And nobody wanted to be that guy. But over the years, mockery and criticism have slowly crept into the general reverence we still tend to adopt for this landmark musical of the '90s. Songs like "Season of Hype" and "This Ain't Boheme " skewer the musical as an overrated product of commercialism, fueled not by substance but by its own drama and media frenzy. The show itself is described thusly:. In , the critic Scott Miller, in his critique of modern musical theater Rebels with Applause , devoted a substantial chapter to Rent 's cultural influence and lasting legacy.
Concluding that the show hadn't really changed Broadway, he wrote a final paragraph musing about who Larson's bright young successor would be:.
The other young composers making their marks on Broadway are following more in the tradition of Sondheim's sophisticated, complex musicals than following Larson's populist lead. Much has been made of the cultural, structural, and generational similarities between Rent and Hamilton.
Each show speaks both to and for subcultures whose stories have traditionally been less well-represented in musical theater — the poor, the immigrants, the minorities. Like Rent , Hamilton has completely electrified its cultural moment — and like Rent its social conscience speaks directly to the current political climate. Rent offered what was at the time an unprecedented frank look at sex, drugs, queer identity, and the devastating impact of AIDS in the late '80s.
It did this while simultaneously speaking to the concerns of a world-weary pre-millennial generation, triumphantly heralding the return of the rock musical and ushering in a permanent new era of modern sound on Broadway. Hamilton , too, has all the same potency of modernity and intergenerational social commentary on its side — and, crucially, a hip-hop score serving as the strongest musical statement on Broadway since Rent itself. But while Larson never got to see the legacy of his show, Hamilton 's creator is alive, well, and not a white man on Broadway; so naturally it hasn't even snagged its inevitable Tony for best musical, and the critical negging has already started.
Don't get me wrong — Hamilton contains plenty of entry points for interrogation and critique. It's just that many critics have chosen the ones that dismiss what Hamilton is actually about. Still, the cultural similarities between Rent and Hamilton have helped bear both shows aloft on the wings of near-universal, Pulitzer-winning acclaim.
It seems almost cosmically fitting somehow that Hamilton is enjoying a critical coup the same year that Rent enjoys a cultural comeback and a milestone anniversary. In a heartfelt application letter for the Jonathan Larson Award in , Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote movingly about how Rent had impacted him:.
The cast sings that the best way to measure your life is love, and this song becomes an empowering anthem. It's also played at New Year's and graduations, thanks to its lyrics about moving on. If you were to drop this quote at a dinner party, would you get an in-unison "awww" or would everyone roll their eyes and never invite you back?
Here it is, on a scale of Quotes Shmoop will make you a better lover Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes. I even recently learned about something called a Klout score, which aggregates one's overall influence on social media platforms.
I imagine more and more people will soon becomes familiar with theirs. After all, this is kind of what computers are for. Literally "computing," calculating and regurgitating statistics. Just about every entity in social media has a number, a counter, a ticker, a graph, or a colored bar that determines its popularity and value. And because we spend so much time and energy invested online and, therefore, in these numbers, we use them to make the same conclusions about our own self-worth.
I'm embarrassed to admit how many times I'll reload this very page to check for new likes, shares, comments, or tweets. As cyberspace seeks to make us more number and less human, we have to consciously separate our self-image and self-esteem from our life's virtual box score. Sometimes we forget that when we die, no one will ask for the Carfax to appraise our life's worth, that our follower count won't appear on our obituary or our Klout score on our tombstone.
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