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Challenge QuestBy: Lyn MillnerStill Scared of Willy Wonka? |
When I was four, mom and dad took me to my first movie on the big screen—
Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. On that fateful day in July 1971, my parents must have thought that the G-rated film would be a treat. But, for me, it was 100 minutes of unrelenting terror.Long after the credits rolled, the ill effects endured. For years, as my friends trotted off to see
Jaws, The Shining and even flicks most would consider tame, I stayed home. Or I went to the Cineplex with them and slunk into a different theater, where I watched films like The Pink Panther and ate popcorn by myself.But recently, with the help of a therapist, I unpacked my repressed phobia of Wonka and held it up to the light.
If you’ve never seen the movie, here’s a summary, from the Netflix DVD jacket:
"Eccentric candy man Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder) prompts a frenzy when he announces that five golden tickets hidden inside his candy bars will get their holders into his top-secret factory. Amidst a world of Oompa Loompas and chocolate rivers, young Charlie Bucket and Grandpa Joe get caught in the middle of Wonka’s secret agenda. Based on Roald Dahl’s book."
I ordered it and then phoned a therapist: John Van Lente at the Child & Family Institute in Fort Myers.
"Heck. I’m still helping people recover from
The Wizard of Oz," Van Lente told me. And then he went on a tangent about Oz’s flying monkeys, which terrify him to this day.We made a plan: I would watch
Wonka during the day, and he would watch it that night. The following morning, we would talk. (I opted for daytime viewing to minimize the chance that Wonka’s terrible orange-tinted, green-wigged dwarves—the Oompa Loompas—would toddle into my dreams when I dropped off to sleep.)The film arrived. I sat on my couch, pressed play and fell into a world I swore never to revisit.
Inside Wonka’s chocolate factory, almost everything is sweet and edible. The wallpaper begs to be licked. The mushrooms are dotted with whipped cream. Gummy bears droop from the branches of Dr. Seussian trees.
Wonka sets the children loose there. The obese Augustus Gloop kneels beside the chocolate river and scoops the melted liquid into his mouth. But he leans too far and plunges into the river whereupon he is sucked through a vertical tube and launched right out of the movie.
The remaining children vanish one by one. In the Egg Room, Veruca Salt is deemed a bad egg and discarded through a chute into an incinerator. Violet Beauregarde eats a piece of Three-Course Dinner Chewing Gum and swells into a giant blueberry. Mike Teavee (addicted to television) shrinks to the size of a grasshopper. The only child spared is the virtuous Charlie Bucket. Even he is nearly chopped to bits by the blades of a ventilating fan in the Fizzy Lifting Room.
When a child disappears, Willy Wonka simply watches. "Help, police, murder," he says drolly. You can’t get a read on him. He swings wildly from salty to sweet—here a tantrum; there a melody. His eyes are the happy, haunting shade of blue hydrangeas.
After each child is plucked from the screen, the Oompa Loompas appear, delivering a sing-songy warning to children and parents. "Oompa Loompa Doompadee Doo. I’ve got another puzzle for you. Oompa Loompa Doompadah Dee. If you are wise, you’ll listen to me ..."
At age four, I thought I had solved the Oompa Loompas’ puzzle: Candy was perilous. Dare to eat it, and you took your life into your own hands. That at least explained why my mother refused to keep sweets in the house.
Near the beginning of the film, before the cast begins to dwindle, Wonka takes them on a boat ride. The
Wonkatania glides into a dark tunnel, and the musical score changes from lush to urgent to menacing. Gruesome images flash against the tunnel walls: A chicken is decapitated. A big, black worm slithers across a man’s mouth. Wonka sits at the prow of the vessel. Instead of soothing the kids, he recites trochaic tetrameter as his voice crescendos to a shriek.In the end, Wonka awards Charlie the chocolate factory. Charlie, Grandpa Joe and Wonka climb into the Wonkavator and fly high into the sky over Charlie’s small village. The last line of the film—I’m not making this up—is "he lived happily ever after."
This time, when the credits rolled, I was healed. The movie wasn’t as scary as I had remembered. Parts of it were quite funny, in fact. I did see how certain scenes would frighten a small child. And I still don’t care for the Oompa Loompas. (As I write this, their cautionary melody is trapped in my head.) But I slept peacefully that night.
The next day, Van Lente broke it down. What my four-year-old brain missed was Willy Wonka’s real message: that it was the bad behavior of the young characters that caused their doom. Children don’t comprehend real causality until they’re about seven years old. So chalking their demise up to something as simple as eating candy—or worse, random chance—left me feeling very vulnerable.
The movie is actually a warning to parents, not children, Van Lente said. It shows what happens when Mom and Dad don’t place limits on the kids—and allow them to pursue the wrong values.
Van Lente also pointed out that every punishment was reversible. The child who shrunk could be stretched by the taffy puller. The blueberry girl was taken to the Juicing Room to be expressed. Though we never saw these kids again, the implication was that they would survive—and be better for it.
By the time Van Lente and I were through, I had gleaned many insights about my family’s dysfunction and differentiated my early childhood trauma from my adult view of the world. That’s how he phrased it. I only knew I felt better.
So, I recommend the film—for anyone older than seven. If you’re going to watch it, be sure to get the 1971 version, not the watered-down Johnny Depp remake. And, in case you need it, here’s John Van Lente’s number: (239) 896-3599.
