I saw the Tim Burton movie version of Stephen Sondheim's musical, "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street", over the Christmas holiday and I enjoyed it in a cathartic sort of way. This thought provoking, Gothic tale of revenge, as overwhelmingly dark and bloody as Shakespearean tragedy, triggered a bit of Googling on my part. My search for background knowledge led to the reading of the ubiquitous Wikipedia article on the subject, which now appears to have changed since I looked at it about three weeks ago. Wikipedia is a flighty temptress, too, IMHO.
The story of Sweeney Todd is apparently an urban legend which incorporated another popular contemporaneous urban legend of human remains being used for foodstuff in Victorian London. I found this cannablistic cookery angle interestingly referenced in the Japanese anime film, "Steamboy", also set in Victorian London. The movie has a scene with a newsboy yelling the news that bones had been found in a baker's bread, which also references Jack and the Beanstalk's giant's rhyme. This seems to me to be a country mouse metaphor for the out-of-towner's fear of being killed and eaten by the big city literally and spirituality.
The story of Sweeney Todd is apparently an urban legend which incorporated another popular contemporaneous urban legend of human remains being used for foodstuff in Victorian London. I found this cannablistic cookery angle interestingly referenced in the Japanese anime film, "Steamboy", also set in Victorian London. The movie has a scene with a newsboy yelling the news that bones had been found in a baker's bread, which also references Jack and the Beanstalk's giant's rhyme. This seems to me to be a country mouse metaphor for the out-of-towner's fear of being killed and eaten by the big city literally and spirituality.
The Leviathan, London, like Jack's Giant, "ate" the lives of its swelling lower class population during the industrial revolution as they became human cogs in factory sweatshops, those "dark Satanic mills", in their efforts to support themselves. The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson, a history of the London Cholera Epidemic of 1854, details many even more unsavory job choices available to London's lower classes, such as "night soil man", "bone picker", and "tosher", trades that specialized in profitting from the mountains of waste that London produced.
Contemplating Victorian London's sanitation issues brings to mind "Oliver!" , the 1968 movie version of the Lionel Bart musical, which starred Oliver Reed and was based on Charles Dicken 's Oliver Twist, which appears to be a major influence on the musical and film of "Sweeney Todd". I was particularly reminded of two scenes at the end of "Oliver!" where Fagin is digging in the muck for his lost treasure and where Oliver witnesses Nancy's death at the hands of Bill Sykes.
Like Dickens' work, "Sweeney Todd" captures the urban despair of Victorian London, which Todd's character describes at the start of the film, as having two tiers of society; a heavenly zenith filled with successful, well-off people and a dark netherworld where the gin and opiate numbed masses of the poor struggle to survive. An evil beadle figures in both stories as well. In both cases he is a power-corrupted lackey from the lower world, who profits from his relationship as intermediary through abuse and extortion.
I also made a connection to the song, "LDN", by UK pop star, Lily Allen, which contains the line, "if you look twice, you'll see it's all lies", talking about the way London, or any city, looks great at first glance, but when you look closer you see the urban problems; crime, poverty, etc. I also found it interesting that barbers were historically sources for medical treatment, including amputations of diseased limbs, prior to the rise of modern medicine and the establishment of the MD as prime arbiter of body health. I can't help wondering if the urban legend of Sweeney Todd isn't partly an echo of that past when seeing the barber may have meant losing more than just your locks.
The sewer scenes and urban filth, the violent serial killings, the visit to the Victorian mad house in "Sweeney Todd", and the subject of urban legends and historical mysteries also brought to mind several related subjects, as well, and books about them.
Nonfiction
The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson - A history of London's 1854 cholera epidemic and the quest for its cause by John Snow and others.
London: A Biography by Peter Ackroyd - A thorough history of London from pre-history to the present day.
Jack the Ripper: Case Closed by Patricia Cornwell - Did Patricia Cornwell unmask the man behind Jack the Ripper?
The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester
The Yellow House: Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Nine Turbulent Weeks in Arles by Martin Gayford- Did reading newspaper articles on the Jack the Ripper murders play a part in triggering Van Gogh's self mutilation?
The Air Loom Gang: The Strange and True Story of James Tilly Matthews and His Visionary Madness by Mike Jay - Spies, madness, machines, and a 14-year stay in Bedlam, London's most notorious madhouse. Yes, Virginia, truth is stranger.
The Gangs of New York and The Barbary Coast by Herbert Asbury
The Barbary Plague: The Black Death in Victorian San Francisco by Marilyn Chase - It can happen here and it did.
Fiction
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Montmorency: Thief, Liar, Gentleman by Eleanor Updale - Montmorency, as his alter ego, Scarper, uses the London sewers to rob the rich in Victorian London in this YA series.
I also made a connection to the song, "LDN", by UK pop star, Lily Allen, which contains the line, "if you look twice, you'll see it's all lies", talking about the way London, or any city, looks great at first glance, but when you look closer you see the urban problems; crime, poverty, etc. I also found it interesting that barbers were historically sources for medical treatment, including amputations of diseased limbs, prior to the rise of modern medicine and the establishment of the MD as prime arbiter of body health. I can't help wondering if the urban legend of Sweeney Todd isn't partly an echo of that past when seeing the barber may have meant losing more than just your locks.
The sewer scenes and urban filth, the violent serial killings, the visit to the Victorian mad house in "Sweeney Todd", and the subject of urban legends and historical mysteries also brought to mind several related subjects, as well, and books about them.
Nonfiction
The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson - A history of London's 1854 cholera epidemic and the quest for its cause by John Snow and others.
London: A Biography by Peter Ackroyd - A thorough history of London from pre-history to the present day.
Jack the Ripper: Case Closed by Patricia Cornwell - Did Patricia Cornwell unmask the man behind Jack the Ripper?
The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester
The Yellow House: Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Nine Turbulent Weeks in Arles by Martin Gayford- Did reading newspaper articles on the Jack the Ripper murders play a part in triggering Van Gogh's self mutilation?
The Air Loom Gang: The Strange and True Story of James Tilly Matthews and His Visionary Madness by Mike Jay - Spies, madness, machines, and a 14-year stay in Bedlam, London's most notorious madhouse. Yes, Virginia, truth is stranger.
The Gangs of New York and The Barbary Coast by Herbert Asbury
The Barbary Plague: The Black Death in Victorian San Francisco by Marilyn Chase - It can happen here and it did.
Fiction
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Montmorency: Thief, Liar, Gentleman by Eleanor Updale - Montmorency, as his alter ego, Scarper, uses the London sewers to rob the rich in Victorian London in this YA series.
*****
accessed 1/21/08.
LDN by Lily Allen
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