I dont Think any of the les mis cast actors can be black. If you were black in France in 1800 you would be lower class. And it was before integration. It is not historicly correct that Javert, a police officer with High status, would have been black. I love norm Lewis, but no. And eponine cant be black, and have white parents. Im not racist, i repeat not racist
Everything about this is factually wrong.
-There very much were black people in high status positions in France in the 1800s. Here, check out the Dumas Family —General, famous author, and hey, another fairly successful author!. Sure, most black people would not have been high status— most PEOPLE, period, were not among the social elite, because that’s how an elite works. And racism was certainly a complicating factor for anyone not white. But 1800s France was not 1800s USA, the systems in play were very different, and the options for racially marginalized groups were likewise different.
– Eponine can totally be “black withwhite parents”. Or white with black parents! (cw:racism, both those links) SO COULD ANY OF THE CHARACTERS, Because Genetics. It’s a lot more complicated than people seem to realize!
All this, of course, on top of the realities of theater that I’ve seen other people mention in the notes to this post re:colorblind casting, the fact that we accept ENGLISH SPEAKERS in 1820s-1830s France (and Hugo didn’t talk overmuch about race but he has ACTUAL CHAPTERS to say on language), and, y’know, the singing thing (although there IS a surprising amount of actual singing in the Brick.) And anyone claiming to be Not A Racist might want to first wonder why they find RACE the objectionable adaptational issue, rather than the English, the singing, or the wildly inaccurate clothing in most stage productions (the xylophone, now, THAT would not have been happening. At least not on Enjolras. But I’m willing to go with it, aren’t you, OP?).
I’m going to guess it’s at least partly because, ESPECIALLY in the USA, ALL OF US are subject to certain cultural narratives that prioritize race as a focus and normalize historical racism, whether we ourselves want to believe those narratives or not. Which is the only reason I’m posting here; it’s certainly not because I’m an expert in the field. I’m not one of the real heavy researchers, I’m not equipped to answer fine-detailed questions about the history of race relations in France past OR present (and I expect to be offered corrections and criticism on this post really fast, AS IT SHOULD BE, because this is important!). But that’s kind of my point; it took me all of thirty minutes to look up most of this (INCLUDING the non-Tumblr commissioner stuff, and there was more of that if I’d needed to construct pay records etc. on my own), and that’s on dialup. We don’t have to accept the whole “history is for white people” idea, and why would anyone WANT to?
Title Painting. Portrait of a woman.
Creator LESAGE Pierre Alexis (1872—1932)., artist
Date XIX—XX century.
Description (Young black woman, dressed in high-necked blouse, turned three-quarters to the right.)
Photo source: Menil Foundation/
Photographer: Mario Carrieri,
Repository NANTES., Musée des Beaux-Arts.
Source The Image of the Black in Western Art Research Project and Photo Archive, W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, Harvard University
Title: “Said Abdallah from the Tribe of Mayac in the Realm of Darfour”, a portrait of Seïd Enkess, a freed Black slave who became a professional model in Paris.
Sophie de Tott, Ourika, ca. 1793. From the frontispiece of Roger Little, Ourika, 1998. Ourika is depicted crowning a bust of the maréchal de Beauvau with a garland of flowers. The painting is in a private collection.
Anonymous, Portrait of Ourika, nd. Reproduced in Roger Little,Ourika, 1998; who reproduced it from Léonel de la Tourrasse, Le Château du Val dans la forêt de Saint-Germain. Private collection, Château du Val.
Charles-Henri-Joseph Cordier
Capresse des Colonies
France (1861)
Bust in onyx and patinated bronze and stone on a pedestal of rose veined marble, 96.5 x 54 x 28 cm.
Print for Illustration for Trajes de la Ordenes Religiosas y Militares: Gran Maestre del Orden de la Estrella de Na Sra (en Africa) segun andaba en la Corte de Francia.
France (c. 1780)
Engraving, Print on Paper; 350 x 230 mm.
At the end of the seventeenth century, Louis Aniaba was the protege of Louis XIV, and the first black officer in the French army.
Jean-Baptiste Belley was born in Senegal, kidnapped at a young age and sold into slavery in Saint-Domingue. Over the years he gained his freedom (some sources say he saved money and bought his freedom; others say he earned his freedom through his military service).
In 1793, he was one of three delegates sent to represent Saint-Domingue in the National Convention, and afterward the Council of Five Hundred. He served until 1797, thus being one of the people to vote to abolish slavery in French colonies the first time in 1794.
After losing his seat to Étienne Mentor, he joined Leclerc’s 1802 expedition to Saint-Domingue to take control from Louverture. However, he was arrested by the French and imprisoned in Belle-Île. He died in 1805.
Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson
Portrait de C.[itoyen] Jean-Baptiste Belley, ex-représentant des colonies
The Image of the Black in Western Art Research Project and Photo Archive, W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, Harvard University
Jean-Antoine Houdon
Portrait Bust
France (1781)
Plaster study for a fountain, 32 cm.
Soisson, Museé Municipal.
(Head of a black woman, her lips parted, looking slightly to the right.) The bust was damaged in World War I, leaving only the head intact.
The Image of the Black in Western Art Research Project and Photo Archive, W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, Harvard University
Lethière painted this in 1822 from France, but it was never intended to display there. His son Lucien delivered the painting to Haiti in 1823. The scene commemorates the Haitian Revolution, depicting Jean-Jacques Dessalines (right), an ex-slave who led the revolution after Louverture’s arrest and crowned himself the first emperor of Haiti; and Alexandre Pétion (left), a free man of color who defected from Leclerc’s forces and became the first president of the Haitian Republic after Dessalines’ assassination.
The painting was damaged by the 2010 earthquake, and was temporarily moved to France for restoration. After it was fixed, it was displayed in the Louvre briefly before being returned to Haiti.
Did someone really just copy and paste half the MPoC 1800s tag as a
reply to someone spouting nonsense about Le Miserables, including part
of this submission…(screenshot from upthread)?
Also flagging up the fact that the argument about class is irrelevant because we know Valjean was poor, Javert has a line in which he admits “I come from the gutter too”, we have no idea what Fantime’s life was before Cosette, and don’t even get me started on Eponine and the little kid…
Even if you do want to assume that the French Revolutionary period was more racist than it was, you have to acknowledge that at least half the cast was, at least originally, lower class and poor. Your argument therefore sucks and you need a better excuse if you’re that invested in keeping POC off the stage.
30, She/her. Used to be DreamingPagan a long time back. Multi-fandom, mostly Black Sails these days but with a lot of Tolkien and funny things interspersed. Complete language and history nerd - be warned. I write fic and occasionally I talk about ships.
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