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| Sweeney Todd
I was
surprised how much I felt for Sweeney Todd even though he was killing people
and feeding the bodies to other people. It reminded me the TV show Dexter which has a serial killer as the
main character; it seems messed up at first but after you watch an episode you
are rooting for Dexter to be able to kill and not get caught. I think Burton
overcomes the moral revulsion and murder by showing us why Sweeney is angry
with the upper class of London before he starts killing people. The audience
sees Sweeney’s background of being taken from his family by an upper class-men which shows why he is sad, but the audience is hopefully he can be reunited with
his family until he learns that his wife is dead and his daughter was taken. After
learning what happened to his family the audience feels angry with Sweeney and
they want revenge as much as he does. But after the judge gets away before he
is able to kill him, Sweeney is in a very delicate state which Mrs. Lovett
takes advantage. Sweeney has all this stored up anger which he cannot do
anything with until Mrs. Lovett presents him with an idea to kill more people
for meat as a way to get back at the upper class. Sweeney accepts the deal
because it is a way for him to get back at the upper class and allows him to release
some of his anger. But also, killing others connects him to life, which is the
same for Dexter. I think the audience recognizes this in the beginning of the
movie which contributes to them being able to connect to Sweeney and see past
the murder and cannibalism. Sweeney even fulfills the archetype of a good
father and a murder; he is the shadow and the hero. His wanting to kill the judge
can be seen as him wanting to protect his daughter from the judge’s unnatural
desire to marry Sweeney’s daughter. Sweeney is a sad, murderous, but a
relatable character. Everyone feels cheated by life at some time and wants to
get back at the people that cheated them. Sweeney just takes people’s buried
desires and brings them to the surface.
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Thursday, April 18, 2013
Dupuis: Sweeney Todd
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I agree with what you said in your blog. Obviously we know that it is wrong to kill people, and definitely when most of these people did absolutely nothing to Sweeney Todd himself. Common sense tells us that this sort of indirect revenge is wrong and does not really solve anything at all. Even though we know these things, we still want Sweeney to get his revenge no matter how he goes about doing that. Burton does a great job with giving viewers the background information first so that we could sympathize for Sweeney and willingly support his decisions. By the end of the movie we do not see Sweeney as being the evil person at all. Mrs. Lovett is actually indirectly the cause of all of the murder that occurs in London. If Mrs. Lovett had not been so selfish by wanting Sweeney to herself, Sweeney could have been reunited with his wife and eventually with his daughter. His family would not have been the same, but at least he would have had one versus killing his family and being murdered himself.
ReplyDelete-Asenath Babineaux
When you think about the idea of cannibalism it’s, of course, very off-putting, but I really love how Burton takes this idea and makes it both literal as well as a metaphor. We want Sweeney to be reunited with his family, but then once we realize that cannot happen, we get angry with him. His anger is fueled by his hate for Judge Turpin and also the powerful position he holds. Todd is angry at the person and the status, the concrete and the abstract. When you step back and think about how capitalism and urbanization has both built and destroyed societies it makes us feel angry at the people who made this happen and the idea itself. It’s like one cannot be separated from the other, which is how Todd feels. With lots of power comes just as much corruption and Burton displays this concept beautifully for his viewers.
ReplyDelete-Tara Malay