Willy Wonka, Lovable Lunatic
Oompa Loompas, Tim Cook, and a little nonsense…
When writing about vision and execution earlier this week, I started thinking (as one usually does) about Willy Wonka. This man Wonka, chocolate factory owner and candy-making genius, is clearly a visionary. But he is also something of a lunatic. And we should talk about this.
Allow me to discuss this for just a moment, to remind you of the particulars concerning our misbegotten hero of yore…
Willy Wonka has seemingly enslaved a population of immigrants from Loompaland to work his factory. When someone questions the morality of the working arrangement, Wonka speaks for his captive workforce, casting them as hapless victims and himself as hero.
Vermicious Knids, remember? He saved them from an entirely fabricated species of threatening beast to mask the fact that Wonka was the apex predator all along.
Sure he’s the dreamer of dreams, but who makes the dreams come true?
In this way, Wonka is Jony Ive and the Oompa Loompas are Tim Cook. Wonka envisions the menu, but the enslaved orange workers figure out how to make the meal.
Perhaps even more troubling (if anything can be more troubling than the forced-labor, sugar-laced fever dream) is Wonka’s attitude toward the children visiting his factory. The German kid nearly drowns. The television-obsessed kid ends up the size of a grasshopper. The gum-chewing girl surely exploded. And poor, spoiled Veruca Salt likely dove directly into an incinerator. Wonka is unperturbed.
How?
Willy Wonka is a lovable sociopath.
The internet, in a feeble attempt to show us that anything good can come from our modern connectedness, has innumerable recut trailers of Wonka as a horror movie instead of a family film. This one might be my favorite.
What is my point in all of this?
I’m not sure, to be honest.
Maybe we should beware the visionary without guardrails. Or the madman in the chocolate factory.
Or maybe this is all a bit of nonsense. And maybe a little nonsense now and then is ok.
- KB
