Fresh Perspectives: HPU Anthology of First Year Writing, Spring 2013

RENT: BUY IT! (By Camille Sarmiento) Though I had almost no knowledge of Rent when I first watched it, its eight talented actors never failed to entertain or amaze me with their beautiful voices. With songs correlating to the plot, Rent—a movie adapted from a Broadway musical written and composed by Jonathon Larson—deals with controversial subjects such as homosexuality, cross-dressers, HIV/AIDS, non-working “bohemian” artists, and the homeless—important issues in the place’s setting of New York City, 1989 to 1990.

While these subjects may seem too risky or sensitive to some, many of these issues are still very real to us today, making Rent relevant and captivating.

At first glance, Rent is simply a story of eight friends and everything that has happens to them within a year, as depicted in the musical’s most well-known song “Seasons of Love:” “Five hundred twentyfive thousand six hundred minutes,” repeat the lyrics, saying that a year is “measured in love” (Columbus, 2005). But the year in this story is nothing but simple. The friends consist of aspiring filmmaker (Mark), a once-semi-successful musician (Roger), a rich man through marriage (Benny), a cross-dressing drag queen (Angel), a struggling teacher (Tom), a lawyer (Joanne), a drug-addicted club dancer (Mimi), and an outspoken activist (Maureen). Most of them have HIV/AIDS and are struggling with money. Three couples fall in love and experience their own kinds of problems. One friend becomes fatally ill. Along with that, various situations cause the friends to drift apart. A year after the movie’s opening, they are reunited due to the critical health condition of another friend. Yet the movie ends happily—or as happily as it could, after what they have gone through.

Rent allowed me to experience just a bit of the fear and struggle encountered those who live with a high possibility of dying soon. It features scenes of “Life Support” meetings, where people with AIDS gather and help each other cope. During a song accompanying a montage of conflicts, a special effect shows the Life Support members fading away and disappearing. This foreshadows the death of one of the friends (my personal favorite).

As in most stories, there are romances, and in Rent they are both heterosexual and homosexual.

Though some people still view homosexual relationships as inappropriate for such shows, today there are many more proud homosexuals as well as many more people who are accepting. Rent helps demonstrate tolerance by including a gay couple, a cross-dresser, and a lesbian couple. The film portrays their relationships with as much dignity as heterosexual relationships, their love being no different; it is actually the gay couple who has the ideal relationship that everyone wants. Another character exclaims in a song, “I’d be happy to die for a taste of what Angel had.” In one song Angel (Wilson Jermaine Heredia) buys Tom, his lover, a jacket after his gets stolen; though the purchase was not significant at the time, the jacket appears again after someone’s death, taking on great emotional value.

The concrete reason for the title, Rent, is that Benny wants to evict the homeless from “tent city,” where many homeless and low-income people reside, as shown in the story’s first title song. In its place he wants to build a “virtual interactive studio.” Though many are already struggling to pay their rent, now they have to deal with the prospect of being evicted—a major issue in New York at the time.

Many scenes were filmed in certain areas of New York City that still cope with homelessness, helping to put the audience in the actual place and time period and to have an accurate sense of what it is like - 37 -