Ppl On The Disco Elysium Subreddit Are Going Crazy After The Mobile Game Was Announced

The thing is, Jean Valjean’s “nineteen year prison sentence for stealing a loaf of bread” from Les Mis isn’t actually unusual….not even today! I see people talking about it as if it’s strange or unimaginable when it happens every day.

In modern America — often as a result of pointlessly cruel (and racist) habitual offender and mandatory minimum laws— people are routinely sentenced to life in prison for minor crimes like shoplifting or possession of drugs.

The ACLU did a report in 2013 detailing the lives of various people who were sentenced to life in prison without parole for nonviolent property crimes like:

•attempting to cash a stolen check

•a junk-dealer’s possession of stolen junk

metal (10 valves and one elbow pipe)

•possession of stolen wrenches

•siphoning gasoline from a truck

•stealing tools from a tool shed and a welding machine from a yard

•shoplifting three belts from a department store

•shoplifting several digital cameras

•shoplifting two jerseys from an athletic store

• taking a television, circular saw, and a power converter from a vacant house

• breaking into a closed liquor store in the middle of the night

And of course, so so so many people sentenced to life without parole for the possession of a few grams of drugs.

And we could go on and on!

Gregory Taylor was a homeless man in Los Angeles who, in 1997, was sentenced to “25 years to life” for attempting to steal food from a food kitchen. He was released after 13 years. The lawyers helping to release him even cited Les Miserables in their appeal, comparing Taylor’s sentence to Jean Valjean’s.

cbs8.com

Homeless man imprisoned for 13 years is free

Homeless man imprisoned for 13 years is free

And there’s another specific bit of social commentary Hugo was making about Valjean’s trial that’s still depressingly relevant. He writes that Valjean was sentenced for the theft of loaf of bread, but also that the court managed to make that sentence stick by bringing up some of his past misdemeanors. For example, Valjean owned a gun and was known to occasionally poach wildlife (presumably for his starving family to eat.) . So the court exaggerates how harmful the bread theft was—he had to smash a windowpane to get the bread, which is basically Violence— then insist the fact that he owns a gun and occasionally poaches is proof that he is habitually and innately violent. Then when Valjean obviously becomes distressed traumatized and furious as a result of his nakedly unjust sentence and begins making desperate (and very unsuccessful/impulsive/ poorly thought through) attempts to escape…. the government indifferently tacks more years onto his sentence, labels him a “dangerous” felon, and insists that its initial read of him as an innately violent person was correct.

And it’s sad how a lot of the real life stories linked earlier are similar to the commentary Hugo wrote in 1863? Someone will commit a nonviolent property crime, and then the court insists that a bunch of other miscellaneous things they’ve done in the past (whether it’s other minor thefts or being addicted to drugs or w/e) are Proof they’re inherently violent and incapable of being around other people.

A small very petty fandom side note: This is also why I dislike all those common jokes you see everywhere along the lines of “lol it’s so unrealistic for the police to want to arrest Valjean over a loaf of bread, there must have been some other reason the police were pursuing him. Because the state would never punish someone that harshly and irrationally for no reason. so maybe javert was just gay haha”. (Ex: this tiktok— please don’t harass the creator or poster though, I don’t think they were intending to mean anything like that and its just a silly common type of joke you see made about Les mis all the time so it’s not unique in any way.) because like.

As much as I don’t think Les Mis is a flawless book or that its political messaging is perfect….the only way that insanely long unjust sentences for minor crimes is “unrealistic” is if you’re operating on the assumption that prisons are here to Keep You Safe by always only punishing bad criminals who do serious crimes. And that’s just, not true at all. Like I get that these are just goofy silly shallow jokes, and I’m not angry or going to harass anyone who makes them. but it feels like there’s an assumption underlying all those goofy jokes that “this is just not how prison works!” “Prisons don’t routinely sentence people to absurd laughably unjust pointless sentences!” “Prisons give people fair sentences for logical reasons!” When like…no

Valjean being relentlessly hounded and tortured for a minor crime in a way that is utterly ridiculous and arbitrary in its cruelty is not actually a plot hole in Les mis. It’s a plot hole in …..society ajsjkdkdkf. And the only way to fix that is to fight for prison abolition or at least reform, and (in America) stand up against the vicious naked cruelty of habitual offender and mandatory minimum laws.

But yeah :(. I hate how Les Mis opens with a prologue saying the novel will be obsolete the moment the social issues it describes have been resolved— but two hundred years later, the book is still more relevant than ever because we’re dealing with so many of the exact same injustices.

I also forgot to mention! The very obvious theme of motherhood here, especially when you look at Sarto’s other works, infants and mothers are very prevalent.

One of the first things I thought when I saw this piece for the first time was the way it feels to raise a child while being surrounded by violence. To nurture a child, but you cannot change what they’ll be exposed to.

Now that I’m looking for common threads between Sarto’s works, consumption and predation are both extremely relevant.

The framing of this piece COULD even be to suggest the woman and baby are also among the meat to be consumed, thus the name— they’re in the butcher-shop as another product, not as predators themselves.

I still don’t understand the frog symbolism, but that’s another frequent mention.

Esther Sarto. Butchershop Bliss. 2019. Watercolour and Gouache on 300gsm hotpressed Watercolour paper.

24 x 16 inches

I’ve been thinking about this piece for weeks. I keep coming back to it trying to figure it out. I’ve seen some discussion, but no interpretation has ever really resonated with me.

There’s nothing particularly uncanny about the woman or baby, the surroundings seem normal for them. The lighting is bright, the room is cluttered but not obscured. The meat frames them in, but I’m not sure if that feels like an oppressive force.

The surroundings are visceral, but not scary in any way. Despite the raw meat, there’s no blood in the room, It seems clean.

The only conclusion I can come to is it’s about survival, food, and eating. The baby breastfeeding vs the butchers room. That comes back to the title, though, which doesn’t make much sense to me in that context.

There’s also several feminist and class conscious readings you could do of this; but I’m still not sure.

Please help me figure it out, I’d love to hear other people’s thoughts on this piece!!!

Having a wicked ass walter white cough sesh alone in my den

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number 6 you cannot let the public know what we've been doing

doig fuckiung henchmen troleplay in fortnite with 5 friends at the moemnt

Something bad has been happening to me lately. I keep saying “oh a puppy” when i see something i find cute. I was on a walk on the cliffs and I saw a slug and said it because i thought I was alone, but then an old lady on her walk teleported behind me and said “Im afraid not…”

french aristocrat getting bottom surgery, call that beheading send tweet

I started a new disco game and he wasnt there. Straight up just didnt exist.

King??????? Where are you

If you think about it Ruby is one of the coolest Disco Elysium characters because she ran away from the mob, joined a seperate mob, somehow managed to gain the respect of the local law enforcement to the point where she can give them directions and they will follow them, got into the world's messiest breakup, harnessed an incomprehensible force as a weapon using something she built herself out of most likely scraps and she didn't even use it to kill anyone she used to to hold off the police. And she's a butch lesbian that is at her core a kind person who puts others above herself until the point where she will die if she doesn't run.

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