I’ve seen that ‘modern LM film set in NYC’ post a bunch, and while it’s definitely an A+ post, something about the portrayal of Javert strikes me as just a bit off. I could be looking at things completely wrong, but for me one of the really big things about Javert, one of his crucial points, is that he is not from a more privileged societal position than JVJ or even necessarily Fantine. Like, Javert was born in prison to, IIRC, a single woman of uncertain racial heritage who had been arrested for fortune telling. He is, arguably, starting from a position of less societal privilege than Jean Valjean, who, before his arrest, was a bog standard poor peasant type. The point of Javert’s story, I think, is to directly respond to a very standard criticism of the book’s main argument, i.e. that Jean Valjean brought his misfortune upon himself by stealing/Fantine did the same by becoming a prostitute/having a kid out of wedlock/whatever people want to say about Fantine, and that if they had just Followed The Rules and Kept Their Heads Down they’d have been better off. Javert did exactly that. Javert’s entire character arc is grounded in the fact that he is a man who epitomized Following The Rules. He is the system (complete with having internalized its hierarchies completely). And in the end he too is destroyed by it. The point of Javert (or, one of the points; this is LM after all) is that the system will crush you even if you cooperate with it. The amis and their fellow revolutionaries are trying to destroy it because it hurts everyone, no matter how hard they try to stay within the lines and follow all the rules.
So, getting back to the modern AU, I feel like Javert would work better if he was more like Jean Valjean and Fantine. I’m kind of leery of saying that straight up, since setting the story in modern day USA brings up a whole boatload of racial politics that I am absolutely 100% not in a position to address. But I feel like making Javert obviously different from people like JVJ and Fantine, like making them black and making him white, loses a little bit of that piece of the story. Javert isn’t just a representation of the system and an authority figure, Javert is a symbol of how following the system can fuck you over just as hard as not following it.
The point of Javert (or, one of the points; this is LM after all) is that the system will crush you even if you cooperate with it.
^^^^^Yes yes yes EXACTLY!
And it’s not like he’s *only* crushed at the end, either. He lives his entire life fairly poor and incredibly isolated; the price of not being treated like a criminal by the legal system is that he basically turns his own life into a prison.
–And as someone else (sorry, I can’t find the post atm!) recently pointed out, Javert is described in a way that makes it clear he *looks* exactly like the sort of person law enforcement of the day would have expected to be a criminal–like, there were guidebooks with lists of “criminal features” and Javert has those features, pretty much all of them. So there’s that for the visual side of things.