Loving Rent is apparently no longer theatre-kid-couture. Where learning every word of “La Vie Boheme” was once a blossoming theatre fan’s rite of passage, a counter-culture of despising the show has sprung up in recent years, possibly in part as a response to Lindsay Ellis’s popular video essay from 2016.

There are a number of real criticisms one can raise about the show. The story is heavily dependent on the sufferings of LGBT people and people of color, despite being written by a straight, cisgender, white man. (Not to mention that despite the colorful cast of characters, the plot centers primarily on Mark and Roger, the only two straight white men in the main cast.) Many point to the privileges the main characters enjoy in spite of all their moaning and wailing about being apparently unable to pay their rent.

I understand these positions, I think they make really good points. Ironically, these aren’t the arguments I see most often. More than anything else, what I hear is that Rent is outdated and out of touch with modern audiences.

I think this is a dishonest argument.

To be clear, Rent came out in 1994, and is certainly a product of its time The arguments I mentioned above are good examples of ways the script definitely shows its age. It hasn’t aged perfectly my any means.

But judging Rent too harshly for this doesn’t make much sense. Rent is very specifically about living as poor, queer artists and visionaries, in the village, in the 90s. The show is a response to the attitudes and issues of that time, and it was a radical response when it debuted. Appraising it with a modern eye with no regard for the age it represents not only dismisses the fact that it was an important, revolutionary part of theatre history– it also ignores the fact that it was revolutionary for its era. Essentially, you’d be ignoring the entire purpose of the show.

Jonathan Larson had a storied penchant for writing about his own life. That’s what Tick, Tick BOOM is about, and it’s also what Rent is about. Larson lived in a tiny apartment without a buzzer, and he actually had to toss a key down to his friends from the fire escape, as explained in the RENT coffee table tome.  According to family and friends, Larson loved life, and especially loved living the way he and his friends did. He loved being a struggling artist in a crummy, rundown apartment, and loved devoting as much time as humanly possible to his art.

Many of Larson’s works are explicitly about his favored way of living, and Rent is no exception. Rent is like a loveletter to Larson’s lifestyle– a romanticized autobiography in a sense.

Larson dreamed of creating “a Hair for the 90s.” Larson succeeded, whether in fostering a renewed interest in the theatre among new audiences, creating a show with a lasting legacy, or reflecting attitudes of the era in a contemporary musical like nothing else. On all accounts, he succeeded. And it may be a testament to that success that, like Rent, Hair is now also criticized a show that is too outdated to resonate with modern audiences.

To remove the context of the 90s from Rent removes what Rent is at its heart. It simply cannot be done, and I don’t believe Larson intended for it to be done. Larson intended to capture a very specific era and attitude of history. Condemning it as outdated because it fails to align with modern attitudes would be akin to leaving Oklahoma! out of the theatrical canon simply because it’s old-fashioned.

Besides, even if Rent shows its age, it’s outrageous to imply that nothing of Rent could possibly apply to modern audiences. Despite being distinctively about the 90s, its messages are universal and enduring, much like those of Hair. Rent‘s core theme is that love is the most important thing in a person’s life (“Seasons of Love”), and that you have to live while you can, as though any day could be your last (“Another Day,” “Finale B”). Rent is also about the urge to pursue work that is fulfilling rather than money-making, and the grind of trying to live for more than money. This is a very timely message. It’s also about opposing the bourgeoise, and issues such as gentrification and mistreatment of the poor and homeless… and it’s also about a pandemic, and how opposing government mishandling of a pandemic can be a radical notion. Writing this article in June 2020, smack in the middle of the COVID crisis in the US, Rent feels quite possibly more up-to-date than ever before.

Though Rent‘s story is purposefully unique to the 90s, its messages transcend that era. This shouldn’t be that surprising. Besides the fact that this is generally how popular media works, many of the issues of 90s America are still painfully relevant, as COVID shutdown complications are proving. Gentrification, homelessness, substance dependency, disease, sexuality, and gender identity are all topics still hot discussions, despite Rent acting as something of a canary in the coal mine on many of them almost thirty years prior. Maybe we should all revisit Rent again– if we can’t figure out how it relates to modern society, we must not understand what’s actually happening in modern society.

Rent is not outdated. If anything, to call it outdated only calls attention to what woeful progress we have made on the issues Rent spotlighted thirty years ago. Though it perhaps only aspired to portray the attitudes and events of its own era, it somehow continues to be relevant– and that tells us that its time is hardly over.