Oompa Loompa

(Redirected from Oompa Loompas)

Categories: Willy Wonka characters

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Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka with the iconic Oompa Loompas of the 1971 film
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An Oompa Loompa from the 2005 movie adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, portrayed by Deep Roy

The Oompa-Loompas are dwarves in Roald Dahl's fictional books Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. They come from Loompaland and are the only people Willy Wonka will allow to work in his factory due to the risk of industrial espionage. They are only knee-high, and are paid in their favourite food, cacao beans.

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History

The Oompa Loompas were first featured in Roald Dahl's 1964 children's book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The original book first portrayed Oompa Loompas as black pygmies from "the very deepest and darkest part of the African jungle where no white man had been before". After the book's U.S. release, complaints of racism caused Dahl to rewrite the characters as dwarves with "golden-brown hair" and "rosy-white" skin. In the 1971 musical film adaptation, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, the characters were again reinterpreted as orange-skinned, green-haired, and overall similar to the munchkins of 1939's The Wizard of Oz. In the 2005 adaption, which was restored to its original title of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the Oompa Loompas are very small, with short dark hair and bronzed skin, all played by dwarf actor Deep Roy. Roy's stature was diminished on screen to an apparent height of about two feet, using digital compositing and forced perspective.

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Loompa Land

Oompa Loompas originally lived in "the very deepest and darkest part of the African jungle where no white man had been before", which was changed into Loompa Land. Loompa Land is an uncharted land full of Snozzwangers, Horn Snolgerlers, and those wicked Whangdoodles, three classes of extremely dangerous creatures. They would eat thousands of Oompa Loompas each year. The Oompa Loompas lived on mashed giant caterpillars and never could work long or hard enough to keep their race fit or alive. They had a horrible life in Loompa Land until Willy Wonka arrived. Loompa Land is rumoured to be 'south of Armenia and bordering the Caspian Sea', which is in Iran. A more accepted theory is that it is in an unknown part of the Amazon Rainforest. In the first movie Vermicious knids were from Loompa Land but in Roald Dahl's novel Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator Vermicious knids are large greeny-brown egg-shaped monsters who go to other planets and eat those who live there (they are also mentioned in passing in The Minpins).

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Songs

The Oompa Loompas are notable for their witty, moralising songs and dances about the mischievous children who have been invited to tour the factory. Four songs are presented in the form of a simple puzzle which are intended to make adolescents think about the consequences of their behaviour: the Augustus Gloop Song, about a greedy boy who tried to drink up the chocolate river only to fall in and get sucked up into a pipe headed for the fudge room; the Violet Beauregarde Song, about a girl who is a chronic gum-chewer who eats an experimental gum, causing her to turn blue and expand into a human-like blueberry and is rolled out to the juicing room to keep her from bursting; the Veruca Salt Song, about a spoiled brat who winds up going down into a garbage chute for her wanton greed; and the Mike Teevee Song, a song about a boy who watches too much television, only to get shrunken down to size by a matter condenser, and sent to the taffy room to be stretched back to normal.

The songs written by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley for the 1971 film are radically different than the songs in the book (each beginning and ending with the now-iconic Oompa-Loompa-Doompa-Dee-Do), while the 2005 adaptation uses the book's lyrics to the point where Roald Dahl is listed in the 2005 movie credits as having written the lyrics for the songs.

In the 2005 version of the movie, it is pointed out as being highly suspicious that the children's names were already in the songs, suggesting that they already knew that the incidents (Augustus Gloop getting sucked up the pipe, for example) were going to happen.

In the book's sequel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, the Oompa Loompas sing two other songs: Wonkavite, and Goldie Pinklesweet.

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Casting

Angelo Muscat (The Prisoner), George Claydon, and Hussien Farhat (Time Bandits) played the role of three of the Oompa Loompas in the 1971 film.

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Parodies

The Oompa Loompas were once parodied on Family Guy. In the episode "Wasted Talent", which features a subplot based on the 1971 film in which Peter Griffin wins admission to a tour of the Pawtucket Pat Brewery, the "Chumba Wumbas" sing a song to Joe Swanson in which they make fun of his need for a wheelchair. Shortly afterwards, they start singing to Peter Griffin when he and Brian are forced to leave for tasting beer they weren't supposed to taste. During this song, one of them elbows Peter in his knee, making him drop down and clutch it in pain.

Also, in "Fry and the Slurm Factory", an episode of Matt Groening's Futurama cartoon series, the "Grunka Lunkas" sing a song while the crew were touring the Slurm softdrink factory. The crew were warned not to inquire about the secret ingredient of Slurm. The Grunka Lunkas subsequently lose their bathroom breaks for singing. It is later revealed that the Grunka Lunkas are essentially slaves, working at less than half the cost of humans/lobsters/robots/mutants. They were treated incredibly badly in the show, mostly for the degrading humorous effect.

Farnsworth: "Who are those disgusting little orange men?"
Glurmo: "Why, those are the Grunka Lunkas."
Farnsworth: "Tell them I hate them!!"

The Irate Cinema Underground made a satirical film called "Oompa Loompa Liberation" in which they protest the film release of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" due to Wonka's out-sourcing of American jobs to Oompa Loompa slaves.

Finally, in a episode of MTV's stuntshow Jackass, Jason Acuña, better known as Wee Man, does various stunts on his skateboard in an urban area, dressed up as an Oompa Loompa. He is musically guided by remix from the Oompa Loompa "theme song" from the 1971 film.

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External links