Rent

In the decades following the opening of Rent in 1996, many editorials and fans entering midlife have revisited their automatic acceptance of Benny as the musical’s villain and questioned whether, perhaps, he was in fact the voice of reason. One might write this perspective off as the loss of youthful pipe dreams and the brainwashing mechanism of capitalism over time, but the musical does call attention to the issues with Mark and Roger’s professed ideals while still critiquing the problems of capitalism and gentrification. Perhaps young audiences who romanticized their bohemian lifestyle and viewed the characters as heroes were, at least in part, missing the point. Gentrification, which began in Alphabet City in the early 1990s, is an oppressive tactic that prices poor people out of their homes and neighborhoods under the guise of urban renewal and improvement. Benny wholeheartedly contributes to gentrification, because he believes that what the other characters are idealizing as bohemia is just abject poverty. The musical juxtaposes the central characters who are clinging to their rent-free apartment with the peripheral characters of the tent city, who would also be displaced by Benny’s studio but are already inadequately housed. Its residents’ poverty isn’t a choice, unlike that of the characters who are choosing poverty as a show of virtue. In the end, neither Benny nor Mark’s friend group does anything to help the people in the tent city. When Christmas Eve rolls around again a year later, the characters who didn’t have homes at the start of Act I remark that nothing changed for them, while the main characters celebrate their personal triumphs.

The title of the show is addressed in the first full song, in which Mark and Roger, who have been living rent-free for a year, rebel against Benny’s decision to collect their back-owed rent. Critics of the central characters ask: Why shouldn’t they pay rent like the rest of us? Why do they think they’re entitled to free housing? Of course, Benny knows perfectly well that his former roommates can’t pay. He’s leveraging his power over their housing as an attempt to coerce them to stop Maureen’s protest. The centralization of rent as the title of the musical indicates that the concept of paying rent is more significant than their initial game of chicken, which concludes early in the second act when Benny gives them the key. It raises the issue of basic survival as a privilege within capitalist and consumerist structures. Food, housing, and firewood are commodities in capitalism, as is healthcare, an issue that the musical misses an opportunity to explore, given that AIDS activism at the time focused significantly on the issue of inaccessibly priced medical treatment. Even dying is expensive, as shown when Collins can’t pay for Angel’s funeral. The bohemian anti-capitalist mentality of voluntary poverty requires an atmosphere of social collectivism that relies on the generosity of those who participate in capitalism, including the working poor. Benny marries into wealth, which allows Roger and Mark to benefit from capitalism without directly participating in the system. Collins works as a professor, Angel works as a street musician, and they share what little they have. When Roger moves in with Mimi, they presumably live on her income from the Cat Scratch Club. Ultimately, capitalism is a hegemonic system, and it’s impossible to fully refuse to participate in it while living in a society that is based on capitalist structures.

The musical subtly disparages the notion of romanticizing poverty for art’s sake, secondary to the more dominant critique of selling out. But the characters’ poverty doesn’t feed their art, as demonstrated in the opening scene when Mark and Roger are burning their literal art—screenplays, music, posters—to stay warm. They are, however, benefiting from their proximity to the less fortunate. Mark’s confrontation with a woman who is unhoused who yells at him for filming demonstrates that the main characters are out of touch with the real victims of capitalist oppression: the people who are huddling in tents as it starts to snow. Even if Mark’s primary motive in this instance was to protect the woman from police violence, her response suggests that the presence of Mark and his friends is an ongoing issue. She sees Mark and the other artists as exploitative, wanting to use them to seem virtuous but unwilling to sacrifice so much as a dollar for her. Benny seems to be correct when he claims that Maureen is protesting because she wants to keep her performance space. The protest benefits Maureen and Mark when his footage makes the news, but in the end, it does nothing for the people who are barred from the lot. Benny wants them to monetize their art; at minimum, he is offering to fund their work. Most of the characters also have parents who worry about their well-being and would likely act as safety nets. At Angel’s funeral, Mark realizes that money is useful, as Benny offers his to genuinely help Collins and Mimi. The musical presents Mark’s decision to quit a job that he thinks will violate his ethics as the right choice, but—ironically, as Mark is the closest stand-in for Jonathan Larson—Larson was commercializing his own art by taking it to the Off-Broadway stage. The musical doesn’t quite reconcile the middle ground between selling out and choosing poverty, but it does offer Benny semi-redemption, suggesting that money doesn’t have to be evil.