I'm not actually criticizing the book. I'm just saying it IS fucked up and pretty much objectively horrifying.
The story is at least partially a morality play, and it has a strong anti-consumerist undertone. Gloop’s sin is Gluttony, Mike Teevee’s sin is Vanity, Veruca Salt is Pride or Wrath, and Violet… uh… really her sin is just not following lab safety procedures, so let that be a lesson to lab workers. But the point is - All the rich kids are visited with an ironic fate based on their moral failings. And Violet’s poor understanding of Lab Safety.
This is my issue. Not only are they children but none of these 'sins' are particularly bad. I swear I'm not just committing to my name for the bit, I just legitimately have never seen someone who acts in ways that are inclined to any of those to be actually bad people (Except Wrath, of course acting on anger all the time can lead to hurting others). The only Deadly Sin that's really consistently evil in real life is Greed and it's also suspiciously absent from the list (Unless you count Wonka himself as being representative of Greed, in which case holy shit Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is based???). The rest are mostly just personality quirks or self-sabotage at worst, nothing deserving of suffering.
Following this interpretation of it, it actually comes across more as a criticism of God itself with the twisted and arbitrary punishments, then any sort of reasonable moral fable, which shows how bad and completely fucked it's morals are.
Gluttony kills. It doesn't mean eating a little too much. It means consuming resources wastefully. Gluttony butchers people all across the globe. America takes in so much food, while producing so much, and so much of it ends up in the trash. Also, consider how often some small staple crop gets "found" by a capitalist, and now the population dependent upon it has to fight tooth and nail to get it with the wealthiest of the world. Amaranth and quinoa were dirt cheap, then pricey, and now get exported to super markets at the cost of the people who needed it. Look in the dumpster of any restaurant in the US, see the tons of food they can't stand the thought of someone else eating. Also, look at the brutal practices of the farming industry, how animals are treated, how meat packers are treated, how harvesters are treated. Look at the hog diets, cannibal sandwiches and all meat diets. You think those people know hunger? This is all a game to them. They'll burn through all the world's food to eat what they want.
Vanity kills. You see the diets, the insane workout regimens, the hundreds of dollars of products people use to look young? You ever seen a bully, so full of their appearance, mock someone to the point of self harm? Even death? People who spend their whole life in front of the mirror are not healthy happy people, and they will not hold your best interests at heart. If you've ever read about royals bathing in the blood of virgins, and heard about how badly treated animals are in cosmetics, you know vanity is deadly. Caring about looking nice is fine, but the minute you put it up over other people's lives on your priority list that's a sin.
Every single one of the seven deadly sins is toxic, and they are the causes of every evil act. Every one comes from some fine impulse, needed to stay alive, taken to an extreme and being dangerous.
Those are extremely vague interpretations of them, and they're not actually root causes of suffering. Almost all of the examples you've given are actually suffering caused by capitalism and greed, which corrupted and warped other desires. Yes, these behaviors taken to an extreme are unhealthy, but that extreme is not inherent to or even remotely a normal aspect of those desires. This is not a world where people who desire to constantly find new tastes have to contribute to the waste of entire countries to do so, or a world where people who want to look good or feel important have to do so at the expense of everyone else. You even conceded this point in your own comment! The dangerous, horrible aspects of these are almost all tied together with and intrinsic to culture, economy, wealth, historical events, and many other factors. To reduce these massive systemic issues to personality flaws or 'sins' is a dangerously simplistic view of morality and inherently incompatible with a materialistic and socialist view of humanity.
We could argue for hours and hours over this, but the truth is that none of the things you've listed are the socially accepted definitions of what constitute the Deadly Sins. People do not think of our insane beauty standards when they think of vanity, they think of 'welfare queens' and women who get breast implants. They do not think of our horrible waste of food and valuable products when they think of gluttony, they think of a fat kid who eats too much at dinner. They do not think of the constant rat race and capitalistic grind to be 'on top' as Envy- They think of those who wish to have a fair share of our society's resources. They do not think of rapists and the absolutely monstrous capitalists who use their power to get off on hurting others as Lust- They think that's just a woman who sleeps with too many men. They do not think of the landlords who do nothing and abuse their tenants as Sloth- That's the tenants themselves, who refuse to do the Work. And, most damning, they do not think of our systemic hoarding and conditioned greed as capital-G Greed- They think that WE'RE the greedy ones. We, the people who want everyone to have what they need, yes, they think we're the greedy ones. McCarthyism was a wild ride.
This is the issue with the Deadly Sins as a tool for making moral judgements- They claim that the evil, horrible behaviors that are displayed nearly daily are some sort of personal crime, a sin against God. But these horrible behaviors are not inherent human behavior at all, and are only aesthetically related to their 'healthy' variation. And when you reduce it to personal crime, subjective view of what it entails becomes much more important. And so the reactionary forces can warp and change the definition of evil at will.
We, as communists, cannot think in terms of personal morality. And so I suggest we discard the Deadly Sins entirely from our vocabulary, and instead use the terminology and toolset that has been available for us from the beginning- Dialetical Materialism, and a holistic view of society. You can continue to use the terminology of the Deadly Sins to describe systemic issues, but know that anyone trying to depict them in media will not be saying the same thing as you, and anyone listening will not be hearing the same thing you're trying to say. Of course, using alternative definitions of the Sins as a rhetorical tool when talking with those who believe in them is a valid tactic! And believing in them yourself, is, most likely, fine, but from a wide view we still have to consider the systemic forces and not just the flaws of a select few.
Okay so with the Seven Deadly Sins I like the interpretations where Deadly Sins are obsessions or practices that rule your life. Gluttony isn't eating too much or being fat; It's when you consistently take more than you need, more than you can use, even at the expense of others. Vanity isn't wearing makeup, it's being so obsessed with your appearance or reputation that you'd cut down and try to destroy others if you think they're making you look bad. Pride is when you stomp all over other people's lives and rights because you're so self centered that you don't even notice the suffering you're causing.
It's all over the place in Christian philosophy and theology. You'll definitely find kill-joy Puritans who will rant and rant about how getting a hair cut is vanity or talking back to your mom is Pride and you're going to go to hell, but fuck those writers. I'm much more inclined towards the writers who position the Deadly Sins as something over and above common daily foibles and follies. Like the difference between drinking regularly and alcoholism - It's not a problem until it starts to ruin your life. It trips over in to Deadly Sin when it starts to govern your life and harm you or those around you.
As a real world example;
You can see Pride in the stereotypical Karen. Someone who is so self assured, so confident in their own righteousness, so unaware of the needs or situation of anyone else, that they'll happily call armed cops to "deal with" minority people. And they'll never question if they were right, they'll never experience self doubt. I'd also include Biden. He refuses to use executive orders and the vast powers of the president to help people because he thinks he's better than that, and that it's not suitable for the office of the president. His own stupid pride is causing massive suffering.
Wrath would be all the Liberals baying for the blood of Russians right now. Totally blind hate, a totally unexamined thirst for violence and death.
Gluttony would be Jeff Bezos, hoarding wealthy beyond human comprehension then stabbing at underpaid Amazon workers who dare to unionize for a few more crumbs.
Greed applies pretty broadly. Bezos or Musk would fit, but so would every small business Tyrant stealing wages and tips from workers.
Lust is another appetite sin. Lust for sex is the most boring version, and the one that most Evangelicals obsess over, but their lust for dominion and control over others would be considered as much of a sin by some Christian philosophers as just having casual hookups. If you leave out Christian moralizing against sex you'd be looking at things like people who use manipulation and lies to get other people in bed then discard them to look for another victim. It overlaps in a lot of ways with gluttony and greed, but it's generally aimed more at concrete, physical things like sex. But you could even call a desire for a post workout high lust if you let it control you. Apparently Lust is generally held to be the least of the Seven Deadly Sins, since it's natural to feel desire, so people shouldn't be judged as harshly for this one.
Sloth usually gets translated as laziness, but the word used in Latin actually means something more like carelessness. It's attributed to people who are apathetic, who refuse to use the virtues available to them, who avoid obligations and responsibilities. Liberals, for instance, who :vote: are giving up all their responsibility over their lives to their democrat masters. Virtue is considered something active, it's incumbent on you to go and be virtuous, to care about people, to care about the world. Giving up and handing it all to someone else, or just being indifferent, would be sloth
Envy's pretty easy. People in the office who using office politics to cut down other people for fun, or wreckers who just like seeing other people made miserable when their hard work falls apart. Anyone who sets out to destroy something beautiful simple because it offends them to see beauty.
I know most people's experience with Christianity in the US comes from Evangelicalism or Catholicism or various cults, but this stuff also shows up in classical Greek philosophy, Dante's Divine Comedy (which is a peerless act of shitposting), and Full Metal Alchemist. As for the book we're discussing, it's a magical realism book. The bad kids aren't supposed to be real, fully fleshed out characters. They exist in the story to provide a contrast to Charlie as the everyman hero. They're exaggerated caricatures of their respective vices.
Keep in mind; To you, reading this as an adult, this is an adult man, Wonka, torturing children for being children. To the age-appropriate audience it's people their age getting their comeuppance for bad behavior. Making the consequences exaggerated and over the top makes them absurd, which allows them to be funny while also being a little scary.
I'm reminded of an anecdote from Neil Gaiman, where he talks about how parents reading Coraline with their kids would find the Other Mother's button eyes extremely creepy and disturbing, while kids would just chalk it up to the story being a faery tale. By the same token, an adult reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory who has an awareness of unequal power relationships and a strong sense of justice and concerns about how kids are held to unreasonable standards and punished in unreasonable ways is going to have a very different read from a child who is reading a story about a weird magic man with a magic factory. By judging it from the perspective of an adult you may be missing the forest for the trees.
And you're not wrong about it being a critique of God; Wonka is supposed to be weird and a little sinister, a little scary. The punishments are supposed to be unreasonable, that's what makes them interesting and memorable. Wonka isn't a responsible authority figure, for kids he's an example of how adults impose all kinds of weird, arbitrary rules on kids that often don't make sense.
I made a massive writeup about the Deadly Sins in response to another post but basically my concern is one of typical usage:
Most people don't actually use the Deadly Sins to refer to excessive behavior. It's to refer to normal behavior that is inherent to all people, and must be absolved through prayer. This is an obviously problematic mindset, because it implies that not only is it not possible to entirely suppress these things, but it also implies that they're all personal responsibility and unable to be affected by material forces.
To use the book itself as an example, almost all of the kids are created the way they are by their parents. And yet, the children themselves are punished! This is my issue, that instead of focusing on the societal forces that create and cause these problematic behaviors, we point at a kid and laugh and say: "Haha! That kid's fat and eats a lot!", in a nearly thought-terminating way. Because when we do that, we don't have to question why the kid eats a lot. They just do! They're bad!
Keep in mind; To you, reading this as an adult, this is an adult man, Wonka, torturing children for being children. To the age-appropriate audience it’s people their age getting their comeuppance for bad behavior. Making the consequences exaggerated and over the top makes them absurd, which allows them to be funny while also being a little scary.
I’m reminded of an anecdote from Neil Gaiman, where he talks about how parents reading Coraline with their kids would find the Other Mother’s button eyes extremely creepy and disturbing, while kids would just chalk it up to the story being a faery tale. By the same token, an adult reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory who has an awareness of unequal power relationships and a strong sense of justice and concerns about how kids are held to unreasonable standards and punished in unreasonable ways is going to have a very different read from a child who is reading a story about a weird magic man with a magic factory. By judging it from the perspective of an adult you may be missing the forest for the trees.
Oh yeah, definitely. At this point I'm just using this discussion as an excuse to dunk on the notion of personal morality. Of course Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a fine book that hasn't caused much if at all societal harm.
I'm not actually criticizing the book. I'm just saying it IS fucked up and pretty much objectively horrifying.
This is my issue. Not only are they children but none of these 'sins' are particularly bad. I swear I'm not just committing to my name for the bit, I just legitimately have never seen someone who acts in ways that are inclined to any of those to be actually bad people (Except Wrath, of course acting on anger all the time can lead to hurting others). The only Deadly Sin that's really consistently evil in real life is Greed and it's also suspiciously absent from the list (Unless you count Wonka himself as being representative of Greed, in which case holy shit Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is based???). The rest are mostly just personality quirks or self-sabotage at worst, nothing deserving of suffering.
Following this interpretation of it, it actually comes across more as a criticism of God itself with the twisted and arbitrary punishments, then any sort of reasonable moral fable, which shows how bad and completely fucked it's morals are.
Gluttony kills. It doesn't mean eating a little too much. It means consuming resources wastefully. Gluttony butchers people all across the globe. America takes in so much food, while producing so much, and so much of it ends up in the trash. Also, consider how often some small staple crop gets "found" by a capitalist, and now the population dependent upon it has to fight tooth and nail to get it with the wealthiest of the world. Amaranth and quinoa were dirt cheap, then pricey, and now get exported to super markets at the cost of the people who needed it. Look in the dumpster of any restaurant in the US, see the tons of food they can't stand the thought of someone else eating. Also, look at the brutal practices of the farming industry, how animals are treated, how meat packers are treated, how harvesters are treated. Look at the hog diets, cannibal sandwiches and all meat diets. You think those people know hunger? This is all a game to them. They'll burn through all the world's food to eat what they want.
Vanity kills. You see the diets, the insane workout regimens, the hundreds of dollars of products people use to look young? You ever seen a bully, so full of their appearance, mock someone to the point of self harm? Even death? People who spend their whole life in front of the mirror are not healthy happy people, and they will not hold your best interests at heart. If you've ever read about royals bathing in the blood of virgins, and heard about how badly treated animals are in cosmetics, you know vanity is deadly. Caring about looking nice is fine, but the minute you put it up over other people's lives on your priority list that's a sin.
Every single one of the seven deadly sins is toxic, and they are the causes of every evil act. Every one comes from some fine impulse, needed to stay alive, taken to an extreme and being dangerous.
Those are extremely vague interpretations of them, and they're not actually root causes of suffering. Almost all of the examples you've given are actually suffering caused by capitalism and greed, which corrupted and warped other desires. Yes, these behaviors taken to an extreme are unhealthy, but that extreme is not inherent to or even remotely a normal aspect of those desires. This is not a world where people who desire to constantly find new tastes have to contribute to the waste of entire countries to do so, or a world where people who want to look good or feel important have to do so at the expense of everyone else. You even conceded this point in your own comment! The dangerous, horrible aspects of these are almost all tied together with and intrinsic to culture, economy, wealth, historical events, and many other factors. To reduce these massive systemic issues to personality flaws or 'sins' is a dangerously simplistic view of morality and inherently incompatible with a materialistic and socialist view of humanity.
We could argue for hours and hours over this, but the truth is that none of the things you've listed are the socially accepted definitions of what constitute the Deadly Sins. People do not think of our insane beauty standards when they think of vanity, they think of 'welfare queens' and women who get breast implants. They do not think of our horrible waste of food and valuable products when they think of gluttony, they think of a fat kid who eats too much at dinner. They do not think of the constant rat race and capitalistic grind to be 'on top' as Envy- They think of those who wish to have a fair share of our society's resources. They do not think of rapists and the absolutely monstrous capitalists who use their power to get off on hurting others as Lust- They think that's just a woman who sleeps with too many men. They do not think of the landlords who do nothing and abuse their tenants as Sloth- That's the tenants themselves, who refuse to do the Work. And, most damning, they do not think of our systemic hoarding and conditioned greed as capital-G Greed- They think that WE'RE the greedy ones. We, the people who want everyone to have what they need, yes, they think we're the greedy ones. McCarthyism was a wild ride.
This is the issue with the Deadly Sins as a tool for making moral judgements- They claim that the evil, horrible behaviors that are displayed nearly daily are some sort of personal crime, a sin against God. But these horrible behaviors are not inherent human behavior at all, and are only aesthetically related to their 'healthy' variation. And when you reduce it to personal crime, subjective view of what it entails becomes much more important. And so the reactionary forces can warp and change the definition of evil at will.
We, as communists, cannot think in terms of personal morality. And so I suggest we discard the Deadly Sins entirely from our vocabulary, and instead use the terminology and toolset that has been available for us from the beginning- Dialetical Materialism, and a holistic view of society. You can continue to use the terminology of the Deadly Sins to describe systemic issues, but know that anyone trying to depict them in media will not be saying the same thing as you, and anyone listening will not be hearing the same thing you're trying to say. Of course, using alternative definitions of the Sins as a rhetorical tool when talking with those who believe in them is a valid tactic! And believing in them yourself, is, most likely, fine, but from a wide view we still have to consider the systemic forces and not just the flaws of a select few.
tl;dr personal fault is bullshit
Okay so with the Seven Deadly Sins I like the interpretations where Deadly Sins are obsessions or practices that rule your life. Gluttony isn't eating too much or being fat; It's when you consistently take more than you need, more than you can use, even at the expense of others. Vanity isn't wearing makeup, it's being so obsessed with your appearance or reputation that you'd cut down and try to destroy others if you think they're making you look bad. Pride is when you stomp all over other people's lives and rights because you're so self centered that you don't even notice the suffering you're causing.
It's all over the place in Christian philosophy and theology. You'll definitely find kill-joy Puritans who will rant and rant about how getting a hair cut is vanity or talking back to your mom is Pride and you're going to go to hell, but fuck those writers. I'm much more inclined towards the writers who position the Deadly Sins as something over and above common daily foibles and follies. Like the difference between drinking regularly and alcoholism - It's not a problem until it starts to ruin your life. It trips over in to Deadly Sin when it starts to govern your life and harm you or those around you.
As a real world example;
You can see Pride in the stereotypical Karen. Someone who is so self assured, so confident in their own righteousness, so unaware of the needs or situation of anyone else, that they'll happily call armed cops to "deal with" minority people. And they'll never question if they were right, they'll never experience self doubt. I'd also include Biden. He refuses to use executive orders and the vast powers of the president to help people because he thinks he's better than that, and that it's not suitable for the office of the president. His own stupid pride is causing massive suffering.
Wrath would be all the Liberals baying for the blood of Russians right now. Totally blind hate, a totally unexamined thirst for violence and death.
Gluttony would be Jeff Bezos, hoarding wealthy beyond human comprehension then stabbing at underpaid Amazon workers who dare to unionize for a few more crumbs.
Greed applies pretty broadly. Bezos or Musk would fit, but so would every small business Tyrant stealing wages and tips from workers.
Lust is another appetite sin. Lust for sex is the most boring version, and the one that most Evangelicals obsess over, but their lust for dominion and control over others would be considered as much of a sin by some Christian philosophers as just having casual hookups. If you leave out Christian moralizing against sex you'd be looking at things like people who use manipulation and lies to get other people in bed then discard them to look for another victim. It overlaps in a lot of ways with gluttony and greed, but it's generally aimed more at concrete, physical things like sex. But you could even call a desire for a post workout high lust if you let it control you. Apparently Lust is generally held to be the least of the Seven Deadly Sins, since it's natural to feel desire, so people shouldn't be judged as harshly for this one.
Sloth usually gets translated as laziness, but the word used in Latin actually means something more like carelessness. It's attributed to people who are apathetic, who refuse to use the virtues available to them, who avoid obligations and responsibilities. Liberals, for instance, who :vote: are giving up all their responsibility over their lives to their democrat masters. Virtue is considered something active, it's incumbent on you to go and be virtuous, to care about people, to care about the world. Giving up and handing it all to someone else, or just being indifferent, would be sloth
Envy's pretty easy. People in the office who using office politics to cut down other people for fun, or wreckers who just like seeing other people made miserable when their hard work falls apart. Anyone who sets out to destroy something beautiful simple because it offends them to see beauty.
I know most people's experience with Christianity in the US comes from Evangelicalism or Catholicism or various cults, but this stuff also shows up in classical Greek philosophy, Dante's Divine Comedy (which is a peerless act of shitposting), and Full Metal Alchemist. As for the book we're discussing, it's a magical realism book. The bad kids aren't supposed to be real, fully fleshed out characters. They exist in the story to provide a contrast to Charlie as the everyman hero. They're exaggerated caricatures of their respective vices.
Keep in mind; To you, reading this as an adult, this is an adult man, Wonka, torturing children for being children. To the age-appropriate audience it's people their age getting their comeuppance for bad behavior. Making the consequences exaggerated and over the top makes them absurd, which allows them to be funny while also being a little scary.
I'm reminded of an anecdote from Neil Gaiman, where he talks about how parents reading Coraline with their kids would find the Other Mother's button eyes extremely creepy and disturbing, while kids would just chalk it up to the story being a faery tale. By the same token, an adult reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory who has an awareness of unequal power relationships and a strong sense of justice and concerns about how kids are held to unreasonable standards and punished in unreasonable ways is going to have a very different read from a child who is reading a story about a weird magic man with a magic factory. By judging it from the perspective of an adult you may be missing the forest for the trees.
And you're not wrong about it being a critique of God; Wonka is supposed to be weird and a little sinister, a little scary. The punishments are supposed to be unreasonable, that's what makes them interesting and memorable. Wonka isn't a responsible authority figure, for kids he's an example of how adults impose all kinds of weird, arbitrary rules on kids that often don't make sense.
I made a massive writeup about the Deadly Sins in response to another post but basically my concern is one of typical usage: Most people don't actually use the Deadly Sins to refer to excessive behavior. It's to refer to normal behavior that is inherent to all people, and must be absolved through prayer. This is an obviously problematic mindset, because it implies that not only is it not possible to entirely suppress these things, but it also implies that they're all personal responsibility and unable to be affected by material forces.
To use the book itself as an example, almost all of the kids are created the way they are by their parents. And yet, the children themselves are punished! This is my issue, that instead of focusing on the societal forces that create and cause these problematic behaviors, we point at a kid and laugh and say: "Haha! That kid's fat and eats a lot!", in a nearly thought-terminating way. Because when we do that, we don't have to question why the kid eats a lot. They just do! They're bad!
Oh yeah, definitely. At this point I'm just using this discussion as an excuse to dunk on the notion of personal morality. Of course Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a fine book that hasn't caused much if at all societal harm.
Fair nough. Thank you for an interesting discussion> : )
np, I'm sorry for being so serious about my replies about a silly children's novel.