Mel Stuart's Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971)

Film Club’s theme for Movie Night this year is “originals.” That is, movies that were later remade into versions that, for younger viewers, have become more familiar then first. For example, raise your hand if you’ve seen both Peter Jackson's King Kong AND the original King Kong from 1933 or the Coen Brothers' Academy Award-winning True Grit AND the original True Grit from 1969 (with John Wayne). We were pretty intrigued by the idea of seeing these classics. What major differences would emerge? Would technology, or culture, or narrative be the most re-worked element? What made the original so entertaining or flawed that film-makers were compelled to make another one? And the more we talked about it, the more I got the sense that we were chalking this cannibalization of movie stories up to a typical Hollywood maneuver, one usually have to do with economics.

But it’s not. Telling stories, repeating them, adapting them, changing them, blending them with other stories – this is what we humans do, and we’ve done it for millennia. For example, Shakespeare’s plays are reworked versions of older stories. All three of the major Greek tragedians tell versions of the Orestes and Electra myth within a few decades of each other. More recently, Rick Riordan has been updating Greek myths for new readers. We love familiar stories, and we love to hear them with new twists. And sometimes because we love them, we want a small piece that makes us uncomfortable to be changed, so we can go on loving them.

In a trivial example of this, in 2005, HarperCollins, the publisher of the children's classic Goodnight Moon, decided to remove, from a picture that had long adorned the back of the book, the cigarette from illustrator Clement Hurd's fingers, using the magic of PhotoShop. "It [was] potentially a harmful message to very young kids," publisher Kate Jackson told the New York Times at the time. A significant outcry against changing what amounted to a historical document forced HarperCollins to reconsider.

So it may or may not surprise you to find out that there are two versions, an original and a revised, of Roald Dahl’s children’s book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, from which tonight’s movie, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, comes. The change is a small one, but it’s significant. And it has to do with the Oompa-Loompas, those endearing little people who live and work in Willy Wonka’s famous chocolate factory. Dahl published his book, originally, in 1964. The introduction and description of the Oompa-Loompas goes like this:

Children and parents alike rushed down to the edge of the river to get a close look.
“Aren’t they fantastic!”
"No higher than my knee!"
“Their skin is almost black.” 

At this point there is some incredulity about their size. Mike Teavee doesn’t believe any real person could be so small. And Mr. Wonka points out that the Oompa-Loompas are, in fact, pygmies (as in Faith Jacques original illustrations):

Pygmies they are! Imported direct form Africa! They belong to a tribe of tiny miniature pygmies known as the Oompa-Loompas. I discovered them myself. I brought them over from Africa myself -- the whole tribe of them, three thousand in all. I found them in the very deepest and darkest part of the African jungle where no white man had ever been before. They were living in tree-houses. They had to live in tree houses, otherwise, being so small, they would have been gobbled up by every animal in the jungle. And when I found them, they were practically starving to death. ... Poor little Oompa-Loompas!

When Mel Stuart began work on the film version that you’re watching tonight, there was some concern about controversial issues. If you read the passages that follow the original description of the pygmies, you’ll notice right away the stereotypes that have become associated with racist or imperialist imagery: A culture of struggling little natives rescued by a benevolent (white) European, easily adapted to entertainment (“They love singing and dancing. They are always making up songs”), still retaining elements of its "primitivism" ("they still wear the same kind of clothes they wore in the jungle  ... the women wear leaves, and the children wear nothing at all"), and who seem to have no problem with their indenture in a factory.

The studio wanted to ensure that the film was enjoyed by all and, as you will notice, they eliminated the pygmy look and replaced it with the now-distinctive orange and green Oompa-Loompa. Dahl followed suit in a revision of the book in 1974. The passages quoted above were replaced. Instead of Africa, the Oompa-Loompas now came from “Loompaland,” the existence of which is denied by Mrs. Salt. Mr. Wonka begs to differ and retorts:

What a terrible country it is! Nothing but thick jungles infested by the most dangerous beasts in the entire world – hornswogglers and snozzwangers and those terrible wicked whangdoodles. A whangdoodle would eat ten Oompa-Loompas for breakfast and come galloping back for a second helping. When I went out there I found the little Oompa-Loompas living in tree-houses.

The fantasy tone of the revised version echoes the fantasy of a magic chocolate factory, and few people challenged the changes. As revised fantasy Loompalanders, we’re less likely to criticize this depiction, which is retained in the revision, and echoed in Quentin Blake's 1998 illustrations for the book (right). Dahl explained the change this way:

"I created a group of little fantasy creatures ... I saw them as charming creatures, whereas the white kids in the books were ... most unpleasant. It didn't occur to me that my depiction of the Oompa-Loompas was racist, but it did occur to the NAACP and others ... After listening to the criticisms, I found myself sympathizing with them, which is why I revised the book."

This is not to say that Dahl is a racist, or that remakes and revisions exist to correct errors or weaknesses of the past. Dahl came from a time and a place still recovering from an intensely imperial (and imperialistic) past.

And that’s an interesting thing about originals – the window they open to earlier cultures. We get to look at a familiar story, but reflect on the unique way in which the story is told. You’re watching a movie tonight, one with orange Oompa-Loompas and a Willy Wonka definitely not played by Johnny Depp but by Gene Wilder. What elements of 1960s culture do you see built into the story? What elements stay the same? Whatever you notice, you’ll enjoy the riotous, sarcastic, deadpan entertainment of this version of Dahl’s story.

R. Findlay
Film Club adviser