William Wilberforce and Sweeney Todd: Stories of London

February 21st, 2008 • Africa, Development, Opinion

Clare and I had the pleasure of watching Amazing Grace and also Tim Burton’s new Sweeney Todd recently, and it got me thinking about some of the things Blattman has been blogging about how the bad things we are seeing in Africa aren’t that different to what the West was like not too long ago.

The two movies show quite different views of London in the 18-19th Centuries. Amazing Grace is basically optimistic and shows the England embracing the cause of emancipation and battling a few bad apples to see it become a reality. Conversely, Sweeney Todd is a dark, pessimistic movie about the depravity of revenge and man, and the corruption that pervaded all levels of English society.

Amazing Grace is an uplifting, inspirational film designed to get the viewer to believe that change is possible and to honour Wilberforce as the man who killed slavery. And in this limited way it works. I felt rather good after watching it and did feel more inspired that change is possible. However its ignorance of some of the other social issues plaguing England does leave it lacking as a realistic portrayal of English society. One can too easily take from Amazing Grace that the English were basically opposed to slavery the whole time and were only being held back by a retrograde ruling class. Also, England is portrayed as a great place to live, I can hardly remember a portrayal of the poverty and oppressiveness that characterised a lot of English life in the film at all.

Sweeney, on the other hand, revels in its dark portrayal of London as the “pit of the world”. It’s hyperbolic portrayal of the judiciary as corrupt to the core and of society in general being so degraded makes the cannibalism encouraged by Mrs Lovett seems almost acceptable as a natural extension of societal norms. Sweeney touches upon the child slaves in the mines, the horrific conditions in the ‘insane asylums’ and how the rich lorded it over the poor – creating a picture of London far darker, yet in many ways more realistic then Amazing Grace.

Sweeney embraces the London of yesteryear as not the golden, intellectual utopia of Amazing Grace, but rather a city of brutes. England was a country of oppression not only at home but abroad too. While Amazing Grace continues the civilising myth that sustained Western colonialism – that is that the generally good West must teach the bad Africans how to govern – Sweeney Todd demonstrates the hypocrisy of this position.

While there’s nothing wrong with condemning corruption and oppression, let us not forget this is not an ‘African phenomena’. This is not an issue about ‘African/triabl culture’.

Sweeney is a strong reminder of how close we are to the same societal wrongs that shock us again now. We were, and are, just as retrograde as any other society. The modern West has just succeeded in changing the focus and outlet of our retrograde behaviour.

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Tags: amazing grace, corruption, Development, england, london, majority world, movie, oppression, review, sweeney todd, third world, tim burton, west, william wilberforce

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