blackfeminism:

pilferingapples:

lesmisconfessions:

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.

-Speaking of social elites! Police inspectors were not at all in that number. (Also Javert may not have been exactly an inspector, Hugo appears to have conflated some duties) (And here’s some NSFW reading on what those duties might entail! Warning: lots and lots of talk of prostitution). Remember that even in the book, Hugo describes society “closing its doors” (which, OUCH) on two classes: those who attack it and those who defend it, meaning in that particular passage criminal and the law. Inspectors were poorly paid and poorly trained, with training/schools for the field not established until 1883.

– Eponine can totally be “black with white 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

Anonymous Artist

Prince Louis Aniaba

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.

See also:

An African Prince at the Court of the Sun King by Phillipe Halbert

Blank Darkness: Africanist Discourse in French by Christopher L. Miller, p. 32-36

Chevalier Joseph Boulogne de Saint-Georges, musician whose work influenced Mozart’s.

Ange-Jacques Gabriel

Mascaron, Place de la Bourse

Bordeaux, France (1730-1775)

Pierre-Antoine Demachey

El Preste Juan; Emperador de los Abisinios (Prester John)

France (c. 1760s)

Hand-colored lithograph.

NYPL Digital Collections.

Jean Discart

The Connoisseurs

France (1884)

Oil on Wood, 43 x 32 cm.

[x] [x]

Jean-Louis André Théodore Géricault

Portrait of a Black Man

France (c. 1823)

Oil on Canvas

[x] [x] [x] [x]

Jean Discart

A North African Merchant

France (b. 1856)

[x]

Jean Louis André Théodore Gericault

Portrait of the Model Joseph

France (1818)

Oil on Canvas, 46.5 x 30 cm.

The J. Paul Getty Museum.

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

Jean-Jacques-François Le Barbier; Workshop of De Manou

Africa from a set of The Four Continents

France (1786)

Wool and Silk Tapestry, 365.8 x 457.2 cm

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
http://www.metmuseum.org

Jean-Léon Gérôme

Bashi-Bazouk

France (1868)

Oil on Canvas, 80 x 66 cm.

Olivier Pichat

Général Thomas Alexandre Dumas (father of author Alexandre Dumas)

France (c. 1790s, not dated)

Unknown Artist

Portrait of George Augustus Polgreen Bridgetower(1780-1860)

England (c. 1790s)

British Museum

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

French (Albi 1864 – 1901 Malromé)

The Black Countess

France (1881)

Oil on board

32.4 x 40.7 cm (12 3/4 x 16 in.)

[x]

Edgar Degas

Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando

France, 1879

Oil on canvas, 117.2 x 77.5 cm.

National Gallery, London, Great Britain

Reblogging for the jaw-dropping power of the sourcing in the reply.