Social Science Perspective on Les Mis

Amongst the craziness of life, the universe, and everything (specifically a 25 point project taking 10 hours to do right (see this video) and the ups and downs of midterms) I was able to finally see Les Misérables a couple weeks ago when a friend invited a group of people to go. This means I am somewhat qualified (at least capable) of giving an opinion about the movie. On BYU Memes, there was a meme/comment thread that described reasons why certain people didn't like Les Misérables for several different reasons. Being an admin for the page, I felt like I needed to watch the movie to truly understand why the movie was or was not the greatest thing since Wicked to adequately give an opinion. Among the sea of opinions about why or why not Les Misérables is a good musical or a good movie, mine is of the positive, and (because it is me) comes from a perspective of a social scientist.

I think the reason why we generally like Les Misérables so much is because we can connect to each character emotionally in some way, whether we have experienced similar emotions or we know someone who has. We develop a deep connection with the characters, and when they lead intertwining lives where one good or bad intention affects the others around them for good or for bad (and, in most cases, it is for the worse), it is heart-wrenching. The musical or movie does a really good job at making you deeply study the characters' lives for yourself and see the complexity of each individual human's thoughts and how much interdependence is portrayed with actions. In a nutshell, here are some examples:

• You can't see Cosette and Eponine fully happy at the same time because they like the same man (and what girl has not been on both sides of that coin, I ask you.) 
• The good intentions of Jean Valjean get besmirched by a complicated mess of gossip, pride, lust, resentment of rejection, Javert's insatiable sense of false justice and mistrust of full repentance (because of the cynicism that has grown inside him from criminals not changing), and the context of government hostility and economic depression. 
• The girl saved from hard labor and child abuse (Cosette) grows up isolated and horribly naïve and somewhat resents her rescuer and only father she's really known who has only tried to keep her safe the best way he knew how. Perhaps he was a helicopter parent, but perhaps a little paranoia, considering Javert's history, was what was needed.
• All of these events (and more) happen while Jean Valjean has a horrible guilt complex and build up of anxiety about being a changed man, and he is encouraged to have low self-esteem until his dying day, by Javert's false sense of justice. 
• Ironically enough, the battle scenes at the bunkers, where half of the people worth noting die, have some of the least amount of effect on the interdependence of individual story lines we see in the whole movie (at least if we compare the on-screen time of different events.) We see the end of a lot of people, but the only one the deaths really affect is Marius (and, perhaps, Javert, depending on your perspective, but it is more psychological warfare with Jean Valjean to me, and somewhat detached to the battle scene at hand.) I guess I'm also not including the audience being affected, as we bawled through the innocent deaths that were for naught, but you must remember that we aren't really in the movie, even though it may seem like that emotionally.

In the end, the more I think of it tonight, I think we can also see our daily conundrums and faults embodied within the characters. We know the difficulty of making hard decisions in our lives, and know that agony. We see ourselves in Javert's battle with what is justice and mercy, and knowing who to trust, what things are going with the letter and spirit of the law, and how much we fully believe in repentance for others and ourselves. I'm going to generalize this next bit to everyone, though I'm not sure how far the reach of this is, so bear with me.  We also can see ourselves through Jean Valjean, as much as we hate to admit it, because we also can't let our former actions go sometimes when evaluating ourselves as a person. We see ourselves as broken, even if we say we believe in entire repentance. When people tell us that we are wonderful, we can't accept that because of our glaring past, present faults, and we hold on to negative opinions of ourselves like a pair of old duct-taped, tattered, and ill-functioning shoes instead of letting ourselves break-in the nice ones because we're afraid of dirtying them. We believe the man saying he's fighting for justice is telling the truth; perhaps because he personally believes that is what is happening helps convince ourselves, even if we know that he won't win in the end. We need to realize that the conviction of negative forces does not make them right, and our self doubts and secret stashes of self-resentment can be taken away by hope and trust in the atonement of Christ. He bore all things (not just our sins), and he did it so we could change for good, not just erase our mistakes or duct tape the holes. Believe it as much as He does: let's all learn a lesson or two from some of the unnecessary self-deprecation and let's be a little more whole.