Benny got a raw deal

Once upon a time we bloggers had the concept of the Blogosphere: a global network of bloggers linking to other bloggers, commenting on each other's posts and responding to those comments, forming friendships and the occasional deep enmity - a social network, if you will, long before Facebook rose to prominence and came to embody the concept of "social network."

Here's a post from December 2015, which I found through a comment by the blogger to a clever tweet about RENT being unrealistic because it presented the possibility that two people could fall in love with a performance artist. This post focuses on the character of Benny, the successful capitalist friend and sometime foe of the main characters, who owns the building in which they are squatting and who had a goal of turning the building into an art studio with condos, providing gainful employment for them and an income stream for himself. Benny is treated as a villain, especially in the movie version, which excises all the human touches (such as paying for one character's funeral) that gave depth and complexity to his character.

I believe I saw RENT performed in Scranton back in 2010, and I immediately took a liking to Benny, while finding myself looking askance at the other characters who... well, anyway, just read the linked blog post by Courtney Enlow.

PAJBA: In defense of Benny from 'Rent'