#sexism in this sport rears it’s ugly head yet again can’t say I’m surprised | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

plunder-heaven-and-devour-god · 6 years

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I harped on what made Notre Dame De Paris a great novel and definitely worthy of its longevity. But now I need to rip it to shreds because sometimes cultural and historical relativism can fuck itself. I need to have this discussion with the void.

I have 206 bones to pick with Hugo and his bullshit.

Don't come at me with your bullshit 1800s enlightened poet’s soul with pretenses of progressivism. Your 15th century sexism is just 19th century misogyny is period attire. The racism is ABHORRENT. Like, I'm not an idiot. Medieval cities like London and Paris were FRAUGHT with people of color, not just the Romani who are so gruesomely marginalized in real life but also in the book. There were "Moors" and many people of the Arab world who passed through Paris. They held rights, they held positions of power and they held positions of servitude equally.

Hugo's era reeks of the eugenics employed to wipe out cultures, skin colors, and ethnic physical features. From the Belgian Congo to the north American destruction of its first Nations cultures there is so much of that coloring Hugo's work. Not to go into it too much but the racism is a different flavour in the 19th century and that’s what you taste reading this book. It’s not the racism that we know today.

Here is what shocked me to my core. I had to stop the book and put my head in my hands.

Quasimodo is black.

And I don't mean the strange colloquialism of a "black countenance or a black attitude" that Romantic writers like to use to mean a dark figure. Neither do I mean the terms old literature uses to call a white person ugly with ethnic features.

I mean fully black. Hugo's 19th century racism in 15th century clothing rears its head. They call him an ape, a contorted construction of the Orient, he describes his black back while being whipped like an animal. When Esmeralda gives Quasimodo water to drink Hugo describes the water falling slack from his surprised and big black lips. His visage and body are ugly because they are black.

Yes there are layers to this, there is the perceived xenophobia, paranoia, and racism of the 15th century but there is also Hugo's which comes after slavery, after the rise of capitalism, after the racism that started with Europe's quest to dehumanize whole ethnicities to justify a global market. You can't sympathize with what isn't human, and that is the motive behind any dismissal of race, gender, etc.

I say this because the racism of the 15th Century is different than how Hugo imagines it. And that is what adds that layer of incredulity to my reading of the text.

Quasimodo is black. Idris Elba taking the role is FINALLY ONE THAT WILL BE ACCURATE. And what's more is that we have recontextualised the story in order to make Quasimodo a sympathetic hero so I'm glad that we call all collectively destroy this image of ugly=black. We can have a narrative that puts black at the forefront of marginalization and mistreatment.

But the Romani, oh my god. They are so persecuted by the fictional parisians and the parisian who writes about them, and the audience that did not want to sympathize as human.

There is, I swear to God, one of the longest chapters about these three women who talk about how this "village whore" had a beautiful daughter and she was supposedly "stolen" by "gypsies". The mother went mad and is later found in what is essentially a public oubliette. She's a pitiable recluse, a feral disgusting husk of limbs. There is SO MUCH TO UNPACK. Apparently her baby was replaced with a disgusting "black/brown gypsy" child who almost killed the mother upon seeing it. We find out later its Quasimodo.

This recluse screams abuse at Esmeralda who passes by just as we are about to witness the famous scene of her feeding Quasimodo water upon the pillory. But yet when one of the women's children shows up this recluse and childless mother has a breakdown. We are supposed to feel bad for her. Hugo does nothing to devillify the Romani people, we are supposed to feel sympathy for this childless mother who has become feral in this public oubliette; she was driven mad by gypsies, the gypsies are evil look at what they did to this not so innocent woman.

All I could think was "you should die in that hole too." PERISH.

We are supposed to sympathize with the White Parisian Power Structure which does indeed think itself superior to the Romani. We are supposed to think this recluse woman has a point, we are supposed to look upon the Romani with revolt in them and think: EW I KNOW RIGHT. But we don’t, not today, we think: what an awful caricature.

To his credit. Hugo does a good job of showing us the fickleness of public sympathy, the parision mob screams for blood and laughs like the Roman mobs in coliseums. I get that. The woman, like many characters are multi faceted, neither good nor bad to a 19th century audience.

Not to mention the Court of Miracles and all the "dark skin personnages" who populate it are done such a crime to them.

Hugo is OBSESSED WITH WHITE BEAUTY. White swan necks, pale hands, rosy feet, white virginal bossoms. He, like every single gly fucking Westerner in yesteryear and today that prizes near a aryan level of beauty. I'll go into this more but Esmerelda is not actually Romani, she's apparently got that "attractive skin that Roman women or andelusians have" and I'm paraphrasing but apparently a slight olive sun tan was a stratification of skin color too fucking dark for Hugo. And as a woman who is often not dark enough to be indian and not white enough to white I find this SO CONDESCENDING AND SO AWFUL TO WOCs.

I can't tell you how many times he trivialises their poverty, their tricks, their mysticism when in reality they are an excommunicated people by the pope. They cannot go anywhere and are not allowed to make a living. There's a reason that Diederle's 1939 version took an anti-fascist position to this opinion and MARGINALLY cracked open some sympathy for the Romanis. He was fleeing the Germans, and according to Lindsay Ellis his film was the only film shown at Cannes that year, a festival created against Naziism. The terms, stereotypes, abuse, and ugly caricatures of the Romani (sometimes called Egyptians, lepers, Jews, blacks, Moors) have literally not changed in centuries, I wouldn't even say after the Holocaust. One can see why this film was used to such a great affect against Faciism, all the terms and abuses which are identical in many places are showcased here.

It's frustrating because some people imply that : "well that's the point, the people in the book are bigoted, unsympathetic, and awful, and that's really how it was in 15th century Paris". To the latter I say no and I've explained why it may be true on a case by case basis. But it’s really REALLY NOT historically accurate and Hugo CLASSIFIES THIS HIMSELF IN THE BOOK AS A HISTORICAL FICITON. And to the former I also say: that's not the point.

Hugo's narration is not just a third person narrator, he refers to himself, asks the reader to permit him things or moments, he clearly sports opinions of art, architecture, the abject deplorability of living in medieval squalor, the ugliness or stupidity of one or another. He is very clearly a character in the book, one that has to differentiate his stance from other characters. His voice, his narration does nothing to exonerate or make a moral statement out of his foes and heros. Which is strange because his self insert character puts on a morality play at the beginning staring the marriage of "commerce and agriculture" and "clerical with noble". Basically Capitalism and Catholicism. He even calls it not very good afterwards. Hugo is a famous playwright. He is occupied with his moral plays and questions. He has Les Miserables to show his support, and exoneration for the people of Paris.

The difference is that he is tackling marginalized people's, people of color, disabled people of color, monstrous people of color, women of color, persecuted and excommunicated people's, pedophilia (yeah I'll get to this.) And he's a white guy. He really isn’t the man who should be writing this.

He venerates the building of Notre Dame which is a beautiful chapter in the book yes. But it is made of stone it cannot feel, it cannot feel the years of mutilation it experience so says Hugo.

The LAST LINE of the 1939 version is Quasimodo looking upon the happy crowd after saving Esmeralda, she goes into the sunset. He is left bereft, alone, still ugly, still forgotten by the narrative. He clutches a gargoyle and says: “Why was I not made of stone like these.” We are at a place in our society that values the individual enough to realise that the Cathedral doesn’t have any FUCKING FEELINGS. Quasimodo does!

Moreover, if the printing press killed architecture as a register human history, it means we get a fundamental shift from

Cathedral important to------>2)Characters are important

Which incidentally, Hugo really did not care about his characters. In visual mass media killing the book, this phenomenon has accelerated and now Notre Dame is not the focus but the setting and circumstances of the story. The characters and their plights are what is more important.

And again, people would say: what were you expecting? To which I say: yeah. I wasn't expecting much more. To be honest, sometimes I even expect worse. He is a man of his time. And for a man of this time the very clear anti clerical, and anti establishment sentiment is already progressive by the standards of his epoch and that of the historical setting of the book.

But.

Yet again, we haven't had a version of the story that has ever shown the plight off the marginalized. Not properly.

We have had a black Quasimodo yet on screen because I think many content creators and audiences did not want to sympathise with a black quasimodo. And Esmerelda of color is supported, I think, because the gendered benefit of her beauty for consumption. And the added benefit of any and all racism taking on a gendered role. We never truly get to see the Romani demystified or devilified. They’re still goofy and charletons in the Disney movies in 1996.

However, the Disney movie made Quasimodo its hero, they gave us the corny yet poignant: internal beauty is what matters. The question who is the monster and who is the man is posed to the audience. We only ever get to see Frollo's abusive relationship with the Hunchback. We get to sympathize with quasimodo. AND AGAIN Lindsay Ellis does a MUCH better and succinct job than me of explaining this. (its a great video, half of the articulations here come from her forming the idea first).

In the 1939 film we see this anti fascist, anti Holocaust sentiment in the treatment of the Romani. They are still cartoonish, and treated badly. But Esmerelda is actually Romani in this one, although white washed to hell and back.

I can't say yet, because Esmerelda and Frollo haven't actually had a scene together yet in Notre Dame De Paris. But the Disney version and the 1939 version are the only two insofar that treat Frollo's obsession with Esmerelda as violence. His lust for her is abuse, it is racial and sexual violence. His absolute anti-romani mania that equals his clerical devotion is manifested in this. And stupidly enough the fucking Disney version does this on film the best in my opinion. There was room for melodrama in the book and even less in the 1939 version. But the Disney one doesn't fuck around. To quote James Janisse from Drunk Disney: "monsters are rapey". They take the subtext of his lust for this “gypsy girl” and spell out physically in a short amount of time and leave you no wiggle room.

And Frollo is one of my favourite fictional characters because it's rare for me to watch a Disney movie between my fingers in disgust and horror. I love him because of Tony Jay's tar gargling voice and the blaspheming Catholic imagery and the disgusting split we witness down his deplorable excuse of a human soul.

But I want to get the issue of Frollo out of the way. The Disney version took its Renaissance formula and made him, although more dimensional than let's say Ursula or Radcliffe, is still a maniacal, evil laugh, and Disney-fied villain. We are never to question who is the monster and who is the man.

That isn't the issue with the book, Hugo writes this as a commonplace occurrence, this repressed lust for the object of his hatred. Which is fair and fine. And for the audience he is a prominent face in a heartless medieval mob of horrid antagonist/villains.

However, I don't know if Hugo cared if you did know who the main antagonist was. He oscillates from condemning the artists who ruined the gothic soul of Notre Dame, to the White Whole Foods mom's of 15th century Paris to the people who stone Quasimodo on the pillory. Jehannes Frollo is a douche, and unlikeable, so is Phoebus, oh god so is Gringoire. Literally every mob or crowd scene we see that all of Paris is an antagonist. Hugo almost says: look at all these awful ugly disgusting people, they're all gross and awful now moving on to my sweeping 20 page description of this corner of the cloisters.

Hugo described awful people doing awful things and then pipes up and says: aren't these people horrible! He just doesn't...do that with Frollo? Mostly because Frollo has been wholly inactive until Book 7 of 21. But when he is he doesn't say: this near forty year old is getting flushed and possessive of a sixteen years olds virginity and throws gringoire on the floor out of jealousy because he hears about his peep sow.....ISNT THAT HORRIBLE. I haven’t heard Hugo do a condemnation of that yet, which wouldn’t be strange if he hadn’t done that for literally everyone else.

There are several chapters explaining how smart Frollo is, how voracious his mind is, the depthless love he has for his spoiled and ungrateful brother Jehannes. We find out he's reviled by the public because he knows alchemy, mathematics, and languages. He's considered to be a sorcerer WHICH IS IRONIC considering that he's tasked the head torturer to track down la Esmeralda for witchcraft. This is purposeful on Hugo's part. The judge who condemns Quasimodo to be whipped at the pillory is also deaf. It's a whole farce. It's meant to be. Deaf men condemn deaf men. A perceived Sorcerer condemns a perceived Sorceress. Blah blah blah I’m Victor Hugo, the building is the only sacred thing.

But to be frank, Hugo hasn't been like: if the audience permits we would like the examine the horrible defection of Frollo's predatory nature. He calls Frollo a bird of prey once but that's it.

The mob and Frollo become unbalanced and sooner rather than later Frollo becomes the major evil. Even Frollo, is a quiet evil in this book, and the 1939 version does a good job of capturing this in the God Help the Outcasts scene. Again, in the written word killing the edifice we have reshuffled the roles and priorities of the story. Frollo is the major evil. And that's fine with me.

And I'm not trying to fish out a message about how Hugo feels about Frollo or who the true evil of the book is. That is clear to the audience. It's a varying and fickle degree of personnages who do awful things. In later adaptations the preoccupations of individuals leads us to draw greater conclusions from them. I'm just hoping we get one good condemnation out of Hugo, regardless of the obvious plot and set up as the antagonist.

EDIT:

Now that I'm further into the book I can safely say Hugo makes Frollo one of the most despicable villains in all of literally fiction. It's disgusting and nauseating. And the reason Hugo never says: look at how wrong this is is because this book is very anti clerical and anti Catholic church. Its not anti-spiritual or against faith I would say. But Hugo was progressive in the sense that he was anti establishment to a degree. Frollo is this exemplification for the hatred and bigoted mania the Catholic Church was exuding at the time. Between excommunicating an entire race, inquisitions, monstrous campaigns of slaughter, there is also lots of sexual misconduct. Rampant sexual misconduct. The clergy abusing their power. The repressed sexuality associated with evil and wrongdoing takes a definitive example in Frollo. He is positively obessed with Esmerelda to the point where Hugo spells out to us in big letters: this is sexual violence.

He is the main villain, literally no one can fucking take that mantle away from him. I was going down the wrong vein of thought above. So ignore it. Because Hugo takes a while to get to the plot of his story it means that we don't have Frollo truly do anything until the seventh book of 21. And when he does...

I wanted to vomit to be honest. I couldn't listen to the audio book. I kept putting down my ebook and walking around and avoiding it. It was one of the hardest reads. Phoebus allows Frollo to be a voyeur as he coerces Esmerelda to have sex with him (she's sixteen literally all the men in this book have to die). He plants a horrid disgusting putrid kiss on her after she faints in a pool of phobus blood. He is one of the hooded figures who puts her to the leather bed and tortures a confession out of her next to Charmoulue he heard torturer. He comes down to her oubliette to just literally beg for sex, he implores her begs her, literally even if she were to hurt him. Then when she is about to be hanged he leans down in front of the whole crowd (so some people think he's hearing her last confession) and tells her again the offer to bang is still there. She only says no because of Phoebus (who is actually alive and feeling up his fiancée within seeing distance). He starts associating the bodily harm of Esmerelda with sex and it's just so disgusting.

God and when Esmerelda gets her sanctuary in one of the appartment of the belltower Quasimodo never went the appartment. He brings her birds and flowers, respects her space. But that fuckwit Frollo can see the appartment from his office, i guess you'd call it where he's been angsting for weeks as he voyeuristlically sees Esmerelda go about her day. Then he remembers that he has a key, assaults her again, and Quasimodo pretty much almost shanks him.

Now Frollo is trying to get Gringoire to lure Esmerelda out.

Anyways this is all to say this Frollo is the worse one, Hugo went there, i was so wrong. This version made me so nauseous and terrified. Hugo doesn't mince words with who he thinks is the villain. The sexual obsession is racial violence, the racism is gendered. Vice versa.

Anyways it so bad I cant wait til every man except quasi dies in this book. Though, to the other men's credit sometimes i hate grigoire and Phoebus more than Frollo. Idk it really depends on who is doing what and when.

But let's get back to Hugo.

Where do I start when it comes to Hugo and La Esmerelda. Again, it's a useless discussion to have, we know this is a misogynistic and bigoted warp of a set of female stereotypes.

But I'll start with this.

Esmerelda is sixteen years old. She's infantilised, ridiculed, condescended to, abused, and so so so much more. Not to mention Hugo seems to revile and hate women despite his prolific attendance of 19th century brothels.

Yeah and I think Frollo is supposed a thirty nine year old who looks twice that age already. Which you know is pedophilia. Which Hugo just presents for you to make your judgment, hopefully congruent. Duh.

That's not my beef with how Hugo writes Esmerelda.

It's how the narration goes out of its way to sexualise that innocence. Nothing new, mind you of 19th Century Romanticism or 15th Century historical setting. But as a modern reader it can jar you out of the experience. Gringoire literally says: “she doesn't even know what the difference between a man and a woman in her dreams". And he revels in peeping behind a curtain and sees her in her shift while UGH explaining this to Frollo who wants to know if she's still virginal. Literally locker room talk about a child and her body to an old priest from a shitty poet.

Esmeralda is not sexually mature, when she dances she does it with a child’s abandon and to put bread on the table. She doesn't understand what her sexual appeal is, and it makes the dances feel voyeuristic and nonconsensual. And it's stupid. Making her older gives her agency when this book literally robs her of agency. Making her younger gives her no agency and makes us observant in her abuses, or at least that is how I felt.

Hugo writes others calling her: girl, little girl, gypsy girl, "the Esmerelda", the sorceress". You're probably asking: why are you surprised. I'm not I'm just aggravated at times when faced with a time capsule from the 1800s. It’s hard listening to Frollo, every judge, mother, petty bourgeoisie, Phoebus, and Gringoire call her “little girl” without thinking she’s eight years old.

There is a scene where Phoebus calls Esmeralda into a home where he's hanging with his fiancée, her family, and bitchy friends. And BECAUSE WOMEN CAN’T BE FRIENDS the minute Esmeralda comes in, Hugo describes that each of the women turn on their bitch switch because she's prettier than they are and they all want the one man in the rooms affection because ALL WOMEN WANT IS A MAN’S ATTENTION. So they start tearing her apart. Phoebus is gross, a pig, a soldier more likely to force a women than not. He infantilizes her just as much as the narrator.

The women start verbally shaming her, they slutshame and everything else they can think of. Until she just? Feels like she's given leave to go? Esmeralda only speaks when spoken to, she only came in when she was bid to. For such a free spirit according to Hugo she’s the perfect docile and desirable woman when need be.

Her beauty and sexuality are made appealing and un-romani for consumption, for the men in the book and the reader. Because Hugo like most men of the time and many of today are obsessed with white beauty. She has no faults, she is literally described as being perfect if not for her "pout" which, again, feels SO SEXUAL for a childlike sixteen year old. The only faults she has is the ones litigated against her for things she cannot change like her gender and supposed race.

It made me want a story told from Esmeraldas point of view, written by and for WOC. I want to see Esmeralda bandaging up her feet after a day of dancing, her toes and knuckles bloodied up from trying to earn a living. After a day of dancing she would glance over at the meagre coins in her hat and sigh at how little food she will have. I want the exoneration of the Romani people and treat them with dignity. Her poverty is unattractive and not noble but imposed on her by a system that hates her for something she can't control. I'd want an older Esmeralda with more agency, more control over herself. Shes be romani, or not. You commit to one. I'd love to see a scene where she is on the run and she does feel the entire world hate her and she is allowed moments of imperfections and cry. The world is on fire, the flames of Esmeralda as the book calls it, but their the flames of an ignoble archdeacon, the pursuit of an ingoble Archer and a wretch treated as badly as her. I want to see Esmeralda rage against an effigy, a saint and swear on her knees that she would kill all four of them with her bare hands, Frollo, Quasimodo, Gringoire, Phoebus for making her the literal objectified vessels of their want. I’d want her to kick Frollo's dead body. I would want to see her in Notre Dame by herself under the rosary window while we get lighting to denote what alignment our leading men are as they watch her and pour all of their hates and wants and make her into a vessel for themselves. To make that clear to the audience is so important. I would want her to have friends, female friends. I'd want her to stab AT LEAST ONE TO THREE PEOPLE. I would want her to be shown intelligent because she's put down for being illiterate. I want to see Esmeralda so righteously mad that God would have to beg for her forgiveness. I'd want her to leave Paris after the epic affair of Notre Dame and set back on her nomadic path convinced that no man or place is good enough for her. But when all is said and done, even when she has nothing, she has always had herself and that has been enough. She has herself and her people and that is what she needs.

And don't get me wrong I STILL LIKE THIS BOOK A LOT. And even with these parts being wholly unacceptable to me as a modern person I can enjoy the book, and not even have to practice a 2018 woke awareness to it. If I didn't read books by authors who thought that darker skinned people were inferior I'd pretty much be reading almost nothing. The story is genuinely interesting and so are the characters, stunted and pushed aside by the author as they are. But I just needed to do a comparison. To lay out all the thoughts on the table with the facts and go pretty much say what Hugo does: Not much changes in all this time, and at the same time nothing is the same.

#meta #longpost #notre dame de paris #victor hugo #also i do love this book a lot i just have frustrations and feelings #and now i have to watch the 1939 version again because i love that movie its so bad and so good #also #esmeralda #needs her own platform #and her own story from her perspective #and more merchandise #so we can all make hugo fucking roll in his grave #just let me know if these longposts are annoying

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