Pierre Gringoire - Tumblr Posts
✧ trollization is success. but i bored then draw this. well my headcanons for main and another characters of ntdp
✧ claude frollo – jade. sylph of doom. ders ✧ jehane frollo – olive. rough of light. prospite ✧ pierre grigoi – jade. seer of space. ders ✧ clopin trofou – burgundy. knight of hope. ders ✧ esmerr allduo – bronze. rough of time. prospite ✧ phebus d'chate – violet. thief of heart. prospite ✧ quasio moddio – candy red. page of life. derse ✧
Plus Gringoire is also the only character with who he has real dialogues. Most of the time Frollo sings by himself (about Esmeralda) and even in his other duets he either gives orders/don't bother to listen what the other person says or the other person sings to him and again he doesn't really bother to listen (mostly his songs with Quasimodo). But when he duets with Gringoire they actually listen to each other and even have lines together. Pick dynamic.
love how in the Notre Dame de Paris musical Frollo has more duets with Gringoire than with anyone else, giving rise to my inevitable theory
psa:
the hunchback of notre dame was not and never should have been intended for children. it’s a complex story about love, lust, power dynamics and racism, and by watering it down into a G-RATED kids’ cartoon (with cute singing gargoyles!) we lost out on all the richness of it. esmeralda is just a pretty dancing girl. phoebus is a nice soldier. against this backdrop, “hellfire” is startlingly frightening and creepy. (because it’s adult!) quasimodo sees esmeralda as an angel, frollo sees her as the Devil incarnate, and there’s little else to bring us to a correct conclusion of her character. victor hugo would’ve been mortified. (also, the hypersexualization of a woman of color…)
that doesn’t apply as much to the disney stage musical. here, disney actually meant this for adults. here, you get sweeping orchestral music, a plethora of lyrically complex songs, a richly textured frollo, and even an emotional glimpse of jehan. it’s not without its faults: despite a little more character development, esmeralda is still a very adult sex symbol (hey! she was supposed to be 16!), and phoebus is rewritten as a heroic little himbo. and gringoire is still Not in the picture. but at least you get a better representation of what victor hugo actually intended.
the thing is, two-hour adaptations of massive novels are probably always going to fall short. but victor hugo chose to write SO in depth about lust, sin, misogyny, hypocrisy, death, racism, unrequited love, etc etc etc! there is so much in this book! and the thing is that i believe children are capable of understanding complex themes, and i believe that they should be exposed to rich media. age-appropriate, of course, and i don’t think that this is a story appropriate for young children — but even if disney was planning to cut out the frollo lust plotline (which they didn’t), at least represent women? and romani people? and racism? and unrequited love? in a way that’s both palatable and well-written. we don’t need to water things down for children to understand them. take mr. roger’s neighborhood! take star trek! take bluey! these are all shows that tackle hard themes in a kid-friendly way. more of this please!!!
and if it comes to a story like hunchback, where the big storyline is that a catholic priest is lusting after a young girl? do us a favor and don’t make it into a kid’s cartoon.