Yeah, I have always felt that Wonka was deranged and derived pleasure from torturing the kids on the tour. He basically spends the day scaring the hell out of them.
BUT, as pointed out, three of the four non-Charlies leave the factory deformed. Augustus is squished from his tour in the pipes, Violet is still purple, and Mike Teevee is (I think the quote is) "ten feet tall and as thin as a wire!" Presumably his toes have also grown to finger length, thanks to the Vitamin Wonka he's given to grow.
The Salts just wind up covered in garbage.
My mom pointed out to me the underlying cruelty of most Dahl stories once, and I never forgot it. I kind of love his work for that reason.
(Also, in real life the guy was something of a bastard. But he possessed raw storytelling talent to a supreme degree. The only other writers I regard that way are Stephen King and J.K. Rowling.)
My favorite Dahl short stories are "The Way Up To Heaven" (the Manhattan townhouse with the private elevator) and "The Landlady" (about the small English boarding house where the young man stops for the night).
The one about the parson collecting antique furniture is great, too.
June 19, 2012 4:00 PM
From cracked, One of the most beloved and oft-quoted moments in the ridiculously beloved and oft-quoted film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory is the sequence in which the unbalanced candymaker displays his newest invention: lickable wallpaper. As the children and their guardians go to town on the wallpaper, Wonka declares: "Lick an orange. It tastes like an orange. The strawberries taste like strawberries! The snozzberries taste like snozzberries!"
We laugh, because "snozzberries" is obviously a fanciful, fictional word, and nobody knows what they really were. Except that Roald Dahl, the book's author, knew exactly what snozzberries were: They're dicks. Snozzberries are dicks. Willy Wonka made those kids lick dick-flavored wallpaper.
"The Filthiest Joke Ever Hidden in a Children's Movie"
7 Comments -
I find fault with the author of the article on this one - he writes:
"It turns out the guy who thought a story about an insane recluse casually murdering a group of children had a pretty fucked up sense of humor."
If you read the book you know that none of the children are murdered. They all leave the factory at the end...
June 19, 2012 12:10 PM
They're pretty messed up, though!
June 19, 2012 12:32 PM
Yeah, I have always felt that Wonka was deranged and derived pleasure from torturing the kids on the tour. He basically spends the day scaring the hell out of them.
And he makes them lick penis-tasting wallpaper.
June 19, 2012 12:54 PM
I liked that line, DCD! But you are correct.
BUT, as pointed out, three of the four non-Charlies leave the factory deformed. Augustus is squished from his tour in the pipes, Violet is still purple, and Mike Teevee is (I think the quote is) "ten feet tall and as thin as a wire!" Presumably his toes have also grown to finger length, thanks to the Vitamin Wonka he's given to grow.
The Salts just wind up covered in garbage.
My mom pointed out to me the underlying cruelty of most Dahl stories once, and I never forgot it. I kind of love his work for that reason.
(Also, in real life the guy was something of a bastard. But he possessed raw storytelling talent to a supreme degree. The only other writers I regard that way are Stephen King and J.K. Rowling.)
June 19, 2012 2:30 PM
I read his books with my kids, I absolutely adore his twisted view of the world. Dick flavored wallpaper just seems about right in this situation.
June 19, 2012 3:02 PM
My favorite Dahl short stories are "The Way Up To Heaven" (the Manhattan townhouse with the private elevator) and "The Landlady" (about the small English boarding house where the young man stops for the night).
June 19, 2012 3:58 PM
The one about the parson collecting antique furniture is great, too.
June 19, 2012 4:00 PM