My Secret Vice…

Posted on November 3, 2008 by Scott Jennings| 20 Comments

…show tunes.

[YOUTUBE=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3ijYVyhnn0]

(note: I wonder if the people who did this know how Les Miserables ended.)

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  • Pandanapper

    I would have shut this off, but was too busy gouging my eardrums.

  • Gawain

    that was pretty awesome.

  • http://www.flashofsteel.com Troy Goodfellow

    As a musical theater nerd, this is one of my favorite videos of the campaign.

  • TPRJones

    Oh the irony, when you consider that the riots that the opera is based on were sparked by right-wingers against the royalist ruling elite of the time. Technically they’ve got the parties there all backwards.

  • http://westkarana.com Tipa

    Empty chairs at empty tables…

  • http://bdadv.blogspot.com Bonedead

    These last couple posts have given me the impression that you don’t take kindly to people who don’t take kindly to SL and show tunes.

  • http://blog.tonday.com Gunch

    Awesome. They even did the power triangle at the end! LoL.

    I am so ripping this form you and putting it on facebook. :-P

  • The Alien

    Well, the musical does have a happy ending. I think if Obama completes his life’s work just before he is escorted to Heaven by the ghosts of the righteous fallen, people will still be pretty happy.

    (Hopefully he’ll be quite old at that point.)

  • Sjofn

    Yes, when I think “musicals with happy endings,” I think of ones where most of the people are dead by the end, most of them killed just after they realise no one but them cares about the thing they care about.

    The video is cute, but man. I would’ve picked some other musical for sure. :P

  • http://www.killtenrats.com Zubon

    The revolution fails, everyone singing except Sarah Palin dies. This would be the opposition “happy ending” to The Alien’s point.

  • The Alien

    *** SPOILER ALERT ***

    Hey, hey. Sure, almost everyone dies in Les Miserables the musical and the revolution fails.

    But Marius does not die, nor does Cosette. They’re the two singing to each other. They marry and live happily ever after. Jean Valjean is able to lay down his burden, having raised Cosette and seen to her happiness. Fantine and Eponine’s spirits arrive to guide him to Heaven.

    Yes, Mlle. Thenardier(Palin) does survive(along with her husband)…but they’re still just the comic relief at the end(Beggars at the Feast). Javert(McCain) cannot cope with his worldview being shattered by Valjean turning out to be a good person…so he kills himself. Which is sad.

    I still maintain that the musical has a happy ending. There’s a lot of depressing stuff in it, but the ending itself, the very end, is happy.

  • The Alien

    Oops. I mean Mme. Thenardier. My French skills are pathetic.

  • http://wowpanda.blogspot.com wowpanda

    Ah! After search the web for Les Miserables, I finally realized I have read it a long time ago, in my own language. It is not a tragedy, and I like that novel a lot.

    When I first come to US, I saw that sad girl’s face and was really touched, she was so sad that I don’t want to look again. Until one day I saw it on the cover of Broadway, and I told myself, good, it is just some kind of symbolism.

    Anyway I am very happy to finally make the connection after so many years :-)

  • Pandanapper

    *chloroforms and bags Wowpanda*

    Never read LeMiz but had a chance to see it in London till the tour guide thought it would be ‘inappropriate’ for most of the people. -.- Guess I’ll have to look into it now even though I read the spoiler.

  • http://wowpanda.blogspot.com wowpanda

    @Pandanapper, I need to clarify that I was very young and read the cartoon version of it, and the fact that Cosette was beautiful might also clouded my judgment. Overall I love it, much better than most of the million dollar Hollywood busters.

  • http://www.killtenrats.com Zubon

    I remembered later that Marius and Cosette made it out, but I never cared much for those characters, so I was suppressing that memory. At least one of them gets shot.

    Oh, and if “the revolution failed” is a spoiler, boy do I have news for y’all about The Passion and 300.

  • http://www.arksark.org/blob/ Arkenor

    Seems it turned out to have a happy ending after all!

  • Sachant

    Loved the video. I saw Les Mis in LA and the whole production was amazing and the set design was sheer genius. I never thought it was a story I would grab on to having never read the story prior to seeing it, but it really made you go through all of the emotions along the way.

    I also admit, I too am a sucker for show tunes.

  • Pandanapper

    @Arkenor
    Or you could see it as the story is just starting. ;)

  • Arkazon

    I read the full book, and the ending is pretty much the same. Victor Hugo is MASSIVELY wordy….he spend literally 150 pages or so describing to you the battle of Waterloo, JUST so he can introduce Marius’ father and how he was saved by Thenardier.

    In the books, Thenardier is the real villain, Javert is just the “shadow” of Valjean. As Hugo described, Javert didn’t have a heart of stone, because even stone could melt: he had a heart of wood. Thenardier’s wife dies in prison, and Thenardier himself and his one surviving daughter flee to America and get into the slave trade.

    For the musical, I’ve always considered the Thenardiers as “the villains who get away.” I mean, in their own song, they got precisely what they wanted and never got caught.