Word: slaving
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When Fantine dies, Valjean comes to the aid of her daughter, Cosette. He finds that the Thenardiers, the couple who take care of the young Cosette (Christa Larson), are nothing but thieving, conniving pub owners who have worked the child like a slave while charging her mother large sums of money. Thenardier (Tom Robbins) and his wife (Victoria Clark) are the show's clowns, and the audience revels in their provincial language and drunken vulgarity...
...notion that systematic efforts to improve the prowess of slaves by selective breeding have something to do with black athletic achievements is one of the most persistent and pernicious myths in America's overflowing collection of racist ideas. Historians as diverse as Ulrich B. Phillips, a staunch defender of the Confederacy, and Eugene Genovese, a Marxist, have convincingly shown that there was no widespread deliberate mating of slaves. This preposterous theory has nevertheless wormed its way into the collective consciousness through such classic works of pulp fiction as Mandingo. It is probably no coincidence that Kyle Onstott, creator of that...
...elaborated: "The black is a better athlete to begin with because he's been bred to be that way . . . because of his high thighs and big thighs that goes up into his back." He went on: "This goes back all the way to the Civil War, when . . . the slave owner would breed his big black to his big woman so that he could have a big black kid." In sports, the Greek declared, "there isn't much left for the white guys anymore...
...insular world of these fathers ended with World War II. In 1943 Levi joined a band of partisans to fight Italy's Fascists and the Germans. He was captured and sent to Auschwitz, where his skills as a chemist kept him alive. He worked as a slave at a privately owned I.G. Farben laboratory, which was part of the death-camp complex...
Even Bugs Bunny has to hop aside when Brer Rabbit comes by. The big-eared varmint has been a folk hero since early slave days, and his sly outwitting of bullies and bosses is history disguised in fur and interpreted by the victims. Jump Again! (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; $14.95) demonstrates that a classic offers something fresh to each generation. This time it is Van Dyke Parks' riotous retelling and Barry Moser's elegant watercolors. Beneath the new surface, of course, the hero is instantly familiar, once again outmaneuvering Brer Fox, Weasel and Bear, winning the paw of Miss Molly...