Blog post 1 - Les Misérables

Les Misérables is a fantastic film to review when looking at Communication Ethics, mainly because of all the different ways the film portrays the subject.  One of the most notable examples of communication ethics in the film can be seen in the opening scene.  After Jean Valjean has helped pull the ship in, he is told that he has been issued parole.  Here we learn why Valjean is a slave: to help his family Valjean had stolen some bread.  This was enough to not only make him a slave, but also to permanently mark his reputation as a dangerous individual.

Before any of the lyrics have been sung, we can already see how Valjean is different than the others pulling in the boat with him.  While all the slaves were singing about not looking at Javert and looking down, you could see Valjean looking at and occassionaly making eye contact with Javert.  This non-verbal communication shows the viewer that Valjean is not afraid of Javert, or at least not as much as his fellow slaves.  The lack of fear is then translated over when they are communicating verbally after the ship has been brought in.

This is where the conflict of differing morals comes into play.  Javert, who is the overseer of the slaves, lives his life with the idea of the laws being the most important thing.  Contrarily Valjean would be anything for his family, including as we just discovered, breaking the law.  This dialoge between Valjean and Javert was very intriguing to me because of the differing moral views.  Both of them believe that they did what they needed to do, Valjean fed his family, while Javert followed the laws.  Since we are looking at communication ethics, it is important to see how these different moral viewpoints were expressed in the conversation between the two.  Even as his sentence was finished, Valjean continued to plead his case stating that all he did was steal bread and expressed how hungry they were.  Which is then met with Javert countering by stating that he needs to learn the law.  It was interesting to see this back and forth dialogue so early in the film to contrast the two different characters and how they handle the difference in morals.