La Vie Bohemme: Picking up the pieces of a reckless life

This weekend I finally watched the popular musical Rent. When the musical came out it looked interesting, but the theme intimidated me. In case you haven't heard of it, Rent is the story of several young artists in New York's "Alphabet City". Each of the characters has adopted the alternative lifestyles of the city's bohemian society.

The bohemian lifestyle embraces ideas and values counter to the norm. In the musical's song La Vie Bohemme, the characters sing the joys of their unhindered lives (including homosexuality, illicit drug use, and many inately destructive lifestyles) and challenge "let he who is without sin cast the first stone."

spoiler notice!!

With a lesbian couple, an homosexual male couple, an exotic dancer and rocker with AIDS, and a struggling movie-maker (the former boyfriend of one of the lesbians and roommate of the rocker) making their lives in the rough area of New York, we are to sympathize with them. Even when one of the characters dies and all go their way, in spite of a moving overture on love, they do not address their destructive decisions. In the end, the characters seemingly reconcile and we're left with a resounding song that love makes it all better.

The friends have an old friend, Benny, who has gone on and wants to make their lives better by building a studio in Alphabet City, displacing several indigents, but offering the community a way to grow. He's ostracized as an outsider and dismissed by the producers of the play as a bad guy. However, Benny represents the way out, which the other characters dismiss.

Other musicals (like Les Miserables) and plays by greats like Shakespeare realize the misery of life and even destructive lifestyles and decisions, but bring the characters to repentance or the tragic consequences of their decisions. Rent misses this!

Love eases life, but we have to acknowledge our own and our friends' self-destructive decisions AND work to change them if we're to really break free of misery.