Positive reviews for Sweeney Todd (reprinted from a comment in someone else's LJ)

[fpb]

I see. They like it because it makes mass murder and cannibalism entertaining. Well, as a historian, I have had enough of that in my subject, and I must say that I do not see the fun in it. Hollywood, however, does, ever since The Silence of the Lambs and Fried Green Tomatoes. But then, an industry that relies on the regular destruction of its own personnel may not have any trouble with cannibalism. I wonder - has anyone ever checked the ingredients in Hollywood restaurants and caterers?

Comments

Re: Sweeney Todd

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Long, thoughtful (and polite) responses are very welcome in this blog. The fact that you take the trouble to respond with the best your intellect can offer is itself a compliment. Nevertheless, I think you are still rather a victim to self-indulgent modern categories. You quoted the fable of Bluebeard; but Bluebeard ends not just in the destruction of the villain, but also in an assertion of the value of decency - although modified by the ancient peasant cunning that says "if you meddle in what is no concern of yours" (that is, if you become curious about Bluebeard's secrets), "you'll end up in trouble." You do, but in the end, it is the murderer who is punished. The way in which Sondheim and Burton tackle the dirty old anecdote is to deny any correspondence between reality and morality: in fact, they positively reverse it. The world as they describe it is the world as Sweeney sees it - bloodshot, livid, vicious, ugly. Tell me, does it answer to your experience of reality? It does not to mine. In my world, the sun shines equally, and the snow fall equally, on the good and the evil, and Ol'Man River does go rolling along in spite of all the ugliness he may witness. The background even to the darkest tragedies is inevitably beautiful. If you insist on looking at the world through smoke-coloured spectacles, you tell nothing true about it, merely impose upon it your own obsessions. And that is self-indulgent.

Re: Sweeney Todd

[jezreelite.livejournal.com]

What about Charles Perrault's version of "Little Red Riding Hood?"

Ultimately, Sweeney Todd is a morality tale about the futilities of revenge. It's rather strange that you seem to have missed that entirely.