"The Most Important Thing We've Learned": Didacticism in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and its Film Adaptations

Abstract

Through a comparative analysis of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and its adaptations by Mel Stuart and Richard Burton, this paper explores to which extent the films copy the didactic elements of the novel through narration, description, imagery and character voices. While the popularity of didacticism appears to have decreased after the nineteenth century, passive didacticism remains influential, as narration, description, imagery and character voices as a form of didactic control are still effectively present in Dahl’s novel and its adaptations, perhaps most strongly in Burton’s film. Additionally, the didactic message of Burton’s adaptation differs from the moral lessons of Dahl’s novel and Stuart’s film. The continuing presence of didacticism in children’s entertainment and the changed didactic message may be a response to the growth of concern about child welfare and family values in the twentieth, and especially in the twenty-first century.