 Starring: Johnny Depp, Freddy Highmore, David Kelly, Helena Bonham Carter
Director: Tim Burton
Year Of Release: 2005
Plot: For many years Willy Wonka has been producing the world’s best chocolate in his giant factory, even though he hasn’t been seen and no workers come in or out. Then he announces that five children who get the golden tickets hidden in his chocolate bars will get a special tour of his factory. Against astronomical odds, poverty-stricken Charlie Bucket gets a ticket, and he and four brats from around the world head of on a fantastical tour that has unexpected consequences. |
I’m never sure what to think about Roald Dahl. While his books have sold millions of copies and I used to love them as a child, I always feel there something almost nihilistic and sadistic about his worldview. His books are filled with grotesques, but perhaps the most disturbing thing is the punishments rained down on people for even the slightest deviation from Dahl’s moral code.
Just think about Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. In the book and film, terrible things happen to the children for their infractions in Willy Wonka’s health and safety nightmare of a factory. Although everyone except Charlie is a complete brat, the way it’s presented isn’t that the children are punished for just for being out of control little asses, it’s for specific, often minor, character traits. Augustus Gloop nearly drowns because he eats too much, Veruca Salt is almost killed falling down a rubbish shoot for being demanding and Mike Teavee gets shrunk and then stretched for enjoying television too much. Perhaps worst of all is Violet Beauregarde, who’s terrible crime, according to Dahl (and the Oompa Loompas), is liking to chew gum, and she must be punished hideously for it.
It often seems like the book is about Dahl taking his own personal little pet hates and inventing terrible things to happen to children because of them (while ignoring the fact that the kids are just the products of their useless parents). It’s a rather harsh and sadistic view of the world, and can be seen in many of his books.
So what does he suggest children should be like? Boring, that’s what. Seen and not heard. Charlie Bucket is almost a non-character. His only characteristics are being blandly nice and slightly self-sacrificing. Throughout the book and film he hardly ever actually does anything. In fact both the 1971 and 2005 movie versions had to invent things for Charlie to do, just so he’s an actual character in the story who has some decisions to make, rather than a passive observer (it’s noticeable in many Dahl filmadaptations how many changes are made to the main characters, just because there’s so little too them).
Charlie comes out on top and is rewarded, largely for being the least interesting character around. He wins out not by being actively good, but by not being bad (or at least not breaking Dahl’s strict view of the world). It’s noticeable that in many of Dahl’s books, he rarely spends time rewarding people for positive actions (like I said, Charlie gets rewarded for doing pretty much nothing, which isn’t the same thing), while revelling in the punishment of things he sees as bad.
It’s almost the odd thing about Dahl, that while a mythos has grown up around him since his death in 1990, from his children’s books you get the impression that he wasn’t actually a great fan of kids, and only he really liked them if they kept out of the way and never did anything he found even vaguely annoying (his granddaughter, Sophie, has talked about what a difficult man he was).
His books are filled with characters where minor foibles are taken to the extreme to make them seem grotesque, and people are punished terribly for minor wrongs. Just take Matilda for example. Again the ‘hero’ of the book is almost a non-character. Her only characteristics are being clever and otherwise pretty much blending into the wall. Everyone around her is horrible and so when she gets strange powers, these grotesques must be punished. However Matilda herself never rises above being a bland nothing. Children may like this world where terrible things happen to people they don’t like, but it’s an oddly unpleasant way to look at things, where people don’t need to be good, they just need to be nothing, and anything else is bad and must be punished.
But perhaps maybe my attitude towards Dahl is too shaded by an interview I saw with him when I was young. As a kid who was interested in writing and as a fan of Dahl’s books, I was quite excited when I saw he was going to be interviewed on the children’s TV programme, Blue Peter. However the whole thing turned out to be a major disappointment. He was crotchety and seemed almost disdainful of the whole idea of talking about his writing to kids, who he seemed to treat as an annoyance he’d rather not have to deal with.
There was one particular answer that’s always stuck with me, because even as a child I thought it was cynical, negative and almost mean. He was being asked questions by children who’d been invited to the programme, and one of them asked him his advice on what young people should do if they’re interested in writing (because the kid wanted to write books). His answer was that they simply shouldn’t bother, as there was no point in them even trying, because in his opinion nobody under 30 had ever written anything worthwhile.
There was no suggestion they should write for fun or practice their craft so that one day they’d write a really good book. He just completely shut the child down and told him there wasn’t any point in him writing anything because at that point in his life it was going to be crap. What sort of attitude is that? You’re not that now, so why bother trying to be?
And that’s essentially the problem I have with Roald Dahl. Everything’s so black and white and solipsistic. In his books characters either live up to his bland idea of how the world should be, or they’re a grotesque who will be punished in an OTT fashion for something that doesn’t really matter. There’s little sensation that anyone has the ability to change or grow – it’s all about how things are at that moment, and if Dahl doesn’t like it, what’s the point of trying to change it when you can just invent some bizarre form of punishment to destroy it? It’s rarely ‘this is the way the world should be’, it just about what it shouldn’t.
It’s a frustrating, slightly unpleasant, my-way-or-the-highway philosophy that bleeds through in many of his books, (it’s also noticeable that adult characters in his books who are seen as good, nearly always share the same narrow ‘I’m right, everyone else is wrong’ attitude)
He may be known as a rather politically incorrect writer who filled his books with quirky and odd characters, but that hides the fact his books show a rather conservative, slightly sadistic and a tad hopeless view of the world. And it’s for that reason that I have a bit of trouble with Roald Dahl.
TIM ISAAC
PREVIOUS: The Chaplin Revue - Or, the controversial life of Charlie Chaplin
NEXT: Chicago - Or, the curse of the Best Supporting Actress Oscar
CLICK HERE to see the index of 909 films and TV shows the Movie-A-Day Project will be covering
CLICK HERE to find out more about the idea behind The Movie-A-Day Project
CLICK HERE to follow Movie_A_Day on Twitter
