Wonka (2023) was one of my favorite films of that year and also quickly became one of my favorite films. It is written and directed by Paul King, director of the legendary british comedy series "The Mighty Boosh" as well as the criticially acclaimed "Paddington" franchise. I've recently started writing a script for a sequel to the Willy Wonka films including Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971) and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005). I've been discussing this script with a friend, and subsequently the discussion expanded into such topics as the effectiveness of capitalism and its alternatives and the cultural meaning of the character known as 'Willy Wonka'.
In the most recent Wonka film, some details are exposed revealing the origin of the Oompa-Loompas and Wonka's relationship with them. It is a common question: "Is it ethical for Willy Wonka to run his factory using imported and possibly exploited foreign labor?" "What is the difference between the Chocolate Factory and a sweat shop?" I believe in the new film it is essentially justified as a deal that works for both the Oompa-oompas and for Wonka, but let's just be honest. Willy Wonka is portrayed in every version of the story as an exceptionally powerful individual. Why is it, then, that so many fans love the franchise and despite Willy being a representation of the visionary industrialist, actually think the Willy Wonka is pretty cool? Would YOU turn down a tour of that factory? If YOUR Scrumdiddly-umptious bar had a golden ticket, would you take the ride?
Wonka fans love Willy Wonka because the boundary of his world is that of his imagination. Willy Wonka represents dreams coming true and an escape from our mundane lives. Not everyone can inspire this feeling.
My friend mentioned in our discussion that Willy wonka is not meant to be an analog to anyone real. He is a character who exists only in fantasy. I disagree. In fact, art itself is an analog and an articulation of life itself. Willy Wonka, IMHO, is an analog for a specific type of person. And that is the industrialist, the visionary, the inventor. WIlly Wonka, Rodney Copperbottom, Walt Disney, Gary Valentine, the list goes on and on. Willy Wonka is more like a Richard Bransonfigure than he is like any person I've ever met in real life.
I've been reading about the Soviet Union thanks to the brilliant books written by Michael Malice. One story that particularly stands out to me is one about Boris Yeltsin. He visited the United States in 1990, and there is a famous image of him at a supermarket in Texas. The story goes that going from the Soviet Union where even basic ingerdients and food were scarce for everyone, to a U.S. supermarket stocked with food products, more food than folks in the USSR had ever seen in their lives, was beyond shocking and incomprehensible to the Soviet premier. How is this even possible? How can there be so much available to anyone who had the money to shop at the store? No rationing, no siezing food. If you had the money you could buy a thousand fudgie pops and eat them all yourself.
This brings us to the next link in the chain: chocolate. Willy Wonka's greatest achievment is the construction and operation of his Chocolate Factory, with a huge chocolate river and glass elevator. The River is a marvel. It is something people would come from all over the world to witness if only they could find a golden ticket in their chocolate bar. Veruca Salt, the daughter of a rich industrialist, takes over her fathers factory and commands hundreds of employees to unwrap Wonka bars thousand per day, just to find the Golden Ticket. Augustus Gloop, the obese German boy, famously jumps in the river and is the first to be punished for his gluttony.
I dream of a scene in which someone from the Soviet Union, which would have to be some sort of refugee (I doubt anyone who lived in the USSR and found a way out would ever want to go back) finds a Golden Ticket and is introduced to America by witnessing an Wonka's chocolate river. The refugee weeps, weeps that in America obese boys drown in rivers of chocolate while at home, he and his family had crumbs of bread confiscated by Stalin's thugs. My friend wrote to me "Wonka land as excess". This is not what I meant. Let me clarify:
When Yeltsin walked into the US supermarket, and saw the shelves lined with more food than any one person could ever eat. Some, depending on their values and philosophies may see it as excess. "How can some have so much, when others have so little?" Waste is never a good thing. But what Yeltsin witnessed that day was not "excess". It was prosperity. It is an alternative vastly superior to rationing food and government controlled farms, which yield less food that more poor people must becaome even more competitive to have access to. It's a system that yielded not only enough for everybody but MORE than enough for everybody. Obesity is a problem in america. Starvation, on the other hand, is much worse. Some folks are starving in America but it is not even close to the horror we've witnessed in history or that we still see today in many other countries. During the Soviet Union, there is no McDonald's there is no grocery store.
This is all to say that, in this hypothetical Wonka scene, the Soviet refugee who weeps at the sight of a Chocolate River does not weep because of how excessive it is, but instead weeps about how absolutely horrible their living conditions have been, until they found their Golden Ticket.