With two film versions, and now a West End musical, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is probably Roald Dahl's most popular kids' tales. And the moral of that tale? Basically, don't complain about starving to death, while living in the shadow of a giant factory full of food (most of which presumably goes uneaten), wait around in your hovel until some sadistic fat cat decides to randomly award you a benevolent gift for being the most passive kid in the world.
The chocolate factory of the title is a mega-factory that relies on slave labour, with hastily whitewashed racist overtones. In its shadow lives noble Charlie. His dad works shovelling snow since he lost his job and the whole family are starving. No wonder Saint Charlie wants to win the lottery, aka find a golden ticket. And if you'll excuse the spoiler, he totally does. So do four other kids. Unfortunately, these turn out to be the four worst kids in the world – simply by being four kids who aren't paragons of Victorian silent virtue.
When these kids act like kids, eating the sweets that they are invited to eat and messing with stuff, they have violent, cruel accidents, which we're meant to applaud. Ha ha, they totally deserve it for being disgustingly fat. Or for chewing gum. (Hey, wait though, doesn't this factory make gum?) Or for watching television. In the theatrical spectacular, Mike Teavee's terrible vice has become video games, because, well, because yawn, frankly. And dammit, don't kids today know it's wrong to ask for a magical, glittery human-sized squirrel? But who among us isn't guilty of these things? I know I can raise my hand to all of them. Especially the squirrel. Damn.
But the fate of shy fatty Augustus Gloop touches my heart the most. What chance did he have? He's in a chocolate factory. He's in the "chocolate room". He's there because he won a ticket by eating chocolate, as part of a competition which was a marketing exercise to sell more chocolate. But fat people don't know how to behave around food, do they? He dares to drink from a chocolate river and faster than you can say, back away from the doughnuts, fatty, he is sucked into a pipe to his possible death. So c'mon kids let's all sing along with this fat-shaming song about how much the Oompah Loompas would like to kill the "great big greedy nincompoop".
And Willy Wonka is so distracted by his ironic child punishments, he messes up. Because who would you actually bequeath a chocolate factory to? A quiet boy who really, really likes chocolate? A girl who is a world champion at consuming one of the products your factory makes? A boy who is well versed in the cultural field you're about to enter? Or a girl who may be a bit of a psychopath but would probably do very well in the world of business?
Of course, we know, none of these children with actual personalities are chosen. The factory goes to Charlie. A boy so nondescript we'd forget his name if it wasn't part of the alliterative title. He's never going to be able to run a factory. He barely speaks when other kids are almost killed in front of him. Slugworth will be launching a hostile takeover within weeks and be all over that place with his evil health and safety compliance and vicious minimum wage.
Yeah, I know none of the kids really die. It's fine – they're just horribly injured and psychologically damaged. I know the situations are heightened and cartoonish. And I know it's a morality tale like Shockheaded Peter, but those children were bullies and pyromaniacs, not shy fatties. Chocolate manufacturers punishing fat kids. Magical.
