The Dark Stuff

Greetings friends. So not long ago, a friend and I went to see Sweeney Todd at a small theater in Vineland. Indeed, the bloody revenge play is something that I found interesting the moment that I first laid eyes on it. There was just one problem. When the film version first came out—and as I was unaware of the original Sondheim stage musical—I avoided it for years. It looked too darn gory! And I was pretty timid when it came to dark stories in dimly lit places.

Now, not only do I love it, but it influenced my debut novel, Barker’s Rules. 

So how did a timid guy like me come to love Sweeney Todd and write Barker’s Rules?

I believe it has a lot to do with Sweeney Todd being a revenge play. Revenge plays typically feature a protagonist who has been wronged, who seeks to kill a certain someone by the play’s conclusion, thus making that target the story’s antagonist.

Much of the mainstream audience seems to agree that murder is wrong, to be moral is to be kind, and that good inevitably triumphs. But in a revenge play, your protagonist is a misfit plotting a murder, and you follow them simply because they are the protagonist. Because the story is about them. And now an author or playwright has the option to let his protagonist be despicable, or to try and make them heroic and thus relatable. Doing so will either craft a story that walks you through the life of a person you would rather not have known, or reveal to you that a person committing a despicable action cannot be judged by what is on the surface. And more often than not, to capture this sympathy for a murderer, the target of the revenge is often portrayed as even more ruthless and evil than the killer! 

Such was, I believe, the case with Judge Turpin in Sweeney Todd, a story that made me feel strong empathetic emotions towards a throat-slitting barber.

So revenge plays, I feel, have a way of shaking things up. We know what we believe is moral going in, but coming out, we are seized with a situation we cannot at first puzzle our way through. And this is how, over the years, the dark stuff began to appeal to this young author. And this same thought process resulted in the birth of Justin Barker.

The tragedy and mystery of the dark stuff is something that will always compel me, but how about you? Have you ever been drawn to—or appalled by—the darker, gorier tales? The blog has a new COMMENT FEATURE, so please share your thoughts below!