“Rent is a rock musical with music, lyrics and book by Jonathan Larson,[1] loosely based on Giacomo Puccini‘s opera La Bohème. It tells the story of a group of impoverished young artists struggling to survive and create a life in New York City‘s East Village in the thriving days of Bohemian Alphabet City, under the shadow of HIV/AIDS.” – Wikipedia

“In this musical, set at the dawn of the 1990s, a group of New Yorkers struggle with their careers, love lives and the effects of the AIDS epidemic on their community. Mark (Anthony Rapp), an aspiring filmmaker, and Roger (Adam Pascal), an HIV-positive musician, scramble for money to pay rent to their landlord and former roommate, Benny (Taye Diggs). Meanwhile, their friend Tom (Jesse L. Martin), a professor, has fallen for Angel (Wilson Jermaine Heredia), who is slowly dying of AIDS” – Google

Rent’s themes of togetherness, living for the present, dealing with social stigma and uncertain futures, and of the pursuit of bohemian abandon set a milestone for the depiction of queer characters in mainstream media. Released in 1996 as a musical and in 2005 as a movie, Jonathan Larson’s magnum opus is still one of the most diverse and varied (created) snapshots of queer life noted today. Featuring many queer characters, HIV+ characters, characters of color, and poor characters, their interactions give insight into not only media portrayals of queer people who fall outside of the acceptable mold of white, abled, upper-middle class gays. In fact, the characters all fairly radically and vocally oppose the politics of assimilation [and subsequently gentrification] into the ‘yuppie’ lifestyle of their ex-friend and ex-flatmate Benny, who sold out in their eyes by marrying rich and trying to raze the very building in which they all used to live and which Benny now owns.

CLIP OF THE PHONE CALL WITH BENNY CAN GO HERE/OR CLIP FROM 2005 MOVIE “YOU’LL SEE”

LA VIE BOHEME- THE CAST EXPRESSES THEIR DISGUST WITH BENNY https://youtu.be/Lo8CmwIKiDw?t=3915

(And reprise https://youtu.be/Lo8CmwIKiDw?t=4597)

Benny is one representation of hegemonic and hierarchical power who transgresses the queer and carnival ethic of  “free and familiar attitude […] over all values, thoughts, phenomena, and things (Nogee).” He has effectively assimilated into an upper class, heterosexual, capitalist lifestyle and abandoned his ethics and friends- essentially spitting in the face of the antiassimilationist ‘bohemians’ who arguably all live quite queerly, regardless of sexuality.

The nonnormative couples in the movie/musical, Angel and Collins, and Joanne and Maureen, are varied depictions of queer and interracial couples, yet race is never explicitly addressed in either relationship. In fact, “interracial relationships are unquestioned,” within the framework of Rent, and “for all the problems that these couples have,” (even the straight couple Roger and Mimi) “their racial differences is not one of them,” yet the racialized characters and politics are clearly mapped onto the very fibre of the production’s essence– the dynamics and believability of the movie/musical simply does not function with an all white cast (Sebesta). It has been attempted, to no great success. Angel and Collins undoubtedly have the most “steady, giving, tender” love of any couple in the production, yet they are considered to be the most transgressive couple because of Angel’s gender and presentation as well as because of both parties’ HIV positive status (Sebesta). Angel is, depending on the version, either genderqueer, a drag queen, or transgender (cast members often alternate between he/him and she/her pronouns within a single production), is queer, HIV positive, and Latinx while Collins is a black, gay HIV positive man. Within the world of Alphabet City, however, where the bohemians thrive, “Angel’s disguise is completely unquestioned […] signaling to mainstream audience what is normative and what is not” (Sebesta)

Yet arguably because of this, neither ever addresses the possibility of marriage or desire to otherwise assimilate. This refusal can be elucidated through the Kenyon Farrow article “Is Gay Marriage Anti-Black?” as well as the medical status of both characters. Farrow argues that, yes, gay marriage is anti-black. Gay marriage, while touted as proof of ‘progress’ in contemporary times, is still an overwhelmingly white movement, and this is because the class, racial, and acceptability politics of marriage often exclude people of color from the beginning, and “the Black family, heterosexual, same-sex or otherwise, is always portrayed as dysfunctional” (Farrow). Yet Angel and Collins create the most healthy couple of the ‘family’ that the characters create, exemplified in “I’ll Cover You” :

[BOTH]

I think they meant it when they said you can’t buy love

Now I know you can rent it

A new lease you are my love, on life

All my life

I’ve longed to discover

Something as true as this is

[COLLINS]

So with a thousand sweet kisses,I’ll cover you

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUY_st9c-QA

Yet more touching still, is the reprise following Angel’s death. Collins sings as a eulogy a reprise of ‘I’ll Cover You” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYVM9q_rHXQ ) which quickly became the most salient and memorable moment in the movie/musical. The language of home and shelter is seen more of a mutual exchange of emotional, sexual, and gender labor rather than any subscription to institutional norms of marriage which do not “address [one’s] most critical needs as a black gay man to be able to walk down the streets of [one’s] community with [one’s] lover”(Farrow).

Given as an explanation of why gay marriage is anti-black, Farrow posits that “Given the current white heteronormative constructions of family and how the institutions of marriage and nuclear families have been used against Black people, I do think that to support same-sex marriage is in fact, anti-Black (I also believe the institution of marriage to be historically anti-woman, and don’t support it for those reasons as well).” The bohemians of Rent also eschew hegemonic “manifestations of sexual relationships, racial alliances, and gendered identities in Rent” and as such eschew marriage politics, which is why it is particularly heinous to them that Benny has not only become ‘yuppie scum’ but has married into yuppiedom.

Video of “Life Support” –

However, another glaringly obvious reason for the ways in which the characters of Rent disdain marriage is that they don’t know if they’ll live long enough to make marriage worth the effort– Roger, Mimi, Angel, and Collins all have AIDs, and although “homosexuality is celebrated,” the life support meetings which some of the characters attend underscore the temporality of life and love, and drive home the mentality of surviving another day which precludes any fantasy of marriage:

[ALL]

There’s only us

There’s only this …

[ALL]

Forget regret or life is yours to miss

[GORDON]

Excuse me Paul — I’m having a problem with this

This credo — My T-cells are low —

I regret that news, okay?

Look – I find some of what you teach suspect

Because I’m used to relying on intellect

But I try to open up to what I don’t know

Because reason says I should have died

Three years ago

[ALL]

No other road

No other way

No day but today