Sweeney
Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street makes viewers sympathize with and
relate to Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett, even though they are the reason for
murder and cannibalism in the film. Burton allows this to happen because in his
own twisted way, he allows the viewers to feel sorry for the two and not feel
sorry for the people who are actually being murdered and eaten. He does this by
making the people who are being murdered seem as if they are not important at
all. Burton does this in the scene in which Mrs. Lovett first brings up to Todd
that just murdering these people is a waste and they should be made into pies
to be sold. In this conversation, they sing of all these people and how they
are all the same. Nobody will miss them, nobody will look for them, they do not
matter. They are of no difference to everyone else. Todd and Lovett look over
the people walking in the streets and no one stands out over the other. Even as
they are personally picking out certain people and talking about them, such as
the priest or poet, they do not talk about them as people but rather they
degrade them to flavors of pie. So as these men are walking up to Todd’s barber
shop to be murdered and viewers see them die in such rapid amounts, they aren’t
really cared for. They just fade into Todd and Lovett’s tragic story.
Urbanization in
London represents cannibalism in such a large way, even though it is not as
literal as eating it from Mrs. Lovett’s meat pies. Many people were forced to
live in London for work. Eventually these people all faded into the background
of overcrowded London. These people no longer become individuals, but are eaten
up by the city and become just one giant mass of mankind. To further this use
of cannibalism in relation to the film, these people of London go to Mrs.
Lovett’s meat pie shop and literally eat their fellow citizens; in a way they
are eating themselves. This is extremely interesting because it shows the truth
of how vicious people can be without knowing it, how easily people can just
fall into the background, and how easily people lose their individuality and
true importance altogether.
I agree that it is so interesting how tim burton can make us sympathize with things like murder and cannibalism. It makes you start to think if any thing is plain right or wrong of if its all just conditional to the circumstances. He makes you understand that Miss Lovett would really do anything to make ends meat and how Sweeney Todd has experienced so much tragedy in his life that it was easy for him to channel that into anger and revenge.
ReplyDelete-Kelsey Falconer