My garden of musings

the movie has six credited screenwriters and changed substantially with every rewrite, plus there were numerous contributions from the animators, story team, and musical talent. I love the movie, but you can tell that certain ideas are present in the film that do not make much sense. Many viewers have no idea how the Romani work in the film's logic. Are they misunderstood? Are they criminals? Are they actually magic? Are they beggars and robbers like in the book? There are storyboards of Phoebus being trained to be a thief, for instance.

I've heard the complaint before – repeatedly – that we're set up to see the Romani as an unjustly persecuted people, wrongly stereotyped as criminals, but then in the song "The Court of Miracles" we see that some of them are con artists who masquerade as crippled or blind beggars to trick unsuspecting people out of their money.

Now, personally, I was never confused by this. Even as a child, I understood that because the Romani were victims of racism and persecution, some of them had to turn to theft or deceit just to survive. But if it's true that some of the writers wanted to portray the Romani as genuine thieves (albeit sympathetic ones) while others wanted to emphasize that they're not thieves, but are stereotyped as such, that would make sense. Different scenes in the movie do seem to say different things in that regard.

Then there's the fact that the Romani are established early on as victims of systemic racism and as having been persecuted for decades by the genocidal Frollo, to the point that they have to live in a secret underground hideaway. Yet Clopin, the Romani leader himself, seems to be the official "master of ceremonies" at the Festival of Fools, with Esmeralda as his assistant, and not only does the general public seem to like them and show no prejudice against them, but even Frollo reluctantly tolerates them until Esmeralda stands up to him. Maybe this is left over from the fact that in Tab Murphy's original outline, Frollo didn't start actively persecuting the Romani until after the festival.

And then, yes, there's the question of whether the Romani in the film actually practice magic or are only stereotyped as using witchcraft. About 99% of the movie points to the latter, but then we have Esmeralda using magic tricks to escape from the soldiers at the festival – something she never does in any other scene. Maybe it can be justified if we assume those tricks were waiting to be performed as part of the festival entertainment and she just takes advantage of them to escape, but that fact should probably have been made clearer.

I had never fully considered all these inconsistencies until now, or thought they could be the result of different writers with different ideas for the plot and characterizations.

Cool, so you want natural fiber costumes with no/nuanced corset slander, people wearing colors, historical hairstyles, people wearing hats or headcoverings and long sleeves outside during the day, no potatoes or pumpkins in pre-columbian Europe, actors with textured skin and wrinkles, minimal makeup, consulting HEMA groups and weapons scholars for all the weapons and fight scenes, a good soundtrack that includes traditional instruments?

To 2025:

Hell, they even cover the devastating heaviness of MASS SHOOTINGS without censoring or watering anything down.

They've been doing this for YEARS, and it's ALWAYS handled with dignity, respect, seriousness, understanding, and love.

This clip is from 1968 and discussed assassination after Bobby Kennedy died.

is the ability to process these things.

taking away the words for bad things

means when they HAPPEN- and bad things will still happen around us-

WE CAN'T TALK ABOUT THEM without the WORDS.

When the word is accurate, USE THE WORD. Say Death. Say Murder. Say Rape. Say Prison, say Riots, say War, Say Famines and Disease. Say Bigotry. Say Hate crime. Say Racism. Say Fascism. Say Abuse. Say Hurt. Say Pain. Say Grief. Say Fear.

We must not lose the Truth of what a word means.

Has anybody read the novelization of the Disney film and if so are there any differences from the movie?

Novelizations are notorious for being based on not finalized versions of films, and often contain deleted material.

I assume it is unlikely that there were many changes. A document containing a list of sequences that was dated from 1994 is relatively in line with the final film (with the exception of the scene with frollo and Esmeralda in the dungeon). And this book surely was written in a short span of time before the film was released.

In general, it is very faithful to the film, except for a few small differences in dialogue, and of course the song lyrics being rewritten into dialogue and abridged.

Some of the few differences I remember:

*The opening chapter, titled “The Puppeteer’s Prologue,” frames the whole story as having happened in the past and being told by Clopin in his puppet show - unlike in the film, where Clopin’s puppet show takes place before the main plot begins and only tells Quasimodo’s backstory. Clopin explains that he knows the story because he saw much of it with his own eyes and heard of it with his own ears, and before he starts to tell it, after saying that it’s a tale of a man and a monster, he says that maybe when it's finished, the children will be able to tell him who is the monster and who is the man.

*Frollo doesn’t kick Quasimodo’s mother onto the cathedral steps. Instead she just loses her footing while struggling with Frollo over the baby and accidentally falls.

*There's no drawn-out chase scene between Esmeralda and the guards after she stands up to Frollo. Esmeralda just makes herself "disappear" in a puff of powder-smoke and then slips away through the crowd. She doesn't pretend to cry and then activate the powder-smoke with a fake nose-blow either – she just tosses the powder into the air.

*Esmeralda and Phoebus don’t fight in the cathedral: she wields the candelabra and warns him “Don’t come any closer!” but doesn’t actually try to hit him with it, or grab his sword and threaten him with it for that matter, and then he goes straight to introducing himself.

*At the end of the scene corresponding to "God Help the Outcasts," there's no man who yells at Quasimodo to go away. Esmeralda just spots Quasi watching her, and when their eyes meet, he runs away out of shyness.

*Esmeralda explicitly tells Quasimodo that the woven necklace will show him the way to the Court of Miracles, rather than just saying a cryptic rhyme about it that he figures out later.

*During the scene corresponding to “Hellfire,” Frollo thinks to himself that maybe God has destined him to lead Esmeralda to righteousness. I might have liked some dialogue like this in the finished film, because it would more clearly explain Frollo’s motives: to either change his “sinful” lust into something pure and holy, by making Esmeralda his wife and converting her to his form of Christianity, or else to get rid of the temptation by killing her.

*When Frollo says to Phoebus "But you were trained to follow orders," Phoebus retorts "Not the orders of a madman!" Obviously, the filmmakers decided that less was more by having him just silently douse the torch.

*When Esmeralda brings the wounded Phoebus into the bell tower, Quasimodo brings water for her to clean his wound, rather than her cleaning it with wine.

*Quasimodo’s reluctance to go with Phoebus to find Esmeralda and warn her about Frollo’s plans comes across as slightly more spiteful than it does in the finished film, per se. “Esmeralda didn’t love him after all. She he loved Phoebus. Why should he help her?” Likewise, when Esmeralda is about to be executed, and Laverne tells him “These chains aren’t what’s holding you back,” she also adds “I think you’re still jealous.” Personally, I don’t like this – while I admit, we can interpret the finished film’s Quasi as almost wanting to turn his back on Esmeralda because he’s bitter that she doesn’t love him, I’d rather think his initial refusals to act are based in fear and self-doubt, with just an undertone in the first case of “She doesn’t need me when she has Phoebus."

*When Quasimodo and Phoebus arrive at the cemetery, Quasi is described as supporting Phoebus, who is still weak from his wound. I might have liked to see that instead of his improbably quick healing in the finished film.

*In the Court of Miracles, Quasimodo is the one who announces that Frollo is attacking at dawn with a thousand men, rather than Phoebus. Then when Phoebus tells Esmeralda "Don't thank me, thank Quasimodo," he then adds "He's the real hero." Esmeralda responds by hugging Quasi and saying "I think I know that better than anyone." Then Phoebus announces to all the Romani, not just Esmeralda, that without Quasi, he never would have found his way there.

*Esmeralda doesn’t spit in Frollo’s face when he says “Choose me or the fire”: she just says nothing. Frollo's speech afterwards is also different: there's no line about sending "this unholy demon back where she belongs."

*During the climactic battle, there’s some dialogue between Quasimodo and the gargoyles that explains the vat of molten lead in the bell tower and what it’s used for (to repair cracked bells), as Quasimodo realizes that they can rain it down on the soldiers. Obviously this dialogue would have slowed down the action in the movie, but it might have been nice to provide an explanation – maybe people would stop calling the lead “lava” then.

*Quasimodo doesn’t sob over Esmeralda’s body when he thinks she’s dead, or have any dialogue with Frollo before the latter tries to stab him - he just exclaims “Oh no!” when he can’t wake Esmeralda, then suddenly notices the shadow of Frollo raising the dagger behind him.

*Phoebus has some dialogue with Quasimodo after he saves him from falling to his death, first joking a little and then expressing sincere gratitude that he was in the right place at the right time.

There's generally going to be rooms dedicated to and build for warmth, the living quarters, both for nobles and their servants. This will be the central living tower, or parts of it called a Kemenate (literally 'room with a stove'), the great hall and work spaces around the kitchen. You can put the Kemenate on top of the hall to catch the big fires' and daily living's heat through the wooden floor, but you often can't put wooden stuff on top of the kitchens (that's a fire risk). If you have the money and space, you build a whole separate comfy place for living because you don't have to stay in the most defensible part of the castle all the time. These separate living buildings are also called Kemenate and are often build from wood, cob, brick etc.

People used to wear much more clothes indoors, including while sleeping, and those clothes were much thicker and sturdier than what we largely wear today. Every time you think of how cold those stone walls are, think about everyone wearing a linen shift + two-ish layers of wool on all body parts except hands and head + stockings and shoes + some kind of head-covering. In Ye Old Middle Ages, women are probably wearing a wimple, which is kind of like a modern Hijab in terms of coverage. People wear shifts, socks, and a head-covering to bed.

I think people used to radiators also really underestimate how much a large open fire/tiled stove heats up a room. Also, middle and northern Europe (as well as parts of Northern China) had and to this day have beds and benches build into tiled and cob stoves. Those fuck.

Beds are enclosed so you stay warm in them, either by curtains, in wall niches or with wood. There's also a type of bed that's inside a chest (like a coffin) so you can stuff your stuff inside during the day and put down the lid to use it as a bench. That's also another reason for people to always sleep in groups. Depending on the era, one of the jobs of a lady's maid or a retainer might literally be warming their master's bed. In early times and among servants, people also sleep in large groups in rooms together in general even outside a farming context, often with animals like pet dogs, too, which further warms everything up.

Walls are not bare, cold stone, but covered with a layer of plaster or cob, tiles or wooden panels, sometimes layered, and believe me, this makes such a difference. Source: I lived in a Ye Olde German Farmhouse with 70 cm thick stone walls and flag stone floor and all that converted to modern flats for a while.

On top of that you hang tapestries on the wall, which are not like modern printed cloth but basically wall rugs, sometimes several inches thick, and rugs or rushes (like a light cover of hay) on the floor on top of stone, tile, wooden panelling or a cob floor cover that goes over the heave flag stone. Pillows and blankets on all sitting surfaces, often on top of panelling (in the case of benches build into the stone). The roof of a room is also tiled, panelled or plastered. Upper stories will generally have wooden floors. Stories in a tower heat each other upwards, so the nicer rooms are further up.

The inner stone walls of a castle, even if stone and very thick, will heat up a few degrees in comparison to the outside walls if the castle is continually heated/lived in, and also trap heat inside, and this will make a difference. Inner walls might also be thinner and made of wood, cob or brick. You're defending against the outside, after all.

You put stuff in the windows. Holy shit. Screens of wood, horn, cloth or leather/hide, often treated for extra insulation. Why are these fantasy castles all so drafty.

Lay people use "cold" and "flu" to describe a bunch of different viruses (mostly, sometimes bacteria) even today, so I don't find it odd that Jane Austen would use them interchangeably. Even beyond respiratory symptoms, a lot of people use "flu" to describe illnesses that make you throw up, which is not influenza, that's usually norovirus or something.

I think a lot of people use "cold" for "mild illness with mucus, coughing, sore throat, and possibly headache" and "flu" for the same but with fever. These illnesses tend not to be dangerous today, so very few people are getting tested and finding out what actual virus/illness they have. Our "colds" include a range of like 200 different viruses.

So anyway, yes, cold and flu aren't scientific words even today, Jane Austen wouldn't be using them scientifically either.