Warning
This episode of film theory is not safe for work
Oh, wait you thought I meant it was full of naked people
Or violence or heavy swearing, right?
No, no, no
I mean, today we're talking about
Willy Wonka and his Chocolate Factory
And no,
When I say Chocolate Factory,
That's not meant to be some kind of weird innuendo.
Get your minds out of the gutter, people!
Hello Internet, welcome to Film Theory
Your golden ticket to a ruined childhood
Today's video hits really close to home for me,
Because we're talking about one of my all time favorite childhood films;
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
Sure, as a kid, I thought Wonka's factory was the most fanciful fantastic place to visit ever
I mean, there are mushrooms where you can scoop out whipped cream
And eat it in the main building.
Knock down some of the candies from that tree
Nom nom nom
But now that I'm an adult and have people who work for me
I see it as the horrendously unsafe sweatshop that it is.
So unsafe
In fact, that it would be literally illegal to produce a single bar of chocolate out of there.
So get ready to melt down those childhood dreams
And send them down the chocolaty river of disappointment
Because not only does Mr. William Wonka have one of the most illegal factories on the entire planet
But what's worse I can prove to you that he actually knows it
'There's no earthly way of knowing'
Yes, there is Wonka
You've been pulling the wool over our eyes for far too long, my friend
And today I'm exposing the grand conspiracy of your golden ticket giveaway
Like the nougaty inside of a scrumdiddlyumptious bar
So loyal theorists get ready to
Come with me
And you'll be
In a world of OSHA violations
In case you're not up to speed with a super saccharine sweatshop
That is Wonka's chocolate factory
Here's the quick rundown: (*Deep breath*)
Eccentric candy maker genius Willy Wonka
Runs a Chocolate Factory with SpaceX levels of security
'Nobody ever goes in,
'Nobody ever comes out.'
To protect his candy making secrets from his sticky-fingered competitors
Who for some reason can't seem to figure out
That all you need to do is mix cocoa powder
Together with butter, sugar, and vanilla.
I mean seriously Slugworth
There just aren't that many ingredients in chocolate
Maybe sprinkle in some nuts or toffee
If you're feeling dangerous.
In both versions of the movie
The modern, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
As well as the vastly superior original version,
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
Which is the one I'm gonna be focused on for this theory
Wonka opens his doors up to five lucky kids
Who've begged, borrowed, and stolen
To get their hands on one of his five golden tickets
As they tour the factory
We as the movie-going audience
Get a first-hand look at the unbelievable wonders
And hazards that Wonka has littered everywhere
And these aren't just some little issues that make life around the factory inconvenient
These are Occupational Safety and Health Administration Violations
Or OSHA Violations
They're illegal
They're life-threatening
And they are everywhere
And here's the interesting thing about OSHA Violations
They don't just come with a little finger wag
And a couple of demerits on your business owner report card
They come with fines
Huge fines
And enough of them will totally be able to shut down your business for good.
So let's figure out how big of a legal tab
That Willy Wonka's racked up for himself.
'The suspense is terrible..'
'I hope it'll last.'
The first violation seemed pretty small
But it'll give you a sense of what real-world business owners face
When they're trying to create a safe work environment for their employees.
See if you can spot it in this clip
'Hey, the room is getting smaller!'
'No, it's not, he's getting bigger!'
Did you catch that one?
'Inside this room,'
'All of my dreams become realities.'
You know what else is gonna become a reality for you?
A big whopping fine.
Code of Regulations 29
Part. 1910
Subpart E
Point 37i
OSHA says that all ceilings must be seven foot six inches or higher.
This is specifically for fire safety,
In the event that the exit needs to be used as an emergency exit.
But just think
This is where we are starting.
If Wonka is getting a fine for the height of a measly hallway
Then you know that old Willy is in for a long night.
Or a long episode of film theory.
Next, the chocolate room
The centerpiece of my childhood dreams
And my current dreams.
And the horrific nightmares of an OSHA agent.
In this scene
You'll see that Veruca Salt cuts herself on a rock in the room
Well
It turns out that that was real blood
And that the actress who played her
Julie Dawn Cole
Still has a scar from that injury on set
Which she got from one of the jagged rocks
That were used as props in the set.
A workplace injury in the movies
As well as a workplace injury in the factory.
That's fine number two
There are a few other pedantic things in here to find,
Including the stairs the Oompa-Loompas walked down
Those are under the 22 inch minimum width required by building codes
And they don't have a vertical banister
So that's fines number three and four.
But okay,
I hear you,
A little cut
A little banister
A little hallway
Come on, that sort of stuff could be fixed in a day.
So who cares?
Well, first off
Who should care is the business owner.
Because all those things may be little to you
But they result in big fines.
Thousands of dollars for small infractions like that
And we're only just beginning.
Let's get to the big ones
Like the chocolate river.
First, you have food running through an open-air factory
That is a huge strike there
The workers around it also aren't wearing any protective or sterile clothing
And literally anyone who touches the chocolate contaminates the entire supply
As Augustus so kindly demonstrates for us
'Don't do that!'
'You're contaminating my entire river!'
Contaminating the entire river, Wonka says
As he doesn't shut his factory down to clean out
The sweaty child floating in the chocolate
So here we have no guardrails
No protective clothing
Working with contaminated food
And failing to clean up those contaminations
All of these are OSHA Violations for basic safety
With the contamination issue
Getting some nice extra scrutiny from the Food Drug Administration
And as a fun fact
If Augustus's germ-ridden body
Did in fact make someone sick from a chocolate bar on the other end
Wonka would be responsible for fines of around
350,000 dollars at the time of the movie release
Or about 1.5 million dollars
In today's terms, per person made sick
Since we have no way of knowing the fallout from Augustus's chocolate dip
We can't really count these
But they would literally be enough to put the factory out of business
If they happen to ship those contaminated chocolate bars out
That being said,
We're still not done with the violations that we can count in this room
Which include the fact that once someone actually falls into the chocolate river
They get suctioned up into a huge unfiltered pipe
'He's at it,'
'Now, the suction's gutter.'
Leading to them possibly drowning and suffocating.
And if you survive all of that
There's still a good chance that you get boiled alive.
'Look sharp,'
'Or her little boy's able to get poured into the boiler.'
So strike for the unfiltered pipe
An additional strike for no safety protocol.
Moving further into the movie
We survive a traumatizing boat ride
Which is shockingly one of the safest things in this entire movie
This is somehow actually okay.
But don't worry
We're about to hit Wonka's secret inventing room
The place where candy and lawsuits get made
First of all,
All those steaming vats are violations of OSHA's rules around hot plates in the workplace.
Reference number
1910.261(k)(11)
"All exposed steam and hot water pipes within 7 feet of the floor
Shall be covered with an insulating material or guarded"
And you guessed it
Each vat or pipe counts as a separate violation
So, uh, let's see here
We have eight of those
Oh and no guardrails again
You think you're slick, Willy?
This is just laziness.
Oh, and there are live bees in this room
So yeah
That counts too.
And last up
There also seems to be a complete lack of safety equipment anywhere
Unless of course
You count the oompa-loompa fabric
Mickey Mouse style gloves
'Shouldn't you be wearing rubber gloves?'
'You love the Elton's maked it up here.'
'You know that, oh yeah.'
Right you are, Mr. Salt
You would have made a good film theorist
OSHA code 1910.132(a) requires that
"Protective equipment, including personal protective equipment
For eyes, face, head, and extremities
Is provided used and maintained"
In any situation involving food or chemicals
And we know plenty of chemicals being used in this room
Are well
To put it lightly
'Hazardous'
'Violet!'
'You're turning violet, Violet!'
The next workplace hazard is in the fizzy lifting drink room
Where Charlie and Grandpa Joe float away
And almost get themselves chopped to bits by the fan blades
At the top of the room.
Like he just said
Now, here's the thing
A fan at the top of a room this tall isn't a violation
But OSHA would still be able to book Wonka for negligence
In making the room with the deadly ceiling
The same room with the soda that makes you float
If you read the book the movie's based on
Wonka even mentions that a few Oompa-Loompas
That they didn't tie down
Floated it off into the blue
But we're just gonna let those slide
Because we're focused on the on-screen versions
But still
You're an awful person, Willy Wonka
Moving right along
We get to see Veruca shining moment with the golden geese
Where she wrecks up a jackpot of fines
You see all those boxes crashing down on the Oompa-Loompas?
Well, that's right
OSHA has regulations against stacking boxes too high
In fact, anything stacked over five feet has to be secured
So it doesn't fall over
Like, you see right here in the scene
So we get ourselves a strike for every single tall stack
That you see in the room conservatively
Conservatively, I'm gonna say that's about 13
Then of course
We have the famous moment
Where Veruca stands on the eggdicator
And falls down the garbage chute into the furnace
Yep, that's another handful of safety violations
No guardrails
An open chute down into the furnace
And again, a violation for each eggdicator
So that's at least four separate strikes right there
But hey now, we're down to just two kids
So how many violations could be left in this movie, right?
Oh so many
Let's start with what happens when you cover people in soap
And send them through a car wash
Exposing people to chemicals
Including most soaps, like dishwashing detergent, is an OSHA Violation
In the highest amounts
And they're also on a moving vehicle with no seat belts
So that's a strike for everyone
Also as a fun side note
These violations actually also happened in real life
During the shooting of this very scene
Where they covered everyone in soap
The entire cast puffed up from all that detergent irritation
It took days of medical treatment for the cast to return to normal
And returned to set
So yeah
There are actually reasons for all these stupid rules being in place
Go figure
Last up on our tour
We start mixing food violations with electricity
What could possibly go wrong there
Well, even though they do have safety equipment and no exposure to chemicals
Unfortunately, Wonka's still getting himself an infraction for violating the
occupational exposure to hazardous chemicals in laboratory standard
Reference 29
CFR 1910.1450
Which specifically covers labs where this sort of research and development takes place
Allowing a small boy to be able to operate a massive ray gun with no safety protocol in place
That's a strike
And seriously Wonka
GUARD RAILS.
Guardrails are gonna go a long way here.
So are we done with this death trap yet?
Almost.
Even though our tour of the factory ends
We get one more bonus strike thrown in for good measure
With our visit to the great glass elevator
'It's an elevator.'
'It's a Wonkavator.'
Which has nothing to stop it from crashing straight through the glass roof of the factory.
So let's just slap on an extra violation
Or three for everyone in that elevator
'WoNkAvAtOr.'
And with that our grand total comes to 60 OSHA Violations
And that's just what you can see in the movie
60 is very conservative
Now, like I said at the beginning of this episode
Wonka better be selling the heck out of those chocolate bars.
Because every one of those violations comes with a fine
But now of course we come to the real question
How much are those fines gonna cost?
Well
According to OSHA
"Any employer who willfully
Or repeatedly violates the requirements of this Act
May be assessed a civil penalty of not more
Than 70,000 dollars for each violation
But not less than 5,000 dollars for each willful violation"
And it's important to mention that these are the guidelines from 1971
When the original Wonka movie came out and was setI
In today's numbers
That's about 31,000 dollars to 436,000 dollars per individual violation
At lowest, Wonka is looking at a 1.86 million dollar price tag
And at highest he's shelling out a whopping 26.1 million in today's dollars
Again, just from the 60 OSHA violations
That we see in the like 6, 7, 8 rooms that he tours us through
Now, obviously a range of 5,000 to 70,000 dollars
Is huge.
What determines
Which end of the spectrum you fall on is your past history
And whether it seems like you as a business owner just made a mistake
Or whether you really don't care about the safety of your workplace
So would OSHA have pity on Willy Wonka?
*MatPat laughs hysterically*
The short answer is
DEFINITELY NOT.
They factor in things like the seriousness of the violation
Which in our case includes violations like
Child-sized pipes to a boiler room in the furnace
As well as exposing children and workers to chemicals
That turn them into blueberries
Also a small business is likely to get off the hook much easier
Than a multinational chocolate mega factory
So Wonka has no case to plead here
Because he ships to literally every continent
We see it in the golden ticket coverage
And when it comes to showing a good faith effort to keep things safe
Well, let's just say that Wonka has a bad track record there too
He's not even good at pretending
'Stop, don't, come back.'
'Hellen. please, ???'
In conclusion. Mr Wonka
We, Film Theorists, OSHA Investigators
Find you guilty on every count
And let's face it
Probably dozens more that we don't see in your 90-minute movie.
You sir are looking squarely in the eye of that 26.1 million dollar fine
Or 4.2 million dollars in 1971 terms.
And if you all watching at home right now think that's bad
I'm not even done. You see the thing about
Safety inspectors is that they don't just show up once fine you and then leave
When you get fined
You're also given an order to fix whatever issues the inspector discovered
When the inspector returns
If they find that you still haven't fixed the problems
Then you get fined again.
This is called the failure to abate
And that results in its own fine
You pay the same fines again for every single day that your factory wasn't in compliance
So 4.2 million inflation-adjusted dollars isn't just a one-time fee
It's how much Mr. Wonka would be paying per day
For as long as all those issues go unfixed
That's 182 million inflation-adjusted dollars per week
And 9.5 billion dollars for a year of non-compliance
For comparison Hershey's current revenues are about 7.421 billion dollars per year
Which would put Willy Wonka's factory in complete bankruptcy in a matter of months
But and here's the biggest butt of them all my friends
This is no surprise to Willy Wonka.
No, in fact
He knows about all these violations better than anyone
You see the Occupational Safety and Health Act
The legislation that created OSHA in the first place
Was passed in 1970
It took effect in 1971
The exact same year that Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is set
And the year that it hit theaters
with the establishment of OSHA Laws in 1970
Willy Wonka realized pretty fast that his factory wasn't long for this world
Given the way he runs it and how dangerous it is to everyone inside.
So Wonka's decision to open his factory to five lucky children
A decision that seems to come out of nowhere in the movie
'Willy Wonka's opening his factory,
He's gonna let people in!'
'You sure?'
He isn't actually motivated by a desire to do good
Or even pass his love of chocolate and candy making secrets
On like a legacy
No, it's to offload this dumpster fire of a business
Onto one poor vulnerable unsuspecting child
Before Wonka himself is hit with all these fines
Charlie who comes out of destitution
And thinks he's hit the lottery with his golden ticket
Believes he's inheriting Wonka's fortune
But the truth is
That he's actually inheriting Willy Wonka's massive legal trouble
And billions of dollars of debt
He's not the most pure of heart or the nicest or whatever
He's just the biggest chump
And the child in the most desperate situation
That Wonka can prey on to escape OSHA
And a lifetime of corporate debt.
But hey
That's just a theory;
A film theory
And
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That all our candy-coated dreams have been destroyed by this episode
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