postdated stuff
This was technically written early on Thursday morning... after watching Addams Family Values Wednesday night. It's the weird thought train that hit me during the movie. I'm putting it under an LJ cut because it's kinda long and rambly. Fair warning to anyone who reads - it is incomplete, will not be completed, unresearched (ie: I did not look up the quotes nor did I hunt down the Latin and double check it. Tis my ramble. Tis not an essay I'm turning in or submitting... tis just my oddball thoughts.
'We gladly consume those who would subdue us' that's the Addams' family motto. Scary but reassuring if you're a member of the family. And that just kind of started the train...
When watched critically, Addams Family Values, is a dichotomy of good and evil, social mores, expectations, and norms forming a multi-layered message. Everything about the Addams is dark, dreary, and forbidding. From the opening of the screeching, rusting gate to the gravel drive up past faded, apparently dying gardens to the battered, run down, Psycho-esque Victorian mansion is artfully chosen to seem dark, scary, and distinctly unsettling. The setting frames the whole story line - a family that is a family, with their own values and strengths that does not match that of normal society.
The family is just like the grounds and house - made up of people who come from the most disturbing, archetypal monsters. Lurch, the nearly voiceless golem with his dark eyes, gravelly voiced whispered words, and unusual height and strength. Thing, the animated hand that is intelligent, fast, a marksman, and all around overly friendly but deadly. Morticia, the pale, extremely beautiful descendant of witches and vampires. Grandma, the old hag who brews night and day and levels curses with a snaggle-toothed smile and cheery viciousness. Gomez the slightly mad, cheerful man who contemplates murder while blowing up trains and other things with child-like glee and no remorse at all. The children - Wednesday, an prepubescent Black Widow in the making who rarely smiles, never gets angry, and loves trying to harm her brother; Pugsley, the smiling boy who can go from calm to deadly serious in a second, whose favorite toy seems to be a butcher's cleaver and is nearly immune to death. And of course, Uncle Fester, who is a mad scientist, looks like Igor, cheerfully teaches his niece and nephew the proper way to plan and create mantraps, explosives, maintain torture chambers... etc.
The family as a whole is forbidding to outsiders. The gate slams closed on people or flat out refuses to open. The doorbell is a deep gong that comes close to hurting the ears and definitely unsettles the ringer. Lurch glares at being disturbed, which might actually be better than his smile to the uninitiated. They are not outright threatening, but the feel is there. Morticia and Gomez welcome visitors, in fact, they are quite happy to meet new people and are, in fact, quite tolerant of everyone's idiosyncrasies and differences. Their ways, however, are quite disturbing and frightening, hemlock tea, discussions about the proper way to ensure the bodies of family members remain in their graves, potions and poisons and dinner all cooked in the same kitchen.
Their behavior towards each other, however, show the true values of the family. 'Once an Addams, always an Addams,' is how Morticia puts it when Fester marries. The family is all important. No matter how different, how unusual they are all accepted, welcomed, and well treated.
As parents, on first glance, Morticia and Gomez Addams appear to be negligent at best and downright terribly criminal at worst. They allow the children to play with dangerous things - knives, guillotines, fire, explosives, electric chairs - seemingly with little if any regard to their safety. They do, however, protect in a oddly unconscious way, baby Pubert from their eldest. And when they confront the older two about their behaviour they do so in a manner that is carefully couched so as to be non confrontational and evenhanded. (It still scared the heck out of me, 'cause people those two tried to kill their baby brother! But this is archetype and archetype is supposed to be over the top to show us problems... just like fairytales, but that's another essay altogether)
The room Gomez outfits for baby Pubert is to quote Morticia, 'dark, desolate, dreary' (need to clean the quote), but they consider it perfect for an Addams baby. The room is all those things, the windows filmed over enough to make the sunlight diffuse. The walls are dim, murky colored murals with Darwinistic murals of small fish being eaten by larger ones and similar themes. The Gothic cradle with its raven beaked corners and draping bedding is an unrelieved, forbidding black. For all of its darkness, however, the room is a match for the rest of the house, dusty, creepy, dim and full of a dreariness that seems to border on the morbid.
The Addams are antisocial towards outsiders, shown by the subtle, silent, disdainful looks all four shoot towards the normal children at Camp Chippewa. The faintly horrified expressions and the sneers are quickly hidden by the two parents because, even if they do not understand or even begin to comprehend why, they believe their children want this. They therefore intend to do whatever they must to fulfill their children's secret dream. They go to the extreme of paying the ridiculous $20,000 each fee for Pugsley and Wednesday to attend.
(that's as far as I got before I got tired of writing, sorry)
points left to write up:
family loyalty
very involved in each other's lives
protective of family
accepting of each other
marriage works - even after 14yrs Morticia & Gomez still in love
education - non-standard but very thorough - languages, cultures, beliefs, sciences, literature, etc
always truthful with each other
children taught facts of life, not fairy tale of stork/cabbage patch
entire family goes after Fester
none of them care that Debbie is 'hired help' when she marries Fester; only disapprove of her & marriage when she forces Fester to abandon family
even after she attempts to kill family, Debbie Addams is buried in family plot
there was way too much to write up
'We gladly consume those who would subdue us' that's the Addams' family motto. Scary but reassuring if you're a member of the family. And that just kind of started the train...
When watched critically, Addams Family Values, is a dichotomy of good and evil, social mores, expectations, and norms forming a multi-layered message. Everything about the Addams is dark, dreary, and forbidding. From the opening of the screeching, rusting gate to the gravel drive up past faded, apparently dying gardens to the battered, run down, Psycho-esque Victorian mansion is artfully chosen to seem dark, scary, and distinctly unsettling. The setting frames the whole story line - a family that is a family, with their own values and strengths that does not match that of normal society.
The family is just like the grounds and house - made up of people who come from the most disturbing, archetypal monsters. Lurch, the nearly voiceless golem with his dark eyes, gravelly voiced whispered words, and unusual height and strength. Thing, the animated hand that is intelligent, fast, a marksman, and all around overly friendly but deadly. Morticia, the pale, extremely beautiful descendant of witches and vampires. Grandma, the old hag who brews night and day and levels curses with a snaggle-toothed smile and cheery viciousness. Gomez the slightly mad, cheerful man who contemplates murder while blowing up trains and other things with child-like glee and no remorse at all. The children - Wednesday, an prepubescent Black Widow in the making who rarely smiles, never gets angry, and loves trying to harm her brother; Pugsley, the smiling boy who can go from calm to deadly serious in a second, whose favorite toy seems to be a butcher's cleaver and is nearly immune to death. And of course, Uncle Fester, who is a mad scientist, looks like Igor, cheerfully teaches his niece and nephew the proper way to plan and create mantraps, explosives, maintain torture chambers... etc.
The family as a whole is forbidding to outsiders. The gate slams closed on people or flat out refuses to open. The doorbell is a deep gong that comes close to hurting the ears and definitely unsettles the ringer. Lurch glares at being disturbed, which might actually be better than his smile to the uninitiated. They are not outright threatening, but the feel is there. Morticia and Gomez welcome visitors, in fact, they are quite happy to meet new people and are, in fact, quite tolerant of everyone's idiosyncrasies and differences. Their ways, however, are quite disturbing and frightening, hemlock tea, discussions about the proper way to ensure the bodies of family members remain in their graves, potions and poisons and dinner all cooked in the same kitchen.
Their behavior towards each other, however, show the true values of the family. 'Once an Addams, always an Addams,' is how Morticia puts it when Fester marries. The family is all important. No matter how different, how unusual they are all accepted, welcomed, and well treated.
As parents, on first glance, Morticia and Gomez Addams appear to be negligent at best and downright terribly criminal at worst. They allow the children to play with dangerous things - knives, guillotines, fire, explosives, electric chairs - seemingly with little if any regard to their safety. They do, however, protect in a oddly unconscious way, baby Pubert from their eldest. And when they confront the older two about their behaviour they do so in a manner that is carefully couched so as to be non confrontational and evenhanded. (It still scared the heck out of me, 'cause people those two tried to kill their baby brother! But this is archetype and archetype is supposed to be over the top to show us problems... just like fairytales, but that's another essay altogether)
The room Gomez outfits for baby Pubert is to quote Morticia, 'dark, desolate, dreary' (need to clean the quote), but they consider it perfect for an Addams baby. The room is all those things, the windows filmed over enough to make the sunlight diffuse. The walls are dim, murky colored murals with Darwinistic murals of small fish being eaten by larger ones and similar themes. The Gothic cradle with its raven beaked corners and draping bedding is an unrelieved, forbidding black. For all of its darkness, however, the room is a match for the rest of the house, dusty, creepy, dim and full of a dreariness that seems to border on the morbid.
The Addams are antisocial towards outsiders, shown by the subtle, silent, disdainful looks all four shoot towards the normal children at Camp Chippewa. The faintly horrified expressions and the sneers are quickly hidden by the two parents because, even if they do not understand or even begin to comprehend why, they believe their children want this. They therefore intend to do whatever they must to fulfill their children's secret dream. They go to the extreme of paying the ridiculous $20,000 each fee for Pugsley and Wednesday to attend.
(that's as far as I got before I got tired of writing, sorry)
points left to write up:
family loyalty
very involved in each other's lives
protective of family
accepting of each other
marriage works - even after 14yrs Morticia & Gomez still in love
education - non-standard but very thorough - languages, cultures, beliefs, sciences, literature, etc
always truthful with each other
children taught facts of life, not fairy tale of stork/cabbage patch
entire family goes after Fester
none of them care that Debbie is 'hired help' when she marries Fester; only disapprove of her & marriage when she forces Fester to abandon family
even after she attempts to kill family, Debbie Addams is buried in family plot
there was way too much to write up