the housman cycle

i think about this a lot why do you think she was so sad

Unpopular opinion but Sweeney Todd is not sufficiently punished by the narrative. He is the title character (protagonist) which means we are supposed to emulate him. He dies before he can explicitly state “Revenge is bad and don’t kill innocent people.” Then the finale says “To seek revenge may lead to hell but everyone does it, though seldom as well as Sweeney Todd” which normalizes murder and revenge. Also even in the finale Mrs Lovett does not get mentioned for her part in the work (anti feminist) but that’s a different post.

going through one of my rare and short-lived “books phases” where i read books. these things are good!

I am reminded of a film about a young man who comes upon a rat in the streets of Paris. This rat is special; he has been gifted with a talent for the culinary arts. He transcends his station as vermin. Yet he is cursed to live a half life, his greatest talent confined to the kitchen in which he will never be welcome. Yet he strives to live; he conducts himself through the young man, concealed within the chef’s toque. The man becomes marionette to the rat - yet the rat himself is puppet to the whims of his own ability, unable to find significance in the simplicity of his species’ station. In the end, it is only the food which escapes the cruel influence of obligation. It is constituted not by what it must do, but only by what it has always been. Tell me, Will, are you the rat? The young man, controlled? Or are you, perhaps… the food?