This is a man who has lived by a strong moral code his whole life, and who for the first time realizes that the world he sees as black and white, is in fact a million different shades of grey.
This is a man who had nothing and nobody his whole life EXCEPT that code, and when it is stripped away, is left with nothing.
And when he dies, he STILL has nothing because essentially, nothing changes. Nobody grieves, nobody cares.
Should you be interested in a villian:
THESE are two people who happily scam people out of money, rob off the dead and are just generally horrible people.
They were also the two who had five children, sold two of them, and couldn’t give a toss that two of them are dead.
basically if someone ever asks you to describe the characters in les mis you can tell them that cosette represents the pure good, the thénardiers represent the pure evil, jean valjean represents the good in evil, and javert represents the evil in good
ok so i saw les mis again on wednesday and it got me thinking.
nearly every song in the show is either directly reprised or at least uses a repeating melody from other songs in the show. i say nearly; there are two exceptions* whose melodies are never sung in another song: stars and dog eat dog. interestingly enough, these two are also the closest the show has to “””villain songs.”””
they’re absolutely not villain songs. especially not stars. but i digress.
the songs that do repeat are sung mostly by the “redeemable” characters (javert and thenardier are the closest thing the story has to villains, though they are both still victims of society like everyone else and included as a part of “the miserable ones”), and those songs connect characters to others, both in the literal sense of their melodies getting sung by others in kind of a web and in the sense of the characters actually interacting within the songs. madame thenardier sings exclusively in repeating/reprised songs, which seems like it could be a subversion of that EXCEPT the thing about madame t is that (this is more of a thing in the book but it does Kind Of touch on this in the show) she’s cruel and horrible to most people, especially cosette, but she has one redeeming quality in that she genuinely, truly, loves her daughters azelma and eponine, which connects her to other people.
the two songs that are completely independent are pretty defining songs for both thenardier and javert (as in like. the biggest insight to their true personalities, as it’s javert’s only independent song when he’s in a sane state of mind/before he has a moral epiphany and it’s thenardier’s only song where he’s alone and also his only totally serious song).
i will maintain until i die that stars shows javert in a sympathetic light, bc it shows how convinced he is that he’s doing the right thing, and it should be played as a soft song, but it still shows how cold and single minded javert can be, and how he doesn’t really care for other people, he just knows what’s Right and that means he has to get valjean because valjean is a criminal and once someone has committed a crime they can never reform.
dog eat dog is kind of horrifying because it shows thenardier’s nihilism and total lack of humanity; he talks abt how god is dead while robbing the dead bodies in the sewers, but even that i can argue is kind of showing at least. not any kind of sympathy for thenardier’s actions but like, an explanation for them. in master of the house what we get in terms of his characterization is more like “haha he’s awful, he just steals from people For The Lols,” but dog eat dog shows how he’s motivated by his “kill or be killed” mentality and the fact that he feels like god has never helped him; he’s had such a shitty life and no one who has cared for him or provided for him, so who cares about morality. it’s all the same when everyone who has beliefs, or convictions, or affection for other people ends up dead in the sewers because of it.
so both stars and dog eat dog show why javert and thenardier are like… the way they are, and even tho javert acts completely guided by the law and thenardier acts with no regard for it, both songs show how much they’ve isolated themselves, how disconnected from others they are. in turn, the songs themselves are isolated within the show, which, in a show with as much repetition and reprise as les mis, is notable. javert and thenardier are the only characters who are completely without positive connections, without empathy, and both the content and the context of their songs reflects that.
but.
even though no other song contains lyrics sung to the melody of stars, we do hear it again. once. it’s repeated instrumentally immediately following javert’s suicide; the haunting, miserable song leading up to the jump (which is an EXTREMELY close reprise of valjean’s soliloquy) is followed by a few notes of the more hopeful, softer stars. in this, i see absolution. javert lived with no regard for others, isolated because of his rigid black-and-white morality and his blindness to others’ suffering, but he died seeing, finally, the gray area, recognizing valjean’s inherent goodness despite his criminal past, and choosing to die instead of arresting him. in doing so, javert ensures valjean’s freedom, in a sense; he is the only person in the world who knows valjean’s past and his real identity, and if valjean had chosen to guard the information, any danger relating to it would have died with him. javert is disturbed, he can’t reconcile valjean being good with everything he’s thought about him for years, and for the first time, he’s questioning (and horrified at) the implications of this realization; if valjean can be good, could that mean that javert has been making the wrong decisions for years, putting the wrong people behind bars? in his last moments, he finds nothing but anguish, but for the smallest second, he’s let other people in. he understands jean valjean. in a way, he saves valjean, if only from himself. i think it’s no coincidence that javert’s first solo song is totally isolated, but this one perfectly mirrors a song valjean sings; both valjean’s soliloquy and javert’s suicide represent a moment of mental turmoil for the characters after being saved by a man whom he has actively hurt, and, just as the bishop’s action restore human connection to valjean, valjean’s action restores human connection to javert. those few seconds of stars’ melody reflect that, at the very end, javert has changed, and understands how to care for other people. that understanding after a life of isolation destroys him, but in a way, he dies redeemed.
which is kind of spat on by productions that don’t put him in the finale but whatever i guess
thenardier has no such moment. dog eat dog is the one completely, totally isolated song in the show; there is not a hint of its tune anywhere else, because thenardier never changes. he won’t. in the face of the horrors of the barricade, the death of both his daughter and his son among the revolutionaries (though he had abandoned gavroche long before that moment, anyway), and the wretchedness of the sewers, he sees only another opportunity to scrape his way back into wealth, and in his last appearance, he’s just the same as he was when we first saw him (singing the same melody to boot). dog eat dog never references or repeats other songs, and is never referenced or repeated in turn, because when broken down to his bare essentials, thenardier is nothing but a twisted and dirty core, disconnected from every other character and concerned only with himself, and no moral epiphany could change that. like javert, he’s both a victim and a product of society, but javert was at heart idealistic; he thought the world and his actions were just and destroyed himself when he realized that they weren’t. thenardier is defined by his knowledge that society, that the world, that god himself is unjust and never helped or comforted him, and after a lifetime of that belief, nothing can dissuade him. he spends his time on stage utterly alone, and he’ll stay that way until he dies.
*bring him home nearly qualifies; when it’s sung toward the end of the show, it uses no bits from other melodies, and it’s only reprised in valjean’s death, when he sings asking god to let him finally rest. this is, imo, very interesting, because bring him home functions very much like stars and dog eat dog, in that it is an individual song, nearly never reprised, and it’s very character defining for valjean. however, unlike those songs, bring him home very pointedly shows that valjean isn’t like javert and thenardier; he’s really defined by his affection for other people, and isn’t effectively alone in the world like them. but he was. before the bishop, valjean was just as bitter as thenardier is about the world throwing him away, just as singleminded in his worldview as javert. but he changed. he received kindness in digne for the first time in 19 years, and took that to become a different person, to help fantine and save champmathieu and adopt cosette, to free javert, to die loved by his children and blessed by god. bring him home comes late in the play and is nearly not reprised (because valjean was very much like javert and thenardier once!), but in valjean’s death, the melody comes back, because he changed. alright i’m probably pushing it now but. hm.
#bless valjean’s attitude in this scene/song #i really love the face he makes in the second gif #like “sacrifice my ass” #“you seriously think im gonna put up with your emotional bullshit????” #“after i literally saw cosette dragging a heavy ass bucket in the middle of the fucking night????” #“wearing rags?????” #“and don’t you dare i don’t know what you have been doing with my money and fantine’s money, you greedy shits” #but since he doesn’t like confrontations #valjean’s like #“alright take my money for your sAcRiFiCe, my dear fellows :):):)” #bc valjean is a kind old fellow #and he doesn’t want to scare cosette #jesus christ you can sense him ready to hit the thenardiers with the receipts #i just rlly love his whole attitude during the bargain #so fucking sassy in a passive aggressive way i s2g #bless you valjean #pls be my dad #ok but i will not stop talking abt this ever #bc jEAN VALJEAN STRAIGHT UP MURDERED THE THENARDIERS WITHOUT THEM KNOWING IT JFC #HE JUST PUT UP WITH JAVERT’S BULLSHIT ABT THE LAW AND HIS PAST THAT HE NEVER ASKED ABOUT #HE LITERALLY “DROWNED” HIMSELF TO GET TO COSETTE #YOU THINK HE’S PUTTING UP WITH YOUR BULLSHIT???? #HA BITCH U THOUGHT
WHY THE THENARDIERS THOUGH? HUGO HAS VILLAINS PLAYED FOR COMEDY. HE HAS GILLENORMAND AND HE HAS MONTPARNASSE. WHY DOES THE MUSICAL INSIST ON DOING IT TO THE THENARDIERS INSTEAD?
I KNOW, the Thenardiers are just so awful and they never STOP being awful, they’re NEVER “Loveable Rogues”, even in the play Mme T’s first appearance is in seriously THREATENING TO BEAT A CHILD?!? Anyone who thinks that’s Wacky Fun kind of worries me.
I think maybe it’s because they’re THERE from an early point? But like there’s no comedy relief in the first bit of Les Mis, there just really isn’t The hijinks are with THE GUYS WHO ALL DIE There are REASONS for that but (while I totally get that the play is what it is now and directors just have to work with that) I think, like, if they HAD to have some wackiness in the first chunk Fauchelevent would have made a lot more sense?? He’s kind of an antagonist at first, even!
i can think of no other reason than “this musical is too damn somber we need comic relief.” you see, the musical could have introduced the thenardiers with a dark and dreary song, but at that point in the musical, the audience would have seen 1) a convict wrongly punished, 2) a woman hitting rock bottom and dying, 3) said convict having to run for his life again. they need a rest. hence, master of the house. true, i never really got to enjoy MoTH because of the undertones, but melody-wise, it’s a savior.
as for fauchelevent, that would entail using an actor for one short scene and having him join the ensemble afterward. it’s a waste of an actor, and is probably the reason gillenormand was scrapped from the original french concept. the thenardiers play largely in the story and can’t be scrapped like fauchelevent and gillenormand (and even montparnasse), so since they have to be there in the first place, might as well use them for comedy.
note though, i don’t endorse them as comic relief either, but i can only explain how it probably went on in the creative process for the adaptation.
Yeah, my husband and I argue about this all the time. “How can you make the Thenardiers funny!” I say. “They’re horrible people!” “You need some levity or the musical will be too overwhelming and no one will watch it!” he says. “The Thenardiers make more sense than anyone else!” “You don’t need levity in a musical!” I say. “Look at Sweeney Todd!” “Sweeney Todd is funny ALL THE TIME,” he says. “There’s a funny song about cannibalism, FFS! That is a horrible example!” Etc.
I haaaaaaaaate what they did with the Thenardiers because it lessens their menace, especially their abuse, and because it means that most of the social commentary Hugo was using the Thenardiers to make has been lost (there is a little bit of it in Dog Eat Dog, but oh so little). That carries over into Eponine, as well — I think it would have been easier to get her actual story across, rather than shunting her into the ‘unrequited love’ role, if her family had been portrayed as something other than comic relief. Eponine is supposed to be a lecture on agency and poverty, but it’s hard to communicate that if you aren’t explicit about what her family life was like, and associated with that, what her future would have been.
But the worst thing is, while I’m right, my husband is as well. The musical does need some levity, and it needs levity, as Hana points out, exactly when the Thenardiers show up, timing-wise. I bitch about how the musical compresses things and glosses over things and cuts things and then dwells on the wrong things ALL THE TIME because that means so much of the story and its attendant messages are lost, but honestly, as a musical, it’s actually paced really well. (It wouldn’t be such a success if it wasn’t.) The Thenardiers might be misused, but the musical wouldn’t work nearly as well if they weren’t.
Beggars at the Feast should still be excised from all existence, though.
You know, I actually don’t mind comic Thénardiers… when they’re funny in the same way Sweeney Todd is funny. When they are so awful the awfulness comes right out the other end into helpless laughter, and it makes you feel almost guilty for laughing so fucking hard, then comic Thénardiers is a thing that works. Thénardier has a slightly easier job in this department than Mme T–before the whole accursed jolly-hockey-sticks panto-slapstick trend got started, I saw a number of excellent Thénardiers, but the only Mme T’s I saw who managed to wring that kind of involuntary horrified laughter out of the audience were Jennifer Butt and Jenny Galloway, both of whom are pretty much the best of the best.
Ah, it’s That Chapter in Brickclub! I always find this post to be enormously helpful in understanding thecultural context for Mme. T’s novels here. I actually wish it wasn’t all behind a cut, it’s just so much useful context!–Especially the bit about how a lot of the novels Hugo’s citing were by men “legitimizing” fictional forms women created by …writing the same thing but being men, and by how the specific narrative through-line of them ties in with Mme T’s expectations for herself and her girls.
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