Oompa Loompas are not the only non-westerners in the story. We have another interesting anecdote of “Mr. Wonka and the Indian Prince.” The story is a digression used to further exalt Mr. Wonka. It tells of an Indian prince who is so rich that he ordered Wonka to build him a palace of chocolate. Rather than eat it, he was stupid enough to live in it despite Mr. Wonka warnings, “but Mr. Wonka was right of course, because soon after this, there came a very hot day..” and the palace started to melt. ( Dahl, 17)
Edward Said explains the representation of non-westerners in western literature,
The thing to be noticed about this kind of contemporary discourse, which assumes the primacy and even the complete centrality of the West, is how totalizing is its form, how all enveloping its attitudes and gestures, how much it shuts out even as it includes, compresses and consolidates. Wee suddenly find ourselves transported backward in time to the late nineteenth century.” (1993:22)
Dahl's story written for children in the 1960s does include Indians and Oompa Loompas from Africa but represses their voice and their version of the story. We only hear Mr. Willy Wonka and his victimized, fooled worker who acts as his apologetic voice, Grand Pa Joe, who was kicked out from the factory but still excuses his tormentor and sees him as a genius.
This rhetoric of aggression towards the “other” who are not westerners is perceived as the remnants of the post-colonial period as well as the voice of the new US imperialist period. Edward Said draws attention to the strong and inseparable relationship between imperialism and culture. He says, “the Connection between imperial politics and culture is astonishingly direct.” The colonizer or the imperialist assumes a dominant relationship on the people or the nation they imperialize. He demonstrates his point of view analyzing the modern American language which expresses, “ American attitudes to American greatness, to hierarchies of race” (8). Mr. Wonka makes a whole race work for him and he takes care of them because they are unable to take care of themselves. Although the United States has never used the rhetoric of colonization or imperialism, it has been argued that the same rhetoric of dominance was used to expand and practice imperialism internally when the first American settlers colonized and oppressed the Native Americans, the African slaves and built an empire of a whole continent. The same language of overt domination was used. As we progress in history the US identified lands that is of interest to them and a new rhetoric of domination ensued,
Now there were distant lands to be designated vital to American interests, to be intervened in and fought over - e.g. Philippines, the Caribbean.. (8)
US imperialism turned its eyes outside. While using rhetoric of domination it simultaneously uses rhetoric of philanthropy and of serving the interests of man kind in general,
`the selfish forces which direct imperialism should utilize the protective colors of disinterested movements such as philanthropy” (11)
This perfectly describes Willy Wonka's approach in explaining himself to Charlie about his workers, “Someone's got to keep it going - if only for the sake of the Oompa Loompas” or as verbalized in the 2005 movie, “who will take care of them” as explained above.
In Hegemony Unraveling, Giovanni Arrighi argues that,
“The “E” & “I” words empire and imperialism are back in fashion.”
He hails the return of imperialism which he attributes to the new methods utilized by the United States to spread its hegemony of the new liberal age through globalization. (2005:23)
Literature even that of Children shows,
“the imperial dynamic and above all its separating, essentializing, dominating and reactive tendencies.” (Said, 1995:37).
Mr. Dahl presents Mr. Wonka as far more intelligent than the Oompa Loompas or the Indian Prince. He dominates the Oompa Loompas because he is deserving. He also dominates his human workers like Mr. Joe because he is “a magician”. Glenn in Unequal Freedom have noted that class segregation overlaps with race segregation.(2002) There is a common element of domination and suffering shared between those who are oppressed. For example, the white workers and the black workers and sometimes women in America shared the humiliation of domination. In Charlie and the Chocolate Factory both Joe and the Oompa Loompas share an unawareness of their situation as being exploited and dominated. Both are segregated from Mr. Wonka either by class or by race. The likeness between the Oompa Loompas and the African slaves is also unsettling.
Foucault in his explanation of the dynamics of power says “there is no power that is exercised without a series of aims and objectives” (1976:477). Therefore when Willy Wonka exercises economic and linguistic power over the Oompa Loompas, it is because he wants to exploit them in his factory. The Indians are also potential consumers who can be economically exploited.
But as Foucault says, “where there is power there is resistance” (1976:77)As a reaction to this type of literature that shows separation, superiority and domination, a “deep seated anti-Westernism that is a persistent theme of Egyptian, Arabic, Islamic and Third World History” (Said, 1995:34) has shaped. This brings us to the reaction to this book and the movie. How can the Indians who are represented as fools or the Africans who are represented as small, hungry and dependant not resent this attempt to culturally dominate as expressed in language and on screen! The reader would expect them to resent the book and the movie.
Despite this demeaning language and like Mr. Joe, the Oompa Loompas do not rebel in the story. Have they bought Wonka's view of them? or have they decided to play along because they need the jobs? Wonka doesn't have to coerce them into work for him yet he conceals his real intentions of exploitation and his feeling of superiority by a show of interest in their well-being. He appears as altruistic. Throughout the story, he does not mention what he stands to gain economically from employing them.
Is Wonka then a symbol of the new US imperialism? The answers is in the affirmative. Although the US has become a Welfare State with the new deal, monitors of capitalist societies have recorded a regression on these welfare policies and a pressure to the production of surplus value. Bush' s administration adopted the new American Century project by “global economic integration.” The US reverted to the self-regulating unchecked free market internally and internationally.
Managers hired by US corporations in the US are told that their working hours will not be limited to 48 hours a week. Statistics show that the modern manager may put in 80 hours a week to satisfy the job description. (Hymowitz, 2005) Barbara Ehrenreich in her Book Nickel and Dimed, On Not Getting By in America, undertakes a research in a few US cities where she starts to work with minimum wages to figure if she will be able to make ends meet. Her aim was to simply support herself while living on her own with no obligations or family to support. In her final evaluation of her experiment and in the concluding chapter of her book, she discovers that it was very hard for her to keep herself let alone a family. Having conducted her research in the actual market she learnt that most minimum wage workers work at two jobs for more than 48 hours a week and share household responsibilities with others who are also working in the same household. They live in debilitated housing and sometimes in extreme poverty. A Wal-Mart worker was not able to afford a stained $7 clearance shirt that is sold at the famous discount chain where she works (2002:181) Almost all minimum wage workers have no medical insurance or pension plans.
Despite dire conditions at home and poverty abroad, the US continues with its hegemonic attempts. Some of which are propaganda, misrepresentation and sheer deception. The story and the film perform all three tasks in service of US and free market hegemony.
Gramsci believes that capitalism has managed to create in people certain ways of thinking, behavior and expectations “consistent with the hegemonic social order.”(1971) For example, during Medieval times the church, the authority of the time, was able to secure the consent of the people on the religious ideology and practices of the time. To explain how the church in Medieval times and the US in modern times are working on securing hegemony, Gramsci uses Machiavelli's image of the centaur which is half man and half beast to describe hegemony as made of both consent and coercion. The hegemonic power will work on enforcing its policies and ideologies by securing consent of the people or by using coercion against those who will not give their consent willingly.
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