You’re an Inhuman Monster! Revisiting Grandpa Joe

There is no way Jack Albertson could have known when he agreed to play a kindly grandfather, the third lead in a mid-budget family film, that the role would eventually become the most despised character in his filmography.

But despised it has become. The internet is overflowing with Grandpa Joe hate. Go ahead, give it a quick google—you don’t even need to include a qualifier, just search “Grandpa Joe.” You’ll find articles and blogs, video essays, at least one rant by a news anchor, and an entire subreddit dedicated to explaining how much of a scumbag and narcissist the star of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is.

There are several reasons given for this. Starting out small, there is the reference to Grandpa Joe’s “tobacco money,” an extravagance if ever there was one for a family so clearly destitute (their supper is cabbage water for goodness’ sake). Beyond mere irresponsibility, he is the clearest demonstration of the sin of sloth. We’re told he’s been bedridden for 20 years, lying in the middle of the room while Charlie’s mother supports the entire family stirring those clothes. But as soon as Charlie gets a golden ticket, well look who can suddenly walk again. (And dance! And what does he sing? “I’ve got a golden ticket!”) Once he’s dressed and been walking for a while, he’s no better. Inside the factory, he instigates most of Charlie’s trouble. It’s his idea to drink the fizzy-lifting drinks, the transgression that disqualifies Charlie. And in the end, after Wonka’s glorious tirade, Grandpa Joe puts his hand behind Charlie’s back, and as he shuttles him off, his final counsel is to sell the coveted gobstopper to Wonka’s enemy Slugworth. Of course, Charlie refuses and everything gets worked out, but in the last scene, the cherry on top, when Charlie is offered the factory by Wonka, Grandpa Joe’s final line is, “And me?”

He is a scoundrel. He’s the villain that Charlie must overcome. And even if it’s an exaggeration to call him an “inhuman monster,” his closest analogues are Wormtongue or a devil on the shoulder.

That, at least, is the story you’ll find on the internet. And while it gets some things right, I think it ultimately fails to recognize what’s really going on. Most frustrating is how it totally distorts how stories are told. I know that for many, critiques of Grandpa Joe are purely made in jest, but I worry that for others this sort of joke either reflects or affects their ability to enter into a narrative. We know that Grandpa Joe is meant to be beloved. He’s the one most concerned with Charlie’s future, his happiness, and his capacity to dream. He’s the one who gives up his money to buy Charlie a chocolate bar. He’s the one who becomes enraged on behalf of his grandson when he feels he’s been cheated. (And he’s also the one who has to carry “I’ve Got a Golden Ticket” on his back, when Charlie can’t hold a note in a bucket.) When our experience of storytelling becomes overly literalized—when we can’t enter into a universe, accept its verisimilitude, and recognize the protagonist as a protagonist—then we fail to show empathy, not only for fictional worlds but for the real one as well.

Notwithstanding this potential for failure at basic literacy, I think the villainization of Grandpa Joe goes wrong at a more subtle level. In the narrative, Grandpa Joe is less a figure of evil and more a figure of the flesh—that is, he represents our natural and ordinary and understandable desires that Charlie must overcome. He is, in a word, human. Or, framed another way, he represents the audience reaction and expectation within any given scene. He does what we would do or would want Charlie to do. And in the face of such ordinariness, Charlie shows himself, time and time again, to be better than that.

Consider Grandpa Joe and the other grandparents’ bedriddenness. The four of them are neither set-dressing nor pinnacles of laziness, but rather the fittingly lethargic and defeated result of poverty. They are the embodiment of what poor Charlie’s future has in store, when the oppression of lack chains you to the bed and atrophies your desire to live. Conversely, when Grandpa Joe and Charlie are alone in Wonka’s factory, the former’s suggestion to take a sip of fizzy-lifting drink, while undeniably mischievous, is best construed as an act of innocence alongside imprudence. That is, it’s a bit of harmless fun in which no one could have predicted anything would go terribly wrong. I do not mean to say that this excuses any rule-breaking the two of them do, but rather that their rule-breaking is understandable.

And then we have this climatic scene. (And can we take a moment to appreciate the writing here? We’ve got dense poetic language, joking word play, and Shakespeare allusions, all as we deliver the emotional crux and necessary plot details of the movie. Pure gold.) After Wonka dismisses Charlie and his grandfather, Grandpa Joe is a figurative devil on Charlie’s shoulder, leaning over and wrapping his arm around as he whispers into his ear. But we’re totally missing the point of the scene if we interpret him as sinister—instead, he’s somewhere equidistant between the Devil and Jiminy Cricket. He wraps his arm around Charlie to comfort him, and he tries to offer a solution by selling the gobstopper to Slugworth, something that seems just given their mistreatment (Wonka has to sterilize the ceiling? get outta here) and will help the family get some money. But Charlie knows, as reasonable as Grandpa Joe’s idea may sound, that it is wrong. And we watch as he freezes in his steps—he cannot go forward with it.

This is what we used to call a morality tale. Charlie demonstrates virtue. This virtue is often in contrast with vice, embodied by the other children, but in its most pivotal moments, Charlie’s virtue is in contrast with the paths of least resistance we deem understandable, in contrast with Grandpa Joe. And Charlie shows us what it means to make these hard decisions—hard, not because they are evil but because they are human.