Have you watched Les Miserables? Watching it completely changed the vibe of this song for me, such that it pretty much makes the opposite point now than it did before.
I have. I think that overall Les Mis is rather more favorable to revolutionaries than I am. For one thing, it wants us to ignore the fact that we know what will happen when Enjolras’s ideological successors eventually succeed, and that it will not be good.
(The fact that you’re using the word ‘watched’ makes me suspect that you may have seen the movie, which is honestly a large downgrade from the musical.)
Ahem, as one of LW’s few resident Frenchmen, I must interpose to say that yes, this was not the Big Famous Guillotine French revolution everyone talks about, but one of the ~ 2,456^2 other revolutions that went on in our otherwise very calm history.
Specifically, we refer to the Les Mis revolution as “Les barricades” mostly because the people of Paris stuck barricades everywhere and fought against authority because they didn’t like the king the other powers of Europe put into place after Napoleon’s defeat. They failed that time, but succeeded 15 years later with another revolution (to put a different king in place).
Victor Hugo loved Napoleon with a passion, and was definitely on the side of the revolutionaries here (though he was but a wee boy when this happened, about the age of Gavroche).
Later, in the 1850s (I’m skipping over a few revolutions, including the one that got rid of kings again), when Haussmann was busy bringing 90% of medieval Paris to rubble to replace it with the homogenous architecture we so admire in Ratatouille today, Napoleon the IIIrd had the great idea to demolish whole blocks and replace them with wide streets (like the Champs Elisées) to make barricade revolutions harder to do.
Final note: THANK YOU LW TEAM for making àccénts like thìs possible with the typeface. They used to look bloated.
That’s not quite true. Les Mis starts in 1815, but the book spans decades and the revolution is in 1832, a short-lived uprising against the king who got in power two years before, in the 1830 revolution against the dynasty the other European powers restored after Napoleon’s defeat in 1815.
Ah right, the decades part—I had written about the 1930 revolution, commune, and bourbon destitution, then checked the dates online and stupidly thought “ah, it must be just 1815 then” and only talked about that. Thanks
This is a leak, so keep it between you and me, but the big twist to this years Petrov Day event is that Generals who are nuked will be forced to watch the 2012 film on repeat.
Have you watched Les Miserables? Watching it completely changed the vibe of this song for me, such that it pretty much makes the opposite point now than it did before.
I have. I think that overall Les Mis is rather more favorable to revolutionaries than I am. For one thing, it wants us to ignore the fact that we know what will happen when Enjolras’s ideological successors eventually succeed, and that it will not be good.
(The fact that you’re using the word ‘watched’ makes me suspect that you may have seen the movie, which is honestly a large downgrade from the musical.)
Isn’t Les Mis set in the second French Revolution (1815 according to wikipedia) not the one that led to the Reign of Terror (which was in the 1790s)?
Ahem, as one of LW’s few resident Frenchmen, I must interpose to say that yes, this was not the Big Famous Guillotine French revolution everyone talks about, but one of the ~ 2,456^2 other revolutions that went on in our otherwise very calm history.
Specifically, we refer to the Les Mis revolution as “Les barricades” mostly because the people of Paris stuck barricades everywhere and fought against authority because they didn’t like the king the other powers of Europe put into place after Napoleon’s defeat. They failed that time, but succeeded 15 years later with another revolution (to put a different king in place).
Victor Hugo loved Napoleon with a passion, and was definitely on the side of the revolutionaries here (though he was but a wee boy when this happened, about the age of Gavroche).
Later, in the 1850s (I’m skipping over a few revolutions, including the one that got rid of kings again), when Haussmann was busy bringing 90% of medieval Paris to rubble to replace it with the homogenous architecture we so admire in Ratatouille today, Napoleon the IIIrd had the great idea to demolish whole blocks and replace them with wide streets (like the Champs Elisées) to make barricade revolutions harder to do.
Final note: THANK YOU LW TEAM for making àccénts like thìs possible with the typeface. They used to look bloated.
That’s not quite true. Les Mis starts in 1815, but the book spans decades and the revolution is in 1832, a short-lived uprising against the king who got in power two years before, in the 1830 revolution against the dynasty the other European powers restored after Napoleon’s defeat in 1815.
Ah right, the decades part—I had written about the 1930 revolution, commune, and bourbon destitution, then checked the dates online and stupidly thought “ah, it must be just 1815 then” and only talked about that. Thanks
“second” laughcries in french
This is a leak, so keep it between you and me, but the big twist to this years Petrov Day event is that Generals who are nuked will be forced to watch the 2012 film on repeat.
Eeeesh. I know I’ve been calling for a reign of terror with heads on spikes and all that, but I think that seems like going a bit too far.