that pisses me off. The one that says "I think this is all a bit silly" and doesn't pay enough attention to the show to realize that so does RENT.
It's musical theater, not Angels in America. It's half comedy, and half pathos, and very specifically meant to be about 12 degrees out of plumb.
And the timers came with the meds from the free clinic. They weren't beepers, they were key to the azt dosage and not some example of the spare cash the characters had to throw around.
That said, Chess was a better constructed show. About a more esoteric topic.
And I cringe when I listen to Over the Moon, because it's a little *too* aren't the cute little artists entertaining? for me.
But Chess was entertainment for me, whereas RENT was a picture of the way that bits of me didn't fit with where I was or who I was supposed to be. So it's the one I've seen the most, bought the dvd of, acquired the soundtrack for, and know the words to.
I think I made it clear that I realize my love of the show is irrational on some level. That doesn't make my impatience with the usual "this is crap" comments any less visceral.
*I should note that I enjoy Les Mis. I don't think it's the greatest thing ever, but it is fun. I'm just glad it isn't the only option any more.
I forgot to add that my comments about MP aren't really anything like your comments about RENT. I like Monty Python a lot. I think it's fun, and I greatly enjoy MP. I'm wondering what that has to do with how you feel about RENT, which comes across as an irrational dislike almost on the level of my love of the show.
I'm actually putting myself forward here as one who DOES have an irrational dislike for Rent. But, then, I admitted that in my first comment...
I also (still) think it's a combination of factors that lead to my not liking Rent (not irrational, just a different way of looking at it): there being nothing new in Rent (again, this could be a comment on all musical theatre) and my not having a "soft spot" for it (like Rent for you and Star Wars for W'man). It seems that I'm being blamed for (I can't be the only one!), just not liking Rent. And, for seeing it differently (or seeing different things?--it's a show, you know, not THE show :-))
Btw, to clarify: I meant "College" in the general sense--not my Uni. I don't know about your "co-op" but can't see my dorm folk having much in common with Rent. Or, my upbringing having much in common with Rent. Again, time and place. Context. Different ways of seeing something. Just deal with it!
This interaction (fight! fight!) makes me (almost but not quite) wish I had something to defend which "spoke" to me from a certain age or time. If I had such a sacred cow, I'd probably defend it to the death too.
Or, maybe not.
We agree that your dislike is irrational--reread my last comment again.
Of course there's nothing new in it--it's a retelling of La Boheme. There was something new *about* it. That's my fucking point.
It almost always is. Hence the sci-fi, the fanfic, the frelling medieval literature. Variations on a damn theme.
With that, I'm done with this, because you're the only one having fun here. I'm not sure you actually read the initial post, or took it seriously, or whatever.
But in this *one* case, taking potshots and snarking back and forth is not a good time for me. Not when you are taking as foundational the idea that I couldn't possibly take any of this as any more than the usual entertaining argument.
Find something else to be incredulous about. Or take it seriously. Whatever.
This is the reason I avoided talking about this particular show for five years, is all I'm saying.
I said I envied you your Sacred Cow...sort of. Almost. Perhaps.
All right, I'll find other stuff to amuse myself with--post on either Hobbes or Nepal (or, hey, maybe both?) coming up soon.
Forgot to add: I loved your use of "foundational". You should have brought this up in 1st year discussions about foundations :-)
hey dudettes, my sacred cow hath been maligned mildly! leave my phantom alone!..:)
but i can completely relate to you E in your attachment and adoration for a musical...my attachment whether or not it is irrational...is and will be phantom...the story, not necessarily the musical perse...
i have finally seen rent on dvd and enjoyed it, would love to see the stage version to see how it should be...
No dissing on Phantom meant, Serena.
Well, okay, maybe a little. But only as far as the Broadway version represents a period in theater that outlasted its usefulness, IMHO. Most of my issues with it are personal, rather than artistic, anyway. Somebody else loved it, and that colors my impression of the show more than it should.
In retrospect, my initial post (which is, quite possibly, as impassioned as I've ever gotten on this blog) wasn't the best way to start the discussion. But then I didn't get a whole lot of help from my co-blogger over there, so what can you do? :)
I'd love to dial it back and turn this into a real discussion of theater, the merits of certain shows, and the things we choose to keep sacred. But maybe that's best left for a post that isn't quite so specific to my own history.
We should talk about pragmatism instead. Because *that* doesn't have any personal connotations.
Who's "we", E?
I would like to poke yous with sticks about your sacred cows (though will stop and DID before you wrote that last bit in the new post and I had to come back here!) and even without the whole "link to history of (American/Western) theatre" thing. I say, why bother to link to some other stuff since all this is mostly personal anyway. Or seems to be ;-)
Yes, totally othering myself and wandering off in search of more sacred cows...
Who is this someone else...liking phantom and why did it color your views of the musical...? I do agree that some plays outlasted their usefulness...one of them being CATS...and I didn't even like it all that much! :)
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