Aight, I enjoy the joke too.
However! I encourage people to remember that grandpa joe is not a faker in the world he’s from!
Since the movie is what most peeps remember, and where the memes usually come from, the first thing to remember is that it’s a musical.
Musicals, by the established rules of the overall genre, do not reflect reality at all times. Even mostly dramatic musicals like Man of LaMancha break some reality in order to function as musicals. Take the scene with the ruffians and “Dulcinea” as an example.
Second, the movie. Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory is essentially a fantasy piece. You’ve got the Oompa Loompas as prime evidence of that. Orange skinned humanoids that do not exist in the real world (jokes aside). Many things in the chocolate factory break the laws of physics or otherwise bend reality. There’s geese laying golden eggs, ffs.
Third, the theme of the movie isn’t actually torturing children. The theme of the movie is the redemptive and uplifting power of dreams. That’s achieved by the journey of Charlie getting his golden ticket and everything in his life getting better.
Grandpa Joe hasn’t been laying there in bed faking it (though, in movie, there’s never anything about the grandparents being unable to move or walk at all, they’re just frail and weak).
He is in his eighties or nineties.
What gets him up and dancing isn’t that he was faking and forgot to, it’s joy.
GJ is transformed by joy, by happiness. His grandson has, through luck or destiny, gotten the golden ticket to a brighter, better life! This doesn’t trick Joe into forgetting his infirmity. It gives him the joy to overcome it.
Joe’s transformation, rejuvenation, is because he is so filled with joy that his grandson will have a new life, that it changes him into the grandfather he wished he could be. Don’t forget that he had sacrificed his one real pleasure to give Charlie a chance at that.
But, look, I know that the grandpajoehate is ostensibly a meme. It’s a joke poking fun at the very musical rules that allow a bed-bound person to magically be cured in the first place. But it never acknowledges the fact that his spontaneous rejuvenation is magic, and that the magic is the magic of love.
In a cynical world, we believe that love is not transformative because the real world grinds us down. But love can be transformative for us too. We just have to be willing to let it work.
This was nice. Thanks for taking the time to write this up!
Hmmm, I just thought he was depressed.
I know its you Joe you cant fool me
Bro really wrote an essay
You wish you loved something this much.
oh I agree with him, just saying
Nah, my essays are longer than that.
Are we bringing the fuck grampa Joe community to Lemmy?
I always think the reason they never got out of bed is they had a 24/7 old person orgy, so the other three were always fucking grandpa Joe.
We know what sort of porn you watch.
Also, username checks out.
I mean… you gonna do it?
Yes. We’re getting tired of these corporate handouts. Grandpa Joe needs to get off the corporate teat.
Depression sucks. Grandpa Joe just needed a pick me up.
Also - and I’m only familiar with the 1971 film version with Gene Wilder - Grandpa Joe is clearly the only friend, companion, and available adult in Charlie’s life who he can talk to. His mother is too busy from working to support the family. He doesn’t have friends or money to spend. And Grandpa Joe does show some guilt and awareness about not contributing more to the family. He has that great line when Charlie tries to give him a nickel for tobacco: “When a loaf of bread looks like a banquet, I’ve no right buying tobacco.”
Given the choice of living like that burdening my family or not I would choose death.
Fuck grandpa Joe. That is all.
Is Grandpa Joe Caillou grown up?
Willy Wonka owned slaves.
And seriously harmed children by bringing them into a workplace that he knew was not safe.
It should bother any decent person what he did. If they really did suffer from animal attacks he could have provided them with weapons. Hell, I am reasonable. He could have sold them guns and made a profit. “Ok peeps, work in my factory and I will pay you. You can use that money to buy stuff that will kill those animals”
There’s actually an interesting deep dive into this.
Weren’t they paid in chocolate, their preferred currency?
I have a hunch that it wasn’t their preferred currency.
In the first edition of Dahl’s novel, Oompa Loompas were Black pygmies Willy Wonka imported from “the deepest and darkest part of the African jungle,” according to Jeremy Treglown’s Roald Dahl: A Biography. In 1970, the NAACP issued a statement expressing concerns about the racist portrayal of the Oompa Loompas in light of the then-upcoming film. Dahl himself showed sympathy for their stance, and re-imagined them in the 1973 edition as having “golden-brown hair” and “rosy-white” skin.
Despite that change in description, the Oompa Loompas’ exploitative origin remained. Wonka smuggled them from their home to work at his factory. They worked tirelessly in exchange for cocoa beans, even as the chocolatier earned real money for their labor. They were prisoners restricted to areas inside the factory. In Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Willy Wonka learned the tribal language when negotiating a deal with the Oompa Loompas, but he was proud that “they all speak English now.”
Does nobody know that all the grandparents were in their ninties?
How does that make sense? People back then had a kid in their teens.
Wait do we have a c/grandpajoehate
Be the change you want to see in the world!
He said he was going to give up tobacco! What else do you people want from him?!?!
Let’s also remember that Willy Wonka fired all his workers and replaced them with slaves, in the original draft of the book they were people taken from Africa, so pretty much resembles slavery verbatim.
I’m not going to go too in depth with this because there’s a whole video already breaking it down in entirety (you can find it here.
Fuck Grandpa Joe and all, but the guy in Saving Private Ryan who stands on the stairs while his squad mate is being killed just inside the door usually gets my vote for biggest piece of shit in cinema history.
This sounds like a moral position until actually having one’s life threatened. There’s no reason to give bravery credit to a statement. That scene showed the paralysis effect of our brain, the ENTIRE POINT is that he was unable to save his friend. Same point is referenced multiple times in the book, and once more(without nominal reference) in the series. Spielberg and Hanks saved their audience of most of the visible anguish and tears in the interwoven interviews. Honestly, the author of the book saves the audience from details, too. It was all THAT BAD.
So.
The folks who said it “wasn’t that bad” and “Hillary evil”, nearly in the same breath, have an accessible platform with an audience that can presume engagement (including purchasing). Jones even attacked parents of murdered children with his newfound power. Confirming that infamous line about absolute (in his small pond) power: it corrupts absolutely.Idk how we got from saving private Ryan to Alex Jones but I enjoyed the ride. Seriously though, thanks for the necessary context and details!
Honestly I heard one of my nieces or nephews in my head saying “So what?” because that’s their thing lately and the tangent fell freely from my brainmeats.
I’m not surprised, I got the vibe this is something you feel very passionate about that the tangents just come naturally at this point. Maybe I’m projecting cuz that’s where I’m at haha.
I think you missed the point of that scene
Everyone thinks they’re better than those put regularly in high stress real life and death scenarios.
Nobody really understands it until it happens to them. Unfortunately it’s the nature of the human brain.
Everyone thinks a panic attack can be pushed through with sheer willpower too. They also don’t understand the difference between garden variety anxiety and a full blown panic attack.
Yeah, maybe. Though what if Grandpa Joe is chronically ill with waxing and waning debility. There are lots of folks in that boat. Maybe he was just having a very good week. One of the chief complaints I hear from friends that are so stricken is that when they are having an ok day, and are out doing something important or essential or even fun, they are seen by some dillweed that takes it as proof they are a lazy, shiftless malingerer.
Seriously, I would have so much preferred the boy to tell his grandpa Joe not to come since he is always so sick, and take his mom or dad instead
You savages must attack everything. LOL
Look at all the Grandpa Joe apologists in this thread. No need to defend this piece of shit. Sad!
Is there a Grand Pajoe hate community on Lemmy yet?
