I heard someone say that they had gotten their sense of social justice from seeing the musical Les Miserables. I'll admit that it is one of my favorite musicals, and that I love the music. But, I'm not sure that it's the best place to form opinions on social justice.
First, Les Miserables seems to be less of an endorsement of the French Revolution than is story examining the differences between law and grace. It's set in the midst of the French Revolution, but certainly not a deep dive into the history of the revolution. For those who don't know, the French Revolution brought a reign of bloody terror to France and in incredibly repressive "government", which (if I'm not mistaken) laid the groundwork for Napoleon who was also not the most liberal of emperors). A notable intellectual foundation for the French Revolution was an atheistic, nihilistic, belief that Reason was sufficient to build a better government.
Second, one of the primary themes of the book and musical is the tension between law and grace. I don't necessarily want to have that debate here, and personally think that they are linked, the primary plot is that Javert is persecuting Jean Valjean because he believes that it is impossible for a thief to ever find redemption. We do see that grace does end up "winning" as Javert's inability to imagine a world without a hard, remorseless law leads him to suicide and Valjean dies knowing that his daughter is safe and happy and that he'll be with those he loves.
So, the question for today is whether or not it makes sense to take a heavily sanitized and romanticized musical version of one of a horrific historical event as the basis for your views on how best to achieve social justice in 2026. We've certainly seen the left wing folx build plenty of barricades over the last 15 years, I guess I'd maybe take a look at how that worked for them.
7 comments:
Jeez, dude! No spoiler alert?
If you don’t know by now, I can’t help.
Actually, I don't much care. Never read the book saw the movie or musical, but do know the basic gist of it. However, I had no idea to two main characters died at the end, thus I thought I'd leave the wise-ass comment.
No big deal, it’s not a secret at this point.
The book is excellent, the musical is very good, the movie was very good as an adaptation of the musical.
I want to say that I've seen the 1935 version with the great Charles Laughton as Javert and Frederich March as JVJ, but if I did, I'm pretty sure I didn't see the whole thing for some reason. I'd watch that if I see on the streaming service. Charles Laughton is always worth the price of admission.
I have a DVD of the 1998 movie and we like to watch it every few months. I tried reading the book but found it horribly boring. Only Javert dies at the end.
I read the abridged version which was good. In the musical/movie Jean Valjean dies of old age. I'd have to go back and revisit the book to see if they changed it.
Given that the post is really based on someone who get their social sense from the musical, I'll stick with that plot.
According to a quick Google, Valjean does die at the end after seeing Colette and Marius established.
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