[Enjoy today's guest post by OTI fan and expert on musicals - movie or otherwise - TC Cheever]

Let’s take a moment here to discuss the classic 1971 musical “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”, based upon Roald Dahl’s book “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”. It’s a movie that has a reputation as a great movie to watch while stoned – ironic, because it is a film that delivers a strong and clear anti-drug message.

Four of the five children who win the Golden Tickets have distinct personality types and character traits that match a class of controlled substance. The eventual fate of each child is also directly tied to the type of drug they represent and in fact is either illustrative of it, or ironically tied to it. Charlie, with whom we as viewers are meant to identify, does not precisely fit this model though his fate is also tied to a type of controlled substance (more on this later).

Augustus Gloop

The first winner of the Golden Ticket and the first to meet an untimely fate is Augustus Gloop. From the moment we see Augustus, he’s eating… something. He’s pudgy. He’s sluggish. In the movie, he can barely be bothered to stop eating to answer the interviewer’s questions. When he gets to Wonka’s factory, he rushes into the Chocolate Room and immediately kneels down by the chocolate fountain, dipping his hands into the river and drinking the chocolate out of his hands. It’s a seemingly harmless action; people drink from streams all the time without any ill effects.

Consider this: the Chocolate Room is the first we really see of Wonka’s factory. Before entering, he describes it like this: “Inside this room, all my dreams become realities, and some of my realities become dreams.” It’s a giant room that contains a candy-filled garden. The entire room is an exaggerated slice of the real world: a candy-filled garden designed not only to tempt, but to put the temptation in a setting that gives a feeling of reassurance. Augustus drinks from the river, which is a natural part of this environment, and then… he falls in. He engages in a practice that is natural and should be safe, and he goes to his end inside of a giant pipe.

Augustus Gloop represents marijuana.

Clear the pipe, then pass the pipe.

Augustus meets his fate prior to the remaining kids taking the boat trip on the Wonkatania. Marijuana bears a reputation of being “the gateway drug”; Augustus’ experience is the gateway to the more sinister experiences to come. His end comes in the river upon which the rest of then children then travel to their own ends, via a ship called the Wonkatania.