Poor Lonely Mark Cohen

Last night my friends had a dinner party as a sort of end-of-summer-start-of-school celebration, and I managed to do a lot of avoiding of issues that I should have mentioned. (My friend Aicha* is slowly finding about my asexuality through osmosis or something, as she read a mention of this blog on my personal blog, and then watched me check the ace blogs I follow. I probably should send her a link or explain.) The event of the evening, however, was watching the movie Rent. What struck me about this was a comment someone made during the "La Vie Boheme" scene, saying that she felt bad for Mark, who was all by himself.

I found this interesting mainly because every time I have watched Rent with other people, someone invariably mentions "poor Mark" who doesn't end up paired with anyone. It's really bizarre how it gets mentioned literally every time. Back when I was 13 years old, the first time I saw Rent, a friend said it, and I remember wondering, "Why? Why is it so sad that he isn't paired up?" but I said nothing. This time, I had the courage to question it out loud.

One point brought up was that the film seems to be highlighting Mark's solitude in the slow-motion camera pan near the end of the scene, where he's dancing by himself as his friends are embracing their loved ones. I agree that it's pretty obvious, but I interpret it as showing that Mark is completely happy by himself. It's not as if he's completely alone; at the end he turns and hugs Roger, and there's no hints of "Oh, must wait for Roger to finish hugging his girlfriend." There's no implication of Mark feeling alone.

That was the other main point, that it was hinted that Mark felt lonely or sad about being alone, since Maureen dumped him. I don't see this at all in the movie. Near the beginning, Mark is still getting over being dumped, in some respects, but after "The Tango Maureen" and her protest, all seems to be more or less okay with him. There are no hints in the later portions that Mark is jealous of Joanne, or that he feels lonely.

I'm not trying to argue that Mark is asexual, and I don't think that's what the movie is portraying. I do think that the movie is showing, subtly, that you don't need a lover to have a fulfilled life. I love Rent because of how it shows such a wide spectrum of life in an unconditionally uncritical way, and it had a huge influence on me for that. Because there are fairytale relationships in Rent, and there are gritty realistic relationships, but there's also someone in there that says that you can have a happy ending without the swooning romance.

Every time I watch Rent, I learn something new from it. There are so many threads in it to follow, it's hard to pay attention to everyone's story at once. But I'd love for more attention to be paid to Mark's story in the same uncritical way that the film looks at all the other characters. Poor lonely Mark Cohen isn't so poor and lonely as you might think.

*Aicha is not her real name. Also, I'm not trying to rag on my friends, as I actually had a good discussion with some of them about this later. I just wanted to explore an interesting phenomenon that I had noticed. Also, thanks to Lissa for making my pretty new layout!