#56 - What We Learned From Slugworth

Everyone has seen Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, right? Well Slugworth, in case you have the memory of Dori the Fish, is the creepy, long-faced fucker who scares kids straight. Kind of like that sinister, spider-like pervert in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang who smells children better than his own farts, but that's an entirely different thesis. These guys are good old-fashioned villains. Stories need them. They play a vital role, which is to initially make you feel uncomfortable so that when there is a release of tension, your happy ending is a reward, leaving you with an accomplished feeling of satisfaction. It's what keeps us buying movie tickets. And this earned sense of relief is imperative in society today, because badly needed is a reinforced belief in the determination of humans. You see, real life used to mean having to overcome pestilence and armed invaders, but now we just live vicariously through film that does the work for us. Even Wall-e, a picture about how lazy and worthless people have become in the future because of the advancement of technology has a conflict and resolution with a happy ending that leaves us with the positive feeling of goodwill. Which goes to prove that in cinema, even a society with no purpose other than to sit on their ass all day in a spaceship and drink Big Gulps is capable of having some redeeming value. Anyway, Slugworth was the X-Factor, Wonka's inside double agent, the mole. It was his job to test the moral compass of these neurotic little rascals. So, what we learned from Slugworth, even though he was a misleading liar himself, is that honesty is the best policy. And if your values outshine your greed, the redemption is as inextinguishable as the Everlasting Gobstopper. And what we learned from Willy Wonka is that with simple imagination, flavored wallpaper, chewing gum meals, and fizzy lifting drinks are achievable if you just believe in your dreams. And even more wonderful is that they can all be infused.