*gasp* Honey, look! It's a homeless person! Awww, he's so cute. Everyone shush, don't startle him. This is a really special moment, you guys. Look, he wants my sandwich, aww hehe no, silly. That's not for you. I got this special because I can't have wheat. My crystal healer said so.
@@useroffline9999 You know, the internet can disappoint you so often. But sometimes a person reaches across the void to voice their disarmed approval. It feels nice. Thanks!
@@UltimoDogLover not in that movie they wern't they were very upwardly mobile entitled kids but they would be called campers that's true but if they wern't rich they would be called squatters :D
My mom told me "I don't need to watch Rent, I lived it. Too many friends died to have to watch it again" - it made me realize how hollow this movie actually was.
@@reganfisher8180 It's not just LGBT people they're talking about. Victims of the AIDS crisis aren't gonna watch a movie where "but muh art" takes priority over "the tragedy of AIDS" when the movie uses AIDS to set up it's drama.
@@sugarcakezz if you actively go against cdc guidelines because you feel like you shouldn't have to, fuck you man. covid got rapidly worst, the cdc didn't predict it right away. whatever. it's not that hard to just listen so people don't have to die. carelessness along the lines of "everyone dies anyway, why not" is stupid as hell.
30:35 I had always interpreted the Who Do You Think You Are scene between Roger and Mimi being Mimi wanting to *sleep* with Roger, along with doing drugs, so Roger was simultaneously denying Mimi because a) he’s trying to stay sober and b) he has HIV (and doesn’t know that she does) and obviously doesn’t want to infect her. Two *very good reasons* for rejecting Mimi. And then I remembered getting super confused because I thought about this scene after it was done, and I was like “…wait… why is this movie treating Mimi like the good-person idealist and Roger the repressed stick in the mud? He has the moral high ground?” Like we find out later that she *also* has HIV, and it’s treated like “Oh my gosh, we *can* be together!” But I was like, wait, Mimi didn’t know that Roger had HIV prior to soliciting him… so she was going to willingly risk infecting someone else (and do drugs and whatnot) just to “Live in the Moment”? Like what the heck?!
Yo. I never thought of it that way. I just thought roger was rejecting her because she was basically a baby-19 yrs old- and he was probably going to die from that disease and he didn’t want to ruin her life with a relationship with him.
Yeah, I found that odd too. I was backstage for my high school's production of RENT, and I remember always being so confused at why the song is written as if Mimi is right: Roger has perfectly good reasons to reject her, even when he realizes that she has HIV. Yet, the song is staged and written as if it's Roger that's being overly angry. Mimi gets the entire female ensemble backing her in the script, while Roger sings alone, making it seem as if her opinion holds more weight, even though Roger has denied her multiple times, which he completely has the right to do. I don't really have much experience with the movie, as I have only watched it once, but from my time helping out with my school's production, those are just my thoughts on the scene.
@@tape-6 He shouldn't have let them live rent-free if he planned to retroactively demand back the money all at once. As their friend, he knows they can't pay it and he knows that Roger has AIDS, yet he turns off their heat in winter and threatens an eviction to make them stop a protest by a mutual friend who he could deal with himself. In the movie, Benny is played as kind and charismatic, so I get why his friends come off as jerks. But consider that they're cold and sick and they know that Benny is comfortable and only wants the rent money to drive up property value for his new business. It makes sense that they feel somewhat betrayed. On top of which, Benny probably didn't pay rent either when he lived with them.
@@AliciaNyblade I confess, I am a Mark fan. No doubt that he is pretentious and flawed, but he is doing the emotional labour of helping Roger and has to watch his friends die. But thanks! Benny shouldn't get a free pass to act sleazy. The movie sanitized him when it changed his and Mimi's relationship.
@@AliciaNyblade I think Mark's worst fear is loneliness. As such, he is always in others' business and ready to defend his tribe by any means. I really really enjoy Lindsey's videos! I think the "woke" style is a way of adding humour and keeping a strong thesis. I get where you're coming from though, since her biases show. I suspect that Lindsey, and a lot of Rent critics, are defending themselves - like, "I'm an artist who works hard and has to pay rent and I don't feel that entitled." Where I really disagree with her is the implied assumption that the play's job is to represent the whole AIDS crisis or have a clear moral. She makes a good point that La Boheme/Rent doesn't exist to tackle politics, but to make us feel for specific characters. Also, (I'm sorry for getting on a tangent), it bugs the heck out of me when audiences ignore context. I'm not an expert on NYC in the 90s, but what little research I've done explains a lot about the musical and why it's written the way it is.
@@AliciaNyblade I think we're on the same page. Except that I am all for dissociating the work from the author when possible (hard to do in Rent's case!) Maybe death of the author can be a crutch for critics who want to push a single interpretation. My thinking is that, to get to know Rent, I have to really pay attention to the story and part of that story includes knowing about history, AIDS stigma and gentrification. And in my experience, the more I pay attention to a text, the more profound it is. In Rent, like you pointed out, I see characters who value friendship and creativity more because of how fragile those things are. And Benny, the alternative, compromises his friendship for wealth. I agree that the show wouldn't be what it is without Jonathan's need to honour his friends. His story is part of the show's mythology. However, I guess I think death of the author is just acknowledging that we can never know his motives for sure. We can only look at what's written. Btw, I really appreciate your comments. You've clearly thought all of this through!
Hearing the crowd shout that healthcare is a right while going through the coronavirus stuff hits different. We really will have to keep fighting forever, won’t we?
Well the United States is also the the world major supplier of medical technology and medical research. Medical technology is one of our main exports. So it’s easy to argue for healthcare as a right when you don’t know that our current healthcare system has created untold good in the world. It’s a tough thing to say. I think we could find a good middle ground somewhere. I don’t want healthcare to be completely free. Rich people buying medicine and getting treated creates a lot of money for R&D.
i feel bad for the US, i wish you guys were able to obtain free healthcare. We have free healthcare in my country and just knowing you never have to worry because the system supports you, is much more liberating than the american idea of freedom tbh
a) An NHS wouldn't be completely free, it'd be paid for by tax dollars, like in every country it's been tried and works in. How does research happen? The same ways it happens in those countries; with medical research like what we have, with government research competing, with bounties, etc. b) Canada, the UK, Australia, Europe, Japan, and Korea are huge in healthcare technology and medical research and competitive despite having nationalized systems c) other countries, such as the developing countries and whatever China is, also manage proportionally to their economies. Hell there's a worldwide demand for Cuban doctors, and no one is advocating for the system that made Cuban medicine. This argument is not only unconvincing, it's honestly starting to become insulting
Lindsey, as a hemophiliac affect by AIDS in the 80’s( brother died from the tainted blood supply). Thank you for acknowledging the hemophiliacs affected. It means a helluva lot
Mike White have you read the book April Fools Day by Bryce Courtenay? He was one of Australia’s best authors (and my personal favourite). Bryce had a son who was haemophiliac and contracted HIV from a blood transfusion and died. It’s beautifully written, Courtenay is such a wordsmith and his turns of phrase always take my breath away. Maybe you don’t need read it, but if you want someone to understand your brothers story, it would be a beautiful recommendation. My condolences for your loss
Mike White - oh my God. Are you Ryan's brother?? I remember him! As a child in the 80s he was the first person with HIV or even hemophilia that I ever knew by name, and really taught me so much about both. He seemed like an amazing person. Anyone reading this who was too young should google "Ryan White", he was an extremely important name in the AIDS crisis and deserves to be remembered.
Rent was filmed for whatever reason in San Francisco, where they dressed the seediest block of seedy 6th Street as a seedy block of NYC for a month. The crew sprayed fake snow everywhere on the location since it never ever snows there, then they paid all the winos & junkies to go away each day (I am not making this up) and brought in paid extras costumed as winos & junkies.
"We are soooo anti selling out and pro poor people"! *Proceeds to yeet the f*ck out the poor people and replace them with well paid actors, thanks I hate it!*
@@Plisko1 It's been critically panned quite a bit, especially the film. Plus, how many seats are available on these tours? Isn't it possible that it's continuing to appeal to that group of the wealthy that was mentioned in the video, not the population as a whole?
Oh poor baby Mark, affording a pretty big studio apartment while having a good paying job in his field that leaves him time to work on his passion project and maintain a friend group with a family that loves him, I feel so bad for him
I think you've missed the point. 1st off, they are poor. Secondly, they are squatters. Thirdly, its a show about the condition of struggling artists during the aids epidemic in New York. Some of the characters have Aids and struggle with it different. Roger is defeated and desperate to leave his mark on the world. Mimi: is going full YOLO, but is destroying herself in the process. Angel and Collins: Take life one day at a time. Enjoying the time they have and embrace the friends they have. They are scared. But they do not fear.
@@TheReddShinobi13 lol. They are poor, he is not. They are dangling over an endless pit of misery, he's hanging over an indestructible safety net that he could fall into at any moment. He doesn't want to pay rent because he'd rather do nothing, not because he's in any way unable to.
@@TheReddShinobi13 1. "They are poor." Mark had a well-paying job that allowed him free time to work on his passions. Which he CHOSE to quit. 2. "They are squatters." See previous. 3. "Struggling artist." He decided to be a struggling artist. He literally had a decent job that would have subsidized his art _in his lap._ The other characters' struggles may or may not be legitimate, but Mark's are not. Mark is a douchebag.
@@GoddoDoggo Mark is textbook trustfund babies BEGGING to he opressed while ignoring how lucky and priviledged they are. He could have helped any of his friends with that job.
"You will hear people say that poverty is the best spur to the artist. They have never felt the iron of it in their flesh. They do not know how mean it makes you. It exposes you to endless humiliation, it cuts your wings, it eats into your soul like a cancer. It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one's dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank, and independent." ~ W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage
Many of the great artists of history have been born with at least the basics of a good life and were later patronized by the rich or aristocrats. It's awfully hard to go from a peasant to an artist.
@@squamish4244 well, at the very least, its hard to care about artistic beauty and self-expression when you're both without the expendable income to buy materials and working yourself to the bone just to survive. It's hierarchy of needs stuff. if you dont have your base needs cared for youre much less likely to care about less material things
Now that I've actually watched Rent (Mostly because I loved Netflix's Tick Tick....Boom) I think Rent would be a lot more interesting if it mostly focused on Angel and Collins since they're the actual homeless, gay, and aid-victims that the musical seems to want to fight for. You'd get more into whatever Collin's theory is, and Angel comes off a lot more sympathetic as she's made more 3 dimensional.
But that is the whole problem, the characters they chose to centralize instead are instead these self-involved entitled straight white boys who are really falsely sympathetic to people who are ACTUALLY oppressed, and act like they are somehow ALSO oppressed merely by association, and by their desire to ACTUALLY exploit them for "art".
I feel like watching tick tick boom gives you the explanation of why the musical doesn't fully focus on that and it's because Larson didn't know how to create those characters without also having himself in the story because of his close relationships to people like that and that creates the characters of Mark and Roger and they also need focus to warrant being in the show.
@@RoaringKetchup its definitely not something I would do or support, but poverty really does make you do crazy shit for money. its why some SWers do (invertebrate, usually) crushing.
well luckily and sadly its being handled better then how aids was initially handled since it affects alot more people, its less about the government not being able to deal with these things but refusing to put effort in the AIDs crisis because they simply could care less if gay people die
Republicans being careless and not at all bothered about a pandemic that they believe doesn’t concern them and that their focus should be on the luxuries they should be given? I’ve never seen that before!
as a trans person with considerable access to privilege through my parents, mark drives me up the fuckin wall. does he not realize he could use his resources to help his community? even the smallest things, like having a warm, clean apartment where your friends/community can come stay when they’re in trouble. having groceries and food to share. i don’t understand how you can live among people you love in poverty in good conscience, when you could bring more resources to the table.
I would never be comfortable accepting this help from rich 'friends', first cs they all expect you to do that, to use them (ironic) second, well poor are always in trouble, that's our thing.
Maybe you missed the parts where he offered his apartment as a shelter to friends who were struggling? Also, the documentary showed what it was like to be silenced as a community, what it was like to live with HIV/AIDS, and what it was like to be homeless in the winter. Sure, Mark was imperfect but please direct me towards someone who is.
@@LuanaSantos-rl4sb dude, that is a you problem. your pride isn't justification for the amorality of mark who could and did not do anything that could have actually made a difference in the life of his friends or the community he pretended to be part of so that he could milk it for 'art points'. when you are part of a community you are _supposed_ to help when you are able to. this is how it works, everyone chips in what they can for each other to float the whole of the group through the hard bits. this guy offered nothing to the community even when he was looking at the people in it struggling
Ive always hated how Rent represents Artists. I always thought it was a hate piece making fun of the "starving artist" until we I did a paper on it in High School and found out it was supposed to be in favor of them... wow, it totally missed the mark
The source material really does go starving artist BY a starving artist. The Mark figure eventually takes up painting signs on an inn for money. The Mimi character dies of tuberculosis in the hospital, and by the time her friends find out about it and go to claim her body, it’s already gone to the medical students for dissection. I did everyone a favor by not seeing Rent. I knew it would annoy me. But Marcello definitely isn’t privileged.
@@EGV88 It's a scene from the documentary "How to Survive a Plague" (surviveaplague.com/). The speaker is Larry Kramer (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Kramer). He is criticizing a 1991 gathering of ACT UP (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACT_UP) activists for falling prey to infighting, negating their ability to gather widespread support in demanding action on the epidemic.
I laughed, but it was a nervous uncomfortable laugh. Because I'm familiar with that speech. It honestly represents what I see as the big problem with a lot of activism. It goes no where because the people arn't organised, they smash windows etc which allows the gov to change the message at will, so their VITAL issue gets ignored. It honestly hurts.
@@Stettafire completely agree with you there. I see this a lot with the activist Left. Group A is so invested in their special interest they'll fight with Group B even though they agree on 99.9% of other issues. Then all of these groups ignore the big picture changes that need to happen in order for their special interests to receive any real attention, all while demonizing the larger organizations and the Democratic Party for daring to focus on the big picture. I'd have gone into activism if I had any patience or tolerance for such petty BS and foolishness.
Julián Rivera “How to Survive a Plague”. It’s a documentary. And the “PLAGUE! We are in the middle of a FUCKING PLAGUE! And you behave like THIS!” Always gets me. Someone make that a ringtone.
I hope they do something like that. I’m really tired of hearing about unemployed folks struggling to survive, and essential workers whining about their jobs being stressful and having to put their lives on the line. I think it would be eye-opening to have a story highlighting the struggles of those who don’t have to work, and especially those who have to work from home. People don’t understand how hard it is motivating myself to put on pants for zoom meetings and not procrastinate while I’m safe at home.
That is an amazing title. "Becky, i cant hear you over the BLM protestors, can you move to another room in your Manhattan penthouse? I know the wifi isn't as good in the dining room but I can barely hear you over the screams as those poor people of color are teargassed."
Talk about a sobering moment: "Plague! We are in the middle of a fucking plague!" Probably the most effectively edited video you've done yet. Excellent work.
Anyone else re-watching this in the midst of this Corona craziness? “Healthcare is a right!” “40 million infected is a fucking plague!” “Early aggressive action pays off.” Ooooof. The times really never change.
@@bonfyre4711 most people who think they hate capitalism don't even know what it is. We somehow live in a world where asking for simple rights such as healthcare is constructed as "Communism" for some fucking reason, and as such people who want to have basic rights end up being told all those rights would be communism, so... Yeah, lots decide to claim they hate capitalism. The only real problem with a free market is that if people are free to do anything, they are also free to take huge advantage of others in worse positions than theirs; we got it mostly right with our legal system, where nowadays most countries focus on the idea that "well, if you're not hurting anyone else or destroying anyone else's property, whatever, do what you want"... But somehow in the area of market legality we still have the stupid belief that asking for something as simple as "hey, could you maybe not knowingly kill people?" would be living in 1950's Russia. We've painted the economic world black and white, and if you don't have a million dollars in your bank right now, you are among the people who suffered for it.
@@bonfyre4711 Capitalism sucks because it fixes people into hierarchy based on capital, it cant deal with ecological issues it causes, it yo yos from economic crash to economic crash, high stage capitalism causes imperialism, people are sick, illiterate, and hungry and jobless. And its profitted off of human suffering.
@@notmytruthTHEtruth >tfw people call bernie anti-semetic for fighting the israeli government's blatant right wing nationalist tendencies stop being a doomer; tulsi literally supported a resolution to defend israel at all costs and spun it as free speech shit when in reality all it does is hurt palestinians and circlejerk the israeli government twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/1155268020723310592
@@notmytruthTHEtruth while I dont love Israel, that's far from the most important, possibly election-deciding decision to make right now. Even if you see that as a lost cause, there are other reasons to decide on a candidate to support.
having never seen rent and only absorbing it through cultural osmosis, i was today years old when I found out that mark and roger are two different characters
That's literally what I was thinking. Beginner screenwriter books literally tell you that harming animals is a sure fire way to make a character unlikable.
"Selling out" is not sacrificing your values for money, but sacrificing your personal agency for money. Killing the dog for money was an immoral act, but something Angel chose to do. A celebrity doing a charity gig because their handlers strong-armed them into it may be "selling out," even if kids' lives are saved as a result. Selling out has a bad name because corporate interests are a lot more likely to be horrible and unkind than are individuals' interests, but that doesn't always have to be the case. There are exceptions on both ends. This is why we hate rapists and murderers and yet don't generally call them "sell outs."
I've never actually seen Rent, but I love Lindsay's essays, and I have a bunch of friends who rave about Rent, so I thought I'd give this a watch. I don't really know much about Angel's character after watching this, but I immediately had her pegged as "the dog murderer." Perhaps I'd develop some sympathy for her if I actually watched Rent, but right now I'm not particularly upset about her loss.
As someone who was an active member of ACT UP in the 80s, RENT made me SO ANGRY. It whitewashed and prettified the terror and horror of the AIDS crisis to make it seem like a byproduct of whiny city-dwelling suburbanites who used trans people as props and....GAH! My most "counterculture" friend and I went to see RENT when it first toured to Boston. She was a woman who lived in a squat, made giant, unintelligible sculptures that she wouldn't sell because they were her "children," and regularly held dumpster-dive supper parties. Halfway through Act I, she turned to me and whispered, "Why don't these assholes get JOBS?" That's been my thought on RENT since the beginning.
xingcat As a gay male born in 1987 (like, I'm pushing 30; whoa), I would like to thank you for your participation in ACT-UP. My generation needs an activism injection; people became docile between 1992-2016. It seems the latter half of my generation is start to learn how to act up, but we still need leadership. If it weren't for your work, things might be significantly worse than they are these days.
It's not at all due to me, in particular. I was a kid back then, and we were all really, really scared, even the suburban kids like me. Everyone was dying, everything we knew about the disease (or "knew" about the disease) told us we had no chance at life, nobody was listening. We just made so much noise that people had to listen. It's something I fear we'll all have to learn how to do again in the coming years.
Yes! This damn hashtag generation is the reason America is in the mess it's in. So few people are willing to actually put forth the work to make a difference nowadays, and think they can get away with simply retweeting something. And while that may certainly spread awareness, it doesn't do anything by itself.
As a southern-baptist raised white gay in rural Colorado who didn't even hear about the AIDS crisis until his early twenties, it always horrifies me to learn more about it. Every single thing I learn about it is like a knife in the chest and... I just feel the system is still ACTIVELY erasing the many many people who fought and died during that time. The version I ultimately learned, when I learned about it in college was so incredibly watered down and that was the only exposure to it I got in my life until maybe 4 or 5 years ago. "There is a thing called AIDS, it's why you use protection. People thought it was the gay virus in the 80's so quite a few people died but we know that's not true anymore so it's all fine :) " Maybe that's a little harsh on what I was taught but I don't feel by much. A few years ago I came across a fucking TUMBLR post talking about it and I was just like, "Wait... what happened!?" And then I researched and learned so much about it and it just STAGGERED me. It still staggers me. And now with 'rona running around killing almost 400,000 people and everyone acting like it's a minor inconvenience, or even romanticizing it, I just feel like letting things like RENT, things that do everything they can to be like "AIDS bad :( But not... so bad, right?" are honestly a bit more insidious than we give them credit for. Even if it's not the actual intention things that soften and blur the faces of the people who fought and died for the right for US to live, the 90's kids, the 00s kids should not be given a free pass. Many of us wouldn't be here if it weren't for those people, and we need to make sure we give them the thanks they deserve by not forgetting them.
If there's one thing Neo-liberal culture will do, it will frame all problems and atrocities that non-standard entities (minorities) have faced as both 'not so bad' and totally over and fixed. This is done for the sake of the standard entity. Take the civil rights movement, specifically Martin Luther King, and how... softened he has been. His edges have been rounded off. His Fight framed as a thing without fire and anger, of politeness and pure civility. Take the nature of Amerind - European 'relations' throughout american history. All fights are framed as "Really not so bad, just cause of some bad actors. And it's all over and gone now. Totally won.". Just look at the 'racism is over' folks. Like shit man I used to buy into that. Just cause I didn't exactly don a KKK hood myself and no one I knew did either. But it's fuckin not over. The fight hasn't been won, Martin Luther King didn't cure racism. He just dragged a ton of legal protections out of the governments bloated rotting mass against it. But whomever is behind the cultural propaganda would have us believe that it's over, the standard-entity is good to the nonstandard entity now. Except for the few bad eggs. (in this case, White people, to Black people. To be specific) There's no like, concerted powerful systems that act against the non-standard entity. Perhaps luckily, society has paid attention to the recent Police Murders of non-standard entities (and a bit of the police murder of the standard entities too) so it's become harder to push the soft and smooth view of the civil rights struggle. But I'm sure once the passion behind the current Police Murder thing dies down, they'll get back to smoothing it all down. same sorta thing is happening now to THE GAYS. Pretending that everything is fine now and if it ever wasn't fine it wasn't too bad, and it was fixed quick by the Good Standard-Entities when the Nice Non-Standard Entities asked. There totally isn't a powerful largely religiously motivated political force that actively opposes the gays actively. Has to be that way so corporations can profit off the Gays. They gotta be Shiny and Smooth. Watch. When Trans People get their foot more in the door as far as 'being accepted' goes, the EXACT same thing will happen to them. I'll give it 10-20ish years before it starts. People will look back now and pretend Terfs barely existed and were just a few bigots that the Good Standard Entities didn't like, and not an active powerful opposing force that is given equal respect and weight by the Standard Entities.
This is how I feel about the opioid epidemic and how romanticized addiction is in movies. 75,000 people died of a drug overdose last year alone, and 50,000 of them was specifically from an opioid overdose. The number has increased every single year since the early 2000s. Nothing ever happens...they'll talk about the problem but no one ever makes rehabs or medication more affordable and accessible. But the make prison hell of accessible and once they can get an addict in the system the know the chance of recidivism is sky high and they make a lot of money off prisoner slavery. But addicts and people with mental illness in general are also stigmatized and no one really cares about them. Not really but they do a lot of lip service. Thoughts and prayers thoughts and prayers.
AIDS traumatized our parents in ways they are still working through. I was taught how HIV/AIDS worked and was transmitted in school, but it was always shrouded in this layer of silence and discomfort with the subject. Teachers didn't want to talk about it, parents grew silent, even the videos and readings would make vague allusions to how HIV+ people shouldn't face discrimination, but no real explanation of why they would in the first place (this was especially confusing since they first introduced the topic in sex ed before we learned about actual sex, so it was just this a bunch of stuff about periods and one random video about an autoimmune disorder). It was much, much later that I learned my parents had lost friends to AIDS and that they had been deeply scarred by the hatred and negligence they had witnessed --even though they themselves were not the target. My mother still gets tense whenever there is an outbreak of ebola, bird flu, etc abroad, because she remembers what kind of atrocity a stigmatized disease led her government to commit.
Manas If by “that good night” you mean “the very dregs of the corrupt society they have wrought” or “the indescribable flames of hell”, then yeah. That’s about accurate.
You're right about Mark's character. Many artists would give their left leg to work in their field and be financially stable/successful while doing so.
This is one of the million things that bother me so much about La La Land: Mia's whole, "it's not your dream" when Ryan Gosling lands a steady, well-paying gig doing something in his field; if he pursues it for awhile, he could then fund his passion project. But, nooooo, she's determined that he needs to stay true to his dream or whatever. What about being realistic and investing for the future?
The weird thing is though, at that kind of money all he needs to do is save then he can do whatever he wants. Heck, he could rise up in the industry and get respected contracts to help him make his dream documentary. Learn from his peers etc. No one ever said you need to do everything all at once and no one ever said you need to do everything alone! So dumb.
the sense of entitlement gets worse when you notice how poorly they treat waitstaff, homeless people, and it’s very much a case of punching down when they could actually show solidarity to the working class and turn their frustration towards the 1 percent and those in power who refused to help slow the aids crisis but nah
-We're anarchists, no one can tell us what to do! -Yeah, the government and the corporations should stop oppressing us. -Oh no, I'm talking about the restaurant owner that doesn't want their tables moved.
This movie wants us to hate the landlords for doing their jobs and feel sorry for the main characters who do drugs, have life threatening sex, disrespect the homeless, drink a lot of booze, burn their eviction notices and refuse to pay their rent. I do hope that there’s a sequel to this called, “Evicted”.
I remember the fear. I spent most of the 1980s living in Europe, and the US university for which I worked in Germany - back when it was still West Germany - didn't provide health insurance. One of my colleagues, a couple of years younger than I, was pregnant by a man who dealt drugs. He swore up and down to her that he never used intravenous drugs. She loved her child, was a great mom, and died within a week of her diagnosis with AIDS. I was already back in the States when she died, but those who were still in Germany when she died said she just stopped eating in the hospital after she found out her daughter was HIV positive, too. By dying her daughter would go to her parents who could get treatment because they had health insurance. She was too old to be a dependent, but her daughter wasn't. I will never forgive the child's father for lying about his IV drug use. By the mid-1980s, it was already known breast milk could pass HIV to an infant. Formula would probably have prevented that baby's infection. Don't get me started on my own scare when I found out the French blood supply wasn't tested and people who'd had blood transfusions from that supply, as I had, were at high risk. There was nearly a decade's worth of people - and thank you for mentioning haemophiliacs - who could have been treated had they known they were at risk. I was lucky, thank heavens, but how many people weren't. I still like a lot of the music from Rent. I think the play is better because the messages on the answering machines, among other things, show how callow, at best, most of these characters are.
Fabrisse ter Brugghe Not enough, if you ask me. In reality, RENT has next-to-nothing to say about the cruel, inhuman society that had facilitated and flat-out encouraged nearly every piece of tragedy of you friend’s story. If Reagan’s America had taken action when it should have, AIDS wouldn’t have become the utter fucking pandemic it became, and wouldn’t have infected that dirt bag drug dealer that poisoned the life of your friend, her child, and her family. Hell, if America’s economic and social system wasn’t as inherently alienating and despicable as it is, that disgusting piece of garbage probably wouldn’t be in the kind of economic disparity that would’ve placed him anywhere NEAR intravenous drugs. Every part of your story was preventable. Every part of it didn’t need to happen. And every part of it was practically ORCHESTRATED by exactly the kind of people who’re still making all the goddamned decisions. You’ll need to forgive me for my crassness and my indignation, but I just hate this show so goddamn much. The LGBTQ+, the afflicted, the POCs, and all the disenfranchised people of America deserve better representation than this tone-deaf, Gen-X, neo-liberal DRECK.
I’m watching this while on break at rehearsal for this show and it’s the pettiest thing I’ve ever done. There are people rehearsing Seasons of Love ten feet from me.
Video Game Drummer Productions Honestly the production we did ended up super well. Somehow they even managed to make ‘Your Eyes’ sound good. Still a terrible story though, all of us were far more invested in the homeless subplots.
Yeah, no, poverty isn't romantic. Spend a couple of weeks sleeping on bus stop benches because you actually don't have any money to pay the rent rather than just choosing not to and anyone who thinks that it is will change their tune pretty damn quick. I'm writing this under the blankets of a king sized bed with the heater blazing, and remembering what it's like to be out in the cold with only a jacket to keep you warm, I choose the former every bloody time, "art" be damned. Fucking trust fund kids.
ThejollyFrenchman Yes, poverty is romantic. The Romanticd in the 1800s did exactly what this musical is doing: Mock the establishment while idealizing the lower classes they actually had no connection with often truly absurd depictions of their life. All while never truly challenging the status quo (with the exception of France where Romantic Art was more political) They weren't the first to do so, just the ones who coined the term. So yes poverty is romantic in the purest sense of the word: It is approriated by the middle class in order ti fit into their idealized narratives.
Kullerva I was getting at the point that Romance itself is an artficial construct and that this construct was created by the values of the 19th century upper and upper middle class. Roses and starry nights are only romantic because they were romanticized as well. As is monogamy.
Concur! However, you're mixing up Romantic and romantic. Romantic (capitalized) has a lot of different meanings; one of the first was as a descriptor for adventure tales like Don Quixote (no, seriously) and, later, grew in meaning to refer to the cult of exceptionalism of the artist and the fetishization of deep feeling as the ultimate goal of life (a la Goethe's Die Leiden des Jungen Werthers). "Rent" adopts the worst parts of Romanticism in spades, but romance (i.e. lovey-dovey bullcrap that men use to get women into bed) is something entirely different, even if it was--and continues to be--constructed in the same way. English is a weird language.
I haven't finsihed the video yet, but does she mention that Jonathan Larson did live in poverty? Or is that an idea in my head that is somehow untrue? I always thought he did and that he died the day before (or a few days before?) RENT opened on Broadway.
One of my *MANY* favorite critiques here is that the show builds up this song that Roger is writing as this earth-shakingly poetic, life-altering song - a song that sums up his life of heartbreak & tragedy - and when we *finally* get to hear it...it’s easily the most forgettable song in the entire show. Every other song in Rent is an absolute BANGER, but the ONE SONG that the show actually builds anticipation for...is a total dud. It’s almost like the perfect metaphor for Rent in general.
Absolutely! It’s so ironic that the song he sings ( One Song, Glory)ABOUT the masterpiece he wants to write is so much more memorable and emotionally impactful than said masterpiece.
I was under the impression that he was lying, saying he worked on it all year to make her feel loved in her dying moments. Then he just pulls a very meh song out his arse in an attempt to be sweet. But yeah, that song was pap!
I always assumed that was kind of the point. Same with how Mark's movie wasn't great either. It's not about the quality of the end product, it's about the love behind it.
@@introusas I get what you’re saying, but Mark is a bad example of that. He doesn’t actually love anything - he just wants to be subversive for the sake of being subversive. Literally all he does for the entirety of the show is complain about his life, despite the fact that his life is objectively awesome. He has parents that love him (who he completely rejects cuz sOcIeTy), he has a GREAT job **in his chosen field** but he quits it cuz it’s too cOrPoRaTe ew!! And he quits to make his own film, which is absolute horseshit. Mark is easily the worst character in the whole show. He has almost no redeeming qualities and he’s a complete selfish prick.
@@crabman732 Okay, I understand and agree with that, but that literally has nothing to do with what I'm saying. I was simply comparing it to my point about Roger's song. It's very simple, derivative, and the lyrics are boring and basic. But believe it or not that song is the one of the few that moves me MOST because of the emotion in his voice. And I'm talking about OBC because the movie is garbage that similarly has no love behind it. And I can personally relate to that song from Mimi's perspective because I have had someone in my life who has pushed me away out of fear, but whom I knew to have loved me. Anyway - I'm not here for an internet fight because I hate those. I'm just stating my own perspective and that even though the song is pretty underwhelming, that it still holds meaning to me personally and if art means anything to even one person, that makes it valuable. And I'm not saying you're arguing against that either, I'm sure you agree. I just wanted to add that perspective to the conversation.
@@Abonanno24601 It was already outdated when it came out lol. It's a musical glorifying slave owners. I still like it a lot, but it is very problematica.
@@Cube-xm6vt that last point you said "its a musical glorifying slave owners" is one of the reasons why I have mixed feelings on Hamilton. On one hand I absolutely adore and love the soundtrack I can't lie its amazing but knowing the actual history of what happened and then seeing thoes same people portrayed as goofy singing characters is just- weird to say the least. And that's without me even mentioning the fandom..
Actually people besides the ruling class live and die as well it’s just harder to get their voices heard. That’s just a slogan people who aren’t from the ruling class say to pretend they can’t exist and never will do anything worthwhile
Well technically it was the point in Hamilton as well... That he was the most forgotten founding father because he died younger and never made it to the presidency, compared to the others who ruled longer and mostly disliked him
The characters in this are the types of theatre kids I went to school with. Jackasses even once got us kicked out of an IHOP because they were singing “La Vie Boheme” at the top of their lungs. There are a lot of valid reasons to dislike this show. But that incident is largely why I despise it.
healthcare is not a right. its a privilege granted to you by the wealth of this country. healthcare is still the product of someone elses labor. youre not entitled to that, nor am i required to pick up your tab when the government spends my tax dollars on your visit. so your right hasnt been granted to you yet because its not a right. since the government is incapable of producing literally anything, their only job is to get the hell out of the way while private businesses research solutions to the problems at hand- another thing you dont have the right to, and the government doesnt have the right to commandeer outside of a (REAL) pandemic without due compensation to the company.
Katie Michel the only character I didn't hate was Joann. She had a real job, was a victim of her friends stupidity and was the victim of a toxic relationship, actually tried to help them achieve their goals, actually put in effort into her relationship but was made fun of by her partner for being too uptight when her girlfriend was too loose
why not Benny? he was willing to give Roger and Mark living quarters and let them stay at his high-tech community center. I mean, that's what Roger and Mark are in it for, right? a validation of themselves? authenticity be damned - that's shot down by the rant the homeless woman has against Mark and Mark, for lack of a better term, bitching about his parents being supportive because "he wants to be a real artist, dammit!"
Hal Emmerich i think the musical changes dramatically when you go from a "friends mindset" (were supposed to like these people and think they're so cool) to a "Seinfeld mindset" (wow this is a show about nothing, they learn nothing, and they're all assholes). I've never seen the stage play, but I like to imagine that all of them are just *the worst* artists and everyone reacts to them the way that homeless woman did. And Benny, move on bro! You're too good for them!
Definitely Catherine Larry Kramer was the man who called Reagan's indifference to AIDS exactly what it was, an attempted holocaust. And he did it while Reagan was still in office he's a fucking badass
"The spread of this was not inevitable, and had the powers that be acted sooner, millions of lives could have been saved. This is what happens when governments fail the people they are sworn to protect." ...y'all. Need to excuse me for a second...I need to lie down.
I like to think of Rent as that person who says "I'm not voting because all politicians are corrupt." They think they're rising above it all and are so superior, but they accomplish nothing.
These people think they're better and more intelligent than the rest of the masses because they're "woke" and can "see through the government's lies", so they think that not voting is some profound statement of dissent. When in reality, by not voting, they are effectively silencing themselves and rolling over to let the rest of the masses trample all over them. Their opinion then does not matter because, by not voting, they are choosing to never let their opinion be heard, and are letting the vocal, voting majority speak for them. Not to say that people who don't vote can't complain, but...they really CAN'T complain, because, in this way, they never spoke up against what they're complaining about in the first place, when it would've ACTUALLY made a difference.
1) "Rent" does not have an anti-political-involvement message. In fact, quite the opposite: "Revolution, justice, screaming for solutions, forcing changes, risk and danger. Making noise and making pleas!" 2) Does the relentless scapegoating of non-voters on the internet do anything to convince more people to get involved in politics?
+jdprettynails I don't think I'm superior, I just don't think the system offers change. If I can vote for brutal capitalism #1 or brutal capitalism #2, I care for neither. The system is designed to ensure the process of reaching the top transforms you into a bastard, unless you are already a bastard; witness Obama's early idealism turn to bombing children & deporting families. I don't think that system holds liberation. If voting on its own was effective resistance, politicians wouldn't frame nonvoting as a problem or try to get people to vote; they do these things because making people think voting is the sole form of resistance is an effective way to bind them to the system & divert their efforts. By all means, vote! Just please don't stake all your hopes solely on that; please don't do only that. I don't think I'm superior to you or want to be superior to you; if you want this world to be better, you are my comrade.
@@swanscream5152 I assure you that John fucking McCain and Mitt Romney would have been worse for the country and the world at large than Barack Obama. Voting is triage. It doesn't mean you stop other activism, it doesn't mean you can't protest the person you voted for, but it does mean you keep the worst of two (or more) options out of office. That is not nothing.
As a gay person with hemophilia B, I just wanted to thank you for actually mentioning that hemophiliacs were effected by the AIDS epidemic, it's literally only a few words spoken but it means a lot. The gay community always recognizes the effects of the AIDS epidemic on gay people but when it comes to hemophilia, we get written out of history so often because we're very rare these days. But literally one of the main reasons that we are so rare is that 10,000 of us were killed by bad batches of blood-distilled factor in the US alone and tens of thousands more of us were killed world wide during the AIDS epidemic. I feel so lucky to have been born and diagnosed in the era of Benefix and Idelvion instead of the era of blood transfusions and blood-distilled factor. I hope to be lucky enough to be living in the era of CRISPR cures being made affordably available to all hemophiliacs by the time I want to have children.
SeabassFishbrains Yup. I’m filled with existential dread every time I consider how many young children would’ve needed to learn that they were afflicted with a disease that boasted a 100% mortality rate, and that every public news broadcasting service claimed was the patron plague of perverts and junkies. Fuck the ‘80s.
A lot of people gave you flak for starting immediately with the AIDS epidemic, but I think this is one of the best researched intros you've ever written. You gave all perspectives their due time, you brought up that there was more at risk than just being gay, and you treated the situation with dignity and impartiality. That's hard to do. I give you props for that.
This is almost completely unrelated, but PSA: DO NOT move the tables in a restaurant without asking. Sometimes the reason the tables are the way they are is so that staff can actually move between them, so if you move them we're going to have to keep asking you to move so we can get through. Which will annoy you, and then you'll blame US because you were stupid and didn't think about the consequences of your actions. Also, the staff then have to waste time moving the table back hundreds of times a night. Also if you hurt yourself moving a table, we could theoretically get sued. Also it could damage the floors. So as Chez rightly says in this video, doing shit like that (moving tables without permission) makes you an ASSHOLE, not a cute rebel.
Yup. Restaurant staff will try to accomadate large parties. It might take time, but they will make it so that no one numps into you and the table will come with silverware already placed instead of waiting for some poor staff to grab you it because you didn’t tell them how many people will be seated.
I work at a casino, I understand the chair moving. God damn I am in one section, One seat gets moved and now I am on the hunt for where did they pull that chair? My section or my co-workers section have a randomly missing chair. Grown ass adults acting like children is what annoys me, not on clock cuz I'm too busy helping others but after work I'm like... "Wait, a minute... Why didn't I report this person again?". Frustrating but I love my job honestly, I have worked many industries I wouldn't trade this one, It's just perfect for me.
Also, MFing fire codes sometimes legally require tables to be a certain distance from X, Y, or Z, which the restaurant has no control over. So if you move tables, or pull up chairs to the ends of the table because "Oh, we didn't know our party of five was actually going to be six!" without permission from the staff, the restaurant could get hit with a serious fine if the fire marshal should walk in.
Also, MFing fire codes sometimes legally require tables to be a certain distance from X, Y, or Z, which the restaurant has no control over. So if you move tables, or pull up chairs to the ends of the table because "Oh, we didn't know our party of five was actually going to be six!" without permission from the staff, the restaurant could get hit with a serious fine if the fire marshal should walk in.
LordofFullmetal Yeah. The fact that they openly ignored the pleas of an amiable small business owner, (no doubt ELATED for an opportunity to get some damn cash for once in the face of gentrification and big-franchise restaurants) means that they don’t actually care about the plight of anybody who’s actually trying to make their way in the world today.
I had avoided Rent like the plague it never really addressed. Always figured that the spoof in Team America was basically what I'd see. Finally, I saw Rent (not) Live the other day, and I was appalled; It was worse than I had imagined it must be. I was there in those days- my best friend was a writer who lived in a one room apartment in Alphabet City, who got AIDS- I watched him deteriorate. We had a circle of artist friends. I marched with Act Up. I sat in with him on some of those patronizing group therapy sessions- whose distorted 'feel good' sessions seem to be where the author got a lot of his material from. I can assure you that we didn't engage with the play's mantra of 'live for today' : Every day was in anticipation of the dread of tomorrow, and what could be done to prevent it. No one felt comforted by the idea that as long as you live your life to the fullest, being near death didn't matter. And no one thought that being forced to a squatter was anything but another turn for the worst. You are right- this play is meant to make middle-class feel good about themselves - 'oh look they're singing and dancing' No. We sang . We danced, but never in celebration of our circumstances. But not one of us would not jump the chance of a high-paying career. Who the fuck are these people? The whole thing is based on a smug comforting lie. ...That, and most of the songs were pretty blah and went on too long. And don't get me started on how a man with HIV having a sexual relationship vulnerable needy woman, he just met without telling her his status, is presumably meant to be romantic love. (Yes, by the 90's, we all knew that HIV could be contracted through intercourse). That was repulsive in so many levels. So, thanks for confirming much of what I feel. I thought I might be turning into a crusty curmudgeon, way too soon
The "Dear ol' Mom and Dad" line, for me, really encapsulates the vapid façade of rebellion portrayed in Rent: A person wouldn't exist to rebel *without* Dear Ole' Mom and Dad. Yes, shitty parents exist and it's a heady experience to grow up and come to the realisation that they weren't right about everything, and develop your own values, morals, beliefs, and convictions separate from them, or are even directly at odds with the ones you grew up with. But in this story the worst thing the parents have done is... love them? Imagine if this was a conversation between Marc and, say, Angel who I think we can safely assume *cannot* turn to her parents for assistance and she's relating the abusive childhood experience only for Marc to chime in and say "OMG, I know my mom is so annoying! She won't stop CaLlInG!" But also, these characters only have a sense of exceptionalism *because* their peers and communities are carrying on with mundane capitalism and doing the laundry and shit. If the restaurant they terrorize decided "you know, in the spirit of La Vie Bohéme, this is now a food co-op with the model of everyone cooking their own entreé" they would be PISSED; where're they supposed to get their fries now????
"Ugh, how am I supposed to keep up my vapid facade as a struggling artist when my worried mother keeps calling and offering complete financial support?! On a side note, no, gay Black homeless friend whose trans partner is dying of AIDS, I will not be using any of my potential privilege and resources to help you out. I'm living bohemian!"
I mean, given that the restaurant barely let the main cast in to eat because they don’t order expensive enough menu items, I can’t imagine them turning the thing into a food co-op any time soon.
When I was a full time stage manager, I was the definition of a "starving artist". One of the venues I was a technician in gave a meal per shift. Most days, that was my only meal. I had to move multiple times just to not be homeless, which I ended up being for a week. It sucked. A lot. One of my friends, another stage manager who worked in more stable companies, had another full time job, and lived at home rent free romanticized the shit out of my life. This movie was the reason she did. This movie is the worst.
@@alim.9801 She continued to get better jobs than me. I actually decided to take a long break from theatre in December (good timing) due to the mass amounts of abuse by a few companies.
Recently I found out a friend actually believed this. He legitimately asked me what kind of lessons he could learn from me given my own poverty. He couldn't comprehend that my suffering _didn't_ make me stronger or more creative or more intelligent. It ruined me. He just glamorized what I went through so much that he genuinely though that I was somehow "better off than him for going through this." Then when I talked to friends I trusted online about it they thought the exact same thing. Suddenly it went from friendship to them telling me what I SHOULD be doing or dismissing everything I say purely because it didn't fit their worldview of what being impoverished is actually like.
@@purplegill10 HOLY SHIT that sounds awful. You pulled your shit together and got through something fuckin' horrible then people 'supposed to support you fuckin' dismiss it? I dunno if you're still with em' but I hope they've at least changed, but jesus christ. They owe you a massive apology. Don't know much bout being homeless other than it's traumatic.
The thing with Rent is the writer suddenly died and because he was young and seemed gay people automatically assumed he died of AIDS and rushed to see the musical thinking this guy died to create this musical and the press ate it up and it blew up into this big thing, the story and characters were weak but the music was very very catchy and gets stuck in your head, people like Rent for the music more than they like it for the meaning, the music is just so damn good that you overlook the words.
exactly!! i remember when i was watching the movie that i was very confused by A LOT of the choices the movie makers chose to made and some stuff didnt make sense but the songs are the only thing good about it
Neato Burrito Yeah I saw Rent when I was 11 and LOVED it despite not knowing what AIDs was and totally oblivious to the adult themes and that Mimi and Roger were recovering ex junkies singing about heroin and addiction, I fucking loved the songs and didn't pay attention to the plot or the message haha it flew over my naive head.
You forget that Larson also PLAGIARIZED the entire story from Sarah Schulman. How do you know? Much evidence, including the way they administer AZT is from 1991 and not 1995 when the play was published.
Jonah Falcon Uh...from what I understand, a few elements of the story (particularly the bisexual love triangle) were probably plagerized to some degree, not the whole story. Plus, how would AZT administration prove anything, given that both stories came out in the 90s and were about the 80s?
Yeah, he was pretty fucking awful. Anyone who tries to argue that Reagan was one of the great American presidents either doesn't know what they're talking about or doesn't give a shit about LGBT people's lives. Or both.
ThePuppyTurtle I think theres an argument to be made that the Reagan ascendancy - how he started to strip away unions, deregulation, "trickle-down" economics - has also led to a monster like Trump.
Reagan had his good points, and he actually did some real good for gay rights before his presidency, but yeah, he failed HARD when the epidemic hit. There are conflicting reports as to what exactly his real attitude toward it was, whether he truly didn't care/thought gays deserved it (which, given his past actions, doesn't seem likely to me) or just underestimated how truly terrible it would get. He DID allocate five billion dollars to AIDS research, but he could and should have done more, earlier. Personally (and I freely admit that I'm not as read up on this particular point as I could be), I tend to think that Reagan did care to an extent, but chose to focus his real efforts on his economic and foreign policy goals and leave AIDS to his cabinet/advisors to decide how to deal with... and many of them were, in fact, rabidly homophobic. Buchanan is a prime example. It wouldn't surprise me if the people around him worked to insulate him from the real extent of the disease's spread. Or maybe Nancy's astrologer advised him not to do anything, who the hell knows.
i know this video is old, but whatever. i have something i want to say. i think about richard hunt a lot. richard hunt was an incredibly talented puppeteer and an absolutely integral core part of the cast and crew on fraggle rock, sesame street, and the muppet show. his characters included characters such as beaker, statler, janice, sweetums, junior gorg, gladys the cow, the very first version of elmo, and many other background characters. he is most known, though, for his role as scooter, my favorite muppet growing up as a totally muppets obsessed to an insane degree little kid, even to today. he was a great friend to jim henson himself, and was the host of his funeral. he was also a gay man living in the height of the aids crisis, and he died of aids in 1992. i am now a 17 year old, gay, musical theatre nerd who also studies LGBTQ+ history, and has a sort of morbid fascination with the aids crisis specifically, both because i am a chronically ill part of the LGBTQ+ community and i know what it’s like to have the healthcare system totally abandon you, but also because it is one of the most shocking and disgusting examples of widespread homophobia leading to the mass, meaningless deaths of not only millions of gay men, women, and other members of the community, but those outside of it as well. to me, richard was an integral part of my childhood. i watched him almost every day on tv, heard his voice, loved the characters he brought to life. to the government at the time, richard was a number on a chart. a massive, meaningless chart that sat collecting dust until the sick, miserable corpses of the innocent were piled up just a bit too high at their doorstep. when i found out he died of aids, i pictured me in my hospital bed, iv in my skinny little arm, watching the muppet show, and, somewhere in the US, in some other hospital, in some other state, decades before i would be born, lay richard, the man behind my favorite, nerdy, nervous little stagehand, scooter, lying in a hospital bed with an iv, perhaps in the arm that he had used to operate his characters, watching the same old tape. all this to say, so many good, talented, loving, wonderful, brave, courageous, kind, gentle, and impactful people were afflicted by aids, and richard was just one of quite literally millions. he just happens to be the one that made the most impact on me personally. so many meaningless deaths, but also, so many wonderful victories. so many stories of triumph in the face of ignorance, so many stories of breakthroughs, goals met, and hateful hearts and ignorant minds changed. and so much love. so, SO much love. so many stories to tell about aids and our community, so many survivors and fighters to tell them… and this is the story we choose to tell? is this what represents us in the minds of the public? this is what they think of when we talk about the meaningless mass death of our family at the hands of a horrible disease that the government refused to acknowledge? i find that sad. i find that very, very sad. i think about richard hunt a lot. he knew he was dying, and he knew it would be soon. so, the eternally positive geek that he was, he threw what he called a “going away party.” he invited all his friends and family, and most of the current at the time and past cast members of his muppets projects, most of whom he had known since his early teens. the people that he would often cite as a second family. at this party, he held in his hands a puppet. a simple, furry, red rod-hand puppet with two big eyes and an orange nose, that he had previously voiced. he called over one of his friends, a man who had previously worked on the muppets, but was now also on the sesame street cast of puppeteers. he threw him the puppet and told him to “do something with it”, knowing the character had potential. this puppet would later become elmo. it’s a solemn, yet wonderful story of acceptance and love, of potential lost and legacies continued. i know i don’t speak for the whole community, certainly not, but in my humble, single opinion, that is a much better story than this. and if, when i am old, and we have had our day, and we have fought ignorance and hate with love and reason and won, and future generations of our community ask me about this horrible time in our history, it is the story that i will remember, and it is the story that i will choose to tell. happy late pride month, everybody.
I was 16 in 1981 and while I didn't follow the protests all that much, self absorbed teen, I remember sitting in my civics class listening to kids laugh and say "AIDS was God's punishment for gays" and feeling horribly disgusted at these "good" Christians. And the Ryan White happened. Followed by dozens more cases of "innocent" people who got Aids from blood tranfusions. I remember in 86, the feeling of my stomach hitting my feet, when my then bf said "I'm getting a blood test done tomorrow, the doctor thinks I might have Aids from the blood transfusions when I got shot." I can't reconcile that long ago fear and horror and disgust with a bunch of rich kids refusing to pay Rent because of.... selling out?
You don't have to answer if you don't want to, but was your ex okay? (And if it makes you feel any better, a LOT of Christians, myself especially for personal reasons, are furious about how their parents and forebears handled things in the crisis. Though I'm sorry to say that it feels like even more have decided to cling harder to their awful ideals. Ugh...)
The juxtaposition of Larry Kramer screaming admonishments and Rent's ridiculous party in the restaurant at the end was brilliant. I'm so glad I came across your channel!
At the dances I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha [Alexander Berkman], a young boy, took me aside. With a grave face, as if he were about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behoove an agitator to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway. It was undignified for one who was on the way to become a force in the anarchist movement. My frivolity would only hurt the Cause. I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business, I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from conventions and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement should not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. “I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody’s right to beautiful, radiant things.” Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world-prisons, persecution, everything. Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own comrades I would live my beautiful ideal. [Living My Life (New York: Knopf, 1934), p. 56]
Fox while I find your comment absolutely beautiful, I don’t think that was Lindsay’s intention in posting that clip. The problem with Rent is that it does not do the work, it only dances. Can Anarchists dance? Of course we can! And we should. But we still must work. We must labour to make a better world. And then we dance to rejuvenate ourselves and express ourselves. (Well, others do, I’m now disabled and can’t dance anymore. It’s a massive loss to me, as someone who grew up dancing, who saw myself as a dancer. I miss it in a way I don’t have words to explain). But Rent isn’t that. It’s all fluff with little substance. It’s all dance and no work.
@@katherinemorelle7115 it's a show. Not a piece of legislation. It's a breath of fresh air, not the revolution in its entirety. Idk why people expect it to be and do everything. It's not like it's harry potter or something seemingly intentionally immune from representating decent political commentary
"Start at. . . $3000?" Holy crap! That would be nearly $6000 today! Mark would be making 6k a month, but no, selling out, work on art projects instead of the thing that actually makes a decent living and could fund my art projects.
I feel this, I make a small amount of money writing custom erotic and romance, but my day job helps pay the bills, I feel like quitting to purely write my "art" would be a quick way to starvation and the unemployment line, if that makes me a sell out then I honestly don't care, I'd rather be stable in a job like a normal person and leave my "art" as a hobby I happen to make money on, on the side
Right? What a piece of narcicist shit he is. He does not want to pay rent cuz he is too artistic, he doesn't want to work cuz he is selling himself?? (for that money, with that job!? bitch were do I sign), then all he do is moan because he is poor, but 'tokenise' homeless people cuz his art is too high and important. Fuck him fuck him fuck him. He is the kind of person (I swear to god) I would punch in the nuts at the first opportunity.
In fairness, there are many different ways artists go about creating their work. Some take years building themselves up in the industry until they have a strong enough reputation to try their crazier ideas. Some have to work side jobs for many years to finance their more niche catalogue, which will hopefully one day be enough to support them full time. Other times creators like Adam feel their art is the only work that can make them feel fulfilled, and so their quit their jobs to pursue their art full time. The problem isn’t this choice, it’s how smug he is about quitting and how bitchy he is about having a decent paying job that utilizes some of his skills as an artist. Plenty of aspiring artists, including myself would kill for a position like that to help finance their passion projects, and the fact he throws that away in such an ungrateful way is so annoying.
Exactly, the worthless shit is apparently too lazy to work on his art in time he has to himself, which really makes me wonder how committed he is to it. I mean Christ I’d love to be making 3000 a month now let alone what it equates to with inflation.
I remember my mom saying that one of the best ways to fix Rent would have been 1) not having the main cast have rich families and instead be on their own, and 2) have all the characters be played by teens. She actually liked my high school’s production better than the Broadway version, not because of the singing or acting or anything, but because it felt less weird and off when you saw a group of teens/college freshmen talking about needing to pay rent and not having jobs because they honestly can’t. Maybe they were kicked out of their homes and have to live on their own somehow. It’s just a bit more compelling. Also, a bit more queer rep maybe please?
@jeshala I think what I mean to say is BETTER queer representation. As a queer person myself who is very close to and grew up around survivors of the AIDs crisis (my mom was actually a highly active ally who joined multiple groups to support the community during the crisis), the representation felt very...off, in a way. The queer characters were frequently pushed to the side to focus more on the straight ones, and while most of the characters in general didn't have the happiest of stories, the queer characters pretty much ALWAYS had sad ones or bad endings. Idk, maybe it's literally just me, but it felt kinda weird.
I feel for Joanne. And side note, I'll take a million "boring" bisexual representations than one more Maureen Johnson-esque attention-whoring sex addict.
ElectricMayhem87 (Ashleigh) You know, I've had a lot of bisexual partners over the years, and I think the reason I like Maureen so much is she is more like me then any of them heh. I wish we had a lot more shows that had Maureen types finding OTHER Maureen types to date. Being yourself isn't wrong. Its only when who you are takes precedence over who your partner is that its a problem.
The closing 2 minutes of this gave me chills. I'm left wondering about how much of the media I've consumed over the last two decades have been complete misfires/misrepresentations of issues I thought I knew about. If you ever read this Lindsay, I want you to know that you are one of the best content creators on RU-vid, and I admire your hard work dearly.
True growth is realizing that EVERYONE is effected by his multiple times in their lifetime. Especially in representation in media. It's hard but you sometimes gotta sit yourself down and admit a lot of things you feel nostalgic for is bad...and then you gotta educate yourself. And you'll never be done doing that either.
One question I would like to pose for discussion: Did Jonathan Larson intend to write a social justice musical that was intended to inspire activism? Or was it simply a love letter to his friends...warts and all? (Side note: In the NYTW 1994 version of Rent, he plays up the fact that these are flawed people alot more: Maureen is selfish, Mark is obsessive over her, Collins and Angel break the law and steal property shamelessly. The opening song is them describing in detail various methods of killing themselves. I find it interesting how Disneyfied the characters are in the 1996 version.) From the few interviews of Larson that exist the only thing I gleaned from his words is that his biggest intent was to bring younger people to the theatre and to inspire a more rock influenced sound in the genre. To me I always thought that his focus was on the interpersonal struggles of the characters and how they coped with the shitty hand that has been dealt to them rather than making any public service announcements for the FDA. But I guess when you deal with a topic like AIDs the personal inevitably becomes the political whether you intend for that to happen or not. I think the hype and fanfare surrounding Rent turned it into the "stick it to the man" musical when perhaps that was not the creators intention. I honestly don't think he framed it that way...but he's not here to confirm or deny that. And at the end of the day a case could be made for both arguments. I do agree that it's a shame that this overshadows Kramer and Kushner's work when it comes to discussion on art that addresses the AIDs epidemic.
I feel the problem is that people view RENT as a musical about the AIDs epidemic and its impact, where in my opinion it was actually just a geniune modernization of La bohème, which is not a play about TB but one that features TB as a major element, its about bohemians. Johnathan simply chose the AIDs crisis as the closest parallel. Looking back at his life and his work, to me it frames RENT more as just a celebration/romanticizing of this lifestyle that he chose, the people that inhabited it, and art as a pursuit. Its no wonder RENT also seems to be about sticking it to the man, as that was a big part of the young bohemian identity when it was made.
If tick...tick...BOOM is any indication after Superbia (a musical that was about something) failed to get off the ground and Rosa says to write what he knows he focused more on telling a story and less on The Statement, but people just love attaching a Statement onto everything they forget to just look at a musical a story that just so happens to have people with AIDS and HIV living in the late 80s to early 90s.
Unfortunately, as the video points out, setting it against AIDS automatically changes the message. There was no defense against TB at the time Boheme, there was defense against AIDS at the time of Rent. And it's that alone that makes it hard to reconcile their cavalier attitude about it all, spending their time getting upset over concerns like paying rent and selling out, with the reality that AIDS didn't have to be a death sentence. It wasn't an unstoppable force. It just required the government to _do_ something, anything, and instead it chose to sit idly by and watch. It'd be like setting it in the modern day and using COVID as the backdrop. You would be utterly unable to separate the purpose of the disease in the work from the reality of the situation surrounding it, the political issues would by necessity be drawn in as a result of the viewer's own experience.
@@vonriel1822 I don't know people are able to enjoy Come From Away without going spiraling into the War on Terror and everything even remotely related to it, the same with Titanic: The Musical and able to separate it from the topics of travel safety and dozens of social issues.
There's also an unanswered follow-up, which would be, If Larson didn't die before the first preview off-Broadway, would there have been more changes that would have happened during the time it was in the NYTW in 1996 for the transition onto Broadway? There could have been some more of those questions answered, or just more fine-tuning since a lot of shows use that time period and previews on Broadway to make more edits based on how the story would be playing from a critical or audience perspective. Famously, Stephen Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George went from off-Broadway to Broadway with basically just the first act, and the second act didn't even come together until near the end of the previews (considering Jonathan Larson's mentor-mentee relationship with Sondheim and the tribute to him in Tick-Tick-Boom.) So I think there could have been more of an opportunity to address more of the musical itself, but without a bigger creative driving force, things mostly went to Broadway as-is, and kind of left things for Rent in the state they are now.
It was really interesting to see just how many points this essay's title ended up tying into. While this one wasn't quite as "fun" as Phantom and Hercules were, it brought up a lot of really interesting points. These videos are always fantastic and they feel so well-researched and thought out. I'm always ecstatic to see them in my subscription feed. Great work as always!
Her, Kyle Kallgren, and (usually) Todd spring immediately to mind. Funny how it's all the ones who left to start their own site . . . (which seems to have completely disappeared? What happened to Chez Apolocalypse anyone? I really miss Nella's readthrough of Tiger's Curse.)
JelloApocalypse Is it a coincidence that I just left watching one of your videos after getting the whim out of seemingly no where only to come to this video despite it's length being much to long for me to watch at this time, then to scroll down into the comments which I haven't done only to come across this comment and write this description of how it feels like more then a coincidence? Yes, yes it is a coincidence.
4:26 that “beyond criticism” line hits hard. I find it real annoying when people find things, almost always dealing with death, to be beyond criticism. U2 Super Bowl halftime because 9/11, Nirvana because Kurt Cobain, and Rent because Jonathan Larson. It all gets under my skin when people try and act like I’m insensitive to criticize anything shrouded in death.
@@shoopmahboop1374 and the thing is, most these losses hurt me too. But nothing is immune from criticism, as sometimes criticism can be constructive and good advice.
When I first saw Rent as a child, I was completely in the closet about my transgender identity. Due to my catholic upbringing, this was the first story I had seen that had LGBT protagonists that were portrayed in what I then believed, was a positive light. Being my young emotional self, I clung to the musical with all I had. Watching that musical was the first step I needed to eventually come out as a transman and start my transition. That being said, watching this video has gotten me to realize that I've put Rent on way too high of a pedestal. I will still have a special place for it in my heart, but now I can see that it held way too many flaws. Thank you for this. It was hard watching a story I cherished being torn down, but you actually did a very good job at softening the blow by giving all the facts in a logical manner rather than angrily ripping it apart.
It had a big impact on me, too. My cousin came out to me and later revealed his HIV+ status and I was rather lost. Rent was a comfort in a strange way. And I'm OK with it. I will still love it for what it was, but it is an entry point, not an ending. And that's where its value lies to me.
@@derrickwoods1595 what are you in disagreement about? And who with? Just wondering...🤔 It's another person's life & issues. Whether or not YOU believe in it, condone it, or agree with their life choice should have absolutely no bearing on them. How noble that you're at least 'nice enough' to be happy for them being happy. Sorry if that came off bitchy, I've had a crappy day. 🤦😜✌️☮️🕊️😶
@@goldilox369 I dont believe acting like another gender is changing it. I dont believe its possible to change it. I dont think if you call yourself a boy but you were born a girl that it makes sense. There's nothing you can do to make yourself as strong or as physically capable or as built or even have the same hormones as a guy. There is a difference between boys and girls for a reason. Its impossible to cross between them. It really is. There's no medicine, no science or no belief that can help you. Its just logic.
Who else feels so bad for that one restaurant owner in the movie? He sounds so distraught and horrified and just lemme save him from these hipsters!!! What did this guy ever do to them? There's not even an excuse they give other than I guess he's kicking them out of the cafe? YOU ALMOST COST THIS MAN HIS JOB!
Ghostietoastie I remember when I first saw that bit, i got so angry, I fantasized some psycho vigilante type like Punisher or Rorschach barging in and beating the shit out of all of these assholes.
Yeah. It reminds me of my Uni, where some rich kids used to write huge socialist/feminist manifestos with lipstick on the mirrors. That, of course, becomes a hell for the poor clean up lady. To see a working class elderly woman kneeling on the ground, puffing and sweating while trying to clean up the word "sorority" from a wall while rich students go by unflinching is something hard to forget.
Edison Michael After I graduated from college my parents became fairly wealthy by building their janitor business. Even after passing the bar I would ocassionally sub-in for my folks or for janitors who were out. The utter lack of awareness from folks (including in neighborhoods where Priuses with Kasich and Obama bumper stickers predominated) was staggering and hilarious. And I'll admit it--I greatly enjoyed ocassionally correcting attorneys who I heard giving bad legal advice, which invariably came from haughty shallow soi-disant liberals with less impressive resumes and salaries than my own.
And then he's like "you sit all night, you never buy" and Roger's like, "no I bought tea the other day!" and the waiter is like "yeah but you couldn't pay for it." Worst customers ever.
The editing of the last 2 minutes of this video still hits hard on a rewatch. It makes my stomach sick by the way it perfectly explains the dissonance between RENT and the actual AIDS crisis.
It's unfortunate that we never got a moment where Fauci finally snapped like Larry Kramer did. With how poorly the US handled COVID, some folks deserved the earful.
Shiny Umbreon Yeah, like I'm an artist, if I, and other artists, was paid for commission by other people, does that mean I'm selling out? No. I still use my own art style, I apply my own rules regarding what I'd do and not do, I accept and reject commissions on my own terms. Like I made it clear that I don't do nsfw, me selling out would mean that even though it goes against my personal preference, I still do nsfw as long as I get the money. So, no, they don't understand what selling out means.
It reminds me of the feminist bookstore in Portlandia, where they're so obsessed with the sanctity of their shop that they actively refuse to sell any books, and end up harming their cause more than helping it.
The problem with "not selling out" is that there is a big difference between actually selling out and just doing something to put food on the table while you try to build whatever career you really want. I don't think any big name film director or musician or artist of any kind has suddenly gone from nothing to making a living from their art (unless they won a competition, in which case they're probably back where they started a year later). I used to think that it'd be selling out to put my music on iTunes because I don't personally use iTunes, but that's a stupid way to look at it. If someone wants to give you money for doing what you love, it shouldn't matter how the transaction goes down. The guy turning down a high paying job in his chosen profession is even stupider. If he took the job, he could still do his own art after hours and he'd have more of a budget for it. If I'd put my music on iTunes 10 years ago, maybe I'd be slightly better off financially than I am. So now I'm playing catch up. But there is very much that sentiment in the artistic community and people have often been too quick to jump on an artist for "selling out". Against Me's own fans slashed the tyres on the band's tour bus when they signed to a major label. Even though the music they made was still true to who they were. Now if they'd suddenly sounded like Britney Spears or Ricky Martin, that'd be selling out. So maybe the me of a decade ago might have had some sympathy for the character, but the 36 year old me just sees the foolishness of a man who could have had it all but was too stubborn to let it happen.
I really think the idea of selling out, especially as it is portrayed in movies and "super real artist stories" is extremelly damaging to young artists. The whole idea behind "the only true art is the one that is done for the sake of art itself and if you accept any form of payment for it you're a traitor to the cause and a monster" is just such unbelievable bullshit it hurts, but it absolutelly gets stuck inside the mind of people just starting out and it can be so bad for them, not only in the process of amplifying their audiences and voices, but even on their minds and bodies. After all, if they dare make enough money to eat or pay their own rent and equipment (or accept such money from any support network, like family) it isn't true art. It's kind of why I especially hate when people are framed like documentary dude in this film. He's not being noble by choosing to not make enough money to support himself and his art on a secondary job or accepting help from his family, he's just actively making life worse for no reason (regardless of the quality or lack thereof of his art) and the movie chooses to portray this as good and proper. He is a true artist because he suffers, even given the choice to simply not... And that's not going into the specifics of him exploring the pain of others for his own shitty, shitty "art", which is a whole can of worms in it's own right. Regardless, I do think this kind of narrative is damaging to society in general and young artists in particular.
both of my moms lived in nyc through the HIV AIDS crisis, and were around this age. they were also activist/artists. one of them devoted her college life to trying to bring attention to it and watching her friends die around her. she did sit-ins, die-ins, and got arrested multiple times. she watched this musical with me and when they mentioned act-up (which is the organization she was apart of) she was like what that’s us! and i was like are you offended? and she was like to be honest a little😂 we both don’t like the story at all but absolutely adore the music though. and for people who will die on their rent hill, just think about that this story has happened to real people, and the musical was written in the 90s. it wasn’t that long ago, it was just tone-deaf. anyway, that’s all i have to say. great video.
I don't have much to really add to this, except to say that the flouncy petulant "I shouldn't have to do this I'm an ARTIST!" way Mark shoved the camera bags into the van in that one shot made me want to punch him.
Yeah, the first time I ever rewatched this post 2020 that moment just hit me so hard in the gut, and I could barely see by the end. I've felt that same rage of his, that frustration, to my core, all the time in the last more-than-a-year now.
@@jamesmyers4691 'Angels' was written by Tony Kushner, not Larry Kramer. You're probably thinking of 'The Normal Heart', which Kramer *did* write and which is also a landmark work of queer theatre, and equally worth a watch! I hate to praise Ryan Murphy for..... well, anything, but his film version of TNH is absolutely phenomenal. Kramer is an ICON. ETA: Not to say that you shouldn't watch AIA - you *absolutely* should, it stands alongside TNH as one of the greatest works of queer American theatre ever written. Just wanted to clarify who wrote what!
it’s so surreal how the way you described the way the government neglected the HIV epidemic is like the same way the government has been handling the coronavirus, it’s genuinely disturbing
Contents! i - we have been left behind by the system [the musical] : 9:28 ii - so about that movie adaption... : 16:26 iii - everyone in Rent is a terrible person : 19:46 iv - poverty vs bohemian idealism or something : 23:51 v - no day but today : 28:43 vi - what machine are we raging against again? : 38:37
Well, the "Will I lose my dignity?" scene reduced me to tears, but so did the E.T. dying scene and the end of Cyrano de Bergerac, so maybe I'm not the best judge.
Lindsay. I have been trying for YEARS to fully explain why I have no patience for RENT. I encountered this video because my friend shared it with me when I mentioned your old "Reality Bites" video when trying to tell people why I didn't watch the recent LIVE! version. THIS. This is what I needed. THANK YOU.
This was brilliant. I've talked to my theater friends a lot about this topic and we all agreed you know you're an adult when you realize Benny is the closest thing to a hero in RENT and every other character is a selfish jerk. Loved that you put it in perspective with the "actual reality" of the AIDS crisis rather than the bizarrely romanticized version of the 1980s RENT presents. Subscribed!!
8:05 I literally don't understand why they didn't make Mark's mom passive aggressively dismissive of Mark's dreams. Something along the lines of "Are you still trying to get those screenplays published? Call us when you're done slumming it or we're turning your room into a lounge." or something along those lines. It would have been cartoonishly villainous but at least it's better than making Mark look like a complete ass hole
Yeah, or make the parents downright abusive. Then it would be like "Oh, I understand why poverty is preferable to contacting them." Instead it's like "Can you BELIEVE the NERVE of my loving parents, caring about me and checking in on me??" Fuck you, Mark.
@@nicholasweil3937 I actually kind of wonder if Rent could have matured a bit more as a piece of theater if Larson hadn’t died. It was kind of frozen in amber after that. But this also would have been an easy change for the film, because Mark’s mom’s dialogue is spoken and not sung. They could have just had her say something different.
As an artist who is constantly on the borderline of poverty, this film is COMPLETELY foreign to me. What part of paying rent is selling out?? You’re just... paying bills, to the landlord- I don’t understand!
You are literally paying for a service. You give them money, you get a roof over your head. Where...is the evil here? Ohhh no! They decided to change the rules! How terrible! They wanted to do something different with something THEY OWN.
I remember being the only POC in my theater department and when I mentioned how I never watched RENT so many of them forced me to watch it. And once I did watch it, I told them “yeah I didn’t like it, it sucked ass” I was essentially shunned from the entire department because a bunch of privileged white kids thought I was homophobic for disliking RENT 🙃 Needless to say my college experience sucked ass
College kids are like that, especially from privileged backgrounds. I grew up rural and poor, I went to a comparatively cheap college after going to trade school and working 5 years as a plumber and saved up every penny i could (I was also working while at college) I was pressured to go see a performance art piece where some black girl shrieked into a microphone fot 15 minutes (literally, all she did was scream) and I said it was shit and I hated it. Well guess what? Because I'm a rural white boy (from a poor family who was working myself to death just to be there) and she's a black girl (who's a rich kid who's father is on the college board of directors and she's there on a free ride) I was branded as a racist, ostracised and tormented daily. When they learned I was hired by the university to be an in-house plumber while I was studying there they petitioned to have me fired. College kids fucking suck. All of them.
"Cmon everybody we've got quilting to dOOooo, we're gonna break down these barricades, everyone has AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AHY-IDS!..Aids" - LEASE (referring to the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt)
The quilt was, and still is, the world's largest folk art project, and it really did make an impact. Before scoffing at it, read about it. The Wikipedia article is pretty good.
Go read up on it dickbag!!!! Quilting was actually a wonderful way to commemorate the dead, show real tangible contempt, allowed people to express themselves and a whole other multitude of things. Are you *really* trying to belittle the actions of dying and dead AIDS sufferers?!
@@drazlet I read their comment as an appreciation of Lindsey acknowledging the quilting, rather than as a belittling of the quilting itself. That doesn't make my take on the comment correct, but you could at least... ask what they meant before calling them a dickbag?
The most depressing thing about all this is knowing that the current COVID-19 pandemic is totally gonna be exploited in 10 years to make this same exact shit again.
Some rich, white, upper- to middle-class male is going to write about the global society (read: Western countries) banding together in this time of crisis and how creativity flourished in these dark, desperate times and how humanity once again shone bright after so many years of drudgery. I simultaneously love and hate the idea.
@@hillarywoo4977 I don't want to get into this but can you not make this about skin colour? Why do so many people think that everyone gets to be nuanced but what you describe is exclusive to this number of attributes? Rich, upper class and if you really need it male would surfice. And still be insulting to millions of people - because men like any other group aren't a hivemind. There are already idiots writing this stuff. We all know that. But their opinions are not just formed by their gender or their skin colour but their entire social status and wealth - in other words their whole character and what this translates to is that as a white, male upper middle class guy, the character you describe? That's a clichée but by giving into the clichée you misunderstand the problematic of class divide. If wealthier, black south Africans write the same things when talking about the poorer lower classes in their own nation, we can take away that being naive isn't about skin colour. And as a frequent news reader, more than enough women write the same emotional crap as their male counterparts. Of course, making this about attributes always brings the risk to oversimplify things but to get back to my original point; I don't care about political correctness. But as a German, I know where this kinda talk can end. It's the most dominant aspect about German culture people don't know about but it is everywhere - our ancestors went down this road, the rest is history and Germany is therefore the most cautious nation on the planet when it comes to talking about groups as you did in your comment. I liked what you had to say. I really did. But do me the favor and put it in a better way next time. Thanks in advance.
@@Arcaryon Als ein Deutscher der jetzt im Ausland lebt, ich würde nicht so sicher reden über die kulturelle Situation von anderen Länder wie Amerika. Es ist sehr oft schwer zu unterscheiden swischen Besserwisser und die angeblich 'gut-informierte' Ethik-Polizei Deutschlands.
@@grimble4564 Ich studiere Politik (vor allem internationale), Ökonomie und Sozialwissenschaft, mein halbes Leben besteht daraus, Geschichte zu analysieren, über momentane, vergangene und zukünftige Ereignisse zu lesen und über Gesellschaften und Individuen zu urteilen um nur ein paar Aspekte zu nennen. Ich bin in der Hinsicht kein "Besserwisser" - ich WEIß es schlicht und ergreifend besser als die meisten weil ich mich damit wortwörtlich stundenlang jeden einzelnen Tag beschäftige - ich bin nicht der klügste oder der einzige mit Durchblick. Aber ohne mich aus dem Fenster zu lehnen, die meisten Menschen auf diesem Planeten wären zwar theoretisch nicht mehr oder weniger in der Lage dazu als ich ABER sie tuen es nicht und sind aus genau diesem Grund unqualifiziert um tatsächlich am demokratischen Prozess teilzunehmen. Ich spreche (bzw. lese, sprechen nur 3) genug Sprachen um mir mein Bild aus den unterschiedlichsten Perspektiven zu machen. Die Hälfte der Dinge die ich hier anspreche, habe ich z.B. aus amerikanischen Medien oder meinem Studium, welches zu großen Teilen auf amerikanischer Arbeit basiert, die nicht nur die Grundsteine der Forschung legten sondern bis heute enorm viele der Aspekte prägen. Ich lese täglich nicht bloß ein paar Nachrichten oder Blogs, ich recherchiere die Themen wochenlang, ich urteile NIEMALS weil ich glaube es besser zu wissen als andere sondern weil ich empirisch beweisen kann, dass meine Theorien vollkommen ausreichend sind um meine Darstellungen zu unterstützen - vor allem weil ich hier ja nichts neues verkünde - es ist fast unmöglich einen originellen Gedanken zu haben aber das heißt leider nicht das was für mich und mit mir zusammen Tausenden oder sogar Millionen von Menschen alltäglich und verständlich ist, auch wirklich von den meisten begriffen wird. Politik ist genauso "schwer" zu begreifen wie zum Beispiel Biologie aber genauso wie die meisten nicht über ihr Schulwissen bei letzterem kommen, verhält es sich mit Politik. Menschen sind nicht so kompliziert wie sie denken. Komplex ja aber nicht kompliziert. Aber dafür muss man Zeit aufwenden. Den Luxus oder den Willen dafür, haben nicht viele, was nicht verwunderlich ist. Demokratie war nie ein Massenprojekt, auch wenn viele das heute anderes sehen wollen. Kennst du den Ausdruck "Ich kann das nicht nachvollziehen?" In einem politischen oder ähnlichem Kontext ist das für mich ein Fremdwort. Das mag' arrogant klingen aber es ist ein Fakt das die meisten Menschen der Auffassung sind, ein paar Minuten politische Bildung in der Woche seien genug um eine Meinung zu haben die man öffentlich teilen darf. Nun - ich widerspreche dieser Ansicht und lehne sie ab. Ich glaube, dass ich nicht in der Lage wäre über Molkekularbiologie zu urteilen und ich bin der Auffassung, dass das gleiche für die meisten Menschen im Umgang mit Politik gilt. Weißt du was ich in meinem Leben zu dem Thema gelernt habe? Viele Leute verwechseln Arroganz mit Selbstsicherheit. Ich habe verdammt viele Fehler. Aber in diesem Feld und bei meinem Training bin ich außergewöhnlich gut und gut heißt in beiden Fällen nicht genetisch überlegen oder in sonst einer überheblichen Art und Weise anders aber genauso wie die meisten Menschen nicht 6 Tage die Woche für 2 Stunden in ein Fitnesstudio gehen, verbringen die meisten Menschen ihre Freizeit nicht damit Gesetzestexte und Statistiken zu wälzen und zu versuchen, sich selbst und die eigene Meinung nicht bloß zu hinterfragen sondern so abzusichern, dass sie den strengen Ansprüchen der Wissenschaft genügen. Ich studiere nicht in Harvard und ich würde mir nie herausnehmen zu behaupten das ich in meiner besagten Profession etwas besonderes wäre. Aber hier auf RU-vid? Bei dem durchschnittlichen Wissenstandard meiner Mitmenschen oder Bürger bei diesen Themen? Die Argumentation gewinne ich fast jedes mal und wenn nicht - tja, wenn ich nichts mehr zu lernen hätte wäre das in meinem Alter schon recht traurig. Aber alleine wie selten es vorkommt bestätigt was ich gerade angesprochen habe. Und egal welche Sprache(n) man spricht oder wo man lebt, am Ende sind wir alle Menschen. Ich habe Leute wie mich überall getroffen. Russen, Amerikaner, Chinesen, Franzosen, Spanier - such' es dir aus. Ich bin wie jeder Mensch einzigartig aber nicht so einzigartig. Warum ich diesen letzten Punkt anspreche? Weil sogut wie ALLE diese Leute egal welche Meinungsverschiedenheiten es da auch gegeben hätte, in dieser einen Hinsicht einig waren. Das hat dann nichts mehr mit einer "Bubbel" zu tuen. Und nebenbei; ich kann jedes Land auf der Weltkarte auseinandernehmen, auch das eigene. WENN ich genug Zeit habe um mir meine Meinung zu bilden. Niemand ist allwissend. Aber wenn die meisten beinahe nichts wissen, ist Überlegenheit nichts womit man angeben müsste. In a world without sight, the one eyed dwarf is king. Ist so viel Selbstvertrauen arrogant? Nun - das kannst du selbst entscheiden. Aber bevor du dein endgültiges Urteil fällst, frag' dich einfach ob meine Weltanschauung wirklich so falsch ist. Ich behaupte, die Welt zu begreifen ist das leicht wenn man weiß welche Fragen man stellen muss und woher man die Antworten bekommt. Lass' uns ein kleines Spiel spielen. Ich nenne mal ein paar berühmte Demokratien und ein oder zwei Revolutionen. Die römische Republik, die französische Revolutionen, um bei meinen Leisten zu bleiben den Mauerfall sowie die griechischen Demokratien, allen voran Athen. Was haben all diese Ereignisse gemeinsam? Nun, man könnte viele Beispiele nennen. Worauf ich hinaus will ist etwas viel simpler es und zwar die Teilnehmerzahlen. Man stellt nämlich leider schnell fest, dass hier in der Regel, nicht immer aber meistens urbane Eliten gegen ihre Oberleherren rebelierten, dass es häufig deutlich weniger Teilnehmer an selbst den nobelsten Unterfangen gab' als man meine würde und dass Demokratien und Revolutionen nur dann erfolgreich (siehe Bauernkriege z.B. im Mittelalter) entstehen und vor allem erhalten werden können, wenn die Bevölkerung nicht nur gebildet und der Staat relativ stabil ist, sondern vor allem Dinge auch wenn wenn sie aktiv und konstant an besagter Demokratie teilnehmen, über aktuelle Vorgänge reflektieren und somit insgesamt die Institutionen die sie errichten wollen oder deren Fortbestehen angestrebt wird, wahrnehmen, verstehen und am politischen Prozess teilnehmen sowie diese Traditionen weitergeben und im Zweifel dafür eintreten. Eine große Tragik unseres Zeitalters ist der Fakt, dass die meisten Leute vergessen haben, dass Demokratien und ihre dadurch alltäglichenen Freiheiten nicht einfach vom Himmel gefallen sind. Ich "kämpfe" jeden Tag dafür, dass sich dieses Problem ändert. Darin habe ich unter anderem meinen Lebenssinn gefunden. So, ich hoffe das erklärt mich und mein Denken in ausreichender Form. Wünsche noch einen schönen Tag oder eine gute Nacht.
@@grimble4564 PS: Beim nochmaligen lesen von deinem Kommentar bin ich mir nicht mehr sicher ob ich tatsächlich eine Kritik vorgefunden habe oder mich da verstan habe, leider kann man Buchstaben nicht sprechen hören. Sollte dies der Fall gewesen sein, bitte ich um Verzeihung und Verständnis wobei mein kleiner Paragraph trotzdem nicht allzu schlecht gelungen ist. Wie auch immer - auf "Wiedersehen".
The strong focus you put on what the 1980s really was like for LGBT+ people is commendable and moving. In current gay culture, this era seems to be all but forgotten at times, and I had to do a lot of my own research to understand the global scope of the AIDS crisis and the intertwining politics that allowed it to get so terrible, along with the brave protesters literally fighting for their lives. I nearly cried watching the end, with the man calling it a "fucking plague", while the hip '80s white people were singing their bops. Nearly an entire generation of gay people was lost. Reagan's gravesite is a gender neutral bathroom!
It's because the second a moderate level of acceptance and equality was established many LG people dropped out of real activism, leaving the rest of us. Now being LG is A Brave New Market, and why would they care about people who aren't just like them.
Its such a painful learning process too, because its basically never brought up in school except for MAYBE as a sex ed scare tactic against premarital sex And its not something we learn about naturally from our predecessors because, well, so many of them were wiped out by the disease that its hard to find elders unless you're really looking So you have to go on a self propelled journey of learning about this awful painful history pretty much totally alone in a library or online And that's overwhelmingly sad and horrible to sift through
Friendly plug that the play “A Normal Heart” is a brutal, honest, boots-on-the-ground take on the struggles the LGBTQ community had to go through during the AIDS crisis. I haven’t watched the TV show adaptation, but reading the play in HS validated everything I hated about RENT.
"Hating convention, hating pretension" is easily one of the most conventional, pretentious lyrics I've ever heard in a song. The entirety of "La Vie Boheme" the song is literally just them saying words and not meaning a damn thing. And yeah, the irony of discovering this video in the middle of our own pandemic has not been lost on me. When that man says "I say to you in year 10 what I said in 1981 when there were 40 cases," I can't help but be horrified
It's literally just a list of stuff with no real connection except that somebody somewhere didn't like it once. maybe yoga was more subversive in 1990? But it feels like it's confusing the trappings of counterculture (food, clothes, dieting and exercise fads) with the substance of counterculture - ideas or art that is dangerous to the mainstream. It's like they're saying that counterculture is just about superficial rebellion but they don't have any real philosophy or ideas - bht that's great! It literally presents an argument against bohemianism and the counter culture as if it's an argument for it.
Once I saw a staging of The Magic Flute that managed to criticize it's racism and misogyny only by changing a few details on clothing, scenary, body language and interaction of the characters. They framed Sarastro as a pedophile and a slave owner by making him always touch Pamina in an unapropriate way and putting Monostatos in chains and physicaly punishing him, for example. It did not change a single line of the original text. I wonder if this could be possible with Rent. But broadway shows, unlike opera, are always staged the same way, so I see no possibility of that happening.
@@RafaelaMartinelli I'd say re-depictions do happen with broadway musicals, it just happens after a while, and starts in smaller theatres. Presumably, that's why we have so many Shakespeare and operatic reimaginations, the originals are way older than the musicals we now think of as some kind of sacred. For example, Oklahoma only recently got a Broadway revival that really critiques the cruel characters. There are ballets like Petrushka (1911!) where the professional productions still seem bound to the original choreo, even. No one would dare think of doing alt takes on Hamilton for decades at least.
