is Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory anticapitalist?
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971) is a movie about a successful capitalist searching for his successor. From the very beginning, the film’s humor and snark towards those that “buy into” the system adds an anticapitalist commentary on top of what would otherwise be a movie about a factory. The plot driving the whole movie, however, is even more radical: In 2020 terminology, Willy Wonka is a Boomer that has recognized his outdated, exploitative method of moving through the world, and has decided to step down and search for a progressive member of Gen Z to re-imagine his business (and the world). Boomers, take note!!!
The movie opens with a stampede of children running from school to Bill’s Candy shop. One of the first sounds we hear is the grating, whiny sound of greedy white children demanding candy from a single shopkeeper. The shopkeeper entertains the children and begins singing “The Candyman Can.” Throughout the song, he pours bits of candy into the children’s hands and allows them to manically ravage the shop. Though the song is upbeat and fluffy, the shopkeeper’s slightly sinister expression as he gives the children candy, combined with the horrifying speed with which the children consume the copious amounts of sugar around them, creates an unsettling and eerie feeling in the viewer. Enter Charlie Bucket, a low income/working class school boy, looking through the window of the shop with puppy eyes. Almost instantly, the audience becomes aligned with Charlie Bucket rather than the world of the other children; Charlie is framed as the antidote to an over the top, loud, greedy, capitalist world.
When the opportunity to enter Willy Wonka’s famed chocolate factory is announced, the whole world is thrown into a frenzy. Again, the movie’s use of satire and humor frames the entire situation as absurd to the viewer. One by one first four golden tickets are found by wealthy kids around the world. First is Augustus Gloop in Germany, who we are meant to laugh at for his gluttony and fatness, which I do not condone (ban fat jokes!). Next we meet Veruca Salt, a Greedy Little Capitalist, who literally has an entire workforce of women opening chocolate bars at the behest of her factory owning father. After Veruca is Violet Beauregard, whose local politician/car dealership owning father takes over the TV interview to promote his dealership’s bargains. Last is Mike TV, who will not look away from the TV as he is being interviewed. When asked to shut it off, he replies “No, are you crazy?!” and “Can’t you shut up, I’m busy!” His mom even brags that he takes all his meals in front of the TV, and that Mike has “never even been to the table!” This critical lens through which the movie presents these self-indulgent, capitalist children sets up the expectation for the audience that these kids are Bad and Charlie is Good.
When the group of children and their chaperones arrive at the Factory, we finally meet Willy Wonka, played by a wacky and witty Gene Wilder. Clad in a velvet tail coat and a stove-top hat, he is the picture of a successful capitalist. After a brief scene where all the children sign away their rights and absolve Willy Wonka of any culpability in the shenanigans that are about to ensue, they emerge into a magical candy field, and the song “Pure Imagination” begins to play. Up until this moment, Wonka has been full of quips and witty retorts. This all disappears as he earnestly sings: “Come with me / and you’ll be / in a world of pure imagination. / Take a look / and you’ll see / into your imagination.” On the surface, this song can be viewed as a humble brag; Willy Wonka is welcoming them into his magical factory and singing of its glory, implying that the factory is all the children could have ever imagined. Hidden within the song, however, is an invitation. Wonka continues, “If you want to view paradise, / simply look around and view it. / Anything you want to, do it / want to change the world? / there’s nothing to it.” In these lines, Wonka is acknowledging that the factory around them looks like paradise, yet invites the children to whatever they want with it, and even change the world as a result. An anticapitalist viewer familiar with the film knows that beneath the sugary landscape is a factory run by slaves called Oompa Loompas who were brought from a different land to run the factory. Wonka knows this as well, and is acknowledging that these young minds have the ability to build a better world than he has. Though we don’t know it at this point in the film, Willy Wonka has decided to retire, and has brought the children here to find a worthy leader for the future. “Pure Imagination” is the first glimpse we get at this agenda, and in the final lines of the song, Wonka directly acknowledges that he has failed in his attempt to build paradise: “There is no life I know / that compares with pure imagination / living there you’ll be free / if you truly wish to be.” Wonka is aware that his current version of life and his factory are outdated compared to the world the children can imagine, so he invites them to be the next to try, if they so desire. Like a Boomer, he has recognized the wrongdoings of his capitalist methods, but refuses to hold himself accountable for the system he’s left behind. But at least Wonka decides to step back, recognizing the radical capabilities of Gen Z!
As the tour of the factory progresses, all of the children except Charlie prove themselves to be unworthy members of Gen Z by giving in to their capitalist tendencies; they fall for traps that sneaky Willy Wonka has placed in their way to tempt and test them. Augustus breaks the rules of eco-socialism when he contaminates the chocolate river, Violet defies the FDA and snatches a beta version of gum out of Wonka’s hand, Veruca Salt embodies the very essence of capitalist greed singing “I want the world / I want the whole world” and is subsequently declared a Bad Egg, and Mike TV loses all good judgement over his obsession with being the “first person in the world to be sent by television.” As a result, each of these kids winds up in a dangerous situation, all while Willy Wonka seems unbothered. For example, as Mike runs up to be shrunk and beamed into a TV, Wonka says in a deadpan, throwaway fashion, “Stop, don’t, come back.” Wonka has purposefully created scenarios to reveal the children’s inner nature, and each of them has proven themselves to be a capitalist through and through, eliminating them from the search.
After Mike TV’s demise, the tour ends and Willy Wonka feigns disinterest in Charlie and returns to his workday. Charlie, a Good Boy through and through, stops Wonka to ask what is going to happen to the other children. In his response, Wonka assures Charlie that they’ll be alright, and says that they will “return to their normal, terrible old selves,” confirming his disdain for the other children. Wonka shuts the door on Charlie and Grandpa Joe, but there is still one final anticapitalist test; each of the children was approached by Wonka rival “Slugworth” when they found a golden ticket, who offered them a huge sum of money for one of Wonka’s new Everlasting Gobstoppers (which they are given along the tour). Frustrated with Wonka’s treatment towards Charlie at the end of the tour, Grandpa Joe says to Charlie, “Slugworth wants a gobstopper? He’ll get one.” But Charlie, a morally pure anticapitalist, turns around and gives Wonka the Gobstopper back. Under his breath, Wonka utters “So shines a good deed in a weary world,” and then, “Charlie, my boy! You won! You did it!” He apologizes for putting Charlie through this series of tests, and informs Charlie that he’s passed and won not only the lifetime supply of chocolate, but so much more. He leads them into the Wonkavator (a glass elevator that can move all directions), and they head “up and out.” The Wonkavator breaks through a glass ceiling, and flies over the town as an orchestral version of “Pure Imagination” begins. As the song plays, Wonka informs Charlie that he is giving him the factory: “I can’t go on forever, and I don’t really want to try…that’s why I decided a long time ago that I had to find a child. A very honest, loving child.” The sentiment underneath the first iteration of Pure Imagination is finally fully revealed — Wonka is disappointed in the empire that he has built, and is ready for a younger, more progressive person to try instead. The Wonkavator sails off into the blue sky as Pure Imagination swells, ushering in the future run by a smarter, more radical, anticapitalist generation.
