My family has watched Wonka at least three times now. (We may or may not dance around the kitchen singing Have you got a sweet tooth? and doing our best imitation of Hugh Grant’s brilliant Oompa Loompa character.) In spite of some sad themes in the background, on the whole, the movie is a light and easy antidote to the horrors of the real world right now. And there’s the added bonus that, having read and/or seen Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, we’re all fully aware that this story turns out well, so even the dark bits are not particularly dark.
Is there going to be enough?
And yet, I found myself watching each time with an uneasy concern about when Willy Wonka’s chocolate was going to run out. The fear cut through the enjoyment of ever-more-spectacular confectionary creations like a constant fly buzz in my head: ‘Oh no! There’s not going to be enough!’
You’ll be pleased to know, Willy Wonka doesn’t run out of chocolate. Despite a vague reference to his last jar at some point, the real tension in the story comes from other quarters – not from the possible chocolate poverty that stressed me out from start to finish.
Of course, this says more about my own mindset than the film itself, but what has any of it got to do with Tearfund?
Here’s what I understood.
Scarcity fears and Fickelgrubers
I realised that I watched this movie with a worldview steeped in ‘not enough’ – a context that has taught me to fear that resources will run out. In this instance, all it cost me was some pointless stress (it’s fiction!) and no actual harm was done, but if I live with this mindset of scarcity, what other, larger and potentially more damaging outcomes will – or does – it have in my life? Where do they make me hoard and become bitter (like Prognose, Fickelgruber and Slugworth) or simply miss out on sweet possibilities by being afraid to use, or share, what I do have?
What is poverty?
And that’s what Tearfund’s theory of poverty asks us to look at – that poverty is more than just the symptoms that we can easily see on the surface (such as hunger or financial hardship). Poverty involves an entire underlying mindset. Sometimes it’s learned from personal experience and sometimes it has been passed down to us through generations. Wherever it came from, our own personal ‘not enough’ beliefs keep us, and others, unwittingly enslaved in all kinds of poverty.
