The man was also way too hard on Charlie Bucket.
When we talk about “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” we don’t spend a whole lot of time talking about how Wonka is clearly a nut.
Okay, maybe we do. Maybe it’s one of those things that’s so obvious that you move on to other questions. But we should probably spend more time on this. I’m referring to his depiction 1971 movie starring Gene Wilder, which, like its source material, is kinda messed up. Where did the Oompa Loompas come from? Wonka is paying these guys, right? Why does Wonka take the kids on a psychedelic freakout during a boat ride on his chocolate river? Why is he dangling all-you-can eat chocolate front of a dirt-poor kid who lives in a hovel with his indigent grandparents? What is the point of Wonkavision?
And, look, it’s made clear that his rivals all want a piece of incredibly successful candy business, but still, why is Wonka so paranoid?
The answer is undiagnosed mental illness, most likely, although that’s a heavy subject to stuff into a musical set partly in a chocolate factory. This question, however, gets to the ultimate thrust of the movie, and it’s unsatisfying ending.
But first a recap: Willy Wonka, an enigmatic, world-striding chocolatier, announces an exclusive tour of his candy factory and a lifetime supply of chocolate will be given to the holders of five golden tickets – which can only be found randomly placed inside the wrapping of one of his delicious Wonka Bars that are sold around the globe. An international scramble to find the tickets ensues and, as each ticket is discovered, the winner is visited by a cavernous man in black named Slugworth, a rival candymaker, who offers a reward if they smuggle him out a sample of a revolutionary everlasting gobstopper that Wonka has in development.
When it all shakes out, five kids and an accompanying adult are lined up for the trip inside the Wonka factory gates: Gluttonous Augustus Gloop, ultracompetitive Violet Beauregard, demanding Veruca Salt, gun-obsessed Mike Teavee, and poor protagonist Charlie Bucket.
And once inside, each falls victim to their specific follies to potentially tragic ends (Violet is sent to be “dejuiced” after eating an untested blueberry pie candy; that one seemed like the worst). All are eliminated except Charlie, who then gets nearly booted out of the tour too because he and his Grandpa Joe take swigs of Wonka’s fizzy lifting drinks. Granda Joe – correctly, in my opinion – tells Wonka to shove it and encourages Charlie to pocket a gobstopper for Slugworth’s reward.
But Charlie doesn’t. He leaves the gobstopper to Wonka, who quickly announces that Charlie, by virtue of being pure of heart, has won the contest. Slugworth wasn’t a rival; he was a Wonka employee sent to test the ticketholders. And the prize isn’t a lifetime supply of chocolate but Wonka’s entire candy business. They then board an elevator that explodes up through the factory’s roof and sails away over the surrounding city. What?! Who cares, the end!
This is a movie I’ve seen dozens of times over the years, and it was almost certainly a viewing as an adult when I finally thought how paternalistic and moralizing it is fabulously wealthy industrialist to dress down Charlie like this. Charlie and his family are broke as a joke. He’s gotta hear about what it means to be pure of heart from this guy in a top hat?
But I also had questions about Slugworth. So this guy’s not a rival? The whole Slugworth thing was simply a ruse to tempt the kids?
In the context of the 1971 movie, yes, Slugworth is just part of Wonka’s machinations. But in the Roald Dahl book and the other film versions, he’s indeed a rival. Wonka’s competitors’ attempts to steal his secrets had him so freaked out that, fearing leaks, he laid his workforce off and imported the Oompa Loompas to live and work in his factory to safeguard against industrial espionage.
Slate published a fascinating article in 2005 about this very subject:
The real-life espionage became so pervasive that candy makers in Europe — where virtually all of the important industry innovations were taking place — began routinely employing detectives to keep track of workers. Sensitive manufacturing processes were off-limits to all but the most loyal workers. And outsiders dealing with candy makers were forced to sign strict, highly punitive confidentiality agreements.
For example, when Nestlé first figured out how to successfully blend milk and chocolate, only a handful of Nestlé executives knew how the complete milk chocolate-making process worked. The company also conducted employee background checks and put “suspicious” workers under surveillance. At Hershey’s, an elite few are privy to the proper mix of cocoa beans required to produce Hershey’s distinct chocolate flavor. And Mars blindfolds outside contractors when it’s necessary to escort them through its factories.
Dahl experienced the industry’s obsession with secrecy firsthand. At age 13, he attended Repton, a prestigious public boarding school in Derbyshire, not far from Cadbury headquarters. Cadbury executives used Dahl and his fellow students at Repton as taste testers. It was the perfect setup — an isolated population of teens and preteens who exchanged confidentiality for a little gray box containing a grading sheet and 12 different bars of chocolate — one “control” bar and 11 new confections. Wrapped in plain foil and marked by number, each bar was judged by the boys and rated from zero to 10; Cadbury then asked the boys to explain their grade.
Kinda ruins your Hershey Kisses to imagine the factory workers who once made them being hassled by goons hired by their employer!
Industrial espionage is indeed a real thing – Chinese IP theft, as recently as 2018, is estimated to have cost the United States between $225 billion and $600 billion annually – and likely to drive an industrialist who’s already an oddball a little further off the deep end. And this is a subject deemed not too heavy to include in a classic kids’ movie.
So pity the factory owner at war with his rivals! And let’s go out with the song we all know and love: