Wonkamaniac

An op-ed just appeared on Salon.com which I really empathize with. You can read the full text at Salon.com Arts & Entertainment | Me & the chocolate factory.

I am in almost complete agreement. Although I don't have a candy fetish like the author, I did wish, when I was 10, that I was Charlie Bucket. I felt like Charlie Bucket, after all. I saw in him what I wanted to see in myself, and how I wanted to be. When my classmates were into the Wizard of Oz, I was into Wonka and Oompah-Loompahs. And the movie has remained fresh and true for me ever since.

Just a week ago, over the July 4th weekend, I watched Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory for the upteenth time with some friends in a beachhouse filled with adults and children. I still felt my chest tighten with hope when Grandpa Joe uses his tobacco money to buy Charlie a Wonkabar, then deflate with terrible sadness when they don't find a golden ticket and Charlie resigns with "The ticket probably makes the chocolate taste funny, anyway." I still smiled when "crippled" Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder) stumbles and then gracefully tumbles when he first appears. I still chuckled everytime Wonka confuses a parent with his twisted logic or warns one of the awful children that their choices are about to cause their doom (his quiet, bored pleading with Veruca, "Please...Don't...Stop...", which can be read two distinctly different ways, as she throws a tantrum and falls to her demise, causes me to burst out laughing). And I still fought back sobs when Charlie gives back the Everlasting Gobstopper saying nothing but "Mr. Wonka...?" and laying the candy on the table next to him.

Charlie Bucket is my model on how a person should act, with fecund decency and deep kindness, even when faced with his own mistakes and errors. My fantasies are fulfilled, just like Charlie's, when he wins what he most wanted in the world.

Sniff.