Day: December 22, 2006

Rise of the Loompa Proletariat

In the movie “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” Willy Wonka employs in his factory Oompa Loompas, strange little orange men who seemingly work for free. The Oompa Loompas, who sing while they work, seem to be charged with much manual labor. They mix the chocolate and other confections, carry out Wonka’s orders, manually power his personal yacht and otherwise do his bidding-all at the beck and call of his whistle. After seeing just one minute of the movie with the Oompa Loompas on the screen, one obsesses about this work arangement. Are these Oompa Loompas slaves, or indentured servants? Are they salaried employees? Is this some Stalinist work camp? Wonka answers this question himself early on when several visitors on a tour of his factory raise these troubling issues. The Oompa Loompas, he explains, come from a far off place called “Lumpaland,” where, because of their diminutive size, they […]

We Are Improving to Serve You Better

I’m in the process of switching the blarg from Blosxom software to WordPress, which might involve a radical overhaul of the ancient content on the dot org. To prepare, just in case, I’m posting some older writing on the blarg, so that it can be archived here, instead of as dusty old html. First up is my oft-reproduced Marxist analysis of the film “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.” The article began life as a term paper for my Labor Studies 101 course when I was a wee little snot (I got an A). It was shortly thereafter published in the awesome zine, Lumpen. David Raffin has also published it in Vision?Nary! Please excuse our appearance during renovations. We are still open to the public!