In watching the second portion of Les Miserables, I noticed a very specific form of interaction between society, Jean Valjean, and the Thenardier family. Jean obviously knew that Cosette was being treated poorly by this couple, hence the reason he went to save Cosette. When Jean arrives to their inn we can immediately see a very strange couple dynamic. The couple couldn't care less about the young girl. The only benefits she brought them was housework. Jean can see this, but the couple tries to swindle him like they've done with everyone else in the town. Jean blocks any physical contact, and interacts with them in a way that says he is not going to put up with the game they are playing that has seemed to work on everyone else.
What interested me more, however, was the way the couple departs from the girl, and how nobody reacts. They put on an act to show the outside world that they care about the girl, and they are upset about having her taken away. From the outside looking in, this is a very strange situation. We can see that the couple has no form of human decency or care about the ethical treatment of the child, but the people in the town take no care because the couple puts on such a good act. It is their lack of attention that makes me question the ethical standards of the people in the town. I understand that this is just how this period in history goes, but if we look outside the immediate situation we see a very strange caste system of interaction.
The inn keepers have constantly stolen from the visitors that pass through the town, and they have obviously, openly, treated Cosette poorly, but nothing happens. It makes me wonder, do the Thenardier's have some sort of power in the town? Or does the site of Jean Valjean aka Monsieur Madeleine have a certain power people just don't question?
I suppose what I'm trying to get at is the ethical minds of the people during this time. I haven't seen anyone care about how the rich and powerful treat the lower class. There seems to be no community standard for how people are treated, so the inn keepers can get away with the mistreatment of a child and theft, and Jean Valjean can just take a child from an outwardly distraught couple (no matter how big of a lie it is) and nobody questions it. It must be the period in history, or the fact that the story wouldn't be interesting if a random nobody character intervened, but it made me think about how human interaction and treatment has changed so much over the centuries.
It is true that their definition of communication ethics is different and seems very wrong for us. However, that's just how the things worked back then. They have different norms than community today. I do agree that human interaction and treatment has changed a lot over the centuries which is good. However, I do believe that some people still possess that old norms as sometimes the rich here could just do whatever they want to their worker and get away with it.
ReplyDeleteI tend to agree that human interaction has changed a lot. We have evolved so much from that period in time. Just the simple factor of development of living quarters and how people choose to live today creates some of these changes. We aren't in such close quarters as they lived back then, even the people that choose to live in apartments or condos instead of single family homes have more privacy than in those days. People can keep their business to themselves if they like, which was much more difficult then, in such tight quarters. We have laws in place today that provide more rights and protection to workers. We have laws and policies even between nations today, within the UN, to help regulate the mistreatment of human rights.
ReplyDeleteDue to these and other advancements/changes I feel that as a society we like to think and feel that we have come a long way from this type of treatment, but I throw out the question of whether we actually have. Are we actually ethically treating people better or has industrialization and societal independence just made it easier for people to over look these things. We live in a world now where there are still poor people who are begging on the street corners. Yet people drive by, try not to make eye contact when they walk or drive past and don't intervene when they have the power to make a difference. Providing something as small as a free meal, so they aren't forced to steal or dig in the trash. Prostitution is still relevant today. We've made an entertainment industry for men to observe women as sexual objects while they are performing and taking their clothes off on stage. Working conditions can be terrible for some people due to treatment of upper management, no benefits, unequal wages for different genders and races, etc. I'm not saying that we haven't come a long way; I am just playing devils advocate here and pointing out factors that make me question whether we have actually come as far as many of us would like to think. Is it just easier today to pretend it isn't happening because it doesn't directly affect us, we don't see it blatantly in our faces the way it was then, or have we developed norms in todays society that mask this type of communication ethics?