Willy Wonka And The Seven Deadly Sins
Okay, this is going to be my first real rant on my new live journal. I’m so excited. Not! I’ve just had this thought in my head for a while now and need to organize it for closer.
Every one knows of the cult classic film “Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory,” (originally a short children’s story by Roald Dahl). Unknown to many is that Tim Burton is in the works of remaking everyone’s childhood favorite movie. This revamp will cast Johnny Deep as Willy Wonka (awesome!). You can read a very well written and informative article here -> (Willy Wonka).
No, I haven’t read the book yet, but I have been told that the movie was similar in almost every way. So reflexively, I can’t be wrong for looking for the non-literal meaning Roald Dahl was trying to convey in his original short story, by using examples from the movie.
I have found an uncanny association between the individual vices of the character’s used in “Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory,” and the seven main moral offences to the divine (aka God): The Seven Deadly Sins. This might seem like non-scenes, but the intension of each “select” character, and the poetic justice in which their downfall was brought, affirms my hypothesis. Allow me to elaborate.
Augustus Gloop just couldn’t stop eating. There isn’t one moment in the story where he wasn’t hungry or feeding his face. His character was the first to go when he fell into Wonka’s river chocalite while he was trying to drink it. There is nothing deep or meaning full about his passing. His character was simply the embodiment of gluttony, and his stomach unmade him.
Violet Beauregarde vice is a little harder to pin down than Gloop’s. Lets think: she loves the spot light, waves to cameras, steals microphones and does anything and everything to be the center of attention, even if it means getting turned into a giant Blueberry. That’s kind of vane, don’t you think?
Varuca Salt was as kind and sweat as her name implied. Her rage and temper were only quenched by the aquirering of disiared possessions. Once she got what she wanted, she was probably the sweatiest bitch in the world. She was overly obsessed with possessions. In the end Varuca’s greed gets the better of her.
Henry Salt (for whom I have no picture of) couldn’t help but sway to the demands of his daughter Varuca; like an overwhelming desire to please her, and I might be so inclined to say that he “lusts” to please her. I need to be blunt about this vice. Lust does not have to have a sexual meaning at all. Lust is normally associated with sex but, is defined as “an overwhelming desire or craving: a lust for power, a lust for approval.” You can have a lust for anything, and we all know that too much of any one thing can become deadly. Henry’s lack of self-control is a grand example of lust.
Mike Teevee’s name is an obvious clue as to his character flaws. Consumed by the comfort of media programming and TV diners, Mike never left his couch. Like many that have fallen prey to the TV demon, it had poisoned his mind. He was filled with delusions of grandure, fantasizing on fictional characters he wanted to become. Do to his slothlly life, Mike’s mind was a slave to some one’s vulgar fiction. He died more and more each day when he gave his life to the TV.
Even Charlie Bucket, being the shining moral example, did not escape from having sinful intensions. After all, he wasn’t Buddha. He was a poor working-class child, envious to all those around him (he lived in a fucking barn for Christ sakes). But he was the most virtuous of all the characters. He was the only one in the story that didn’t sucome to their dessares. He could have sold his Everlasting Gobstoper to Slugwoth and fixed his families financial problems; although, through corrupt means. But his knowleged of right and wrong provaled, and that’s why he’s the man with the chocolate factory.
Willy Wonka is the pearl of my examples. His intensions in the story were not fully clear until the end, when he told Charlie he was being tested; that the whole golden ticket contest was just a smoke screen to hide the moral endurance chalenge Charlie was to pass.
That was the whole point of test. Wonka knew he had become corrupt and needed to be replaced by a pure spirit. Though the years, Wonka had become bitter to the world, and he even inflicted his “wrath” upon the other ticket winners. Wonka cared nothing for the other ticket winners and showed little remorse for their falling. He knew they would lose their minds in a world of fantecy: a place where they could have anything they wanted. You might even say that he enjoyed watching them crack. The sicko…
Now that I have made this connection between Willy Wonka And The Seven Deadly Sins, I have come to two conclusions.
One:
In this battle between vice and virtue, it is sad that only one made it though the trail. I don’t even know if anyone has ever uttered the words, "so shines a good deed in a weary world," under their breath, about something I did.
I am sertain that Roald Dahl was trying to say that we can be the ruler of our own world if we don’t fall prey to petty desires. No one is without sin. It is a part of our lives, and only though trials and tribulations do we find out were we stand in the world: who we are beyond all the desires of the flesh and possessions.
Two:
The small connection I have made to Willy Wonka and The Seven Deadly Sins is by no means a coincidence. These messages by biblical connection are everywhere, though we might not see them. They are behind the movies we watch. They are in between the pages we read. They are in the minds of the people that let use change lanes on the freeway, and it is a travesty to overlook these meanings, and their source.
As an Atheists, the idea of some all-seeing useless omnipresence governing the universe just fills me with disgust, but I do believe in society having a common moral vision. I feel that the conveyance of moral strife through modern story is a far better method of teaching virtues, than being forced to worship and fear an omnipresent fictional character that will punish you if don’t. To me, fiction is my God, the hidden meanings is it’s will, and it’s authors are it’s prophets.
But don’t mind me, I’m just ranting….(Thanks for the help Jazzy :D)