"Rent"

"Rent" -- The 8th longest running musical in Broadway history comes to the silver screen this week. From my review in The American Conservative (subscribe here):

"Rent's" composer Jonathan Larson ... wanted to "revolutionize" the musical by making it relevant to today's young people by featuring the kind of music the kids were listening to on the street in 1996 … well, to be precise, the kind of 1970s electric guitar rock that Larson had listened to as a teenager in his White Plains bedroom...

The two heterosexual white male characters at the center of "Rent" have all these cool minority friends. Indeed, "Rent" functions as a sensitive liberal man's wish-fulfillment fantasy about a new and improved form of diversity. Hanging with diverse pals demonstrates your moral superiority over other Caucasians, but, frustratingly for young white social climbers, actual live minorities are seldom content to play their assigned roles as silent props in your fashionable lifestyle. In particular, real black friends might insist on playing their hideous rap music and real gay friends their sissy disco music. In "Rent," however, the diverse trendsetters all like 1970s white boy guitar rock, thus validating the two straight guys' hipness quotients.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer