Dan Olson: RENT and the Failure of Visual Storytelling (transcript)
Another great video essay by Dan Olson (Folding Ideas). I often feel like I can almost learn more from bad movies, than from good ones because the baffling mistakes in bad movies give great insight in why things work a certain way. What I really like about this video essay is that Dan Olson explains how and why the visual telling of a story is often more important than the thought behind it, or as he says it: "Inference is dramatically inferior to being shown."
(This video is about the 2005 film RENT, a film I did not see, but the video essay uses clips to illustrate the points being made. I found some stills from the scene online that I added to the transcript below.)
In the scene that we’re concerned about Mimi, a nineteen year old stripper and heroin-addict, played here by Rosario Dawson, has just gotten of work and is looking to party. So she heads upstairs to the apartment of Roger, a mid-twenties unemployed musician and HIV-positive recovering heroin-addict. Oh also, Roger is still recovering from the death of his girlfriend who killed herself when she found out she was HIV-positive. So he’s got a bit of damage that he’s working through.
Mimi comes in, ready to bone and pulls out her heroin. Roger doesn’t take this well, tells her to get out, they back and forth he kicks her out. (…) In the song that they’re singing, Mimi is saying that she is super free and awesome because she lives every day like it is her last. (…)
She is arguing the hedonist perspective: embracing indulgent self-destruction is what Roger needs to get out of his existential crisis. Roger’s side of the argument is more tempered and, a little bit more mature. His point -and the title of the song, Another Day- comes from Roger’s admonition that she should prove she actually cares about his personal demons by coming back another day and not bringing heroin this time.
He’s actually really firm with that one: leave the heroin behind. I keep mentioning the heroin, because I don’t want you to forget it. It’s a pretty pivotal element to the conversation and to Roger’s whole motivation since, you know, he can pretty much draw a direct line between his former heroin use and his dead girlfriend. And really almost everything that’s awful about his life. Also I don’t want you to forget it because the movie immediately forgets that these characters are talking about heroin.
The set-up for the song’s finale is that Roger has kicked Mimi out: she’s gone down to the street. so immediately we are setting up symbolic levels. Roger is in a position of power, a position of perspective. Literally the higher ground, while Mimi is literally standing in the gutter. So far we’re fine, it is a little blunt, but whatever.
But then here’s where it goes weird. Everything else about the blocking, the lighting, the framing, all of it, biases in favor of Mimi. Roger is in shadows and darkness, and the bars of the fence are like a cage. It’s very student’s guide to symbolism. Meanwhile Mimi is bathed in angelic light. And the rest of Roger’s friends walk in, down at street-level and join Mimi in imploring Roger to his perspective and just live like he’s about to die. All four of them repeating the line no day but today, over and over.
Oh sure, Roger has a higher ground but look how sad and lonely and conflicted he is up there. Come on, Roger. Climb on down here to the gutter, join your friends who are totally right and correct and the ones you audience should be cheering for. Empathize with Mimi, Roger is clearly the unreasonable one in this conversation. Oh, poor Mimi, did mean old Roger not want to do heroin with you? Shame on him for not coping with his trauma on a timetable that was convenient for you!
What is the message here supposed to be? Okay, so I get that there is this undercurrent of trying to get Roger to open up a little bit, find some human contact. But the framing of that is still really important. Mimi isn’t trying to coax Roger into going for a walk in the rain, she wants him to shoot heroin and have sex with her. Intent isn’t the only thing that matters, it is kind of important how you ask. And the thing is that the visual dimension is so powerful that it will basically overwhelm any other consideration.
The show doesn’t just present a philosophical argument between living for the day and living for tomorrow and then leave it to the audience to sort out if they agree with Mimi or Roger. The show makes a judgement. The show picks a side and that side is, pretty unambiguously, Mimi’s side.
Roger is given the higher ground, but he is also, as mentioned already, caged by the fence and framed in relative darkness (…) the chosen angle is also rather severe. This, combined with the facial acting, places Roger less in a position of power and more in a position of isolation.
Mimi, however, is out in the open. The camera is down at personal level. So while Roger’s angle reflects Mimi’s point of view, that she would be looking up at him, Mimi’s angle doesn’t reflect Roger’s. This isn’t a straightforward reverse, where we’re seeing each character through the other’s eyes. Instead the camera positions us as the audience, down on the street with Mimi. The camera is our surrogate in the world of the film and we are placed with Mimi.
To finalize this at the end of the song, at the end of the argument, we end the scene with Angel comforting Mimi. That is the consequence that we’re shown. We get to see the emotional fallout of this argument form Mimi’s perspective. That’s she’s hurt, that’s she feels rejected and that Angel, another sympathetic character, comforts her. We are shown this to the exclusion of seeing the impact on Roger.
Now we can probably infer that Roger went back inside and sulked a bit, that this whole thing put a wet towel on his night. But inference is dramatically inferior to being shown. Especially when it comes to building resonance in the audience. Building empathy and getting the audience in the emotional state of a character.
Stories, movies in particular, are ultimately quite morally simplistic. Unless they go out of their way to build nuance and ambiguity into every aspect of their storytelling, they almost always come out in terms of right and wrong. Because the camera introduces so much inherent bias that it’s overwhelming.
And that’s what happens here: the film is telling us that Mimi right and Roger is wrong. But, again, Mimi isn’t just taking about coaxing roger out of his shell, this isn’t just about his unwillingness to open up to her emotionally and allow himself to feel vulnerable. It is about those things, that is a part of the message here, but it is more specifically about doing heroin and having sex with her.
