H01, Group 2: Philosophy and a Chocolate Factory 2/3

Cultural Influences on Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

     Many subtle components of this movie and deviations from the original book stem from the influence of the culture in the late 1960's and early 1970's.  Some portions of the book are completely changed to avoid offending any person or group of people, while other parts are mildly twisted in order to flow better in the times the movie was being made as opposed to the time period and culture in which the book was written.

Possible Racism:

     Coming off of the heels of the Civil Rights Movement and marches on Washington that African-Americans participated in to more fully garner the rights and privileges afforded to all humans by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, as well as being written in a time in which the United States was embroiled in a war against North Vietnam, the creators of the movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory made some very specific changes to a group of characters in the plot and even possibly altered the name of the title to avoid becoming perceived as racially dispassionate.  In the original book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Oompa Loompas are a group of African pygmies emanating from a region in West Africa called Loompaland, an area inside the country Loompa, that is fraught with many dangerous creatures like Whangdoodles, Hornswogglers, Snozzwangers, and Vermicious Knids.  Wonka saves this group of people from death by these creatures and has them work in his factory, providing them with an undisclosed amount of their favorite food, cacao beans, for their labor.  In the book the Oompa Loompas also "insist on maintaining their native clothing: men wear skins, women wear leaves, and children wear nothing."  Many of these aspects had to be altered for the movie release, as the undertones of slavery permeated this portion of the book and the writers did not want to convey a lack of knowledge of the important events occurring in the  time period in which this was being made.  Therefore, Oompa Loompas, while retaining their knee-high stature and place of origin, were changed to orange skinned, green haired people with protruding knees and white attire, reminiscent of classic German garb, a nod to the place in which the filming transpired. 

     A notion also exists of a possibility that the name was changed for racial reasons.  There is no consensus on the issue, as the derogative term "Charlie" can refer to either an African-American or to the Viet Cong, but many people believe that events prior to the films inception forced the hands of the creators into altering the name of the film to avoid an uproar.  The 30th Anniversary release of the film, however, states that the name was changed to emphasize the release of the "Wonka" candy line that Quaker Oats, the financier of the film, was releasing alongside the film's debut.

That last sentence leads me into my next topic:

Willy Wonka and the Quaker Oats Company:

     An aspect I found fascinating after I began to delve into the subtleties of this movie was the entire pretext for creating such a film: an enormous advertisement to boost initial sales of an upcoming candy line.  The company Quaker Oats actually bought the rights to and financed the filming of the movie in order to precede the launch of a new "Wonka" line of sweets and generate a massive amount of sales accordingly.  This plan failed, however, because the chocolate sales were very poor, and sources are split as to whether the cause was a horrible taste or the inability of the chocolate to stay solid while sitting on store shelves due to a complication in the makeup of the chocolate formula.  Either way, Quaker Oats sold the "Wonka" name to Nestle, who then fixed the formula and was able to make a profit from the candy sales.  The idea that this entire movie is just a commercial for chocolate still seems extraordinary to me, but I guess that is coming from a culture in which advertisers now try to insert as many allusions to products as possible to maximize profit. 

Finally, Poetry:

     Another reference to a product comes when Wonka is opening a door that possesses a lock, and he recites the combination as he opens it: 99, 44, 100% pure.  The Ivory Soap company advertised that their soap was ninety nine and forty four hundredths percent free of impurities.  This quote details the influence of another external product on the film, but many references exist to poetry and philosophers often used by Wonka to confuse or bewilder his guests. 

Not only utilized to silence or placate his temporary followers, this seemingly random collection of allusions serves the purpose of exposing the eccentric nature of Willy Wonka and further explain his possible reasons for receding from the daily interactions among other humans, aside from the fact that he was under constant attack by rivals.  As stated before in this blog, Seneca would have liked his choice in leaving public life for a life of solitude, but a more modern philosopher, William Deresiewicz, sees the necessity of solitude to foster intellectual and independent thought, apart from the many influences of society, at least on occasion and for a meaningful amount of time.

He states: "To hold oneself apart from society, is to begin to think one's way beyond it. Today, of course, universities do everything they can to keep their students from being alone, lest they perpetrate self-destructive acts, and also, perhaps, unfashionable thoughts. But no real excellence, personal or social, artistic, philosophical, scientific or moral, can arise without solitude. 'The saint and poet seek privacy,' Emerson said, 'to ends the most public and universal.'"

He would argue that the years spent in solitude allowed the blossoming of Wonka's character, and that, without it, he would most likely be a much more drab, less intellectual individual, due to society forcing conformity upon him.  By being separated from the world, he grew into a much more unique and inspiring man.

Word Count: 1008

Total Word Count: 529+1008=1537