Not How It Seems: ‘Oliver!’
And now, onto the 
film which trained me to believe pick-pocketing is a lot more common than it really is.
Oliver! is the movie of the play that was based on the novel Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. As usual, we’re just focusing on the film adaptation. There’s a lot going on in the story of Oliver! Through it all, there’s a good deal of classism and financial disparity, and while that’s a good part of the film, the greater underlying theme is much darker and resonates even today when there aren’t massive crowds of people selling flowers and picking pockets to make a day’s living.
Are you ready for the bombshell then? Oliver! is about abuse.
The character of Oliver Twist is a sweet, fairly innocent young lad, who was born to an unmarried woman who bore him out of wedlock and died giving birth to him at the workhouse. As such, he is born to work hard for the workhouse until such time as he is released. The boys in the workhouse are fed gruel, and not much of it, while the wealthy men who essentially own the boys feast. Through peer pressure, Oliver is forced to go ask for some more food, since he draws the short straw. They know the punishment will be severe.
Sure enough, the boy’s request for a normal-sized portion of food is met with a chase and a series of dark threats, indicating that he will be thrown down a set of stairs, turned black and blue, and forced to eat cockroaches to survive.
I know we’re looking at 1800s life in a workhouse, but that’s some textbook child abuse. Okay, maybe they want him to be more obedient, but even spankings are more humane than throwing a tiny kid down a flight of stairs. Clearly, there’s some inhumane treatment going on at this workhouse.
The verbal abuse continues when he’s sold to a mortician, and this older kid who works there just starts insulting the heck out of Oliver’s mom for seemingly no reason. This causes him to react violently. He’s caught in a coffin and then thrown in a basement, where the sensitive child ponders about where he can find love in the world. Because obviously, he’s not finding it in his life.
He ends up running away, walking for seven days to London, where he meets the Artful Dodger, another small boy, who picks pockets for a living. The Dodger is the right-hand man and star student of an older fence named Fagin. For once, Oliver is welcomed with open arms and feels as though he’s going to be accepted. He doesn’t seem to quite understand what the other boys are doing when they pick pockets, but all the boys and Fagin seem to idolize a man named Bill Sikes.
Fagin tucks Oliver in like a real parent, and wishes him sweet dreams, continuing the illusion that Oliver has found a family. Perhaps this can forgive the scene a bit later when Fagin is prepared to stab Oliver for being awake and nearby as Fagin looks at his treasures. Or perhaps it makes things much much worse. Because what’s worse than a figure that you always fear threatening you? A figure that you love and respect threatening you for little or no reason with love on either side of the fear.
Fagin sneaks off to receive stolen goods from Bill Sikes, a man of few words and even fewer kindnesses. We also meet Sikes’ girlfriend, the lovely Nancy, a beautiful girl with a positive outlook and cheery disposition. She’s very self-possessed, and even with the choice line from “It’s a Fine Life” in which she and the other women cheerily mention “Though you sometimes do come by/the occasional black eye/You can always cover one/’till he blacks the other one/but you don’t dare cry,” you can’t help but think their poor life isn’t so bad after all.
Kind of like “Chim Chim Cheree” in Mary Poppins, except — hold on a minute! — all of these women think that beatings are pretty much a given part of life. Just as it’s a normal part of life when Nancy wakes Sikes up with a fresh-cooked breakfast and is scolded for waking him. Just as it’s normal for Sikes to answer Nancy’s request for a reassurance of his love with an exasperated, “Of course I do, I live with you, don’t I?!”
Basically, the struggles Oliver faces are very similar to the ones Nancy deals with. I think she sees this in Oliver from the first time they meet.
Oliver is caught as a thief when the other boys steal a man’s wallet. Fagin fears he will turn them in and enlists Sikes’ help by telling him if he’s arrested, Sikes will be, too. Sikes reacts violently, but Nancy steps in the way, calming him down.
The case ends up being dismissed, and the man Oliver was accused of robbing decides to take him in, treating him as a son and welcoming him into his home. Despite the fact that it would seem everything is over, Fagin tells Dodger to follow Oliver, and he and Sikes find Oliver’s new home. Sikes is still so paranoid that he and Fagin decide they have to kidnap Oliver and bring him back to the fold. They want to use Nancy since they know Oliver will trust her. She protests heavily, wondering why he can’t have a chance at a good life, and Sikes reacts by telling her she will do as he says or “feel [his] hand on [her] throat.” Not only does he demonstrate what he means by this, he then ends up backhanding Nancy in front of Fagin and all the boys, who look on horrified, as they are used to Nancy being sweet and good-natured.
Nancy then cries, even though “you don’t dare cry.” She launches into a song that’s the classic answer an abused woman has to the abuse.
“Who else would love him?” “I just need to help him get better,” “You don’t understand everything that’s going on,” “I’m so lonely without him.” Those are just a few of the excuses she gives for staying with Sikes. They aren’t good excuses, but that’s not really a surprise. The reasons women stay in abusive relationships rarely are. And since several women at the bar seemed to be in abusive relationships too, she can kind of assume it’s the norm, even though we can tell Nancy is smart enough to know better. Abuse is a vicious cycle, but more on that in a moment.
So Nancy does as she’s told and brings Oliver back. But she really feels remorseful about it. When they get Oliver back in Fagin’s home, Sikes is so paranoid, he thinks Oliver has definitely ratted them all out and prepares to beat him with his belt. Nancy fights Sikes as much as she can so he’ll leave Oliver alone, telling Sikes he’ll have to kill her before he lays a hand on Oliver. Remember those words.
Nancy even threatens to rat them all out if Sikes hurts Oliver, to which Sikes reminds Nancy of “her place.” Nancy walks off, remarking that their thieving career is “some living,” an interesting contrast to her views in “It’s a Fine Life.” At this point, Bill even threatens to kill Fagin if things go wrong, putting his hands around Fagin’s neck and stating that he now “takes the law into his own hands.”
Nancy feels so bad about taking Oliver away from a pleasant home that she decides to help the gentleman get Oliver back. Sikes catches her and strangles her until she passes out (possibly dies? We do see her move again, but that’s not to say she didn’t sustain fatal wounds). A mob forms and ends up shooting Sikes, leaving him hanging at the end of a rope.
So maybe the cycle of abuse is over? Maybe it only ends in death? Not quite. Earlier in the film, Fagin is proud of what a great thief Dodger is, and how he will become a “good little Bill Sikes” in time. Sure, it’s just an idea, and he didn’t mean Dodger would be just like Bill Sikes, but we also know Sikes was picking pockets at Dodger’s age, and we know that he has a similar affinity for top hats. Add to that the fact that most abusers come from a history of being abused or seeing others be abused, and the fact that Dodger, immediately after seeing Sikes shot is not only able to pick pockets, but to cheerily pick up his work with Fagin and plan for a criminal future… I think we have a future abuser and psychopath/sociopath on our hands. Or at least Fagin does.
Meanwhile, the message isn’t all bad. Oliver is able to escape the cycle of abuse and get a happy home life with his actual great-uncle, the man he was living with before. I guess it’s just a cautionary tale about the cycle of abuse. Oliver is able to escape it because someone else who understands his situation (Nancy) helps him out, while Nancy ends up possibly dying because she’s unable to escape. And even though the worst abuser in the film dies, we still need to recognize that abuse doesn’t end when one abuser dies or goes away, that there will always be abuse. The key is just to learn how to recognize and escape it.
“Not How It Seems” (usually) attempts to support the argument that favorite movie musicals aren’t really the dated, anti-feminist films some people perceive them to be.
