For the Celebration of White Settlers Massacring Native Americans I stayed indoors and revisited my childhood. This started with my finishing a novel by Ghassan Kanafani, a short collection of his writings titled Men In the Sun and Other Palestinian Stories (Kanafani was killed in a car bomb planted by the Mossad when he was 36). It made me reflect on my childhood and the childhood denied to Palestinian children.
I went back and thought of the things that I had loved as a child. Things I had not thought of in years, or more than a decade to be more precise, things that had kept me entertained, made me laugh, made me scared, made me want to be a writer, made my imagination go off the rails, made me feel less alone.
So it was only appropriate to start with the 1990 film adaptation of Roald Dahl's The Witches. I remember watching the movie obsessively on VHS when I was a kid, how horrified I was that a children's novel could be so dark and disturbing suddenly on screen. Yet I appreciated how nothing was sugarcoated in those days, that a lot of children's authors had a twisted sense of humor, or were just troubled individuals, from the Grimm brothers, to Lewis Carroll, to Roald Dahl.
Of course, I had to watch Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory right after - the 1971 Gene Wilder version. The only one that matters. It is worth noting as well, that Gene Wilder was a huge presence in my childhood, as my parents were fans of his and would play his movies in our home all the time.
My favorite scene from the entire movie is the one above, taking place a few minutes before the ending (and not from the book).
This simplistic scene that takes place after the whole mess of a factory tour encompasses the heart of the story. The scene is awkward (as confrontations and asking for free things usually are), explosive, a tad frightening, and bears the tone of defeat and frustration on Wonka's part, of which the audience wouldn't understand until moments later (those who don't know the story anyway). A misunderstanding between men ensues, and Wonka ends the escalating argument wth a severe yet classy "Good day, sir!" But after Charlie acts on his conscience and returns the gobstopper, Wonka's tenderness is restored. He quotes a line of Shakespeare from The Merchant of Venice, which suggests that Wonka is in fact a sophisticated, well read man, and suddenly is overjoyed. He explains why he did what he had to do, as it was all a "test" and the brutal honesty of it all became quite poignant.
That there comes a point in a person's life when one has to go to great lengths, however ludicrous, to find a single trustworthy and decent human being to rely on. Especially if you are a man like Willy Wonka, who dedicated his life to his passion, has no family and close friends, and is reclusive for good reason. The world outside his chocolate factory gates is vile and disheartening, and so he resorts to putting his faith in a child—one still innocent and uncorrupted by society, one of the purest of hearts.
