This Entire Song Could Have Been Avoided With Electricity
Mimi is sexy and wet and Roger wears a leather jacket. This is the full extent of the character development available to us.
Rent is about unemployed people who are shocked to learn landlords exist. They believe their gigantic NYC loft should be free (including heat) so they can play guitar and make intrusive documentaries about homeless people without asking them. There’s also a dog murder, but we’ll get to that.
They also believe that burning their eviction notices will stop them from having to pay rent. Historically this did work for draft cards, so they are clearly operating from a proven legal framework.
Arguably the main plot—besides aggressively not participating in capitalism—is that Roger, AKA Mopey Jon Bon Jovi (MJBJ), should be emotionally prepared for anyone he meets to do heroin at any time, including directly in front of him, as a form of personal growth.
This brings us to the song I will be reviewing: “Light My Candle,” starring Roger and Mimi, AKA I’ll Do Heroin If I Want To Thanks Very Much (DHIIWTTVM).
The song begins with Roger noticing Mimi is shivering. She explains her heat was turned off, which could be related to her not paying for it, but is also definitely the heroin.
They then attempt to heat an entire industrial Brooklyn loft with a single candle. Unfortunately, they keep blowing it out, suggesting that basic candle management has not yet reached this artistic community.
Mimi is sexy and wet and Roger wears a leather jacket. This is the full extent of the character development available to us.
They light the candle. It goes out. They light it again. It goes out. This happens approximately 30 times. Practice makes perfect.
There’s a charming moment where Mimi points out that Roger thinks she looks exactly like his dead girlfriend, and Mimi receives this information as if it’s flirtation. Can I please have a light for my candle? Also I resemble the woman whose death permanently destroyed your psyche. Why can’t you just do heroin about it and move on: The Musical.
We also learn that Mimi is a stripper at the Cat Scratch Club (that’s where she works, she dances). This brings us to the most confusing line in the entire song: Roger says he didn’t recognize her “without the handcuffs.”
I do not look down on stripping. I think it’s a perfectly valid profession. I do, however, believe the income could theoretically be applied toward rent.
But more importantly: where were these handcuffs positioned so that Roger could not recognize a presumably naked woman as the exact same near naked woman currently shivering in his apartment? Were they on her face? Were they obstructing her bone structure? Were they personality-altering handcuffs?
If handcuffs make someone unrecognizable, then the entire justice system is built on a lie. Every mugshot is now legally ambiguous. Your honor, that was me in handcuffs. This is me without handcuffs. I trust you can see these two identities are completely different.
Next, Roger—who has fully transitioned into I’m A Drag Who Hates Fun—is like maybe don’t do heroin anymore, it turns out it’s bad for you.
He has a line where he tells Mimi he used to have all her symptoms because he was a junkie, which is objectively helpful medical information delivered in the least persuasive way possible.
Mimi loses her heroin, which creates an opportunity for Roger to observe, from above, the exact trajectory of his remaining years.
They’ve already used all their matches due to their ongoing failure to understand candle mechanics, but she eventually finds it. This seems to resolve things emotionally for her.
They then introduce themselves by name, which feels late.
Roger should not be around this person. She is a bad influence. Unfortunately, all of Roger’s friends will soon explain that he is actually the villain for not immediately embracing heroin, emotional devastation, and whatever is happening with this candle.
In conclusion, Light My Candle is a beautiful story about two strangers who refuse to pay their rent or utilities and lack the technical skills to operate a candle. Over the course of the song, they learn nothing, solve nothing, and run out of matches. The candle never successfully lights the loft, but it does light the path toward them learning each other’s names, which is the first step toward the incoming emotional damage that is this musical.