Reconfiguring masculinities: generic hybridisation, postfeminist fatherhood, and queer readings in Les Misérables

Abstract

Inherently intertextual and self-referential since its origins (Feuer 1993), the contemporary Hollywood musical follows in this tradition by displaying intensified transmedia exchanges and an expansion of source materials in practices such as screen-to-stage-to-screen adaptations, remakes, serialisation, and generic hybridisation. Les Misérables (dir. T. Hooper, 2012) provides a fertile example to explore the intensified intertextuality of the genre, both as the adaptation of a stage musical, in turn inspired by the Victor Hugo novel of the same name, and as a hybrid between the musical and the newly-revived historical epic. In this chapter, I argue that intertextuality and hybridisation are fundamental to the negotiation of contemporary gender discourses and broader socio-cultural contexts in the film. The close analysis demonstrates that the adoption of the conventions of the historical epic informs the performance of an ideal masculinity embodied by Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman) and configured through the prism of postfeminist fatherhood (Hamad 2014), which is here connected to discourses of nationhood and Christian self-sacrifice. Articulated through the complementarity between Valjean and antagonist Javert (Russell Crowe), this construction challenges the borders between public and private spheres, heterosexual and queer masculinities, and hegemonic and alternative models, speaking to debates on gender, family, and equality in the contemporary American landscape. This performative assertion of gender that blurs conventional heteronormative boundaries opens up the text to queer readings, as demonstrated by the reception of the musical in the fandom through slash-fiction, further reiterating the political value of entertainment.

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ORCID for Eleonora Sammartino: orcid.org/0000-0002-7268-8014

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