"Broadway, Living, and Gay Hope" Transcript
27 Jun 2023
Why Straight Creators Fail Queer Stories
Broadway, AIDS, and Gay Suffering
Best Intentions (Thumbnail)
Angels Don't Pay Rent In America (Thumbnail)
RENT
Angels in America
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Jun 27, 2023
First published.
Dec 07, 2023
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May 8, 2024Channel deleted
Jun 27, 2023
Nov 15, 2023
Dec 03, 2023
As of Jun 27, 2023
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What has RENT gone down in history as THE queer play about HIV/AIDS when it's barely about queer people, barely about AIDS, and a much better play about queer people and HIV/AIDS came out years before it? Let's investigate.
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00:00 Introduction
08:31 1. Renter’s Market
14:58 2. Penis From Heaven
21:13 3. Not All Rainbows
27:08 4. You and Me, Easy as AZT
33:20 5. Bohemia! What a concept!
42:35 6. AIDS in America
50:30 7. Manic Pixie Dream Homelessness
01:03:17 8. Glory To
this video is brought to you by Squarespace in 1996 the musical theater world was changed Forever by a small Off-Broadway musical gaining the attention of critics and fans alike rent was promptly moved to a proper Broadway Theater where it quickly spread throughout the whole world and for those of us who have recently become immunologists from spending the last three years in a pandemic we know just how fast a plague can spread without protection namely much like kova 19 a lot of people who didn't think it was bad to begin with yes I am comparing redheads to anti-masters see I love drint focus on the past tense the movie adaptation came out at the perfect time for me I was in high school and just started to take my future seriously my dad had just won a decades-long fight for workers compensation after breaking his neck and back on the job so he received a settlement that in hindsight was nothing compared to what he was actually owed which meant I got a digital video camera for Christmas I could finally start making movies and properly editing them I could work on my art so when rent came out I heavily identified with Mark this was also at the peak of Post 9 11 fears of a cataclysmic World War III so that seemed to be a possibility so the no day but today messaging resonated with me quite deeply when you have something you have to say it's important to get it out into the world now because there might not be a tomorrow through rent however I was exposed to a wider range of theater and began to see places where rent themes were more clearly expressed Hedwig in the anger inch while problematic I would argue knowingly but that's not a mole hell I'm willing to die on seemed to just hold itself together in a way where rents use and catchy songs and general sentimentality helped you to ignore its shortcomings and then baby gay James begins to learn more about the AIDS crisis and specifically what it was like in the early 90s and late 80s and yeah there are some issues about that and then as someone who grew up and grew their career while still holding on to my artistic dreams okay Mark it really can't be that hard to get your together and through discussions with my co-writer Nick who had nothing but contempt for every aspect of the production despite only knowing about it through second-hand knowledge I began to concede that the bigger picture themes you know it was made by straight guy with the best of intentions whose objective was to depict the deteriorating state of artistic Merit that he had seen through the 1980s rent was made to push against the trend of corporatization in giuliani's gentrification of New York City as well as a serenade for the bygone golden age of Starving Artists through a reimagining of blabo M in modern times where we swap out consumption which was likely tuberculosis for AIDS Larson seeks to remind his audience of the importance and value of authenticity in art and in turn the value of art itself to society but that opens up a whole bunch of questions about Mark's role as the protagonist a question about what art is how the nonsensical elements of the plot fit into a representation of social justice the behavior and morals of the core cast in the context of early 1990s New York the representation of queer characters the moral focus on the effects of AIDS on straight people and a question of how appropriate it is to swap out tuberculosis for AIDS without too much adaptation AZT break and then I eventually got Nick to sit down and watch the thing he hates as much as I disagree with hate watching on Merit but he wanted to be armed with information if he was going to keep this discussion going and sure he's not having a great time but oh God it's like watching your favorite childhood movie as an adult and you just spend the whole time cringing because instead of just knowing how the songs vaguely fit into the context of play seeing the actual interactions between these people who are somehow framed heroically and their sense of what the world apparently owes them there's a lot to be desired for instance Mark is offered a part-time job in his field that pays well above a living wage especially for the time and then he quits because it's taking time away from his own art take the other 20 hours a week and make your dumb pretentious documentary about your friend's Mark your documentary isn't even about anything you're not making it to be consumed by an audience outside your group of friends you're not even recording sound this art documentary offers nothing to humanity it has no value to culture because there is this implicit belief in the late 80s that making art for a mass audience somehow diminishes its inherent authenticity there's no reason you want to make it except to stroke your own ego and call yourself an artist in spite of the fact that you're allergic to criticism and therefore are too afraid to actually show it to anyone else no wonder Maureen dumped you okay so in spite of the fact that rent is deeply problematic in a way that's easy to overlook because the collection of identities are visibly represented regardless of that it's important as a work of theater because it presented specifically queer identities to a broad audience and helped ease the general population into appreciating these people where they were depicted without rent swinging open the doors we would not have had the kind of representation we have now rent while Troublesome paved the way for True masterpieces of queer representation namely Tony kushner's Angels In America which while lacking an explicit discussion of art itself it discusses Ren's themes of inequality poverty republicanism AIDS and cultural disassociation in a much more subtle yet targeted way this strangely comedic Fantasia about death and rebirth the gay state of being in late 80s America and a culture on the precipice of great Capital C change remains one of the most celebrated pieces of theater in the American Canon and for Angels in America to fly I had argued rent needed to walk hobble limp saunter and then you actually have the moment of douge where you need to fact check yourself and rent properly premiered Off-Broadway in 1996 after being workshopped since 1993. workshopping is when you put the production in front of test audiences and work out the Kinks before you put it in front of the real audience part one of Angels in America Millennium approaches however premiered in 1991 and part two parastroika premiered in 1992 and they were on Broadway by 93. rent wasn't even out of the gate by the time angels in America lapped it all these years I thought rent was a progenitor of queerness in theater and meanwhile there went to gaiju making one of the most significant additions to Modern literary canon while being passed off as riding on rent's coattails what do I do with this how do I reconcile that if angels in America didn't need rent to prop itself up then why rent at all and why rent when you can buy a subscription to Squarespace this video is brought to you by Squarespace building a site with Squarespace is a great way to build your brand and reach a wider audience whether you're a visual artist photographer writer a video producer or work in any other creative field it's vital to have a site that you can use to help build your brand on your own terms Nick and I have had a presence on social media for a while now and obviously this channel but with certain sites looking like they're going to go the way of the dodo we thought it about time to make our presence felt away from the Bird app using squarespace's incredibly intuitive and easy to use tools we've built the James Summerton YouTube Channel website featuring a Blog where Nick and I write about topics that probably wouldn't make for a full video like the movie The Menu the show succession and my rediscovery of anime as well as a special section where you can read preview chapters of my upcoming novel and check out Nick's full first novel gentlemen's club and best of all by using squarespace's video hosting feature we're even able to give you access to videos that YouTube made us remove you can head to squarespace.com right now for a free trial and when you're ready to launch your site go to squarespace.com James S that's j-a-m-e-s-s to save 10 off your first purchase of a website or domain start showing the world how amazing you are today with Squarespace foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] I know some of you don't like it when we synopsisize the media under discussion because spoilers but this is a comparative analysis that takes into consideration political economic and social context so it's probably best that I make my case clear when it comes to what we're actually talking about but specifically what is it about these Productions that make it significant that angels in America came first it's important to show respect to Trailblazers in representation even if their representation doesn't age well media that Stakes out new territory can swing the door open for better representation and that's how I felt rent's major purpose fit into our modern media landscape messy but ultimately palatable enough to large audiences to broaden the spectrum of acceptance enough to permit something like angels in America to get into the world but that clearly wasn't the case however there are two claims here that I'm going to need to back up with some textual evidence one is that rent is so-so on representation the other is that rent is fundamentally palatable as in it takes radical identities of the day and age queer people homeless people and addicts and softens their personalities and circumstances so that it's easier for General audiences to identify with them I see this as finding a way to fit these people into the societal Norm rather than challenging the boundaries of the norm lean in empathy and especially when it comes to that I am liable to contradict myself because rent is messy and a huge component of why it's messy is the way in which the audience interprets it and the way these characters are framed through Direction so what happens in rent the plot of rent takes place over the course of a single year 525 600 minutes to be exact and focuses on a group of young artists who are coping with the effects of poverty addiction and HIV and AIDS the story focuses on their hardships their hopes and the relationships that they build as they work through the obstacles that life throws at them the central characters are Mark Cohen an aspiring filmmaker the show's narrator and unwittingly the worst person on Earth and Roger Davis a songwriter and recovering addict the show begins on Christmas Eve when the protagonists are confronted with the possibility that their landlord and former roommate Benny May remove them from their apartment since they haven't paid rent in a year they triumphantly announce that they are not going to pay rent because they're all just so artistic and therefore they shouldn't have to pay rent because getting jobs will interfere with their creative process Benny had once been part of the group of starving artist friends and is alluded to have once had strong leftist political beliefs he has since married into money and opted to purchase this building and the neighboring property with the intent of developing these Lots while he doesn't have plans to develop the literal slum that Mark and Roger live in he does want to evict a homeless Camp to construct a cyber Art Studio vocally expressing that the goal is to offer unspecialized employment to be fair while Benny had once agreed to let Mark and Roger live there rent free this is something he has changed his mind on God forbid you have to pay rent Roger who is haunted by the suicide of his girlfriend struggles to find inspiration for his music until he meets Mimi who instigates a very poorly judged romance with him for a number of reasons Roger is very resistant to her flirtations namely because he's an addict in recovery and basically every addiction program mandates a solid year of no new romantic attachments after becoming sober meanwhile Mimi literally sings a song about how it's okay to do drugs in Roger's face and yet this is the Romantic Duo the audience is meant to be rooting for evidenced by the fact that this romantic through line is the closest thing to a plot that the play has will they won't they I digress attending the squatters Christmas party is Tom Collins a good-natured professor of philosophy in the digital age he is assaulted for unknown reasons on his way to Mark and Rogers and encounters Angel who helps him get back up to his feet sparking the start of their romance Angel is surely one of the only likable characters in the play which says something given that the first thing that they do in the play is kill a dog Benny's dog the two show up to the party as a couple and remain that way until angel passes away in a pivotal moment in the second act with much anticipation we meet Mark's ex-girlfriend Maureen Johnson who is an eccentric and self-obsessed performance artist as well as her new girlfriend Joanne Jefferson who is a no-nonsense lawyer Joanne is clearly a bit of a masochist too or else she would have left Maureen within five minutes of meeting her Maureen is also bisexual which means that she's a apparently because bisexuals apparently have too many options and so they can never be trusted to keep it in their pants apparently of the aforementioned characters four are HIV positive Roger Mimi Angel and Collins throughout the musical these characters also face the harsh realities of poverty illness and loss they confront the stigma and challenges of poverty while cherishing their friendships until they all decide to hate each other when Angel dies and Roger and Mimi break up and Mark quits a ridiculously high paying job because it isn't his art and he doesn't have time to wait context Mark is one of the people not living with HIV or Aids or addiction so he has absolutely zero swords owned by Damocles hanging over his head but he is a straight white man so he deserves things in the show's conclusion everyone reconciles the differences because Mimi almost dies from a combination of drug overdose weather exposure in December and what is alluded to be Advanced stage AIDS but Roger sings the worst song to her and she comes back to life and then they watch the documentary that Mark's been making over the last year about his friends a documentary which he has recorded with no sound equipment so it's basically just a slideshow highlight reel of the show which we've just watched kind of like what I just made you go through but without the pithy commentary but that said I feel a little bad being so critical of rent primarily because it isn't all bad rent hit the pavement running at a time when having any kind of queerness was something that according to censors opt to have been kept out of media Brent was bold about topics around sex and sexuality and featured Collins a character with AIDS holding on to dreams about his future however the problem I have here is not so much with rent itself but a question of why it's still put on this pedestal by many with angels in America while Angels In America which checks those same boxes is not nearly as widely known especially when I would hold angels in America in much higher esteem [Music] Tony kushner's Play Angels in America was a game changer when it premiered in San Francisco in 1991. the play takes place in New York City during the mid-1980s during the height of the AIDS epidemic The Seven Hour production is broken up into two sections which are titled Millennium approaches and perestroika Millennium approaches establishes the characters and how their lives are intertwined as well as sets up the magic realism that props up the allegorical side of what the AIDS crisis was doing to America we are introduced to Pryor Walter a gay man of lineage that can be traced back all the way to the crossing of the Mayflower and Beyond story opens he Reveals His AIDS diagnosis while he's handling it well especially given what life with AIDS meant in the late 1980s his boyfriend Louis ironson struggles with the fear and responsibility of having to care for a sick partner the play also introduces us to Joe Pitt a closeted Mormon lawyer who is being groomed by Roy Cohn to be a pawn in a game of political chess Joe's wife is Harper who is dealing with severe mental illness and is being severely gas lit by Joe she has begun to suspect that in light of her husband's complete lack of sexual interest in her he is in fact a homosexual we see the impact that aids has had on society throughout the course of Millennium approaches as well as the fear and shame that surround the epidemic and the political inaction regarding the crisis the characters are forced to come to terms with their own mortality as well as the unpredictability of the future unable to withstand the pressure of being directly confronted with the reality of AIDS Lewis leaves prior while he is unconscious in the hospital something that prior doesn't really let him live down the play isn't wrong in having prior state that Lewis is leaving is a bitter pill to swallow partners of AIDS victims usually stuck it out until the very end something that the rest of the world should have seen as a testament to the loyalty and compassion that we queer people were accused of not possessing in the absence of Lewis prior's old drag friend and nurse believes steps in to pick up the slack he is aside from one of the takeaway characters of the show pivotal in challenging the play's principal villain Roy Cohn Belize is assigned to attend to Roy as he dies of AIDS which is being exasperated by the cancer treatment he insists on taking to protect his reputation as a passing for straight Republican shark lawyer all the while he loses his mind and is haunted by the literal ghosts of his morally bankrupt past as Roy tries to convince his Protege Joe to relocate to Washington the Mormon struggles with his wife Harper The Strain on this relationship is spurring him to dive deeper and deeper into his repressed homosexual urges this leads him to cross paths with Lewis a word processor for Soulless lawyers like himself Joe Falls completely in love with Lewis who is on the rebound and who also has no idea that Joe Works directly under the living embodiment of gay evil Harper is taken in by Joe's mother Hannah an eluded closeted lesbian who crosses paths with prior by then Pryor has already started seeing slash hallucinating visitations from Angels bestowing messages for him to prophesy unto mankind amidst a full psychological meltdown he turns to whomever he's able to to give him answers he finds those answers at the Mormon Community Center where Hannah is volunteering this strange Duo ends up becoming a curious pair Hannah is implied to also have interactions with angels truly questioning if Pryor is actually seeing Angels or not because Belize is a nurse in the AIDS Ward where Roy Cohn is receiving AZT an experimental new AIDS drug still in double-blind trials and therefore nearly impossible to attain he sees Joe through prior word gets back to Lewis who confronts Joe who we learned was cohn's right-hand man for some truly abominable legal actions love the one where you found against those women on Staten Island who were suing the New Jersey Factory the toothpaste makers whose orange colored smoke was blinding children blind just minor irritation three of them had to be hospitalized Joe I mean it's sort of brilliant in a satanic sort of way how you conclude that these women have no right to sue under the air and water protection act because the air and water protection act doesn't protect people but actually only air and water Joe who had been waffling on a decision to leave his clearly mentally ill wife to the Wolves for the sake of a penis has his mind made up for him when Lewis dumps him we don't actually find out what happens to Joe doesn't matter Harper leaves to travel the world on Joe's Credit Card prior blessed by angels has his aides go into a kind of remission something about AIDS that happens sometimes in baffles researchers to this day he forgives Lewis but refuses to take him back and then they and Belize become good friends with Hannah who remains in New York oh right and Roy Cohn has a gruesome on-stage death the the more you know about him the more you get this kind of schadenfreude about it in addition to these personal challenges the play delves into the political and social issues that were prevalent During the period and sadly still to this day the dishonesty and Corruption that were widespread throughout the Reagan Administration are exemplified by Roy Cohn the only major character in the play directly based on a real person the play is critical of the lack of sympathy within conservative administrations for people whose lives have been touched by AIDS and it underscores the struggle of the queer Community for visibility and equality at the same time it balances the internalizing factors of living with AIDS and what that does to someone living in a society whose only discourse about people living with AIDS is that they are the disease deep inside you there's a part of you the most inner part entirely free of the story hurdles toward an apocalyptic conclusion the paths of the characters connect and divide bringing them face to face with their darkest fears their most heartfelt desires and the unavoidable fact that things will always be changing the play investigates the human capacity for growth and evolution as well as the intricate dynamics of relationships in the search for Connection in a world that feels more chaotic with each passing day [Music] initially a comparison between rent and angels in America is weird they are at first comparable because they're acclaimed theatrical Productions that are about or feature queer characters and AIDS in an approximately late 80s setting however the play's direct subject matter seems quite different rent wants to directly discuss gentrification and the effect that has on artists and therefore art how the heartless elements of greed is killing the concept of Art For Art's Sake it's about the heart of New York City and who this Heart Belongs to about Scrappy kids sticking it to the Man by moooing at him angels in America by contrast is about three people's cumulative nervous breakdown around the question of AIDS homosexuality and what it means to exist in this modern world however dig a Little Deeper still and at the core of these plays what these plays are actually meant to say to the audience is a discussion about change and they're using AIDS queerness art and the moral value of America to frame that discussion where rently away from actually holding a discourse about AIDS it focuses on Art and Where Angels in America laser focuses on the subject of AIDS in a Darkly comedic way it's discourse on the condition of art is more implicit male love isn't ever ambivalent a comparison drawn between them derives from their joint central question what the crap is going on with the USA famously both of these plays use queer people to help explore this question and make use of one of the deadliest pandemics in human history as part of the setting however a study of rent finds that it has shockingly little to do with AIDS and actively avoids a discussion about it even when prompted AZT break and while it contains visible queer characters there's no real discussion about queerness itself one could even argue the queer characters are inconsequential to the plot with one exception we'll swing around to later of the WLW crew Joanne is only really there as an attache to Marine who again only seems like she has a lot to do because she's an interesting character there will always be women in rubber flirting with me and it's a shame because Joanne is one of the few if not only purely sympathetic characters for whom the audience is meant to empathize with on account of her circumstances and actions Maureen's involvement revolves around her more or less deliberately starting a rye yes granted this is a matter of homeless people resisting their eviction from a tent city I don't think they particularly needed the push from a trust fund baby's bad performance art who implores them to Moo Moo with me Collins doesn't really have a whole lot to do aside from complaining about having to live in New York City again it's not really a bad thing to have a man living with AIDS who is still dreaming about his future in fact that's probably a noble and nuanced thing to depict at the time and yes I realized that in Productions where Angel a street performer and Collins's love interest is depicted as trans that would not necessarily imply that Collins is gay or bisexual but it leads to the question does a queer person in a romance automatically facilitate queerness it's also worth noting that angel and Collins are the only functional couple in the entire Story Angel is the only one of the four queer characters who has an impact on the plot though it's a bit of a barrier gaze moment Angel's death is one of the final straws for the other seven friends to largely break ties and the memory of Angel is the Catalyst for their lukewarm reconnection in the end and granted I can see this as being a nice break from the drag of anti-gay propaganda and this would be super fantastic for the time if it wasn't for the actual plot of rent as per labo M to be built entirely around a straight romance really you can cut the gay characters out of it with the exception of Angel's death the play's primary conflict revolves around Benny and Mark Roger and Mimi angels in America by contrast features a predominantly queer cast the only character who isn't queer or alluded to be queer is Harper who's a queen in her own right my church we don't believe in homosexuals in my church we don't believe in Mormons what's your Steve okay I get it there is however an argument to be made about angels in America lacking queer identities outside of five gay men and a closeted lesbian and I feel like that's a valid criticism though if Kushner wanted to stick to writing about his own lived experiences as a gay man in the 1980s I can appreciate that angels in America Dives in to display the intricate nuances of Gay Culture at the time and covers a lot of Territory between four Gay characters Plus Roy Cohn without an overt discussion Kushner depicts the ways homophobic oppression and internalization have shaped them it's worth noting that none of these characters ever come out and tell audiences how homophobia has affected them but it's apparent that each of them have some neurotic Behavior as a result I'm sorry I didn't introduce you I always get so closety of these family things but you get Butts hey cousin Doris uh you don't remember me I'm Lou a racial's boy Lou not Lewis because if you say Lewis looking at the civil and S I don't have a civil let us blame you hiding this collection of little things can amount to just as much of the queer experience as the more Sinister visible elements of homophobia and in the case of Roy and Joe we see the destructive side of living a closeted life Joe seems to be out to destroy Harper and use her to live the Mormon dream while Roy acts as a grim prediction of what he will become however as mentioned the range of queer experiences seems to be broader in rent of course depending upon if Angel is a gay drag queen non-binary or trans but even with the illusion of lesbian drama rent is already a wider depiction of the queer experience it comes down to whether you would prefer a wider yet shallow range of topics or a more isolated topic but with much deeper exploration I have my preferences towards angels in America however for this alone I can't fault anyone for leaning towards the broader topics however when it comes to how these queer characters are depicted in their struggle with AIDS rent comes up short the grand irony of rent is that its executive point isn't about AIDS even though its reference as the AIDS play in various parodies there is a mention of AIDS in it but there's very little in here about the reality of HIV and AIDS in the musical Rent is a play based on the signature Opera by Giacomo Puccini La bohem the major adaptation here aside from setting and language is substituting consumption for AIDS consumption was a catch-all diagnosis which meant we have no idea what's wrong with this dying person but they're losing weight however it was most often used to describe symptoms of tuberculosis the problem with swapping out TB for AIDS is that there was a vast cultural separation in terms of how the public observed these conditions largely arising from how HIV is transmitted and what that said about the kind of people such an individual must have associated with to contract it rent doesn't particularly handle this like at all half of the HIV positive cast or straight and there's additionally very little depiction of public stigma against them it's the fact that aids was a massive cultural shift that quite frankly our 40 years later culture is still recovering from while HIV today is not a death sentence and provided the use of medication it can be nearly impossible to transmit this was something that shifted our entire culture in a very sudden jarring way there was a widespread political and social climate of simply not acknowledging AIDS at the same time of it being a kind of Boogeyman AIDS was this nightmarish real world serial killing babadook the less it was openly acknowledged as a problem the worse it got and it was not discussed and it got bad it wasn't until 1987 that President Reagan even openly acknowledged the existence of AIDS in America AIDS did not need to be discussed because AIDS did not exist in the puritanical moral majority of America AIDS was something that was contracted by homosexuals as long as it kept to those people it was seen as something that properly monogamous heterosexual people did not need to worry about and when straight people did contract it it was was individuals who were promiscuous or those who were using intravenous drugs the Moral Majority had a bible-based case to say that these people had AIDS as a kind of poetic consequence to their sinful lives at least that's a moral argument for those who don't seem to know anything about Jesus convincing men to leave their wives for him supporting sex workers and Healing The Sick without compensation or Consequences and even after the straight straight world of commercial medicine and academic ego pulled up their big boy pants and realized that hiv-positive gay guinea pigs were you know human beings that were dying horrible deaths AIDS went largely undiscussed on a social level we might look back and say all Madonna did was say that you should be nice to gay people in the 80s but this was still a period of time where there was such a fear around every gay man carrying AIDs that even at the height of worldwide Fame just saying that put her career at risk so if there is anything about rent's depiction of AIDS to be credited it is the willingness to discuss it so openly and feature it as a major component of the story however this representation is naturally going to be limited based on the plot beats of lava m labo m is about a bunch of Plucky Young Artists living in paris's low rent artistic District at a period of time when Bohemian aesthetic and lifestyle was in Vogue this is the same setting for instance as Moulin Rouge the major problem with Faithfully adapting a story about poverty and tuberculosis to become a story about poverty and AIDS is that the story is still about tuberculosis but by the name of AIDS which means in order to keep the same pacing of the original story it means the reality of AIDS needs to be secondary to what needs to happen to keep La bohem's plot beats a large component of lava m is the Romantic tension between Rodolfo and Mimi the characters Roger and Mimi are based on this is also what makes lavoam a tragedy because bohemimi dies for realsies whereas rent Mimi gets resurrected with the power of the world's most discount rhyming dictionary however because Roger and Mimi are both carrying a deadly infection that's something that can't really fall to the Wayside but we need to get this plot moving and that whole dying horrible death thing could get in the way so it needs to be addressed in a way that reminds the audience that aids is real without interfering with the actual plot of a drug addict trying to use AIDS support rhetoric to Badger her love interest into scoring drugs for her so how do we address the AIDS elephant in the room AZT break all right good enough I guess there are like seven different flavors of why this line hasn't aged well to the point of maybe like maybe it shouldn't have been written in the first place Roger and Mimi are engaging in a discussion about their relationship at which point they are interrupted by a pager reminding them that it's time to take their scheduled AZT the common name used for acetamine AZT was the first significant AIDS medication which effectively extended the lifespan of an AIDS patient by a few years if not months it was one of those treatments is almost worse than the disease kind of drugs you have the FDA giving you a drug so far you've got AZT why which I can't take because it's too far too toxic because over half the people that have HIV okay but the F when AIDS became every medical researcher's white whale as in to get the credit for being the person College a pharmaceutical company who discovered it there was a very sudden push to develop some kind of treatment for it and while gay men trans people sex workers addicts and even people who would receive blood transfusions were dying like gnats in a cold snap the FDA was dragging the drug through its regular scientific method of double-blind Trials it took several protests a very loud gay man named Larry Kramer and one Doctor Who became famous again during covid to force the FDA to push the drug into public availability and when it did get approved for public use it cost a small fortune due to availability was nearly impossible to get an extended history of AIDS is fascinating and depressing and I would implore viewers of this video to dive into it if you've got the right mindset because it's very deep and a perfect example of why we can't trust corporations maybe I'll make a video about it but what does all of that mean when it comes to rent AZT break all right first of all the degree of flippancy in that line undermines the impact of a life-extending treatment for millions of suffering people the framing of this delivery is even worse interrupting their romantic development AZT is meant as a signifier that aids is keeping them apart the knowledge of their own looming mortality is generating a rift however that's a problem because Mimi wants to fill that Rift with drugs and Hedonism and is trying to convince Roger to do the same thing Mimi hijack's rhetoric evade support groups like no day but today and uses it as an excuse to engage with her addictions whereas the intended meaning of this is more in line with Collins's objective if you want to move to Santa Fe to open a restaurant there's no point in putting it off so Mimi's objective is more or less to use AIDS as a common ground with Roger to bring him closer to her because misery loves company so with her intentions of leveraging AIDS as common ground AZT time really does function as this life-saving cure being an obstruction to what the audience wants romantic tension deep cut maybe but for a musical play which won the Pulitzer Prize for drama I think it's absolutely within reason to hold it up to higher standards of consistent literary language however this is a literary angle that most audiences won't engage with on a conscious level especially because AZT has been replaced with a much more accessible Truvada which is still expensive but thanks to government assistance programs within the price range of understanding how two jobless squatting drug addicts would be able to afford it at which point the question would become how to jobless squatting drug addicts in the late 80s could afford pagers which were very expensive at the time and then also for Gen Z what's a pager is Larson presenting a normative description of the world that we should make AIDS drugs more accessible so that we can allow these epic romances to flourish but why present a fantasy here while errantly trying to establish a gritty reality in other places the language of poverty here isn't consistent and quite frankly it's insulting to poor people and this is what I mean when I say that rent is limited in its ability to portray AIDS as per how much it needs to follow the plot of lava M which is already problematic because of the four HIV positive characters in rent only one has consumption in Lobo M so the closer you need to follow the plot of La Boheme the less you can actually present the reality of AIDS in real life it's also worth noting that in the four act Opera Mimi only contracts tuberculosis in the third act so the plot of labo M being adapted to replace consumption with AIDS is not going to be able to properly frame any discussion about disease or plague until the halfway point it's also worth noting that neither Collins nor angels French Bohemian counterparts have tuberculosis and that angel survives to the very end also worth noting that Collins Angel Maureen Joanne and Benny's respective characters basically have no role in the second half of labo M which explains why rent's second act has no real structure except for lesbian drama I see an additional angle of problematicness here because the second most significant deviation from The Source material is to change not only the ethnicity but the gender and or sexuality of Angel to give them a highly stigmatized sexually transmitted infection and then after sorting them into multiple vulnerable and underrepresented identities to kill them this is second of course to the most egregious deviation from La Boheme as mentioned the resurrection of Mimi which in spite of Angel's death completely shifts the tone of this musical from having any kind of moralizing theme don't worry about poor people they've got magical Resurrection music they're fine meanwhile Angel's over there like where's my song funny that the straight HIV sufferer gets the Magical song but the queer one who didn't even die in La Boheme has to stay dead even though Angel's romance with Collins was right there Collins doesn't get a resurrected love interest either funny how that works leads me to feel like the straight versus gay AIDS politics reads a little bit shallow Cullen's AIDS more or less has no effect on the plot until Angel's death and is brushed over whenever it comes up meanwhile AIDS swings over Roger and nimi like an Edgar Allan Poe Horror Story just always there foreshadowing tragedy like dramatic irony that being with the exception of Angel who doesn't seem to have AIDS until they do following a very strange musical number equating the drama of the friend group to an orgy and Angel emerges saying it's over and then peacefully wordlessly walks off the stage bathes in Golden Light adorned in wing-like Linens and on one hand this is offering visual Justice to queer victims of AIDS for whom even left-leaning politicians at the time decried them as more or less getting what was coming to them again the framing devices and the larger contexts are not flattering especially for a Pulitzer prize-winning play Angel was a spry and Lively character for whom sympathy wasn't really something projected to the audience where we see silently Angel's time in an AIDS hospice during a musical number that they're not even involved in this is our only window in the entire production that depicts the reality of AIDS for many people especially because Angel goes from this to having an orgy that's likely meant to be both allegorical and literal knowing that they have late stage AIDS it's not framing Angel as a sympathetic character an honorable depiction would be clearly displaying Angel as not being in a situation where they may spread a deadly infection especially because many in America specifically use the language of lechery and perversion to describe a group of people they felt knowingly or maliciously spread the disease putting angel in that category is not something I think is a flattering use of a queer character and if you want to go deep and literary and I think this says more about the kind of people who were voting for The pulitzers at the time Angel's death can even be read as Poetic Justice where Mimi's death is met with an onstage Bluster of concern and grief Angel goes straight from an orgy to their funeral at peace for the first time in the play their friends remark about their joy-filled memories of Angel we don't see Angel's death nor do we see how anyone but Collins was trying to do anything to help Mimi the straight one was framed as a tragedy because that's how it was framed in Lobo M this is a young girl with a loving mother who will break the hearts of everyone who she knows and she has the rest of her life to live Angel's death contrarily was framed tragically yes but as an inevitability as a natural consequence keeping in mind that Angel's love om counterpart did not die there's a significant case to say that the plot could have progressed as it did regardless if Angel died or not depending on the direction there is even language here to suggest that angel is better off dead that they're more at peace dead than they were alive death is a mercy for what they were experiencing not two scenes earlier especially sour is that angel in earlier Productions is depicted exclusively in drag while they're alive and then when they are dead we see them out of drag for the first time and this is how we are left to believe they are most at peace with their queerness removed I would never say Larson was communicating this on purpose however it's certainly a possible reading and when you don't have to dig very deep to read into gonna bring up the fact again that this one the Pulitzer Prize for drama which means that I feel we have the literary license to be able to extrapolate such readings like this the award is held in high esteem and indicates that the author was thinking deeply about all the signifiers and symbols of what they were writing but then again most of the audience for rent and likely most of the Pulitzer voters were straight people they cheered at the resurrection of the straight character and the death of the queer character was depicted to make them feel sad it's not a good feeling to think of myself as being here to elicit sympathy out of an audience that's my role in media it's just to live tragically rent has this very dark likely unintended Shadow looming over it where it reflects the real world but in this cynical meta textual way AIDS research did not really exist until straight people began dying from it the audience does not need a resurrection for Angel because their role not only as a character but as a human being is Expendable alive or dead is just as good but for Mimi there is a want to see her alive why should Mimi survive without angel because the reality was that a titanically larger number of queer people died compared to straight people because whenever queer people were in the news it was as an AIDS victim or a murder victim the audience had been desensitized to queer suffering for Generations even if you didn't feel that queer people deserved to die it was certainly expected when we did but it was Mimi For Whom the laws of nature were bent and was brought back to life in a stark standout moment of magic realism for which the enduring two hours of production sought to present a grim gritty and sorrowful reality of American destitution it was the pretty young CIS Girl Who Loved a pretty young straight boy who deserved Magic because in a cynical way it is framed that a normal girl did not deserve to die of AIDS in a way that was foreseeable for Angel however when a queer Creator makes media about the queer experience it seems we're the ones who get the magic instead [Music] in angels in America there are no punches pulled when it comes to AIDS multiple characters have close friends who have died of the disease and two characters the protagonist prior and the antagonist Roy Cohn are currently living with it one of the most striking aspects of prior's portrayal is his physical deterioration which serves as a brutal manifestation of the effects of AIDS The Story begins with Pryor at a funeral forcing him to face the Specter of death from the very first scene and Kushner uses vivid descriptions of Pryor's declining Health to highlight the brutal toll the disease takes on the body well it's not going well really two new lesions my leg hurts there's protein in my urine the doctor says but who knows what the that portends anyway it shouldn't be there the protein my butt is chapped from diarrhea and yesterday I shot blood prior's weakened immune system leaves him susceptible to opportunistic infections causing weight loss capacity sarcoma lesions and a great deterioration of his physical appearance he's in and out of the hospital each time more convinced that he'll never get to leave and he hates hospitals the first visit is preceded by a harrowing scene in which his whole body is in pain due to a mounting fever he cries out for Lewis who finds him just moments before Pryor has an accident that covers him in feces and blood and then the fever mounts and he faints his transformation from a vibrant young man to a skeletal figure serves as a potent visual representation of the brutality of AIDS however Pryor's experiences with illness are often depicted through Vivid and painful metaphors his description of the lesions as Angels touch is particularly poignant as it reveals the paradoxical nature of suffering the Divine and destructive intertwined and then the arrival of an Angel representing the collective fears and anxieties surrounding the disease exasperates prior psychological mess his battle with depression and fear of Abandonment highlight the immense psychological burden imposed by AIDS its prior's fear of Abandonment that forms the Crux of the Supernatural story within angels in America when he's abandoned by his lover Lewis after the diagnosis is when the visitations from the angel begins declaring prior a prophet in the end we discover that Not only was Prior abandoned but all of humanity was abandoned when God left heaven in the early days of the 20th century leading to the biggest Wars in human history and now to AIDS but despite the brutal portrayal of AIDS Kushner offers glimmers of Triumph and resilience through Pryor's character Pryor's refusal to be silenced or diminished by the disease embodies a spirit of resilience and Defiance his determination to fight for his voice agency and love despite overwhelming odds serves as a testament to the human spirit and acts as a stand-in for the countless people at the time fighting tooth and nail to be taken seriously by the government and doctors of the world through prior Kushner presents a vision of Hope in the face of adversity but not all characters have such a sunny ending Roy Cohn a prominent lawyer and political figure and Donald Trump's Mentor FYI acts as a cautionary symbol of opting for power in lieu of internalized homophobia and embodies a larger societal denial of the epidemic despite being diagnosed with AIDS Roy adamantly refuses to accept his condition instead forcing his doctor to treat him for liver cancer because regardless if he has AIDS or not if the public learns that he has AIDS only then will he become a homosexual and Roy Cohn in spite of having a pension for pretty blonde boys has nothing but contempt for homosexuals and makes it abundantly clear why he does not want people to think of him as one yay lesbian you think these are names that tell you who someone sleeps with but they don't tell you that like all labels they tell you one thing and one thing only when is an individual so identified fit in the food chain in the pecking order not ideology of sexual taste but something much simpler clout not Hawaii so who's me but who will pick up the phone when I call who owes me favors this is what a label refers to now to someone who does not understand this homosexual is what I am because I have sex with men but really this is wrong homosexuals are not men who sleep with other men homosexual is a man who in 15 years of trying cannot pass a piss hands anti-discrimination Bill through city council homosexuals are men who know nobody and who nobody knows who have zero club Roy's denial reflects the stigma associated with AIDS at the time as he fears the impact of the disease will have on his career and Public Image his desire to maintain power and control blinds him to the reality of his own mortality and the pain endured by others suffering from the disease Kushner portrays the physical and emotional struggles endured by Roy as the disease progresses most prominently in the body-wide cramps that overtake him later on in the play the feverish hallucinations of Ethel Rosenberg that haunt him and the fast physical deterioration from an aggressive lawyer Manning his multi-line phone to the barely conscious wraith wandering the halls of the AIDS Wing where he'll die and as his health declines Roy is confronted with his own real mortality when the New York Bar Association votes to dispar him Roy didn't fear death until his legacy was taken from him he's even faced with the fact that treatment for this disease is more wrapped up in politics and doctoral showboating than actually helping people watch out for the double blind they don't want you to sign something that says they didn't give you m M's instead of the real drug you'll die but they'll get the kind of Statistics they can publish in the New England Journal of Medicine and you can't sue them because you signed and if you don't sign no pills so if you have any strings left pull them because everyone is put through the double blind but this times against you you can't around with placebos but his Connections in Washington and New York who help him skip the line and get a fridge full of AZT all to himself when maybe 30 people in the whole country had access to the drug means nothing his big house in Manhattan his deal making and power brokering even his connections with Reagan himself couldn't save him from the same disease that was killing people he described as nobodies there is no romance in the portrayal of AIDS in angels in America it's pain it's blood its fevers hallucinations diarrhea spasms swollen glands opportunistic skin cancers not only did it kill people in droves but these were horrific deaths mortifying nurses and the loved ones of victims and Through The Gallows and hellish conditions of a body destroying itself we looked for some kind of meaning to it all why is it all happening we were searching for purpose and a reason to go on staring down a microscopic sadist which knew no borders boundaries nor Justice it targeted evil men like Roy Cohn and good men like prior Walter without discrimination in the end Roy is dead and his dragon's horde of AZT is swipe to be given to people who need it no miracle drug to be sure but something akin to a reason to Hope and because this is fiction where we can create a world where Poetic Justice exists prior finds reprieve whether from the blessings of an actual angel or the simple remission of a virus that still baffles researchers to this day fighting AIDS is about choosing life so if this is angels in America why is rent so much more well known and loved not only is rent more well known than angels in America but more well known than almost any queer inclusive production it's remembered as a groundbreaker for queerness depicted on stage even though Millennium approaches was hailed as a masterpiece years before rent appeared and La Casa fall and torsong Trilogy were on Broadway even earlier than that I mentioned earlier but rent has something that neither angels in America had big in the ingredients torch song Trilogy La Casa fall nor even Avenue Q have rent is palatable to the exact kind of people it needs to be Where Angels in America will go as far to outline that Lewis is a bit of a smell Queen the queer components about rent seem edgeless even though we're dealing with two explicitly promiscuous characters they seem particularly inoffensive now perhaps this is to Larson's credit normalizing promiscuity however Maureen is more or less a farcical character she's like this obliviously unbothered manic pixie dream girl for whom neither consequences nor sociological realities apply however in the case of Mimi and implicitly Angel at least before their romance with Collins there's this kind of poetic justice about it that their lecherous lifestyle is being cosmically punished with poverty and poor health meanwhile Lewis and angels in America remarks his regretful disbelief in Pryor's AIDS diagnosis confessing that he screwed around a lot more than prior did this was a reality of AIDS somehow people could screw their way from one orgy to the next all through the 70s and 80s and somehow never contract it Elton John being one case example who has openly expressed shock that somehow he dodged that bullet rent doesn't try and build a fantasy about this but it also doesn't dive into the reality of it either which is a statement that could describe why the play was and is so popular this is roughly what I mean when I describe it as palatable reality is difficult to portray in media and given the philosophical parameters a fiction may be impossible to depict however it seems to be the case and this is mostly observational backed up by some scattered tidbits of critical analysis I've picked up a knob of the years that people disseminate fiction as if it were a reality this is why people can be such sticklers about representation bad representation sets a precedent for how certain people are expected to act in real life and this works both ways too much positive depiction can set a bar for Behavior too high for people to realistically meet leading to unmet expectations of good behavior the reality of a given identity usually contains a narrative history of a press and while a given identity is not defined by that oppression their interactions with the outside world is going to be colored by this history two gay people holding hands in a small town in the evening will passively let go of each other and put distance between each other when they hear a camera coming around the corner this reaction is unspoken and reflexive neither individual will hold it against the other and it's just accepted hand-holding passively resumes when the car is gone this also varies depending upon region there are nuances depicting these identities in a way which calls to attention this narrative history it's automatically going to you know challenge the existing structures of privilege in society and as we know from experience certain people are privileged do not like to be challenged people don't want to feel like they and their attitudes are responsible for a condition of suffering and they certainly don't want to feel like in order to change the circumstances of suffering that they ought to change their own attitudes people like to feel like they're doing enough and there's a certain kind of Shame associated with feeling like they're part of the problem which for those of us who have spent some time on www.twitter.com an all too common reaction to that shame is denial and deflection so if a play confronts the audience with a coded message about shifting moral values and sentiments that comes on too strongly General audiences are less likely to recommend that play to their friends even if said play is lauded by theater nerds to be palatable is to portray these identities without confronting the elements of privilege derived from oppression and this isn't always a bad thing six and Hamilton both contain an incredibly diverse cast through the audience being implored to empathize with these characters there's an implicit call to action for the audience to address these identities in real life as social equals rather than someone getting up on a soapbox to talk about oppression at the audience and in the case of Collins as an HIV positive man who is still thinking about manifesting his best life in the future this is very much the case in rent Collins also has AIDS while escaping the aforementioned trap of poetic justice where there are consequences to his condition in fact I can see Collins as a character fitting into the cast of Angels in America but rent's palatableness isn't exclusively linked to gender and sexuality which even considering my musings about angel I don't have too much of a problem with in a practical sense of observing media I also feel that Mimi's character was well handled her Arc focused upon her understanding of no day but today that coincides with her learning to Value her own life rather than throwing it away similar to Prior I can see her learning to strive for her own life rather than just giving in to pessimism are the diverse identities in rent palatable well yes the play itself doesn't really explore how the cultural norm inherently pushes these identities to the fringes of society where isolated from social supports they are more vulnerable to high-risk activities where one is more likely to be exposed to HIV the script takes these elements for granted was it obliged to explore that would have been nice if it did because in rent which deals with social themes there really isn't any call to action whatsoever okay it sucks to be poor it sucks to have AIDS what do we do about it Pryor Belize Hannah Lewis and Harper have this very philosophical esoteric call to action which more or less implores the audience to accept that change is inevitable you can die mad about it or accept it and to be fair Lobo M doesn't really have much of an answer about it either however as a tragedy it can more freely moralize the actions of the characters as a cautionary tale look at these characters if you want to avoid tragedy then don't do what they did changing that ending for rent there's no real push everything works out kind of and things are fine the public is presented with no reality about what they can do or even what they need to do things are fine it also doesn't help that rents depiction of poverty and art in general also follow this pattern art is being commercialized okay what do we do about it rent solution is let artists make their art but what if like Maureen's performance art it just sucks what if like Mark's documentary it offers nothing to society even Marine Benny is the only one who calls her out for only making her performance to boost her own ego and quite frankly there isn't a whole lot of textual evidence to refute that in fact the only character who expresses any desire to build community is Benny who is demonized by the entire cast because he wants his tenants to pay a reasonable amount of rent none of the other characters have any objectives to make art for any other reason than an intrinsic need to make something to benefit the self but then again Benny is an entirely benign villain which quite frankly is insulting that the play depicts him as a tyrannical landlord next to what a lot of us have had to endure as tenants but then again a massive portion of the audience for rent are either homeowners or the children of homeowners who are the primary audience of modern Broadway itself those tickets are expensive to them shutting off the power is the Apex of tyranny and rent casually ignores the fact that legally Benny could have done a lot worse poverty itself is palatable it's an inconvenience but it's not the worst thing in the world these Scrappy kids are sticking it out aren't they the reality of poverty and the situation of living in New York's East Village you know is Alphabet City is also casually ignored it was in the early 90s Islam you shouldn't want to live there it was an urban center for which survival was an accomplishment the actual reality of confronting homelessness in New York City is more accurately expressed in angels in America when you stop that disgusting slurping he's disgusting slurping feeding animal feeding yourself what would it matter to you or to anyone if you just stopped feeding and died it is uncomfortable it is mental illness it is desperation it is half cohesive confrontation it's the inability to watch but the impossibility to look away it is an impossible Welling of empathy that can only be reconciled by completely disconnecting emotional impulse because the force of social change needed to fix that at an Institutional level is astronomical it's not mooing at cops until they go away we have seen what the police are capable of to think that mooing at them is going to fix the problem never mind that the framing device of rent narrated by Mark the most privileged of the characters focuses the story on Roger and Mimi's relationship and not the cluster of homeless people fighting for their ability to exist in a place homeless confrontation is much more sanitized in rent reaching a climactic Zenith when Mark records a homeless woman being accosted by the police she accuses Mark of inaction of using her suffering to benefit him and his craft which is abundantly true and a debate that is at the heart of documentary and ethics and while Mark feels sad about this at first his queer friends of color swoop in to more or less absolve him of all wrongdoing because hey she just doesn't get your art the world is going to benefit from it you got this bro only it won't because he doesn't seem to have any Ambitions of showing his art to anybody else but his group of friends and still expects to be financially supported for it however Mark seems to be married to Pariah Hood cotton this double speak of wanting to have certain privileges audiences and beliefs while at the same time rejecting financial support from his parents and refusing to do anything to support the Bohemian Community he is so attached to it's made clear that he has a very caring mother who routinely calls him it's suggested that she is also willing to help financially support him however not only does he ignore her calls he seems to treat her with a degree of annoyance in fact it's indicated that many of the cast come from loving families who seem willing to take them off the streets and give them good homes except for Angel and Collins because queer however that would come at the cost of their entire artistic identity being built around roughing it out in the slums and that's a bridge too far can't make good art and good homes at which point rent establishes a very toxic depiction of poverty itself which against the textual Mandate of this play portrays poor people as a people who refuse jobs and turn down work and B people who ultimately choose to be poor meanwhile Mark particularly admittedly complains about the death of bohemia because for all Mark likes taking the center stage and getting all the attention as a social advocate he refuses to pay his tab at a local restaurant you know if you want to keep Bohemia alive you got to support these local businesses because they actually do pay rent and if they can't pay rent they have to sell their business which leads to gentrification but again as per the palatability of poverty this is never really discussed question or mentioned because they're far too invested in being Pariah as to actually change anything about their actions it's okay Mark you don't have to change just keep doing what you're doing keep complaining about the right things but you're under no obligation to do or change anything don't worry you're one of the good ones you're a straight white man and this is the key component of moralizing the quality of palatability in media if this media is presenting a problem upon whom is the onus to change the overarching institutions the public at Large in rent like Angel and Collins absolvement of marks in action against police brutality there is no suggestion for those a privileged to change no lesson there's no indication of how to change or even to change at all just sit watch these poor people cry when something sad happens but ultimately don't worry they've got magical Resurrection music they're fine the onus is on the underclasses to sort out their business and get it together no change is required of the wealthy except maybe to stop wearing Oakleys put aside artistic intent Integrity quality of representation scope of representation politics or our own conceptions of the literary conventions at play there is a simple unifying factor between angels in America and rent they stand as Symphonies of Hope amidst the trials and tribulations faced by people held down by disease addiction and poverty in both plays we witnessed the Relentless pursuit of human Connections in the face of overwhelming odds the characters battle societal constraints discrimination illness and personal demons yet they refuse to be silenced or broken in angels in America the AIDS epidemic looms large threatening the lives of its characters and casting a shadow of Despair however it is through the unlikely bonds between prior and Hannah that we witness the transformative Power of Love and acceptance prior's resilience and determination to live despite his illness become a rallying Cry For Hope conversely rent highlights the intersection of Art and activism as a means to confront societal injustices and Inspire change the characters in both plays become catalysts symbols signifiers and advocates for social progress challenging prevailing norms and fighting against the forces of Oppression whether that oppression comes from capitalistic greed or from the very Heavenly forces that facilitate our existence and angels in America the Angelic presence represents a Divine call to action the world only spins forward there is no going back there is no again there's only next time we cannot go back to the days of the past when God sat in heaven and queer people hidden closets that's not how the Divine physics of the world works a gloomy and painful mood is set upon the stage in the first section of Angels in America by kushner's attention to the political and historical breakdown of the planet due to reactionary policies and invocations of environmental and nuclear calamities the characters experience a similar predicament as the story reaches its Midway conclusion things between Lewis and prior start to deteriorate Joe's persistent denial of his homosexuality nearly destroys Harper's mind and causes the ultimate crack in their marriage locked in their isolation their false Notions that it is necessary or even possible to continue as they have been they are at a standstill unable to go forward with their lives Harper says I can't move my emotions serve as a rudder Pryor and Roy's aids diagnoses mean that they must like Jacob and the angel wrestle an impossible and unfair fight but this is a battle where faith in a better world is power and Roy is found wanting alternatively perestroika the second part of the play which is named for the Russian word meaning restructuring is about a glimmer of optimism and a challenging path out of the crisis once again politics and historical ideas shape the protagonists and antagonists they are gradually figuring out how to rearrange their lives this depiction of transformation which is portrayed as profoundly unsettling is not a pretty one although development is portrayed negatively it is unavoidable Pryor who was picked by the Heavens to spread calm conservatism comes to the realization of unavoidable progress as he resolves to resist giving in to hopelessness we can't just stop we're not rocks progress migration motion is modernity it's animate it's what living things do we desire even if all we desire is stillness it's still desire for even if we go faster than we should we can't wait even he knows that change is inevitable in order to keep up with the times he contrasts his stance with that of the Angels who are passively waiting for God's return and the restoration of their Realm instead he rejects the message of a superior being and places emphasis on the need for transformation and development at the individual level in the epilogue of the play he says this disease will be the end of many of us but not nearly all and the dead will be commemorated and will struggle on with the living and we are not going away we won't die secret deaths anymore the world only spins forward so when you see the people demanding we go back that we regress who want to spin the world back to a time when they were comfortable know that they will simply be left behind progress is inevitable sometimes it's messy and painful but it will come because the world only spins forward and you will be here to see it promise yourself that you will be here to see it you are amazing people each and every one of you and every day you are blessed with more life the time has come the great work begins foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music]
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