Personal Consolation

The Addams family kids, part 3

Picture 1: Not a real “Addams family” strip, as you can see. But I included it because one of the two boys, the blond one in a coat, actually looks a bit like Pugsley. But it is probably just a similar-looking child. This strip, however, shows what kind of “mischief” kids in Charles Addams work can get up to.

I couldn’t find a bigger version for Picture 2: while all the other kids are playing with small boats, Pugsley has his black war submarine ready.

Picture 3: A poor quality one, but we can see a rather rare strip, where Morticia calls the children to watch vultures feasting on… something. And apparently the family built a special platform just to feed said vultures. 

Picture 4 is really mysterious to me, and the poor quality doesn’t help. Pugsley Addams is at a small, very small house by the sea. House in the same style as the Addams mansion and Uncle Fester house, the “creepy worn-out decaying Victorian” style. And the poles that support the house were half cut, maybe by Pugsley himself? (Note: I ended up finding a higher-quality version of the picture, I’ll post it later)

Picture 5: Pugsley, like all kids of his time, plays with bows and arrows. But Pugsley’s bows and arrows are special. They have a little… something more that makes all the games with him very exciting. (And yes, Pugsley had actually a lot of presence and proeminence in the Charles Addams strips compared to his future incarnations)

Picture 6: Another strip that may or may not be about Pugsley Addams. The blond kids look a lot like him, especially when he is wearing his “shirt and sweater” outfit. In this art class, while most of the kids do nice and beautiful pictures, the maybe-Pugsley Addams is already falsifying money. (Or maybe the child is just greedy, and thus draws money instead of a beautiful picture? Who knows)

And I’ll close this first look at Morticia’s evolution with the “The Addams Family”, the 2019 animated movie. I will never talk of its sequel, so I’ll just focus on the original movie. I might also do more posts in the future about other incarnations of Morticia (after all there is a LOT of Addams Family media), but for now I’ll stop here, to cover all the “big ones”. 

The animated movie decided to return to the original designs of Charles Addams. Out with the glamorous and voluptuous Morticias! They return to the ghoulish and corpse-like Addams matriarch, making her truly bony and skeletal-thin, even taller and paler than before, and even copying back the “tendrils hair” look of the original drawings. Her facial traits are also slightly changed so that her face would evoke a bit more of a skull (prominent cheekbones and lower jaw, non-existent cheeks, tiny nose…). Her unnatural thinness is even accentuated and explained in the movie by showing that Morticia was improbable corsets literally screwed on her - and her dress is so tight-fitting she doesn’t actually move her leg, but rather looks like she glides over the floor everytime she “walks” somewhere. And no “baking powder” for makeup! But rather the ashes of her deceased parents… 

Speaking of parents, she is here yet again not originally part of the Addams clan - you have to look in the credits to get a confirmation, but we learn that Morticia’s parents are actually called “Frump”. (Though during her wedding with Gomez there are only Addamses presents so… either the Frumps are a branch of the clan Addams, or Morticia is the only one left of her family after her parents’ death). 

In terms of personality, Morticia also returns mostly to her original characterization. She is more of a stern and aloof mother than her previous incarnations - while caring for her family, she is less friendly towards people in general, a much harsher and apathetic character. In fact, she is the most “conservative” member of the family in this continuity: traumatized by the angry mob that chased them out of the “old country”, she is extremely distrustful of non-Addamses and wishes for nothing more than isolation and seclusion, treating with disdain and reject everything “normal”. But it is not out of hatred - it is rather out of a deep desire to have a home of her own and to protect her children. 

Her anguish is also turned towards her family, as she greatly fears them becoming too “normal” or losing themselves to the ways of the “outsiders”. [In a way, this seems to be taking back the frequent worries of the 60s Morticia and amplifying them into serious smothering concerns]. The movie explores her relationship with Wednesday (which is clearly seen taking a lot after her mother in this movie), and the troubles she has when the little girl goes through a “rebellious” phase after seeing her curiosity about and desire to explore the outside world cut short by her overprotective mother. This highlights Morticia’s main flaw in this incarnation: her allergy to change, her refusal to let go of her children, an unconscious desire to control everything into a perfect and endless status quo (which, as Wednesday points out, makes her quite similar to the villain of the movie, Margaux). But as we know, Morticia is not a bad person, and when Wednesday runs away she understands her mistakes and decides to correct her ways to be more open-minded and let her daughter be the individual she wants to be. 

More details and elements about this version of Morticia:

# Her having more flaws (and thus being a bit more in line with her 60s incarnation) helps create an balance between her and Gomez (again, similar to what there was in the sitcom, but in a quite different way): the same way Morticia is always the voice of calm and reason to Gomez’s exhuberant enthusiasm, in this movie Gomez also acts as a voice of freedom and distance when Morticia becomes overworried and too smothering. 

# It is seen that despite Morticia’s parents being dead for twenty years at the time of the movie, she still regularly gets in touch with them through séances to talk with their deceased spirits.

# Unlike previous incarnations, this Morticia has a more distant and tense relationship with Grandma/Grandmama. Here Grandma becomes Morticia’s mother-in-law (which, as she points out, makes her obliged to dislike her, whether she actually likes her or not), but she also is invited by Gomez to help with the upcoming Mazurka celebration, which Morticia originally planned to organize on her own - resulting in more tensions related to Morticia being unable to “control” or “organize” her own household.

# It is also made clear in this movie that Morticia’s lack of expressions and manfiestation of emotions is not just a style - it is her literal way of life. When she gets a brutal shock, her face turns from pale to red and a bat promptly has to suck the excessive blood out of her face ; and among Gomez’s worries is that due to the extreme stress she would have a “massive facial expression”, which would apparently lead to at best her passing out, at worst her dying. 

# Cleopatra is back here again as a meat-eating carnivorous flower displayed in the middle of the Addams’ entrance hall. 

# We also get to find out what Morticia hides under her tight hobble-skirt. Apparently… It is a LOT of spiders. 

Happy Birthday Usopp!!!! ⭐️