something i think is pretty common to media and i always felt a little weird about but didn't fully realize why until i watched hadestown for the first time is the concept of the loss of identity in a given institution. eurydice forgets who she is for like two songs and it's a plot point to prove what a laborer loses in becoming part of hadestown but it's so... isolated?
there's a lot of tropes and ideas that are so well-established in media that they're expected in certain genres and don't require explanation, and this happens in hadestown, the les mis musical, of the devil—they all have some reflection of institutions removing the identity of individuals to homogenize a group (usually a labor force), but it feels like they do this because it's expected, not because it's particularly strongly integrated with the themes of the work.
hadestown's institution is the state of labor in very specifically neoliberal capitalism, and while eurydice's suffering was very real and understandable to me i didn't get why the miners had to lose their sense of individuality. the institution which hadestown critiques, to me, is not something that revokes identity anymore, at least not in 2026, where the commodification of the consumer through personalization and surveillance have become norms of consumption. the laborer also gets intruded on when their name, their demographic, their private details, and all their previous history become data points that their are often asked for in a job application. of course these are relatively (but not completely) recent developments and i almost thought hadestown was made in the 80s when i first saw it so certainly i might be critiquing it based on retrospective views they had little way of knowing, but does anyone else think this trope feels odd and maybe dated?
like les mis the novel—which is set in a very different economy—has similar themes of institutionally backed loss of identity, just not through calling jean valjean by his prison number. in the arras trial he's able to remember names and characteristics about his fellow inmates, even if many of them are scars and habits gained through prison, like his own gait from walking with a ball. when his name isn't jean valjean, he goes by prestigious names, maire/pere madeleine, m. leblanc, ultime fauchelevent, monsieur jean; these names are all intentionally distanced from his "real" name, and they all serve purposes for what jean valjean or the spectator who named him is trying to accomplish. jean valjean being monsieur gens has a diegetic reason and origin story which qualify why the institution found it necessary/why the effects of the institution forced jean valjean to distance himself from his identity as a tree-pruner in faverolles.
my point is that i think the take that capitalism/industrial labor makes you a cog in the machine and destroys your sense of self is overrated, despite it being perfectly qualifiable, because people have accepted the take for so long that lots of writers don't feel the need to qualify it and in fact are wont to take it as a given which should be included in their work, making the discourse surrounding it quite dated and thoughtless, and people who believe this should qualify these themes
postscript: of the devil does this fine because mass-production, replaceability, and the way people are homogenized in the face of not only companies but also fellow humans are themes but even then the inclusion of it in the prison system felt so... random. why are the prisoners given the psychological torture of becoming unrecognizable? does the prison or government or a third private entity benefit from that? how is this relevant to sosuke?????????? he doesn't depend on his individuality, even if [SPOILERS] [SPOILERS] [SPOILERS]
grace: the color settings on the mary's camera are so.... bad
-flashback-
grace: aren't the astronomers going to get photography training? for science
stratt, speaking to the tertiary science specialist: no. sending back photos might come into play but otherwise learning about tau ceti itself is unimportant and weighs down the ship
the history books are like "yeah the bastille was stormed for arms really not as much for human liberation" but for all the truths about there only being <10 people in there, i swear like everyone who went to prison went to the bastille
phm doodle i haven't scanned. i like to think the hail mary has a few copies of That One soviet environmentalist piece, because the wonders and novelties of space exploration always makes me a little more loving about earth <3
starting to understand why hugo likes puns because every time i notice another jesus reference in jean valjean i feel as exasperated as when i realize a bad pun
Does anyone know what I'm talking about when I say that there's a quote about frev that has something to do with (parentless? natural?) children getting adopted by the patrie?
I need it for an essay I'm writing... but I can't find it. It's quoted somewhere in one of the "starter" books from recent historiography I believe (McPhee's LoD?) but maybe I'm getting the keywords wrong because I swear it exists but I haven't found it.
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