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.