You’ve been singing these words for years but have no idea who Antonioni is.
"La Vie Boheme" from the musical Rent is a tongue-twister of cultural buzzwords, name-dropping, and had-to-be-there references to New York's East Village neighborhood. For anyone who hasn't heard it, here's a lyric video:
Countless theater nerds have memorized the words, but do you know what all of them mean?
Columbia Pictures / Via rebloggy.com
"You make fun - yet I'm the one
Attempting to do some good
Or do you really want a neighborhood
Where people piss on your
Stoop every night?
Bohemia, Bohemia's
A fallacy in your head
This is Calcutta,
Bohemia is dead"
•The term "Bohemia" from the artistic and intellectual subculture originating in the 19th century, when impoverished French artists moved to the low-rent neighborhoods traditionally occupied by the Romani people. At the time, the French thought that the Romani came from Bohemia, a region of Eastern Europe (this turned out to not be true).
•Calcutta is an anglicization of "Kolkata," the capital of West Bengal in India. At the time of Rent's publication, Kolkata had experienced a boom in population caused by war refugees as well as a stagnation in socio-political development, leading to the global perception that the city was a blighted slum.
•Basically, Benny is saying that his friends think they live in an idealized form of artistic penury, when in reality their poverty contributes to slum conditions in their neighborhood.
Columbia Pictures / Via hagriculture.tumblr.com
