Childhood Revisited

For whatever reason, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory has been on TV a lot lately. The mildly creepy Johnny Depp one and the old 70s Gene Wilder one. It's the old one that got me a little bummed.

The problem with watching things that you enjoyed as a child when you're an adult is that the jaded adult eye kind of ruins the magic of it all. I'm not just talking about how fake things look or the inability to suspend disbelief. I am talking about the other themes that you suddenly get.

With Willy Wonka it's not just the drug-trippy nature of the whole thing or the horrible things that happen to the children. It just all seems...bad. Every detail is suddenly harder to take. I found myself thinking that Grampa Joe sounded drunk the whole time.

I remember a night my freshman year of college when we all piled into someone's dorm room to drink hot chocolate and watch Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. I don't know who started it, but suddenly we turned it from a happy childhood tale into a tale of racism and the man keeping Rudolph and the inexplicably gay wannabe dentist elf down.

It was depressing. I'm afraid to go back and watch Song of the South.