Classism as Villain in Sweeney Todd
A Marxist Analysis of Inequality in the Movie Directed by Tim Burton
Jul 22, 2009
In Sweeney Todd, a movie in which the traditional villain is portrayed as both monster and hero, there is really one reason time and time again presented as being the source of all the characters troubles - inequality. Gender inequality plays a strong role in particular, but economic and class inequality also play a strong part. These concepts come to become ultimate villains in a story in which almost every character displays morally questionable behavior. The protagonists start killing people and putting them in meat pies while the antagonist plots to forcibly marry his female ward, who he has locked away in isolation nearly since her birth.
Class Injustice - The Crime to Start All Crimes
All of this is built upon the foundation of the initial crime, shown only in selective flashbacks, in which Judge Turpin somehow sends Todd away (probably through the legal system’s tendency at that time of sending convicts to other continents) and eventually rapes Lucy, his wife, and takes guardianship of Johanna, their baby daughter. Therefore, we feel some sympathy for Todd, whose ultimate goal is revenge for his wife (whom he believes is dead) and for the other main character, Mrs. Lovett, who helps Todd in his crimes out of a love she has been harboring for him since before he was sent away.
In the end everyone dies except Johanna, Anthony and Toby, the more or less blameless children of the story. Tragedy compounds on tragedy, yet throughout it is easy to see how all these people went wrong, how in this vision of Victorian England, the whole of London goes wrong.
Sweeney Todd - An Impoverished, Oppressed Man who Turns to a Life of Crime
In the larger picture, this evil takes the form of class inequality. The songs “Little Priest” “No Place Like London” and “Epiphany” deal with this theme directly and also happen to be some of the more memorable songs in the movie. All three are more or less songs in which Sweeney and/or Mrs. Lovett make decisions that lead them further down the path of their own damnation. There is a case to be made that, because of this correlation, the oppression of the poor working class of London as a whole helped to send Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett into a life of brutal and viscous crime.
What other recourse did a poor Londoner have in response to crimes committed against him by a member of the middle or upper class? We know, historically, that the working class poor in England were defenseless victims in the face of the whims of those “above” them. In Sweeney’s own case the legal route looks impossible, seeing as how the man who wronged him is a judge. In this, Sweeney Todd seems to be making an extreme case for a familiar argument - that people who are oppressed turn to crime, and in this case the more vicious the oppression, the more vicious the crime. It is clear from the songs that in Sweeney’s own twisted logic he is evening the score, not just between him and Judge Turpin, but between the working class and the ruling class of London.
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