The great glass elevator
My favorite movie as a kid was Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (IMDB). Surreal, funny, deliciously visual, sweet, with some life lessons not too subtly woven in. The other day, I laughed upon realizing that buttons play a significant role in the final pivotal scene. Pushing the button represents the reward.
Charlie is our working class hero in a world of spoiled brats, struggling to survive in complete poverty while others demand the world bow to their personal spoiled freakness.
The local mad chocolatier shaman Willy Wonka offers a contest, the reward of which is a lifetime supply of chocolate. Yummy material consumption. Charlie wants to win of course, but not for the endless consumption. He wants to see the magic, to experience the wonder.
Four other children win, brats all. Through the tour, each brat is knocked out one by one, victims of their own freakness, with lessons intermingled by Oompa Loompas. “If you are wise, you’ll listen to me.”
In the end, Charlie is the last child left. But he only wins when he performs the heroic deed, returning the Everlasting Gobstopper to Willy Wonka instead of keeping it to give to Wonka’s rival, Slugworth. (Incidentally, this test is not in the original Roald Dahl book. Charlie simply wins by being the last child remaining.)
Finally, the buttons. Willy Wonka takes Charlie and Grandpa Joe to the Great Glass Elevator. The elevator is filled with buttons on every surface high and low. Wonka says,
It’s a Wonkavator. An elevator can only go up and down, but the Wonkavator can go sideways and slantways and longways and backways (and frontways?) and squareways and frontways and any other ways that you can think of. It can take you to any room in the whole factory just by pressing one of these buttons. Any of these buttons. Just press a button and ZING you’re off. And up until now I’ve pressed them all except one. This one. Go ahead Charlie.
Charlie presses the button and the great glass elevator zooms straight up and through the roof.
The button here is a symbol of a larger action. At the surface level, Wonka lets Charlie start the elevator. But at a higher level, Wonka is letting go of the entire chocolate factory. Charlie is now in control, although he doesn’t know it yet. He won more than a lifetime supply of chocolate. He won his dreams. And the moment of this victory is symbolized by Wonka letting Charlie push the button.
And naturally, they live happily ever after.
