PropertyValue
?:author
?:datePublished
  • 2020-10-13 (xsd:date)
?:headline
  • Was Charlie in ‘Willy Wonka’ Originally Black? – Truth or Fiction? (en)
?:inLanguage
?:itemReviewed
?:mentions
?:reviewBody
  • Was Charlie in ‘Willy Wonka’ Originally Black? Claim In Roald Dahl's 1964 children's novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory , main character Charlie Bucket was originally written as a Black child. Rating True Like this fact check? Reporting A September 24 2020 Facebook screenshot — which claimed that beloved children’s author Roald Dahl conceived the Charlie of the book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as Black — became virally popular, prompting discourse about character Willy Wonka’s motivation: Original Posts in the Screenshot The above screenshot was somewhat confusing in its composition. At the top of the image was a September 6 2020 tweet by @arondotcom_ which was popular in its own right; it read: Sometimes I think about how Willy Wonka sent those chocolate bars INTERNATIONAL and still 5 white kids managed to win the golden tickets Not long after the tweet appeared, it was shared in screenshot form to the aptly named Tumblr user onlytwitterpics . It wasn’t clear where the Facebook screenshot came from originally, but much of the visible discourse in it appeared in an October 12 2020 reblog of the post by user therainonthepavement: https://therainonthepavement.tumblr.com/post/631808834820866048 In that Tumblr post, several different people (bolded) provided the responses seen in the Facebook post, as follows: udontn33dh1m I know y’all did not read the books but Roald Dahl talks about this in the book. Charlie’s teacher points out the fact that unless you buy a shit ton of bars you’re probably not gonna win. Just like the lottery. Just like how all of the other winners of the tickets bought a shit ton of bars. Except Charlie, who just got lucky. And Charlie was originally black. Literally the whole point of the book was that wonka wanted to give the less fortunate a fair opportunity and it wasn’t fair because the system isn’t fair. Florida is where wokes go to die... Please enable JavaScript Florida is where wokes go to die burnitalldowndarling Stop the car. Charlie was originally black?!?! prince-toffee !?!! theryanproject He was and Mr. Dahl was forced to make him white. Also his widow has spoken and confirmed that as well. xandrachantal https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/09/16/551528425/roald-dahl-s-widow-says-charlie-from-the-chocolate-factory-was-originally-black The final comment visible in the screenshot led to a September 2017 NPR article about comments made by Dahl’s widow. The Primary Claim: Charlie Was ‘Originally Black’ Of the comments propelling the lengthy screenshot across social media was one by user udontn33dh1m, which read: I know y’all did not read the books but Roald Dahl talks about this in the book. Charlie’s teacher points out the fact that unless you buy a shit ton of bars you’re probably not gonna win . Just like the lottery. Just like how all of the other winners of the tickets bought a shit ton of bars. Except Charlie, who just got lucky. And Charlie was originally black . Literally the whole point of the book was that wonka wanted to give the less fortunate a fair opportunity and it wasn’t fair because the system isn’t fair. Subsequently, xandrachantal linked to a September 16 2017 NPR piece about that specific claim. On September 13 2020, The Guardian published an article titled Charlie and the Chocolate Factory hero ‘was originally black,' subtitled Roald Dahl’s widow and biographer say first Charlie was black but writer was persuaded to make him white, explaining: Roald Dahl originally wanted the eponymous hero of his much-loved children’s book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to be black, his widow has said. In an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today programme for Roald Dahl day on [September 13 2017], Liccy Dahl said: His first Charlie that he wrote about was a little black boy. Asked why it was changed, she replied: I don’t know. It’s a great pity. Her husband’s biographer Donald Sturrock, who was also being interviewed, said the change to a white character was driven by Dahl’s agent, who thought a black Charlie would not appeal to readers. I can tell you that it was his agent who thought it was a bad idea, when the book was first published, to have a black hero, said Sturrock. She said people would ask: ‘Why?’ Embedded in the article was a September 13 2017 BBC tweet in which Dahl’s widow and Sturrock briefly make the statements. However, the segment was short, and provided most of the known context in for the relatively novel claim. Additional Context for the Claim On September 22 2017, the New York Times published a Q&A to its Books section, titled The Real Story Behind Roald Dahl’s ‘Black Charlie.' That interview was with University of South Carolina professor Catherine Keyser; it was about Dahl’s earlier draft of his work, this called Charlie’s Chocolate Boy . Keyser was asked to provide a brief rundown of the plot: The setup is similar to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: There’s this magical chocolate factory, and its owner, Willie Wonka, is being inundated by children who want to visit it. So he decides instead of letting hundreds of children in, he’ll give seven golden tickets. So that’s more or less the same. There are two more children, and some of the names are different: Augustus Gloop was Augustus Pottle. The names are fantastic. There’s Veruca Salt, but also Marvin Prune and Miranda Piker. And of course Charlie Bucket — who in this version is a black boy, and is accompanied by his two doting parents. The interviewer asked Keyser whether the detail of Charlie Bucket being Black had been previously examined, and she said: No. It was mentioned by Dahl’s biographer, Donald Sturrock, and it was mentioned in Lucy Mangan’s popular book Inside Charlie’s Chocolate Factory. But it had never been looked at in great textual detail. In a separate question, Keyser addressed why Dahl eventually changed the character. She explained: He sent it to his literary agent and friend, Sheila St. Lawrence, and she immediately wrote back: Please don’t make Charlie black. The depressing thing about all of this is that the whole message of Charlie’s Chocolate Boy seems to be how painful it is for a black person to be reduced to an object and treated with violence, and then the Oompa Loompas are all objects. Wonka tests his candies on them as though they were expendable. Summary A Facebook screenshot of a Tumblr post and tweet spread virally, due to its claim that Roald Dahl’s character Charlie Bucket in Willy Wonka or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was originally supposed to be Black. It is true that Dahl’s widow and biographer both stated as such in a September 2017 interview with the BBC, and the New York Times later examined the claim in further detail. According to the paper, Dahl initially wrote an early draft of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in which Charlie Bucket was Black, that Dahl’s agent persuaded her husband to make Charlie white, and that earlier draft was titled Charlie’s Chocolate Boy . Posted in Fact Checks , Viral Content Tagged books , charlie was originally black , roald dahl , Tumblr , viral facebook posts , viral tweets , willy wonka (en)
?:reviewRating
rdf:type
?:url