Why Benny Is The Closest Thing 'Rent' Has To An Actual Hero

I remember Rocco making similar analysis of Rent years ago – on the chosen poverty of the conspicuously starving artists: "It doesn't help that they routinely come across as callous to actual working and poor people in their neighborhood. The poor- beleaguered waiter at the Life Cafe's a prime example: Mark seems to think that he has all the right in the world to take up space in the man's section without ordering- or to order food he has no real intention of paying for- without thinking of the consequences for the man's take at the end of his shift- or how his boss might react to the waiter's lenience towards Mark in favor of paying customers. Similarly- the homeless woman who calls out Mark's self-congratulatory filming of her interactions with the police as the act of exploitation that it is- then exposes that Mark has no interest in helping her financially- reveals the profound limitations of Mark's attitude towards his neighborhood as any sort of holistic entity."

Why Benny Is The Closest Thing 'Rent' Has To An Actual Hero

'Rent' hasn't aged well–and in retrospect- Benny's dream looks a lot less myopic than Roger and Mark's vision of Bohemia.


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