ROX-TV continues the strange saga of “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” in Part 2 of the series
For the readers returning today, we are picking up where we left off yesterday. If you are just coming online with us, please read Part 1 first (only if you want to). We had just left off with the formation of the golden ticket winners, which all happened to be child addicts in one form or another. Four of the golden tickets had been found around the world. So lets jump in shall we….
Charlie’s dreams are crushed again
By all accounts, the contest was nearing a finish, with tickets found throughout the world. Little Charlie Bucket had basically given up on ever having anything go his way and settles back into his routine. Late one night while Charlie is staying up with Grandpa Joe, there is a terrible revelation. Grandpa Joe has squandered his “tobacco money” and foolishly brought a Wonka Bar. Charlie isn’t very thrilled considering his hard earned newspaper money has been blown on frivolous endeavors by the bedridden grandpa.
Instead of using the money for bread or breakfast meat, Grandpa Joe is hell bent on getting Charlie’s hopes up with a candy bar the guy had stashed under his pillow. Since he has been bedridden for over twenty years, he must have had some help in wasting the money. The only other suspect, with working legs and the ability to buy Joe the candy bar would have to have been Charlie’s mother. So now we know that Grandpa Joe isn’t working alone. I just wonder how the candy bar didn’t melt over the course of the day, while being slept on, but whatever.
As the two open the candy bar, Grandpa Joe asks “which end should I open first” giving Charlie a chance to share in the wasted money situation, dispersing his own guilt for a bad choice. Elsewhere around the country and world, candy bars are being auctioned off, kidnappers are holding victims hostage to gain leverage for Wonka Bars, and so it goes. The whole world seems to set aside morality for a chance at that last ticket. Then it happens, the final chance at victory is declared in Paraguay, when the ticket is reportedly found. The Bucket family, aside from Charlie watches the bad news unfold on their small television from the safety of the bed. Grandpa Joe seems upset, because now his grandson will have nothing to hope for. I bet what Charlie secretly hoped for was that his family would get out of bed and start living again, but only Charlie can answer that.
For a family that shares everything, I find it hard to believe that Charlie would have went to bed early on that particular night, considering he doesn’t normally get home till dusk and regularly stays up late listening to his grandpa’s nonsense. The bedridden family ponders telling Charlie the bad news, but Joe refutes this by saying “let him have one last dream”. What a bunch of shit. His dreams are all crushed because he has to support his bizarre family, not by missing out on a contest he never thought he could win. The only one who really fueled the belief that he could win was Grandpa Joe, raising Charlie’s expectation a little too high, and thus creating an environment where he has to cry himself to sleep.
Life goes on for Charlie
Once the bad news has been dropped, Charlie finds himself back in school. The whole class seems a bit flat, after the Wonka Mania has apparently ended. Kind of like a bunch of drunks that went nuts on payday, only to wake up broke with nothing left to do but rehash old memories of wasted resources from the night before. The teacher of limited capacity wants the class to learn about percentages, and to highlight this in a language that people understand, he uses the amount of candy bars purchased/opened as an easily identifiable and relatable example. The first girl asked says she opened about “100” candy bars.
This seems rather high, considering the cost of doing so. I don’t know how money works in 1970’s England, so I will apply the current rates to better understand. Today I can buy a chocolate bar at the store for about a dollar. When I poured concrete for eight bucks an hour, apparently it would have took me at least a day and a half of hard labor to cover the costs of the chocolate. With taxes, it might be closer to two days, but who’s counting?
What kind of reckless spending habits does this town have? No one seems to ever do the right thing when it comes to finances. The next boy claims to have opened “One hundred and fifty” candy bars. If they cost a dollar a piece (modern inflation included), factored into my shitty wages as a concrete laborer in the summer of 1998, it would have taken about eighteen hours (on a standard 8 hour day) of work to cover the price of that candy. Two full days of working, only to be pissed away on chocolate bars. The average weight of a candy bar is about two ounces and contains around 220 calories. Are you telling me this kid ate 33,000 calories worth of Wonka chocolate? I’d hate to see what happens when this kid discovers drugs and alcohol. Probably be dead in a year.
Charles, comes back into play here and again, he seems to be a glutton for abuse and mockery. When asked how many candy bars he “opened”, he proclaims to the class that he did “two”. The teacher doesn’t understand and starts doing the math for “200”. Instead of just sitting quietly, un-noticed by his peers and fellow students, allowing a misunderstanding with no actual consequences to play out, Charlie insists on letting everyone in the class know the “truth”. Oddly enough, when given an opportunity less than a second later he lies when telling the class “he doesn’t care for chocolate”. What an exhausting routine of being a truth teller and a liar, all within the same minute.
If he didn’t like chocolate, then how come his family brought him a candy bar for his birthday? Why did Grandpa Joe torment him with a bar of the good stuff in bed a few nights earlier? Either Charlie’s family doesn’t know him very well, or perhaps Charlie doesn’t know himself. The years of being undernourished and made to work, have obviously affected his mental stability.
Lightening strikes for Charles
After a lousy day in school, Charlie drifts about in the street. Normally he should have reported to work by this time, so perhaps he has quit his job or decided to say “fuck it” (two things I have done repeatedly in life). As he cruises the gutter, his eye catches a nice big coin sitting amongst the trash and rubbish, which has accumulated over time. Charlie’s next move is rather confusing, considering that his family is apparently starving at home and his earlier statements about not liking chocolate. He could have taken the money home and brought groceries for a week, but no. The young man has obviously gone over the edge and wanders down to “Bill’s Candy Shop” for some cheap thrills.
Normally the place is a dancing and singing party, where Bill throws candy on the heads of the children, but on this day, the place is tired with only a few quiet souls, mulling over their candy purchases. Charlie picked a shitty day to get down at “Bill’s”. After asking for the biggest chocolate bar in stock, he eats almost the entire bar before being reminded to pay for it. As Charlie steps away, his victim guilt forces him to go back for one more candy bar, for his undeserving and lazy grandpa.
Upon leaving the store, there is some commotion at the newspaper stand, perhaps one of his bosses competitors? Charlie really should be at work, but instead the music picks up, signaling something is about to happen. He decides to open his candy bar near the mob of people at the newspaper stand, which in hindsight was probably a bad idea. Charlie really doesn’t show good judgement here. As he opens his “bar” he obviously sees that he has found the last golden ticket. Common sense would say “you’ve won, now go someplace safe to analyze the situation and come up with a game plan”. But no, Charlie decides to piss directly into the wind, and immediately starts waiving the ticket around.
From previous experiences around Wonka Mania, we already know that people are willing to kidnap and ransom victims for a “chance” at winning one of these highly sought after tickets. What was Charlie thinking? I’m beginning to think that he might have an undiagnosed Bi-Polar disorder, which during the manic episode phase can cause “impulsive, reckless behavior, and endanger their own lives and the people around them” (www.healthline.com)
As can be expected, Charlie is nearly killed when the “crowd” of emotionally charged people take notice of his golden ticket and start groping and grabbing at the boy and his new find. Oddly enough, his employer from the newspaper stand shows up out of nowhere and frees him from the hysterical crowd. For once Charlie does the smart thing and runs home. Why he didn’t do that in the first place is beyond me. Must have been a manic episode. As Charlie is running back to the outskirts of town where his family shed is, magically Slugworth appears in a darkened alley, blocking Charlie’s path. I wonder how long he had been standing there to make this exciting entrance and how exactly he knew that Charlie was going to find a lost coin, buy two chocolate bars downtown, find a golden ticket, nearly be killed by a mob, and then know the exact route Charlie would be taking home? Either this town has only one road and the man can predict the future or perhaps something else all together is going on. Was Charlie under surveillance? And if so, how long had it been going on?
(Author’s Note: We eventually find out that Slugworth worked for Willy Wonka later on in the movie, so this is rather troubling. How much influence does Willy Wonka really have? Enough to orchestrate the entire sequence leading up to Charlie’s golden ticket find and even know Charlie’s whereabouts at any given moment. It sounds kind of scary when you look at it like that. For Willy to ensure that Charlie was going to be the winner, Bill would have to have been in on the scam as well. Who else? The best scams are never known to the general population and I suppose that’s why they are the best scams, leaving most people to believe in anything other than an inside hand. Curious….)
Grandpa Joe cuts himself into Charlie’s victory
Charlie arrives back at the shack of sadness and declares that he has found the fifth golden ticket. Grandpa Joe is in a state of depression and basically calls him a liar. “Your pulling our legs Charlie” the old man mutters from his mattress kingdom. “There aren’t any more golden tickets” he says even as the boy is waiving the evidence in front of the old con man. It is here that the great unraveling begins on Grandpa Joe’s twenty year lie. Charlie says he wished that Grandpa “could go” which is nice, but the family knows the cold floor has kept him in his bed for two decades. There’s no way the old man could walk, let alone go to a prize tour of the Wonka Factory….or is there?
As I watch the film, you can see the wheels turning in Grandpa Joe’s mind, he has a distant stare, suddenly realizing the years long con is no longer needed. Good fortune has come to the shack, and all he has to do is abandon the narrative he has been perpetrating for two of Charlie’s lifetimes. Within a minute he’s on his feet and nearly kills Charlie in a bizarre series of events, leaving little Charles in a compromising position. A few seconds after that manhandling of Charlie, Grandpa Joe proudly starts signing “I’ve got a golden ticket”. What the fuck? Apparently Grandpa Joe has decided that the golden ticket is his, nevermind that Charlie was the one who actually put it together. “Suddenly half the world is mine” he continues to sing although technically it was Charlie’s sole victory. Without protest or pause, Grandpa Joe has done it again. Taken something that wasn’t his and turned it into his own. “It’s ours Charlie” he tells the young Bucket. Curious….
The guy can now walk and sing, but demands that Charlie find his slippers. Why did he even own a pair if he hadn’t gotten out of bed in all these years? Then in another horrible set of imagery, Charlie again finds himself in a very odd place in life. This scene is absolutely horrifying. What were the directors thinking? The next few moments are more uncomfortable images that seem to show Charlie being pulled, pushed, and dragged around by the strange Grandpa Joe, who can’t seem to keep from falling all over Charlie. Someone call the constable, this is getting to be too much.
The adventure at the factory
The following morning, the contest winners are to assemble at the gates of Wonka’s factory. The whole town has turned out for the event, with a show band and large crowds. Even Slugworth, the most awful chocolate spy of them all has managed to show up to the gates of his most fierce competitor without being detected. Then the bell tolls…for those about to rock. Willy, the main supreme, finally comes out, with a pretty vibrant pimp coat and cane. Even with a limp, this guy is shined up. No one knows what to make of this electric pimp and then he falls into a wild tuck and roll. Unlike Willy, Charlie is dressed like a vagabond.
Willy does the usual talking before leading the troupe into the famed and mysterious walls of the magical factory. This is when shit starts to get weird. Willy is talking near non-sense at times, and his erratic behavior starts to fire up. Willy presents a ridiculous contract that covers the entire wall, with un-legible or readable text. With the paperwork out of the way, the group is led into an odd little room, and everyone loses their cool. At a certain point, Wonka tries the door they came in through and it now leads into a hallway with “Alice in Wonderland” at heart. “You have to go forwards to go back” Willy declares and heads into the shrinking hallway. “The rooms getting smaller” a young boy says. “No it’s not, he’s getting bigger” Mike Teevea’s mother chimes in.
“I doubt any of us will get out alive” says Veruca Salt’s father. “You should never ever doubt, what no one is sure about” Willy reminds him. After fucking with a musical lock, Willy Wonka opens up the chocolate room to his guests. At first glimpse from a modern point of view, it looks pretty basic, perhaps even a little tacky. But I can assure you, had you come across this room in the early eighties and you were a kid, the place looked out of this world. Sadly as an adult in 2021 though, the room looks like eerily similar to the family fun center in Frankenmuth, complete with the fake mountains, lazy river, and other bullshit spread around to keep the mind busy.
The songs start up again and I really don’t care for it. Looking back though, what else could they have filled the time up with? The dialogue was already a little choppy, between crazy Willy’s two cents, broke ass Charlie and Grandpa Joe, and the rest of the gang. What else could they have possibly used during these portions of the movie? Maybe the songs work after all. If nothing else, music tends to bring everyone into the “same frequency” so in that respect, it was a good move. When people are sharing the same station and song, energy can do some interesting things, but that is for another time.
Oh the horrors
No sooner has the tour started, then terrible things start to happen to the visitors of the amazing Factory. As for Grandpa Joe, he proclaims the chocolate river is “the most fantastic thing I’ve ever seen”. I found this confusing and yet quite possibly true. For a man who has literally wasted away in bed for twenty years, seeing two squirrels fight in the park could be the most fantastic scene “ever”, so I tend to believe Grandpa Joe at least halfway. “The most” fantastic though? Come on old man. Is a chocolate river cooler than a naked sex partner? I don’t think so. Hell, fifty pounds of nitrous is pretty dope and way cooler than a chocolate river, but you’d never hear me say the tank was the most “amazing thing” I’d ever seen. Either the old man is launching into some kind of new con or telling the truth. The sad part is that when con men or women share moments of intimacy, it can never be trusted. People who can manufacture feelings and emotions are fucking dangerous and if you come across people that can, and you know they are full of shit, run for the hills. You may never really know what these people are about, and maybe they don’t know themselves. Fucking trouble town my man…
Around this time, a small army of little people with green hair and orange skin, start working across the river. They don’t look very happy and one begins to wonder who they are and how they ended up “working” in a factory. No one on the outside has ever seen them and even the people on the tour can’t believe their eyes. Wonka has a shit load of workers who have never stepped foot outside the factory. This doesn’t seem like a very healthy working relationship, but on we go. Willy claims they come from a land of desolation and strange beasts, “where a Wang Doodle would eat ten of them for breakfast and think nothing of it”. Eventually Willy worked out a deal with the Oompa Loompa’s, transporting them in secrecy to his factory.
Sadly the child addict Augustus is the first to meet a terrible fate. At a certain point, his substance abuse takes hold and he can’t help but to try and drink the entire river of chocolate. As Willy approaches him, oddly enough, the boy falls into the river at the same moment. Did Willy have a hand in his demise? There could be a case made for it I suppose, but it was the addiction to sugar that really ended up costing Augustus everything. His substance abuse brought him dangerously close to the banks of the chocolate river and no one else. His demise could only have happened with his own actions placing him in such a dangerous position. In the end, he gets sucked up into a giant pipe, doomed. Willy barely gives a shit, but why should he? Wasn’t it Augustus who put himself in this horrible spot?
Please tune in tomorrow for the stunning conclusion and analysis of “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” and what it all means.
Signing Off,
Mike Shepard
ROX-TV Head Writer
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