#and also the way i was like hm ok it's valjean so it has to be self-sacrificial in some way...that's always part of it...

[i-dreamed-i-had-a-son]

Another Les Mis musical connection that's making me feral: Jean Valjean uses the same melody with which he sings to Cosette, "Believe me, / Were it within my power, / I'd fill each passing hour-- / How quiet it must be, I can see, / With only me for company"...

When he sings "You are free, / And there are no conditions. / No bargains or petitions! / There's nothing that I blame you for. / You've done your duty--nothing more" to Javert.

In my journey to map out the various leitmotifs in the show, this one really flung me for a loop because what does it meannnn?? This is the only time we hear the melody in the show, and it's applied in two very different circumstances, where the relationship Valjean has to the characters involved could not be more opposite. What connects them?? But I think I have it.

It's a reluctant release. Not of the people, but of his own desires regarding them. Let me explain.

Valjean very distinctly wants things from both Cosette and Javert, which he sings about on the rising part of the melody. With Cosette, he wants to be the center of her life: "Were it within my power, I'd fill each passing hour;" on the other hand, he desperately wants Javert to leave him alone. When he has Javert at his mercy, he absolutely does want to trade lives, which is why he sings it on the rising part: "And there are no conditions, no bargains or petitions." He does want these things--but he's letting them go.

And that's where the falling part of the melody comes in. In both situations, Valjean knows he can't have what he wants. So he gives up that desire. He accepts that Cosette wants someone else, and doesn't blame her for it ("How quiet it must be, I can see, with only me for company,"), the same way he accepts the situation between him and Javert ("There's nothing that I blame you for. You've done your duty, nothing more."). That's why immediately afterwards, he tells Javert his address, and why shortly after that, he prays that Marius be brought home to Cosette.

Cosette is his biggest security, and Javert is the biggest threat to his security. But in this little melody, he sets them free (Cosette metaphorically, and Javert literally). He acknowledges what he wants, and accepts that he can't have it, even though it hurts.

And if that ain't the most Jean Valjean thing, I don't know what is.

[pilferingapples]

Brick Club, 1.4 entire (retro)

Cosette's story often has such a fairy-tale feel, and it starts with this  section (what should I be calling these chunks of text? the X.X sections as a whole, not the X.X.X ones? Volumes?) .

And yet I'm not at all sure why I get that feeling quite so strongly, in terms of narrative technique.  The initial namelessness of the cast, with Two Mothers echoing the way people in fairy tales are Mothers and Millers and Eldest Daughters?  But if Fantine is presented as if she was s stranger to us again, it's not different than what happens with JVJ, and his story never feels this way.  The  Three Sisters made by Cosette, Eponine , and Azelma maybe? That's a very fairy-tale motif indeed.   Something about the way the inn itself is described..?

Augh, I absolutely cannot put my finger on it.   Still,  something about this passage feels as ominous and certain and doomed  as if the inn was a gingerbread cottage and Fantine was vowing to keep silent for seven years while making shirts out of nettles.

Notes on Various Things under the cut:

-  love that the inn sign is really badly made. I've seen several attempts at it in various adaptations and they're always a disaster and it's excellent, I want a collection.

-  the cart is covered with "the same ugly yellow mud sometimes used to decorate cathedrals".  The cart that is A Metaphor for outdated social institutions.  I see you, Hugo. 

- I will FIGHT Hugo about peasant/working class women's clothing in this era, this outfit would be super charming!  But it's definitely more about utility and practical wear than Fantine's old outfits.   There are roughly a billion dissertations to be written about the way that things working class people do and use are , through history, treated as inherently ugly/undesirable, regardless of how much art and beauty might actually have gone into it; I feel like the classism kinda speaks for itself on that.  And then,since Hugo's already drawn a huge Romantic Aesthetic defining line between the Useful and the Beautiful�� in this book, I think  I can fairly just quote Gautier's explanation of the issue -- "Nothing is really beautiful but that which cannot be made use of; everything that is useful is ugly, for it is the expression of some need, and the needs of man are vile and disgusting, like his poor, weak nature" -- and leave this for now.  I suspect it will come up again. 

- Fantine has been "marked by irony" --that is, scarred by her time with Tholomyes.  I do like the way  this new line on her face sounds almost like a dueling scar. Fantine's a fighter in her own way!

- ...Tholomyes is gonna make it to at least 1828, meaning he'll outlive everyone we love in this story except Cosette and Marius.    And he'll do it while being  "always a man of pleasure"--I feel like there's an implicit suggestion that Cosette has a lot of half-siblings in the world, all of them with a story as important as hers, if only people would take them seriously. 

- ...as a Somewhat Taller Than Average woman myself, I am rather delighted by Hugo's obvious terror of women who are Not Tiny.   ( And I realize I'm probably Reaching to think that Mme T might have been much happier and more well-adjusted if she weren't trying to cram her giant self into a tiny box of Ideal Femininity?  Maybe she'd have been much more ok if she'd  been able to go into showbiz and get famous as  a weightlifter or something. )

But I do think there's a real sort of sadness to her introductory chapters.  She had an ideal dream for her own life , and it wasn't even a particularly ambitious one--just a love story, really-- and it's fallen through as much as anyone else's hoped-for Ideal in the novel. She's still trying to hang onto it at this point, but we're already given a glimpse of the future  when she'll not only have given up on that ideal, but come to despise herself for it.  This is no way absolves her of her cruelty towards others, but I think she's a more complex villain (and she is  a villain) than she's sometimes treated as. 

- Fantine does try to lie about having been married, here! ...but she also comes right out and tells people she's making a financial Deal with exactly how much money she has, and how much she's able to give over, before it's all settled.  It's  painful how ill-prepared she is to deal with this kind of economic manipulation (and I think "prepared" is really relevant; she's had no one more naturally skilled or experienced to teach her how to handle these things, and business negotiations, which this is, are incredibly complicated) . 

Seeing how much money Mme T gets for Cosette's fine clothes makes me strongly suspect that Fantine was severely underpaid for pawning her own fancy things--unless, and I guess this is possible, her "putting all her finery" on Cosette  is meant to be literal, and Cosette's current clothes are directly made of Fantine's old fancy outfits. 

- Fantine tries to lie about having been married , and the neighbors *see* her crying as she leaves Cosette, and Cosette must have been well dressed and all for that first months or so...but still, everyone believes the Thenardiers when they start telling the town that Cosette is an abandoned, illegitimate child.  They believe it because Cosette looks the part, and Cosette looks the part because the Thenardiers force her into it.  In so many ways, Fantine is never in control of  the narrative about her child, and What People Say about them does indeed matter more than anything she does--no amount of effort, no show of love, can save her and Cosette when everyone else  has decided they're socially damned. 

...but on the less thematic and more practical side,how on earth are the Thenardiers learning about her marital status? Seriously, was this freely avaialable info?  This  issue is something that comes up several times in the novel and I really have no idea what access to people's family records was like? 

- we get our first negative association with a cat , hm 

- ...workers have "generous impulses", huh?  (also I am not at all sure if the corresponding Bourgeois Respectability is meant to be entirely a good thing, but I'm not sure it's NOT , like I would be with Some Writers? Agh) 

- The Thenardiers' animal souls are : 

French: écrevisses 

Hapgood: crab-like FMA: crabs Rose: crayfish  Donougher: lobsters

Google Translate agrees with Rose, but I wonder if this isn't one of those words that was colloquially used to mean a general category of creatures in its day --Things Like a Crayfish/lobster/crab-- and has come to mean something very specific now?

-  ..y'know, what really kills me about Cosette in this every time is how everyone , *everyone*  in this town really either believes she deserves her abuse, or thinks it's BETTER than she deserves.  This is not happening in secret, behind closed doors, in a private house; it's at the public inn and very blatant. Everyone knows she's out in the cold , first up every morning, starving and beaten, in a home where the other kids somehow have more than enough (because their parents steal it from Cosette, directly).  And not one person in this discount Omelas even thinks it's bad , much less intervenes. It's a point in the Thenardiers'  favor, socially.   This isn't just the gamins of Paris being brushed aside,this is a whole town actively citing horrible child abuse as the Moral and Good Option that elevates the people doing it.  

And in this, I suppose, Cosette shares a history with Valjean-- they're  both put through absolutely horrific abuse , which is not just societally ignored, or accepted with jaded apathy ,  but openly lauded as morally correct.   I hate Montfermeil so much-- but Montfermeil is not really different from Arras, or Digne, or any other place where people think that abuse of the "deserving" is a Good Thing. 

[alicedrawslesmis]

Ok! I just watched the first bbc les mis episode finally!

General thoughts (hm? spoilers for bbc les mis I guess):

I really liked Waterloo! The Marius dramatic circle is the best part, full of feelings without being overdramatic. With very little shown, you get the emotional reaction you need. Well done. The actors are doing an overall good job. But the production is meh, the editing and the cinematography are very bad, the art department is bad. These I just cannot defend. The Bishop scenes reminded me a lot of the 98 movie and... let's not talk about that. It's kind of a sore sight to put my eyes through as a person who likes cinema and visual arts.

About the main changes in characterisation:

I honestly think we as an audience are very brick-focused and that's fine, but they decided on something slightly different and that's also fine! The actors created something new on the text instead of trying to imitate this or that interpretation of the character. I'm cool with that.

I have some problems with how they handled Valjean tho, he is kind of all over the place. I know what Dominic west is going for, making Valjean sort of wild like an animal, but not unaware of what he is doing to others. People who behave in a manner to hurt others irl usually don't lose total control. I think the whole idea is that anyone is able to change for good, and a man who harmed others, who was angry and acted out, can become a good man not by being given the chance, but by being shown that good exists in the world. That using other people is not all that there is. It's another way to think about Valjean's arc.

HOWEver, the editing and the directing did not do him any favours. You have a character who has a storm within a brain! A major fucking mental breakdown! A complete and total change of heart! How can you film it like that! Were you afraid? That it would look like the musical is that it? It already does! It ruined your main character arc! Fuck!

Like if there is anything they fucked up was Jean Valjean and I feel terrible! He is my bread boy! Valjean is the love of my life how can you do that to him! It's so easy to portray him! of course that would require that they think about what they are doing in terms of visual text, they did that to the lady who tells him to knock on the bishop's door (she was filmed like a spectre! very nice) but they didn't do it to Valjean? The Main CharactER? I AM BITTER

Anyway... 

Fantine is ok... but I hated to have to suffer through Tholomyes to see her. I look forward to seeing her more without that boy around. I liked Fantine's friends, they were incredible.

So far I want to see how it goes. It was ok as an introduction, we got a sense of how it will be like, for better or for worse.

About that Javert:

I love David Oyelowo's take on Javert. It's very different from fanon, very different from canon and previous Javerts. Very unique. He is calm and calculated and also very smug and playful and has this sort of young intensity to him. Very attached to his petty position of power and abuses it. He is not brick-Javert but I loved how Oyelowo is handling him in a more humane way, so that he's not an Evil Villain but also without romanticising a police officer who treats those beneath him violently, David has talked about police violence before and I think this is intentional on his part (there are other ways to go about this but I like how he, specifically, is doing his thing. Keep at it David! I knew you'd be the best part of this! I wanna make him a goddamn fan club)