sophia_sol | Fantine. Also the internet.

Crossposts: http://sophia-sol.livejournal.com/169986.html

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fandom: les miserables

Fantine. Also the internet.

Last night my internet was out for the whole evening. I was very disappointed.

Me: Damnit, I just finished Volume II of Les Mis and I want to write up my thoughts!
Mara: You still can, you know
Me: Yeah, but I don't like writing longhand, I prefer to type.
Mara: You still can, you know
Me: No, the internet is down
Mara: You don't need the internet to type stuff
Me: *epic headdesk*

LOOK I'M JUST SO USED TO EVERYTHING I WRITE BEING STORED IN THE CLOUD THAT I FORGOT MICROSOFT WORD WAS A THING OKAY?

Anyways, then I proceeded to type my thoughts out, but you don't get them because I'm currently at work on my lunch break and my draft post is at home on my laptop instead of stored handily in gdocs. (oh, sorry, "Google Drive")

Instead you get my thoughts on Fantine's storyline in the musical versus the book! LET'S GO.

One of the changes from Les Mis the book to Les Mis the musical that really interests me is Fantine's factory supervisor in M. sur M. It turns the firing of Fantine from a question of public morality to a question of sexual predation.

In the musical, the foreman is typified by the following words: "Have you seen how the foreman is fuming today? / With his terrible breath and his wandering hands? / It's because little Fantine won't give him his way / Take a look at his trousers, you'll see where he stands!" And then it goes on to make it perfectly clear that the entire reason Fantine is sacked is because she won't sleep with the foreman. Oh, the other ladies encourage her sacking, but it seems that it's because they're protecting themselves from what might come up about them if Fantine sticks around, and because she makes a convenient scapegoat for the foreman's anger to rest upon.

In the Brick, by comparison, the supervisor of the women's factory is a woman, and there are no men and no unwanted sexual advances involved in the decision at all. And Fantine's sacked because everyone finds out that she has a child out of wedlock, which says that she is an immoral woman, so none of them (and especially not the sternly moral supervisor) think it appropriate and right that she be allowed to continue working there with other decent folk.

Connect this, too, with another change from the book to the musical: Fantine's arrest. In the book, she is engaged in walking up and down the street in a silk dress, and thus happens to pass by an arrogant douchebag every five minutes. He takes the opportunity to say insulting things to her each time, because he knows what she is and thinks himself better than her as a result. Eventually he escalates to physical assault, shoving snow down her back even though a) she's lightly clad, b) she's already ill, and c) the wet will ruin the only silk dress she owns. She retaliates for this attack, and the two of them get into a serious physical fight with each other, which is broken up when Javert arrives on the scene.

In the musical, the arrogant douchebag is a would-be client whom she refuses. He proceeds to tell her she's not allowed to say no and continues to make advances while saying insulting things about her. She retaliates with a physical attack, but it is very brief and no fight breaks out because Bamatabois threatens to get the police involved and Fantine immediately backs down.

So when you connect these two changes together, you can see that the musical turns Fantine's story away from one about social class, social shaming, publically enforced morality and the power that social mores have, to one about sex and the power that men have. Which are two very different things! I'm not saying it's a complete dichotomy, because there are elements of both in both versions of the story, but each creates a particular emphasis on something different.

I'm not going to say anything in conclusion, because I don't currently have an opinion in any direction about these changes. I just thought that they are very interesting and worth remarking upon.

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Yeah, I think that change is really interesting! In a way I'm almost sad we can't get a little of both - like, I think the sex-and-power story is also important, but I prefer the snow-down-her-back scene to the would-be-client scene, because I feel like it's telling a less cliche and more complicated story about the total lack of privilege in Fantine's position. Like, it's a snowball that basically kills her, it's mockery, something as stupid and ridiculous as that, and in a way that makes it so much worse.

Yeah, I really like what you say here about the more complicated-ness of the lack of privilege, and I think I agree, I prefer the book version. (It's always hard for me to know how much of this is actual preference of the book version and how much of it is just that I read the book first SO OF COURSE I PREFER THE BOOK, DARN IT, if you know what I mean! :) ) It also seems richer in terms of character development -- I mean, take the supervisor; in the musical it's not at all clear to me why M. le Maire would trust a guy like that in a position of power, whereas it's pretty clear why he trusts the supervisor in the book even though she doesn't handle Fantine in the way he would have.

At the same time, I think it would be a harder story to tell in the context of the musical? Like, because the musical is so much shorter it has to resort to a lot of shorthand character notes, and I feel like this is one of them -- it's much easier to draw a quick picture of Bamatabois-the-creepy-predator in six lines of song than it is to draw a picture of Bamatabois-the-arrogant-douchebag-who-thinks-making-fun-of-prostitutes-is-amusing in six lines.

Edited (weird typo made sentence make no sense) 2013-01-10 21:14 (UTC)

DAMNIT my internet is only marginally better-behaved than it was last night and it just ATE MY COMMENT. What was I saying? I think I was basically just like YES I AGREE. Also that it had always bothered me in the musical that the foreman was clearly a creeper and yet Valjean was just calmly like "welp off I go, I trust you to deal with everything fairly!"

Yeah so I have nothing to say to this except I AGREE WITH ALL YOUR WORDS.

heeeee, so my solution to this is to have Resophnotes/Simplenote (simplenoteapp.com) so that I can coordinate my rant texts in between home and work (and even smart-devices) :) Resophnotes works even when the interwebs are down!

(though it does sometimes glitch, and lately it has been bad for some reason about wiping out changes I make when not connected to the interwebs, so I use it more as a coordination device / text editor than relying on it for storage of important data)

INNNNTERESTING! I shall have to ponder the usage of this. Thanks for the rec!

To some degree, I think the musical storyline is making some point about public morality, too, but specifically public morality as hypocrisy: the idea that if you're poor, it's your fault for not working hard enough, and only a lazy, immoral woman would turn to prostitution--but the very same enforcers of public morality are the hypocrites who will turn your honest by-the-book labor into prostitution without your consent, so you're basically screwed either way. I think it's a critique of the bootstraps school of public morality.

(It's not entirely clear to me, in the musical, why Fantine turns down that particular customer, or why Javert instantly believes his story that a prostitute randomly attacked him...sure, his sympathies are not with prostitutes, but it's such a nonsensical assertion...but I don't argue that the storyline is necessarily well-written.)

You know, I think that's an argument that is made more strongly in the book, actually -- but you're right, it is there in the musical too.

(yeahhh, that was never clear to me either. Since I've never seen the musical staged before, I've always been free to interpret things how they make the most sense to me, so I figured that probably she's seen him around before and so she knows he's treated others of the prostitutes poorly in some way and wants none of that for herself. But I'm pretty sure that's entirely headcanon and there's nothing in the musical to specifically back that up. And I interpreted Javert's belief in the dude as being the whole "he looks respectable (ie monied) and thus must be honest, whereas a prostitute is a lower form of being" type of thing. But I think I was being unfair to Javert in that assessment!)

The book does have a billionty words to make all the pints! One of the reasons I love adaptations (you can probably see how this is related to my love of fic), though, is that they tell you something about what the adaptor(s) think is important.

I am not a fan of the staging of the musical in general, although I only saw one production, once or twice, and really only remember being underwhelmed. But that's a good explanation.

Re: Javert, I almost wonder if "she will answer for her actions/when you make a full report" could be read as him trying to be fair...sure, he thinks Fantine failed Bootstrap School, but dude better be willing to put his rep out there and testify legitimately. I mean, it's not awesomely compassionate, but it might pass for fairness in Javertland.

I really need to suck it up and read the book properly, argh.

Yes, it is VERY TRUE about adaptations! Always fascinating.

Haha, Javertland. The inside of Javert's head is definitely a different world than the reality he's living in, poor dude. I think he does feel like he's being fair!

You should read the book! The book is SO FANTASTIC and I love it ridiculously much. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

I shouuuuuld. For some reason I feel like I won't absorb it in digital form, and the entire thing in paper is really big to cart around. I wonder if there's a multi-volume edition.

ALSO I CANNOT PICK A TRANSLATION.

I am actually really enjoying reading it on my ereader, for precisely the reason that it's really huge to cart around. But if that's not for you then that's not for you.

I'm reading the Isabella Hapgood translation and finding it excellent, if that helps! And maybe if you find yourself a cheap thrift store copy you can just take a sharp implement to the spine and hack it into the five volumes yourself, if it doesn't come that way?

I just worry I'd have trouble absorbing it. I'm fine with ereading for short stuff, but long complicated books, it's harder for me to absorb. I wish I loved ereaders more than I do....

Huh! That's not a problem I'd ever have thought to have with an ereader. There are some things I find frustrating (not being able to handily flip a bunch of pages forward and backward and all over the place, and greater difficulty in conveniently bookmarking the bits I want to bookmark -- idk, for me there's something about a visual bookmark that works way better than the way bookmarking works on ebooks.) but I've never had more trouble absorbing stuff from it as compared to physical books.

IN CONCLUSION different people's brains work differently and it's always interesting to me to see the ways in which that's the case

The lack of flipping and ability to bookmark is a big part of it for me.

(here from a series of Tumblrs because, I'll explain in a minute)

The other thing is that the prostitution is just way more of a focus in the musical than in the book. There's nothing like "Lovely Ladies" in the book - instead, we have Fantine keeping herself alive by sewing, until the contractor gets prisoners to do the work so the wage offered a free laborer isn't enough to live on. (and I hate "Lovely Ladies" - if everyone except Fantine is just depraved, you have missed the point.)

Anyway! I am here because I noticed your commenting that in your head, Enjolras is ace, and I've been thinking about the same thing! This whole revival of fandom could produce some really interesting fic where that's the case (and I've been thinking of writing some myself - I just don't want to write a fic about Enjolras being ace because it would feel preachy and boring? I need a fic idea) since ace awareness has progressed a good deal since the fandom was last very active. It used to be that he was just written as repressed, I think.

HELLO! YESSSSSS MORE ACE ENJOLRAS. I thoroughly support the idea of you writing such a thing, and also that a fic that's about nothing but being ace is preachy and boring. Unfortunately I have no fic ideas, but if you want to bounce possible ideas off me I would be happy to listen and give my thoughts!

Yeah, I was kind of reaching that conclusion, that the prostitution angle in general is way stronger in the musical. Actually I think sexuality IN GENERAL is a way stronger theme than in the book. Hugo is way more into chaste people. :P Anyways, yeah, I agree with you that if everyone but Fantine is depraved you've missed the point. Although I guess you can read Lovely Ladies as an examination of how being thrust into that sort of socially-outcast role gives you no opportunities to practice being your better self? or something? Like, Valjean didn't used to be a particularly bad dude, but spending 19 years in prison turned him bitter and angry and awful, and it was only being treated like an actual human being by the priest that turned him from that. Similarly being forced into unwanted prostitution is a kind of social imprisonment that can also turn people bitter and angry and awful (though perhaps in different ways).

I've also been wanting to write more about Feuilly, and possibly the whole internationalism and family etc., but that's all I've got and I don't know if it would be the same story or not. :P

I guess? I mean, I don't disagree, but it feels like reading into the number something that isn't there. (I also don't like "Master of the House," the T.s are not comic relief [wait until you see what happens to M. T in the end of the book], I am humorless, whatever.)

oh, and I see someone on Dreamwidth has already given you the spoilers you need for the robbery scene, but not the full awesomeness of Javert's snark in it, so you'll be able to enjoy that when you get to it :D

That story about Feuilly sounds like a wonderful idea EVEN IF it isn't the same story!

Eh, I'm perfectly happy reading things into it that aren't there if it means I can continue to enjoy the song :P At any rate, I have trouble seeing Lovely Ladies as being derogatory and dismissive towards all the other prostitutes even if I try; I have developed a very strong habit of thoughts with regards to my own interpretation and it's not going away in a hurry.

And anyways, heck, that's something I love about fandom: how it's happy to put way more thought into something than the creators probably did and fanwanking an explanation to make it work.

And YES Javert in the robbery scene is EXCELLENT. Javert in every scene is excellent! I love Javert.

Oh, and do you mind if I friend you? We share some fandoms (JS&MN!) but not others, but even so it's always interesting to read people's commentary on things!

Friend away! I have taken the liberty to friend you too. :D

I think how "Lovely Ladies" comes off depends a lot on staging, too.

Maybe? On the one hand, I'm the last person to say that staging doesn't change anything (

sophia_sol: I direct) but on the other, the suggestion that the prostitutes aren't enthusiastic plays totally against the music. :/

Oops, I think my comment may not have replied correctly...see below?

Well, yeah, staging can only do so much with that one. But, for example, I thought the movie did as much as possible to frame the enthusiasm as...a coping mechanism, or bitter sarcasm. I mean, the tune is the same one as Turning, right, which isn't generally played as an upbeat number? So I don't think it's entirely intrinsic to the music.

But yeah, I do have a lot of reservations about it (and most of the Thenardier stuff, for similar reasons).

The tempo and accompaniment are different, though. (However, in looking in the score to confirm this, I find:

Whore 1: God, I'm weary!
Sick enough to drop.
Belly burns like fire -
will the bleeding ever stop?

Pimp: Cheer up, dearie.
Show a happy face.
Plenty more like you here
if you can't keep up the pace!

Whore 1: Only joking - dearie knows her place...

I've never heard this done! Although granted my memory could just be poor, there are parts in the ABC Cafe scene I don't remember either but I know they're a thing because other people mention them.)

(...and there's a bit about Thenardier looting corpses at Waterloo! WHAT IS THIS SCORE. And "For the army we fight is a dangerous foe" gets "as in Grand March from Aida" as a tempo note which makes no sense at all)

The impression I always get from "Lovely Ladies" is that the enthusiasm is basically advertising, trying to look engaged for clients, rather than, you know, genuine sentiment -- that's certainly how I've always seen it done onstage, and when the prostitutes talk amongst themselves they're a great deal less enthusiastic/more cynical (e.g. at the end of the song right before Fantine's part).

The verses you quote above were added to the show in I think 1997, when the show underwent some minor revisions and cuts because they wanted to tighten up the pace and not have to pay the orchestra overtime -- most of the intro to "Master of the House" got chopped around that time, including the Waterloo bit, and quite a few songs lost their second verses at some point although I can't remember if that was back in '97 or later (Fantine's death scene and "Castle on a Cloud" were both rather truncated when I saw the tour in October, but I don't remember when they did that. They also tended toward really fast tempi the last few times I've seen it onstage, so I appreciated that the film slowed things down again). I don't remember if there were any cuts to the cafe parts, although they rewrote some of the lyrics (I know Enjolras' reaction to Lamarque's death is different).

I mean, yeah. I realize that the musical isn't trying to show them as enjoying it - it does come off that way to me, though. (Fantine's the only one that delivers the melody in that downtrodden way, even though in the stage version, she has been a prostitute for an indeterminate length of time by then) Possibly it would grate on me less if we had a chance to see the prostitutes before they went into that mode? But maybe I'm just not sure Hugo's book lends itself well to crowd-pleasing numbers of that nature (or "Master of the House"). I keep coming back to Cabaret, but in Cabaret the style is deeply ironic.

Interesting - since I have the complete OBC which doesn't have the bits that were added, but also doesn't have the ones that were cut? I don't know, maybe it really has been too long since I listened and I've just forgot about them.

I definitely have that in at least some of my recordings, although I normally skip over any track that doesn't involve Javert, Gavroche, or Les Amis. *shameface* But yeah, the lyrics are there, if they're not cut! I don't think it's perfect, for sure, but the number can be played darker.

(About the only Thenardier I like is the "Dog Eat Dog" on the Paris Revival Cast, which has a genuinely creepy Thenardier in full creepy mode. Not even he can make "Master of the House" non-awful, though.)

(Yeah, "Dog Eats Dog" is what it should be.)

(Or "Fureurs Cannibales," in this case.)

Hmmmmm, okay, this piece does not appear to be in the OBC, the TAC, or the CSR, but I have a really clear memory of hearing it, and I don't think that's just from seeing the stage show once in high school. Weeeeeird.

(The TAC version, btw, is about half the length of the other recordings, but I don't want to try to figure out what got cut. But I'm finding people only saying that part was *added* for the TAC, yet it doesn't seem to be on that or the CSR, so I'm confused.)

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Fantine. Also the internet.

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