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The Truth Behind Hair and Rent

In: Film and Music

Submitted By mnjualem
Words 861
Pages 4
Hair and Rent are two well-known musicals that perfectly display the power of art in the world. Rent is a rock musical that tells the story about a group of poor, young artists and musicians who are struggling to survive and make it in New York’s Lower East Side during the AIDS epidemic. Hair is another rock musical, but this musical deals with the hippie counter-culture and the sexual revolution of the 1960s. In the musical Hair, the setting also takes place in New York, but the plot in Hair differs a little from the storyline in the Rent. Instead of struggling to survive as musicians, the people in Hair are fighting against conscription into the Vietnam War. Each character in the musicals Hair and Rent have to deal with the everyday issues of their time while still trying to deal with their own individual dilemmas.
In the musical Rent, the people tend to live a bohemian lifestyle. The American College Dictionary defines the term bohemian as "a person with artistic or intellectual tendencies, who lives and acts with no regard for conventional rules of behavior." The characters in Rent are each trying to reach their dreams of making it in show business, but they have to overcome many obstacles such as living expenses, the AIDS epidemic, love, sexuality, drugs, friendship, and much more. One character, Mimi Marquez, is a club dancer, and that is how she pays for her living. Many people of that time would be club dancers because that was a quick way of earning money. Due to the AIDS epidemic, many characters in Rent were also HIV positive such as Roger Davis, Mimi Marquez, Tom Collins, and Angel Dumott Schunard. Some of the characters also deal with sexuality like Tom Collins who is a gay anarchist, Angel Dumott Schunard who is a young drag queen, and Joanne Jefferson who is a lesbian. All these characters have to defeat their biggest conflicts in order to become who they have always wanted to be.
The characters in the musical Hair also live the bohemian lifestyle. The current issues of the 1960s deals with enlistment into the Vietnam War, hippies, illegal drugs, and sexuality. In the musical Hair, Claude and his good friend Berger, along with their other friends, struggle to balance their life of freedom and rebellion against the Vietnam War and their conservative parents and norm of society. Claude must decide whether to resist the draft like most of his friends did or follow the norm of society and the pressures of his parents by serving in the war. During the 1960s, a lot of people, especially the youth of that generation, were a part of the hippie counter culture movement. The goal and attitude of a hippie was happiness. Their motto was “if it feels good, do it”. Hippies did not want to become what their parents had wanted them to be or had built for them. Hippies dressed in brightly colored, ragged clothes or tie-dyed t-shirts. They also wore beads, sandals, and jewelry. What hippies wore and how they acted greatly differentiated them from the norm of society which was conservative.
The themes and many lessons learned from Hair and Rent really do not have anything to do with my profession which is nursing, but there are many important life lessons that these films demonstrated. One important life lesson taught from the film Rent is to live in the moment. Most of the characters in Rent had AIDS, and for that reason, many of them expected their life to come to an end very soon. These characters learned to stop worrying about the future but to enjoy what is right in front of them and the time they have left. I can relate to that. Most of the time, I am always worrying about what the future holds that I never notice something really great while it is happening. I worry about when the next pay check is going to arrive rather than worrying about what is taking place at the moment. Another lesson I learned is to stand up in what I believe in. I do not always have to follow the norm of society. I have to be my own person and not be afraid to state my opinions. Rent and Hair taught me many more life lessons.
Hair and Rent are two musicals that every person should see at least once in their life. A person can learn so much from these films and listen to the message they send. Though there is no longer have an AIDS epidemic or a hippie counter culture movement, that does not mean people cannot put the lessons that the musicals have taught us to good use. People should not be afraid of our opinions or what the norm is for society. People should spend our time thinking about the present instead of the future. People should also never give up their dreams as well. Rent and Hair accurately show the struggle that each character had to go through in that time, and they show the viewers how to overcome that struggle.

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