The screenwriter behind the classic 1971 adaptation of Charlie & the Chocolate Factory has slammed Trump’s ‘Gold Card’ visa program as the antithesis of everything the film represents. “It’s the anti-Willy Wonka,” Dave Seltzer, 85, told The Washington Post. “If Willy Wonka were asking $5 million to give someone a gold ticket, this movie wouldn’t have flown.” In the film, protagonist Charlie Bucket’s discovery of the golden ticket offers him a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to escape a life of poverty—a stark contrast to the unattainable path to citizenship that Trump’s golden visa represents to the downtrodden. “It’s the realization of opportunity for a poor boy, for a boy whose family is suffering and who can’t catch a break,” Seltzer said of the golden ticket. “What it represented is what everyone hopes for: a break.” Branding expert Debbie Millman agreed with Setlzer’s analysis, telling the Post, “Both the brand of America and the brand of Trump are being merged into this symbolic gesture. The gold card reframes America as a luxury product, a gated community of privilege, rather than a frontier of possibility.”
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