Between the fictional and the real, sweeney Todd, a Victorian London character who remains shrouded in a cloud of mystery, has arrived.
The mystery, unexplained facts that escape our understanding, fill the first pages of the most sensational journals and feed film and literary production. Always looking for a “real fact-based”.
- As shocking as the plot is.
- We want to believe these stories that fill the cinemas.
- Is it just a musical or is there something else?Why did he kill?.
The truth is that it is difficult to keep all the pieces of this puzzle, it is difficult because it is a story that has nourished very well the collective imaginary, which has given rise to films, literary productions, etc.
Is myth mixed with truth, fantasy with history?Is that the result? One of the most interesting and terrifying mysteries in The History of London.
Sweeney Todd appeared in the darkness of London, the same London where other assassins, such as Jack the Ripper, sowed terror. The setting is perfect for this unique hairdresser, and the story is really appropriate for this time.
In East London, hunger, misery and disease prevailed, there were overcrowded problems and the conditions were unsanitary.
According to legend, Todd was a hairdresser who massacred his victims after razing them and, through a tunnel, took the corpses to Mrs. Lovett’s pastry shop, which used them as a side dish for the cakes, which turned out to be the best in London. .
Sweeney Todd is shrouded in mystery and is still alive thanks to the multitude of works that have been done about him and, today, thanks to the 2007 film directed by Tim Burton, but what is the true origin of the legend?
The Victorian era was marked by major changes, such as the industrial revolution, but also by diseases (typhoid and cholera), marginality and prostitution.
While Queen Victoria I set guidelines that suppressed sexual behavior, prostitution was a common place in the London suburbs; hunger, drugs, prostitution, poverty and brothels contrasted with the great scientific and technological advances of the time.
Victorian values were deeply linked to Puritanism and religion played a major role. Was there a start to repel addictions, laziness, sex?All this has led to a great fragmentation between the social classes.
Puritanism represented repression; concealing the most intimate desires, of everything related to the sexual. But all this repression couldn’t last forever. The desires and traumas of Victorian society would manifest itself in the subconscious.
Jacques Lacan once joked that Freud would not have existed without Victorian society. What Lacan meant was that Freud’s studies were so productive, precisely because of the repression.
Because he could not express a desire, or even verbalize it, it was likely that anything considered an addiction would manifest itself below the level of consciousness.
Victorian aristocratic London contrasted with that of the easternmost suburbs, where hunger, disease and poverty gave way to addictions.
Prostitution was a common place, crime was on the rise, and all this led to a series of mysteries and literary productions that still persist today.
The fascination with progress, medicine and science characterized the Victorian era and, as a result, we know titles such as The Doctor and the Monster.
In the face of cultured literature, there is also a link with popular periodicals, horrible cents, very economical and of low literary quality, these stories are usually mysterious or paranormal, so they were very successful with the people of London.
The String of Pearls is a terrible penny from the mid-19th century. In this one, we are introduced to the fearsome barber Sweeney Todd.
The story begins with strange disappearances indicating Todd’s hairdresser. The paternity of The String of Pearls remains a mystery, although some claim to be Thomas Prest, an author who was inspired by chronicles of real events in newspapers.
Over time, many musicals and films have been made that are still performed in theaters today. In 2007, under the direction of Tim Burton, he arrived at sweeney Todd cinemas: the demonic barber on Fleet Street.
It was not the first time the character had appeared on the big screen, as he had already done in 1936. Burton’s version was inspired by the Stephen Sondheim musical and features a vengeful, dark and resentful Sweeney Todd.
Todd had been sent to the United States to serve an unjust sentence, gaining public empathy. Todd returns to London to find his wife and daughter, but mostly to avenge the judge who sentenced him to this horrible fate.
Through flashbacks, we see a happy past, in which Todd was a respected hairdresser and had a family he loved. These scenes from the past contrast strongly with the darkness and decay of London of the present, and with the darkness itself evoked by the character.
Todd rekindling his hairdresser with the help of Ms. Lovett, who will use the corpses in his cakes. In the film, in addition to an absolutely disturbing scenario, we also observe other characteristic elements of the time, such as child labour.
We see, for example, the character of Tobias Ragg, a child who works and ends up helping Miss Lovett, a fundamental fact to understand the time and literature of the time.
It should not be forgotten that Oliver Twist was a serial novel published in the mid-19th century, and that he addresses these issues with just black humor.
Black humor is one of Sweeney Todd’s strengths because he handles atrocities with a certain touch of humor. Cannibalism is justified by hunger and murder for revenge.
This black humor proposed by the work makes us return to the idea of the subconscious that we evoked at the beginning. Aristotle had already warned that the public liked Greek tragedies because they offered forbidden and taboo themes.
If we run out of food too long, we’ll probably dream of a delicious meal, and if that feeling isn’t satisfied for long, we’ll probably start to have thoughts that, in a normal situation, we would consider irrational.
At a time when hunger reigns, stories are needed to free from the subconscious these impulses that justify killing to eat.
We can see an example of this in Joo e Maria, which is published in a moment of hunger by an adult audience. Unlike the current version, in the original, it is not a witch who wants to eat the children, but the mother he he he/she he/she wants. .
In this way, we have many demonstrations that justify certain acts that we consider forbidden, worthy of the most disturbed minds.
Sweeney Todd provided a solution to the problem of overcrowding and, at the same time, hunger. The subconscious is manifested in literature and, at the same time, the reader experiences a kind of purification.
The thing is, Sweeney Todd gives rise to a multitude of taboos, forbidden desires, all combined with the mystery of whether the legend was real or not, certainly fueled his success.
We seem to have some attraction to these kinds of facts and, through humor, it seems less uncomfortable to admit our appreciation for terror, for darkness. Taboos are allowed on the big screen; our subconscious is released and carried away.
“There’s a big hole in the world, like a big black hole. And it’s full of people, and the worms of the world live there!. – Sweeney Todd-