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Indelibly racist Roald Dahl was called upon by Hollywood profit-brokers again last year for yet another adaptation of his 1964 children\u2019s novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory<\/em>. Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet starred as the film\u2019s eponymous Wonka<\/em>, next in cocoa-boss line to 2005\u2019s Johnny Depp after 1971\u2019s Gene Wilder. In January 2024, the Commodore cinema on Bath Street in Aberystwyth, its purpose-built bricks themselves looking quite chocolate-y, touted a belated single matin\u00e9e showing.<\/p>\n I did not see Wonka<\/em>, personally, but in February it was my birthday again and I was experiencing an uncomfortable calling to visit Cadbury World, a chocolate theme park in Birmingham. Having been previously more intensely involved with various socio-economic and climate justice movements, and exercising a fairly extreme level of personal consumer restriction, I\u2019d been experimenting with reintroducing occasional \u2018bad\u2019 products in attempt to soothe daily anxiety. Buying Cadbury Freddos became a joke between friends and family, and developed into a mock obsession. Performing wishes for Freddos, the real chocolate frogs at just 25p as opposed to the \u00a38.95 ones sold by Warner Bros Harry Potter Wizarding World\u2122, was a phatic expression of coping with the gutting-ness of a grossly-structured global economy, instead of being totally freaked by it. Pilgrimaging to Cadbury World, visiting Freddos at their nascent abode, seemed a perverse necessity. It had to be done, and now \u2013 thank God \u2013 it is.<\/p>\n The trip to Cadbury World happened during Holy Week this March. Easter ~ coco holiday ~ seemed a pertinent moment to psychogeographically investigate this particular site. I\u2019m still trying to complete a PhD in literary psychogeographies, so am interested in how space is socially and culturally constructed and how that affects our subjective experience. Marxist filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini released his neo-realist monochrome epic The Gospel According to St. Matthew<\/em> the very same year as Dahl\u2019s insipid Charlie and the Chocolate Factory<\/em> was published. We\u2019d view the Cadbury phenomenon through the lens of redeemed aspects of Christian spirituality.<\/p>\n \u2018En route\u2019 in the car with my Mom and Dad to Cadbury World on our way to the Isle of Wight for spring-break rest, we reminded ourselves of the modern confection industry\u2019s nature. Google-searches for \u2018Marx on chocolate\u2019 gave us sweet FA, so we fast-forwarded to a Guardian<\/em> article from 2023 titled \u2018\u201cBrands to avoid\u201d: Mars and Cadbury among chocolate firms criticised in ethics report\u2019. Yep: few living wages, rife child labour, suspect tax habits, persisting palm oil, deforestation, and plastic problems. Ethical Consumer says \u2018The chocolate industry is incredibly unequal, with many cocoa farmers living in poverty while international chocolate companies are raking in billions of pounds\u2019, amounting to no less than modern slavery. As well as in other-able lands such as Ghana, Cameroon, or Ivory Coast, it\u2019s not good for the UK-based part of the production line either, including tourist and amusement spin-offs that have created whole new realms of inadequate employment. A Channel 4 Dispatches documentary in 2022 urged audiences to mass-boycott Mondel\u0113z who now owns Cadbury.<\/p>\n How has chocolate-related injustice been mediated through the arts? Zooming down the A44, A470, A489, A483, A458, A5, M54, M6, and A38, Mom found \u2018A Literary History of Chocolate\u2019 series at a blog called \u2018Nico and Amy\u2019s Literary Kitchen\u2019. \u2018LITKIT88\u2019 quote Alexander Pope from his 1712 poem The Rape of the Lock<\/em>, describing a decadent upper-class choc-y milieu that\u2019s haunted, feat. beautiful-doomed Belinda for whom \u2018nymphs prepared [\u2026] Chocolate\u2019 on waking until she\u2019s eventually punished. I used to eat a Freddo each morning for breakfast and felt a sharp Karmic pang.<\/p>\n Charles Dickens\u2019s 1856 novel A Tale of Two Cities<\/em> is said to satirise the French aristocracy associating choco with a selfish and corrupt nobility. James Joyce\u2019s 1922 mega-tome Ulysses<\/em> is noted for a scene, imbued with British Empire exploitation vibes, in which Leopold Bloom shares a chocolate bar with whores in a Dublin brothel. Belfast-born poet Louis MacNeice, lecturing at Birmingham University in the 1930s, tackles Cadbury World directly \u2013 \u2018Tonight is so coarse with chocolate \/ The wind blowing from Bournville\u2019 \u2013 and begs for release.<\/p>\n We arrived at Cadbury World around 2pm. At a service station in Telford, my Dad had Googled \u2018best age to go to Cadbury World\u2019 and it is 7-11. We are 31, 60, and 61. But we were on a mission to understand chocolate and its cultural configuration in the UK right now.<\/p>\n \u00a0 We entered, and everything was immediately confusing and busy and felt grotty-bereft. Cadbury World was purchased by the entertainment company Merlin who run Alton Towers, Thorpe Park, various SEA LIFEs, Madame Tussauds, LEGOLAND\u00ae Windsor, and more, just last year. Queuing for the full Cadbury circuit, you can buy either a \u00a31 or \u00a32 goodie bag. We exchanged for a \u00a31 one between three of us into which understandably gormless staff dumped several Twirls, Whispers, and Cadbury Caramel bars.<\/p>\n I am not adequately equipped to discuss the \u2018Aztec\u2019 models on display that ensued, dusty-toned like in gall-ish 1970s Harrods windows. Pools of stagnant water were littered with lucky coins at the Mexican natives\u2019 feet. Corralled through c16\/17th colonisers\u2019 cocoa-discovery tales told via chequerboard-floored and wood-panelled miniature holographic Shakespearean stages, we emerged into Victoriana\u2019s progress from fake streets into a pokey civic square where, a sign tells us, \u2018The dwell time in the area is up to 7 minutes\u2019.<\/p>\n Shopfronts full of cocoa merch, lil tins and trinkets from an optimistic c19th. We then sat in Theatre A, watching talking heads recount the Cadbury story, then Theatre B, enduring a \u20184D\u2019 screening where attendees became conveyer-belt beans jigged about on simulatory benches. Upstairs, a ride like \u2018It\u2019s A Small World\u2019 at Disneyland delivered us through bizarre topographies of anthropomorophised cocoa-beings in different guises and occupations. TVs presented surface-level histories, choc-making was demo\u2019d in a booth, then we got some melted Dairy Milk in paper cups prepared by select employees enacting factory-esque procedures behind glass. Outside we saw a play area called \u2018African Adventure\u2019. Exiting fast through the giftshop, we bought nothing, ignoring that which would\u2019ve once delighted us. We\u2019d seen too much.<\/p>\n Back at the university in Aberystwyth, where I work, Freddos float equivocally in the Film and Theatre Studies Department vending machines\u2026<\/p>\n Is there any way to have cocoa fun without moral comeuppance? Jack Kerouac dramatised the conundrum in The Dharma Bums <\/em>in 1958: \u2018\u201cJaphy there\u2019s one thing I would like right now more than anything in the world \u2013 more than anything I\u2019ve ever wanted all my life [\u2026]\u201d\u2019 and it is ~ \u2018\u201cWhat?\u201d\u2019 ~ \u2018\u201cA nice big Hershey bar or even a little one. For some reason or other, a Hershey bar would save my soul right now [\u2026]\u201d\u2019. How can we negotiate compromised desires in a rancid late-Capitalist age?<\/p>\n Last year, Colin Herd and Maria Sledmere published Cocoa and Nothing<\/em> with SPAM Press, and do a decent job of teasing such questions out. A small book designed like a Ritter Sport block contains eighty-or-so poems \u2018named after genuine and hoax flavours of Ritter Sport Chocolate\u2019. Tasting reviews by Andrew Durbin, Sean Wai Keung, and Rebecca May Johnson are blurb-packet adverts. Cocoa and Nothing<\/em>\u2019s first epigraph is Bernadette Mayer\u2019s \u2018poetry is as good as chocolate \/ chocolate is as good as poetry\u2019; chocolate is GOOD \u2013 let\u2019s not deny it. Lines include \u2018have a great Chocolate \/ Chocolate, Chocolate Chocolate, Chocolate \/ Chocolate Chocolate!\u2019, \u2018boom-and-bust cycle\u2019, \u2018septic plot\u2019, \u2018speak ugly \/ for the survival of art\u2019, \u2018gut sentences\u2019, \u2018decadent as French confectionary \/ laced with incendiary comments\u2019, \u2018poem melting\u2019, \u2018depression \/ [\u2026] without chocolate \/ or sans cocoa \/ I think it\u2019s mad \/ to not want \/ daily sprinkles \/ of something sweet\u2019, \u2018memory of \/ when Bella ate masses of Cadbury Dream \/ bar and vomited\u2019, \u2018faulty relation to dopamine\u2019, \u2018Augustus Gloop has a twitter, apparently \/ official, his bio is \u201cI like chocolate. that\u2019s it \/ really\u201d\u2019, \u2018to write from 100% heart melt and \/ embrace that cocoa surfeit\u2019.<\/p>\n I\u2019d met Maria in Glaschu and asked her if I could raise Cocoa and Nothing<\/em> here, explaining my thoughts. Among other things, Maria replied \u2018I love this message so much x [\u2026] especially in the context of recent Glasgow-based chocolate dramas [\u2026] would be delighted for any readings of cocoa and nothing or anything I can contribute on the cultural matters of chocolate\u2019. See another Guardian<\/em> article, \u2018Glasgow Willy Wonka experience called a \u201cfarce\u201d as tickets refunded\u2019, if you\u2019re not already familiar with this choc-less tragedy.<\/p>\n Maria wrote about psychogeography back in 2016 at her blog \u2018Mariology\u2019. She says: \u2018We might take urban space for granted as something that\u2019s just there [\u2026]. Space, however, is always ideological, entangled in contested debates about politics, identity, belonging\u2019. Amen, baby. Chocolate at Easter, and all months, is part of that conversation. Let\u2019s dream a better chocolate cosmos; I notice my copy of Merlin Coverley\u2019s Psychogeography <\/em>happens to be Cadbury-purple \u2013 is this the message he seeks to convey? You can buy a copy here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Iain Sinclair is another psychogeographer who foregrounds chocolate in his zeitgeist analyses. Slow Chocolate Autopsy<\/em>, with David McKean illustrations, was published as a short-story collection in 1997. What is the significance of this title? More Google search reveals autopsy means two things:<\/p>\n 1. an examination of a body after death to determine the cause of death or the character and extent of changes produced by disease; and,<\/p>\n 2. a critical examination, evaluation, or assessment of someone or something past.<\/p>\n Sinclair is always making autopsies of our ruined earthly Elysium. Is he saying that chocolate is at the core of civilisation\u2019s prolonged demise? Reading Slow Chocolate Autopsy<\/em>, I\u2019m struck by connections to Cadbury World. Are \u2018Purple tongues\u2019 caused by toxic Cadbury products, eventually taking over humans entirely, as suggested by a foreboding sentence: \u2018Purple chocolate, he was\u2019? Should \u2018choc-dust flourish in Frith Street cappuccino\u2019 be avoided or celebrated? Is \u2018Kinder Street\u2019 coded with warnings against Kinder eggs? \u2018Star blossom\u2019 like \u2018Bird-spit\u2019 echoes blackthorn flowers clotted in trees on our way into Bournville, Cadbury\u2019s ex-utopian workers\u2019 village where its factory nestles. \u2018Broken-down people\u2019s palaces\u2019, \u2018Tarted up leisure and entertainment facilities\u2019. Uncanny.<\/p>\n Psychogeographical inquiry itself is also comparable to choc, whereby \u2018free associating meltdown\u2019 from an overstimulated \u2018crippling sense of psychogeography\u2019 is suffered. The psychogeographer has:<\/p>\n The freedom to come and go amongst the confused dead. A visionary technician. A person skilled in the unfolding of post-human possibilities. A slow autopsy turning the frozen air to chocolate. The chalk line to a muddy brown. To a river<\/em>.<\/p>\n For Sinclair, Willy Wonka\u2019s chocolate river is a symbol of our sickly past, present, future that serves very few. Slow Chocolate Autopsy<\/em>\u2019s semi-autobiographical protagonist hopes to save himself from it, focusing more resolutely on his artistic projects, and deciding \u2018No choc bar zits\u2019 anymore.<\/p>\n We are so pleased to leave the Chocolate Factory. Did our \u00a323-each tickets teach us valuable lessons? We spend the entirety of Easter in pious reflection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Indelibly racist Roald Dahl was called upon by Hollywood profit-brokers again last year for yet another adaptation of his 1964 children\u2019s novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":652,"featured_media":16620,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1650],"tags":[3059,3060,3061,2675],"class_list":["post-16624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-eating-drinking","tag-cadbury-world","tag-cocoa-and-nothing","tag-easter","tag-psychogeography"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/652"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Picture1\"](\"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/Picture1.jpg\")
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