Friday, December 30, 2011

The Worst Characters in Fiction: Mike Teevee

This past holiday season offered an opportunity to re-watch a classic of children’s cinema. As part of their Christmas programming (which begins around October and ends sometime in February), ABC Family recently aired Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, the timeless tale of a filthy urchin’s adventures in an insane child murderer’s whimsical confectionery emporium. Unlike many comparable kid’s movies from the same era, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory remains mandatory viewing even today. There are a number of reasons for this: the awesome soundtrack, Gene Wilder, the unbridled imagination, dwarfs covered in toxic body paint, etc. One element I’ve always been particularly taken with is the characters. In addition to being generally well-acted (especially for child performers), the characters are fully realized in an economical fashion. Nearly every kid character is introduced via news clips, and these scenes tell us everything we need to know about each character. But even their names give insight into their personalities and attributes, giving us an accurate impression of them before we hear them speak or see them act. Take “Charlie Bucket”, for example. “Charlie”, rather than Charles, is causal and unrefined, indicating that he comes from an underprivileged background. “Bucket” is a tool used by painters, construction workers, and other blue-collar types, further establishing him as financially disadvantaged. As a final example of the name’s powerful symbolic value, a bucket is also an object that Charlie and his kind are accustomed to bathing/defecating in. This unnecessarily dedicated analysis of names can be applied equally well to most of the other kids. Augustus Gloop is a morbidly obese Hun; his name sounds like the noise ice cream makes when it falls off the cone onto the sidewalk. Violet Beauregard is destined to become purple (well, blue actually, but whatever), and Veruca Salt sounds like the name of a greedy, rude bitch. None of this is especially subtle or clever, but it gets its point across. However, there’s one character whose name and personality overstep the generous boundary established by the movie’s surreal reality. I’m talking about Mike Mother Fucking Teevee. 
Ffffffffffffuck Mike Teevee

Admittedly, maybe “Violet Beauregard” is a little too on-the-nose, given that she eventually turns a shade of purple (the filmmakers obviously didn’t think the slower kids in the audience would get this, hence the line “Violet, you’re turning violet!”). But at least it’s a name that a human being could possibly have. Teevee is a surname that could not exist in the English-speaking world, for the same reason you will never meet a person named Peter Ipad. If anyone was somehow bequeathed the family name “Teevee”, they would surely change it, post-haste. Here’s some supporting evidence. A Google search for “Teevee Name” returned exactly one result, an Inuk Indian author of children’s books (profiled in this extremely anorexic Wikipedia entry). If Mike Teevee had been wearing a parka and was carrying a massive salmon and a harpoon, maybe I’d be a little more tolerant of his moniker. Ultimately, what I find most offensive about the name is how profoundly lazy it is. How about Charlie Poor, Augustus Fatass, Violet Lilac Purple, and Veruca Selfish-Cunt? These names are equally good as (or better than) Mike Teevee.

Moving away from the name to the character himself, his fatal character flaw and eventual comeuppance make little sense. Again, look at the other kids. Gloop tries to shove liquid chocolate into his fat fucking face until he falls in and is sucked into a tube. Salt is dropped a long distance into a den of golden eggs and probably dies due to her avarice. Violet has some sort of Freudian oral fixation, and is punished for her whorish behavior by being transformed into an unfuckable monster. All of these are negative traits (gluttony, greed, and, uh, chewing things*), and there are appropriate punishments for them. But Mike Teevee’s main flaw is that he’s way into television. This can definitely be a problem, and does it presage America’s childhood obesity epidemic (I suppose it’s supposed to represent “sloth” in the movie’s ethical framework). But Mike looks relatively fit. Sure, he’s god damn annoying, but so are most kids (especially your kids, reader). His punishment for loving television is that he gets transmitted into a TV, which Mike thinks is fucking awesome. That’s like punishing me by giving me a million dollars and a wife who will actually have sex with me; truly a hellish fate.  After this transpires, the Oompa Loompa chorus appears and engages in a poorly choreographed (seriously, watch it, it’s terrible) song about Mike’s crimes. The thrust of it is basically that Mike should turn off the set and pick up a book every now and then. I’ve always been an opponent to this kind of thinking. I think that, in general, people should read more, but books are not inherently superior to television or movies. Is the Twilight book series better than Breaking Bad and The Godfather by virtue of its medium? The question is laughable. Shit, a book is from where the name “Mike Teevee” originated, and it’s the worst name in the history of human and animal language. Go fuck yourselves, Oompa Loompas and Ronald Dahl.**

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is a film filled with wonderful songs, imagery, performances, and characters. Mike Teevee, on the other hand, is a slice of fried ass, diminishing not only the quality of the film, but of the human race as a species. 

* This alleged character flaw, like over-watching TV, really illustrates how society has changed since the film was originally released in 1971. Chewing gum constantly was apparently considered extraordinarily rude and a near-crime in those days, while no one today gives a shit. I’m sure 99% of high school teachers would prefer a kid who chews Orbit nonstop to a kid with an iPhone.

** And an extra “fuck you” to Tim Burton and Johnny Depp for the awful remake. Playing Willy Wonka as a chocolate-producing Michael Jackson wasn’t trite or obvious at all. Hacks.     

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