Willy Wonka

As mentioned, Willy Wonka may be seen as the figure of a financial colonizer. Like all creatures of capitalism, Wonka is motivated by self-interest and profit. The launch of the five golden tickets illustrates this point clearly. Explicitly stated in the story, Wonka “decided to invite five children to the factory, [in other that] the one [he] liked best at the end of the day” could be heir to the factory (185). For the purposes of the narrative, Charlie being the most polite and long-suffering child deserves the prize. Yet, in the event that all five children should be eliminated, what Wonka will have launched will be an immensely successful marketing campaign that escalated sales and publicized his brand. Following the discovery of the first golden ticket, “the whole country, indeed, the whole world, seemed suddenly to be caught up in a mad chocolate-buying spree” (38). With the amount of chocolate sold, Wonka obviously earned tremendous profit. Recalling my earlier point that chocolate is a symbol of consumerist desires, by encouraging the excessive consumption of chocolate, Wonka’s capitalist objectives and strategy can be universally observed in most corporate ventures.

The complexity of Wonka lies in his apparent self-awareness of how he is revenue-driven. After Wonka admonishes “disgusting gum”, Mike Teavee astutely asks why Wonka still “makes it in your factory?” (130). Wonka pleads deafness, a selectively recurring disability. Another instance where Wonka pretends not to hear Mike is when Mike challenges Wonka’s explanation of the workings of television broadcasting. From these examples, we see how Wonka takes on an escapist mode whenever he does not have correct answers to questions posed. Mike Teavee’s obsession with the television makes him a metonymy of the media. Wonka’s attitude to Teavee’s questions is comparable to the tendencies of patriarchal authority to ignore and eventually remove representatives of the media when they question the contradictions of capitalist society. This is significant when Wonka escapes with his new found son/heir from the factory. In literally breaking out of the factory, Wonka breaks out of an institutionalized monument of capitalist production. Extending the notion that Wonka escapes from where he has no answers, he emerges from the capitalist system because it does not offer an adequate solution to his other emotional needs. Despite having lived in the factory for years with “no family at all”, Wonka wastes no time in fetching “the rest of the family” (185-186). The urgency of his acquisition of an heir and a family is significant as it highlights the urgency of his emotional hunger. At the same time, a characteristic of consumerism is immediate gratification. With “click, click, click, three times” Wonka summons the Oompa-Loompas who respond “immediately” (101). From a different slant, Dahl’s presentation of Wonka’s need for family as a consumerist desire adds another criteria to the fulfillment of an individual. In the narrative, Wonka is satisfied with the creative aspect of his job, he is wealthy but Dahl is suggesting that even the figure of capitalism needs the company and affection of people to be complete.

This humanistic slant in the portrayal of Wonka was explored in the 2005 movie adaptation of the story. In the movie, Willy Wonka was given an additional layer of psychological depth that explains his eccentricity. Wonka’s distant, authoritarian father as a dentist who forbids the consumption of sweets and chocolates creates psychological scars which are manifested as post-traumatic flashbacks that haunt the adult Wonka. The last scene of the movie shows the bare cottage of the Buckets comfortably situated in candy meadow where the chocolate waterfall is located suggests the integration of the Buckets’ warm with the wealth of Wonka as the ideal solution. Dahl seems to be suggesting that morality and affection that the Buckets exhibit has to be incorporated into the capitalist culture. The sense of an individual’s isolation and inherent loneliness characterizes the capitalist society. Dahl’s solution to this emotional hunger or longing is not through the consumption of material things but to consume or acquire nurturing relationships.

As mentioned in passing in the previous paragraphs, penalizing the spoilt capitalist children and parents and rewarding the proletariat Buckets can be considered an interpretation of Marx’s understanding of the workers’ revolution. Willy Wonka’s timely rescue of the Buckets can be seen as a socialist resolution to their poverty. By allowing the figure of colonialism and capitalism to be the solution to problems caused by these very institutions, the narrative’s utopian reconciliation extends the above reading of the Dahl’s push for greater inclusion in society.

Being absorbed by the capitalist system may be a regressive reading of the Bucket’s economic elevation. I have shown how Charlie has consumerist desires and like the resolution in Matilda, Dahl does not renounce capitalist society, in fact, I would argue that his accurate representations of capitalist and consumerist tropes demonstrates his familiarity with the system. Dahl’s pedagogical intent is simply to present a modification or extension to improve the existing framework.