A lecturer at New York State’s Binghamton University says the new film “Wonka” has racist “remnants of the novel’s past” and complains the main black character “takes a back seat” to the protagonist.
Meisha Lohmann, a self-described “specialist in decoding hidden meaning and dark realities” in kids’ books, writes in The Conversation that several years back she found a 1964 edition of Roald Dahl’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and was aghast at the depictions of the Oompa-Loompas.
In it, Wonka describes the Oompas as “tiny miniature pygmies” from the “very deepest and darkest part of the African jungle where no white man had ever been before.” Stereotypical images of Africans accompany the text.