Ten Little Chances to be Free (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tenlittlebullets) wrote2006-09-15 02:05 pm
tenlittlebullets) wrote2006-09-15 02:05 pm
Entry tags:
Humanization
For the purposes of this particular meta there are three aspects of Les Mis I'd like to address--human emotion, morality, and social criticism. The book addresses all three, the musical only one, and I think that the absence of commentary on morality and society is what led to some of the changes that most annoy me. Javert is perhaps the closest to his book incarnation, and the closest the musical comes to touching on the issues it left out, and even he is assigned more personal motivations to heighten the human drama: religios fervor, an obsession with catching Valjean. Fantine gets a whole solo in which to reflect on how she feels about her situation. Eponine, no longer in any way a vehicle to show the horrors of a youth in poverty, gets her unrequited love emphasized and her class issues tossed out the window. Enjolras, bereft of any particular cause to fight for besides "raaaah, revolution," becomes a charismatic but essentially stupid character who jumps on tables and incites insurrection. Instead of addressing the social context of the insurrection's failure, the musical treats us to a lot of angst about how sad it is that all these characters died. Most if not all of the conflict in the book is man v. society, so when the musical zaps away "society" and leaves us with a bunch of individual characters making their ways through the plot, the story stops being about anything.
The minor characters are most affected by the absence of context, but it's Valjean who suffers from the lack of commentary on morality. In the musical, he is redeemed by the bishop and becomes a sort of supreme good guy, always doing the right thing, almost without question. Whereas originally, yes, he was committed to doing the right thing--but he was constantly having to decide what "the right thing" consisted of. In "Who Am I?", he makes the distinction right off the bat: "If I speak, I am condemned; if I stay silent, I am damned." The rest of the song is just him waffling over whether to do the selfish thing or the right thing. book!Valjean spends the whole night stewing over whether the health of a region is more important than the life of one man, whether morality obliges him to act out or if he can sit back and let things proceed, whether it would even be possible to save this man. Similarly, he goes to the barricades not even knowing what to do about Marius: is he going to kill him? is he going to let him die? is he going to tell him to get to safety? is he going to save him? And once again, he concludes that just letting things proceed is immoral, and once again he goes to amazing lengths to do something that will ruin his life, simply because he has decided it is the right thing to do. musical!Valjean may be more sure of himself and appears to be a better man for not hating Marius, but which takes more spine: saving the life of someone you love as a son, or saving the life of someone you despise so that your child's future is secure?
The novel deals heavily with morality and religion, but for an adaptation of such a work, the musical is distressingly light on both subjects. Javert adheres strictly to the letter of the law and of religion. Valjean is an outcast good guy. End analysis. Another reason why the finale seems tacked-on: it goes heavy on the religious talk when Valjean's about to die, yet hasn't dealt with it at all throughout the rest of the story. When Valjean says "Forgive me all my trespasses," we see religious ritual, not the plea of a man who has been struggling all his life to make up for a supreme act of sin. Removing this aspect of the story means that any time it appears, it rings false.
Now, despite all this, is the musical a good adaptation of the personal, human drama of Les Mis? Yes, I think it is. But it's an incomplete adaptation, and people are taking it for more than it really is. It focuses on one aspect of a multifaceted novel, and does it well, but it's very clunky in dealing with the parts it left out. It annoys me to see people treat the musical as the be-all end-all of the story, when what it does is essentially scale it down to a well-executed melodrama.
Of course, being a study of the human interactions of LM, the musical is perfectly suited to fanfiction, which prizes character over plot. When we write character studies based on book canon, we're looking at the book through the lens of the musical. But when so many of us have our first exposure to LM through the musical instead of the book, plot-driven fanfiction becomes even more rare than in other fandoms. What's the deal, LM fandom? Star Wars and Harry Potter have well-constructed societies that genfic authors delight in playing with. Les Misérables is in a large part about the society that actually existed in 19th-century France, and all we can do is fap about how this character feels about his motivations and how awful unrequited love is.
The minor characters are most affected by the absence of context, but it's Valjean who suffers from the lack of commentary on morality. In the musical, he is redeemed by the bishop and becomes a sort of supreme good guy, always doing the right thing, almost without question. Whereas originally, yes, he was committed to doing the right thing--but he was constantly having to decide what "the right thing" consisted of. In "Who Am I?", he makes the distinction right off the bat: "If I speak, I am condemned; if I stay silent, I am damned." The rest of the song is just him waffling over whether to do the selfish thing or the right thing. book!Valjean spends the whole night stewing over whether the health of a region is more important than the life of one man, whether morality obliges him to act out or if he can sit back and let things proceed, whether it would even be possible to save this man. Similarly, he goes to the barricades not even knowing what to do about Marius: is he going to kill him? is he going to let him die? is he going to tell him to get to safety? is he going to save him? And once again, he concludes that just letting things proceed is immoral, and once again he goes to amazing lengths to do something that will ruin his life, simply because he has decided it is the right thing to do. musical!Valjean may be more sure of himself and appears to be a better man for not hating Marius, but which takes more spine: saving the life of someone you love as a son, or saving the life of someone you despise so that your child's future is secure?
The novel deals heavily with morality and religion, but for an adaptation of such a work, the musical is distressingly light on both subjects. Javert adheres strictly to the letter of the law and of religion. Valjean is an outcast good guy. End analysis. Another reason why the finale seems tacked-on: it goes heavy on the religious talk when Valjean's about to die, yet hasn't dealt with it at all throughout the rest of the story. When Valjean says "Forgive me all my trespasses," we see religious ritual, not the plea of a man who has been struggling all his life to make up for a supreme act of sin. Removing this aspect of the story means that any time it appears, it rings false.
Now, despite all this, is the musical a good adaptation of the personal, human drama of Les Mis? Yes, I think it is. But it's an incomplete adaptation, and people are taking it for more than it really is. It focuses on one aspect of a multifaceted novel, and does it well, but it's very clunky in dealing with the parts it left out. It annoys me to see people treat the musical as the be-all end-all of the story, when what it does is essentially scale it down to a well-executed melodrama.
Of course, being a study of the human interactions of LM, the musical is perfectly suited to fanfiction, which prizes character over plot. When we write character studies based on book canon, we're looking at the book through the lens of the musical. But when so many of us have our first exposure to LM through the musical instead of the book, plot-driven fanfiction becomes even more rare than in other fandoms. What's the deal, LM fandom? Star Wars and Harry Potter have well-constructed societies that genfic authors delight in playing with. Les Misérables is in a large part about the society that actually existed in 19th-century France, and all we can do is fap about how this character feels about his motivations and how awful unrequited love is.
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I'm going to read it in full later, but I had to skim it now, as my Concerta hasn't kicked in yet. XD;;
Very insightful.
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XD I love you. That's such a wonderful way of expressing how a three-dimensional character gets shoved into this two- dimensional role to basically fulfill a plot point and do little else.
I also have issues with how they portray Marius and Cosette in the musical. musical!Marius is a romantic dedicated to the random revolution that, for no apparent reason except for the fact that 'Lemarque is dead/and now is the hour of fate!', mysteriously takes place and forces him to choose between his random undeveloped love interest and going off to die with his best mates. He chooses his friends, over his love, which sort of destroys what I think Marius stands for. Marius, to me, always represented both the present, and the "everyman" or simply the views of 19th century French society, esp. in how his interests change. Marius needs to be somewhat confused politically to display the change of French society. First monarchist, then Bonapartist, then quasi-republican, then more or less indifferent and devoted to preserving the future (as symbolized by Cosette) and his own interests, in order to show the turbulent nature of French politics, and the ever-changing nature of French society. Cosette is supposed to display that not everyone whom has dubious origins or whom has grown up in poverty is evil. She's the future of France, whom Hugo sees as a highly idealized woman who is "April in maiden's form". I also thought it was really important for Marius to retains his motivations for the barricade (i.e. Oh noes! Cosette is moving to England, so I'm going to go kill myself!) to show the hopelessness of the present if there is no future to live for. *However* Valjean, who symbolizes the past, comes and rescues the present so that the future may have a chance. So, essentially, hope prevails, because, no matter what the past might do to influence the future, the future will still remain.
Oh, don't get me started on musical!Cosette. The best I can say about her is that she's drastically underdeveloped. I think she's cute and all, but I missed the Lark. It doesn't help that most of the Cosette's I've heard sound like kewpie dolls, or however that's spelled. I always saw Cosette as more a mezzo. Have you any links to *good* Cosettes, by chance?
Plus, where's all the humor of Hugo? Where's Marius's random "Down with the Bourbons and the fat pig Louis XVI!" and the dry comment, "Louis XVI had been dead for years, but no matter."
Well, it did introduce me to a marvelous novel, and it has some nice melodies if you don't pay attention to the novel they're based off of.
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Javert is the character who really got screwed. He's such a snarky bastard. Dolt of a lawyer. "Would you like my hat?" Javert may have been single-minded in his adherence to the law as determinant of order, but he had a personality. I'm less sold on Enjy having a personality. But he's hot, and he dies in a revolution, and the mere sight of him turns straight men gay, so he doesn't need a personality.
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This is, unfortunately, true. I screwed Brujon all up because I'm used to physical casting that is maintained regardless of whom Brujon understudies.
The other issue here, however, is that a lot of the fandom likes cute boys. Victor gave us a thoroughly anachronistic set of cute boys to work with. So it's easier to have them sleep with each other and angst over who is with whom than to try to figure out what exactly their political opinons were, how to deal with 1830 (thanks for nothing, Victor), and what sort of girls were even available to them. Much easier to just let them boink each other.
I think we also see a lot of plotty stuff in HP because canon isn't closed. A lot of plotty stuff is an attempt at plugging holes or showing how the author thinks the story should go. LM is closed canon. Thoroughly so - nearly the entire cast is dead at the end. So the motivations for writing are generally less plotty in LM fandom. And SW is so thoroughly screwed up with all the tie-in novels and Lucas not making up his mind and writing really crap prequels, there's a lot of hole-plugging and AU necessity there.
It also takes place in the black hole of scholarship. It's a lot easier to research the Napoleonic era, the initial restoration, and 1848 than it is to figure out what was going on in 1828. You can make shit up about HP, or any number of easy to find websites will help you find what you need, whether it be a spell, an invention, or a random fact. It took me longer than it should have done to figure out fashions and hairstyles from 1830, and these are some of the easiest things to find for other eras. It's easier to show rather than tell when you have a command of the details, but it's hard when you can't just make them up. With fantasy or sci-fi, if it isn't in the canon, you can make it up. With history, you can't. Fanbrats try, but anyone with half a brain agonises over whether what they've done to push the plot along is logical for the period. And when Victor can't keep it straight, the dilemma is do we screw around and refer to bohemians even though the term didn't come in for another ten years (and neither did nationalism and an obsession with Poland), or do we try to be *more* accurate than Victor was and correct his dates? (1820, Victor, not 1822, but I don't think you've much affection for Bahorel anyway.) When your canon doesn't match the frame, and that complicates putting together the frame so that you can write within it, it's so much easier to just write wangsty poetry or cute boys boinking each other.
But what do you mean by "plot-driven"? What do you want in terms of gen-fic?
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See, the gen fic I really enjoyed in HP and SW wasn't trying to "write the next book" or take advantage of an open canon, it was stuff that mucked around in the world we were given without screwing with the main plot. Both fandoms have a wealth of minor characters and bits in the plot that aren't holes, but aren't going to be explored in canon. LM is full of those--what were the Amis doing between 1828 and 1832? what were the Thénardiers up to between 1823 and 1830? etc. etc. The plot is closed, but there's still a lot that can be written into the margins.
Honestly I don't know what I want, I just know that I want something more than relationship angst. Fics where the characters do something besides each other. Fics where they interact with their environment, where things happen, where there's a conflict and resolution. It's kind of sad that there's so little of that.
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I think I know what you mean, and the reason there's the lack of it is exactly *because* the historical period is a little unaccessable.
There was an excellent HP fic I read that didn't involve major characters, or touch book-plot more than barely. It was a bit of a class-politics drama-dy involving various Death Eater families, but a scene I remember from it involved Narcissa Malfoy going shopping in Muggle London and the ensuing cultural misunderstanding. ("Did you know all Muggles were numbered?") But the brilliance in this bit came from 1.) research on London, since the author was American, and 2.) clever and convincing invention of details in the Wizard world. (both Research and Invention, as you argue, are missing in LM fandom)
I don't want to say there are no good writers in the LM fandom, but I think *this* type of HP fic is generally good since it's different from canon. HP is in large part an adventure story, so the arena for satire and commentary is wide open, and free from accusations of "style-copying". A HP adventure in a "what's gonna happen next?" style would be difficult to write well and convincingly. Hugo, however, has already written all the satire and commentary, and most of the "ambient" nothing-at-all bits. There isn't really a 'free' genre in which somone can write -- excepting "romance".
That's one theory. :D I'm not 100% convinced myself, but it sounds neat.
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Both fandoms have a wealth of minor characters and bits in the plot that aren't holes, but aren't going to be explored in canon. LM is full of those--what were the Amis doing between 1828 and 1832? what were the Thénardiers up to between 1823 and 1830? etc. etc. The plot is closed, but there's still a lot that can be written into the margins.
(b) Incidentally, most of the Les Mis fic I've been working on falls into this category, but it will probably never see the light of day since I'm not sure I feel the inclination to finish it. Maybe someday...
(c) I really like your LM commentary entries. They're extremely well-written and thought-out, and moreover make me realize how much I've missed the fandom. I should probably reread the novel or something; it's been a while.
A perspective from the other side
The book was mostly ethos with a healthy serving of pathos; the musical played up the pathos. I enjoy pathos, but in the end, I prefer something else balancing it out.
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As for Enjolras -- I dunno. You actually have to pay a lot of attention to him when he's making his grandiose speeches to see his real depth of character in the book. I really enjoy the one he makes after reconnaissance -- he goes on about how we have made advances in technology. What that tells me is that he's a fairly well-learned young man, in addition to being a fervent republican
and the prettiest boy in Paris. Also, that passage hints at some sort of human emotion, if only detached and shown towards the human race as a whole: look at how he addresses Feuilly.I like the musical, but I think it's because I treat the musical as I do any other novel adaptation: my expectations are lower because it's intended to garner the public interest. I really believe that there is no way to make a musical that focuses on all the societal, moral, and human issues in the book, unless it's six hours long. And even then I have my doubts. But like I said, I treat the musical version of Les Mis as the adaptation it is: entertainment with pretty music and singing boys.
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But you're completely right about Valjean. I have come to detest certain lines in Bring Him Home, such as "He's like the son I might have know/if God had granted me a son". Although I understand that audiences wanted to Valjean to be a saintly/never-do-wrong figure, he actually hates Marius with a passion. Yes, people. HATES.
Well, anyway. Even though the musical has its numerous flaws and plot holes, I still love it.
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musical!Valjean may be more sure of himself and appears to be a better man for not hating Marius, but which takes more spine: saving the life of someone you love as a son, or saving the life of someone you despise so that your child's future is secure?
Apparently they added this song especially for Colm Wilkinson, and while he sings it beautifully, and I like the song, in the end I wish they hadn't ended it. Valjean's other songs simplify his situation and thoughts, but at least they aren't out-of-character. "Bring Him Home" is very out-of-character. They chose a pretty song over characterization, and I resent that a little. (Technically, they do the same thing with Eponine, but at least they establish from her first appearance in the play that she's a good girl right away. "Little Fall of Rain" isn't book Eponine's death at all, but at least it doesn't come out of nowhere like "Bring Him Home" in the musical.)
Again, thanks for the interesting read.
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Oops, I meant "added it".
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What I've heard since I wrote this entry is that they were going to give Colm a solo in the second act, tentatively titled "Night Thoughts," and they'd talked a little bit about what it would be about: Valjean agonizing about losing Cosette to Marius, Valjean being jealous of Marius and about to save him anyway. Kretzmer, the lyricist, was all set to write for some troubled, agitated music, and then Schönberg handed him the tune to BHH and he was stumped. Because it sounded like, well, a prayer, and there wasn't much else it could've been. Hence the contents of Bring Him Home. It was all very last-minute.
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Man, that sounds very awesome. I guess they try to slip a little of that sentiment in "Every Day" with the "She was never mine to keep" line, but that song sounds like it could've been great. Ah well. (Interestingly enough I listened to the Les Mis London preview for the first time a few months ago and I was surprised how much some songs/lines skewed closer to the book, like "Valjean's Confession". I've never really understood trying to shave down Les Mis; if you don't think an audience will sit through a 3 hour show, they probably won't sit through a 2-hour-and-45 minutes one.
May I ask, when I was reading your other meta I saw you mention the Jean Gabin as one of the most accurate, and I was wondering if it was an undubbed version you saw? I have that version, but I find the Valjean English dub so horrible that I couldn't sit through it.
Thanks for replying; you'll probably see me around reading more meta. Also, I'll definitely be looking at all the maps and such on your website. It's very cool so far.
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I'm afraid the reason for the cuts was rather more crass than artistic fiddling--Cameron Mackintosh was sick of having to pay the orchestra overtime every time the show ran over 3 hours, so he got it shaved down to save money.
And yeah, the dubbing on the Gabin version is pretty horrible and the whole film looks pretty dated. But aside from one or two scenes it is slavishly accurate to the book, to the point where you can see "Vivent les peuples!" carved on a wall in the barricade scenes.