Addams Family (1991)

December 2022:

Ashia R:

AAAaaaaaand we’re back! Two years later and we’ve giving this movie another try. We watched ‘Addams Family Values’ (the sequel) recnly and only afterward did I realize that we never actually finished this one.

Q (now age 10) and I just finished watching the new series Wednesday, and we’re feeling very Addams-y so we’re all very excited. Unfortunately R2 (age 8) is still too young to watch the Netflix show, so he’ll have to wait. 

BUT – he’s finally old enough for the 90’s movies. ::thrilled::

Let’s see if we can keep track of the (less frequent, but still annoying) questions and interruptions from the Earthquakes.

1. Q interrupts to talk about the TV show Wednesday – because apparently he CANNOT WAIT until a scene without dialogue and has no sense of decency..
2. R2 interrupts to tell us something his cousin said today. Irrelevant!

After a weirdo Christmasy intro (is this a Christmas movie? I had no idea!) Gomez meets his lawyer and the script gets a little… finance-y? We’re talking off-shore accounts and other rich people things I can’t follow. 

1. R2’s curious about that (valid!) But I have no answers.

R2 seems happy to stick around for the silly and morbid jokes. But I admit the ‘corrupt lawyer teams up with a mother-son con team to trick the Addams into revealing the location of a fortune of gold doubloons’ is still a little hard to follow for your average 8-year-old.

I have no idea if he’s catching all the goofy visual gags (which are still hilarious).

When I watched this movie as a 9-year-old, I really dug Wednesday Addams’ energy. I wanted to be just like her. Braided my hair like her for years and slept with my arms crossed across my chest, and dressed in all-black. My late elementary years were very goth.

And now that I’m 40 I really dig Morticia’s energy. Like, the calm-yet-cheery chill? It’s the exact opposite of my frenetic, neurotic, anxious style of parenthood. How do I channel this level of giving-no-fucks?

Although… I mean I guess I’d be chill too if we were endlessly wealthy and didn’t have to worry about what judgy people deciding I’m an incompetant parent and calling child services.

(and also the fact that her kids don’t die even when electrocuted and getting dropped off buildings probably removes the bulk of emotional carbohydrates from her plate).

So all I need to be chill is…

• Endless wealth security locked in a labyrinthian Gringotts-style McDonalds FunHouse basement 
• To be attractive by media standards without ever exercising or worrying about what these nachos will do to my triglyceride levels
• To raise white-adjacent abled kids who can’t die and aren’t targeted or discriminated against for being straight-up weirdos
• To find a life partner with a joyful zesty obsession with me.
• And also a classic sense of style with a capsule wardrobe of capes and gowns that are tattered enough to look like I don’t give a fuck, but also not so worn that I look frumpy.

I guess my life kind of swerved in the wrong direction for all that. Oh well. Back to parenting as a neurotic ball of anxiety in the-bad-kind-of-tattered 10-year-old maternity leggings.

Apparently we also need an optimistic (and slightly threatening) family motto, such as – “We gladly feast on those who would subdue us.”

The Ray fam manifesto is something about being kind and courageous and smashing the kyriarchy. But there’s really connects on an emotional level. You get a sense of where you stand with that kind of motto.

—

So we’re humming along nicely with this movie – the jokes are still great, Morticia’s facial expressions are still on point, and Christina Ricci’s Wednesday is still adorable deadpan perfection.

But good gosh – the kids’ school theater night shakespeare scene – somehow it got even funnier than it was 30 years ago. It’s just so extra and ridiculous.

The early 90’s were a great time for movies, before the cynicism and anti-PC wave. Characters didn’t put each other down and compete to see who could get more edgy. It was just… goofy.

Remember pre-South Park, before every joke had to use a group of people or pop culture reference as a punchline? 

Even the new Wednesday TV show is so… mean. Like the only way we can think of to be funny is to make a snide insult at someone else’s expense. 2022 Wednesday is very cute and I am super excited about the Addams really embracing their Latinx American roots – but the new Wednesday is just unnecessarily mean.

I can’t believe I’m getting nostalgic, but it’s just so lovely to see folks just being goofy. (I am officially old now.)

RECORD SCRATCH. Can we talk about the Amour twins? 

Gomez and Fester became estranged after fighting over a pair of sisters, Flora and Fauna. And the ‘joke’ is that Flora and Fauna are conjoined twins. Implying that because they have a disability they can’t possibly be worth fighting about.

Which is… yeah that’s a yuck.

So on one hand – there’s the kids’ perspective. I’m not sure they get that this is supposed to be a ‘hahaha who would find women with a disability sexy?’ because the way it’s presented, the Amour sisters are very much independent agents and there are no blatant jokes at their expense. 

It’s the underlying message there – the one for adults and folks who already find folks with disabilities ‘ick.’ 

This movie KIND OF normalizes disability – unless you take this plotline (and the subsequent freak-show-family-red-carpet) as another grain of sand in the ‘look how weird this family is!’ bucket. 

Wrapped up as a whole, where every scene and line of dialogue is to reinforce just how strange this family is, the love quad between the Addams brothers and Amour sisters needs an open discussion. 

‘Cause I don’t know which message my kids are getting unless we talk about it. Will my kids walk away from this movie understanding that folks with disabilities are sexual beings and normal beings of affection and lust? Or will my kids end the movie seeing the sisters as a goofy gag?

On to the ‘red carpet’ scene that every Addams Family movie features about ¾ of the way through the plot.

At some point in all of these movies, there’s an Addams Family gathering, where ‘weirdos’ (folks dressed in a lot of black with pale makeup) gather and they movie-makers kind of parade around how weird they can get with it.

Similar to the love quad story – this is double-edged representation. 

There is a casting call for folks with disabilities – like in this rendition there are Little People, folks with spinal differences, and one Black guy. 

(Just the one. 3 seconds of screen time. No lines. Despite Gomez being Latinx, all but one of their friends and family members at this party are white.)

 So we are paying a few more disabled characters, depicting a tiny bit more diversity in a big movie production. BUT – still depicted as ‘the other.’ And the way we’re presented and paraded around – that’s not great for representation.

(There’s also a reference to ‘Voodoo witch doctors’ later in the movie that… isn’t great..)

For a movie in the early 90’s it’s not as bad as most. Particularly with the way Thing (disembodied hand) is just a regular (albeit unexplained) member of the family who speaks with body language and ASL. And Lurch, the family butler, whose physical disabilities and non-speaking communication is just accepted and perfectly normal.

For those of us who identify as an Addams, it’s kind of liberating to see folks like us on the screen. But we’re always aware that IF we are going to get representation, it’s always going to be as the other.

I still really, really love this movie. It’s still fucking hilarious. And I want to give it a pass because it’s 30 years old.

And I would! Except we’re STILL depicting folks with disabilities as freaks and weirdos. And it’s still so sad that of all the movies that we can feel seen and accepted in, this is still really high up there. Even while we remain a silent punchline.