thingsilove

This is one of the many things I love about the Addams Family, and the main thing that resonates with so many people I think, including me.

Here we have Uncle Fester in season 2 talking about his (departed) brother Clump, that has never been mentioned before. And everybody is listening attentively and with great interest... Because they don't know the story and they probably didn't know about Clump either!

Not so many episodes ago, someone asked Uncle Fester what was his surname anyway... He confessed he didn't know. Uncle Fester doesn't know his surname!

This happens again and again! And not only with Fester. Everybody's placement on the family tree is dubious.

I realize this is made for comedic effect, but the implications are beautiful.

"But how can that possibly be?", you ask. "Hadn't it been established that Fester was Morticia's uncle?"

Well yes and no! You see, it changes from episode to episode.

Because it doesn't really matter!

The "Family" in "Addams Family" doesn't have the usual meaning. Family means "people we love and have history with". Hence the myriad of cousins and uncles of different races, nationalities or even species, all wildly different.

Blood relation is completely irrelevant in the Addams Family. The Addams Family is a found family, an assortment of weirdos drawn together by their shared interests, pathos and aesthetic sensibilities.

It is impossible to drawn an accurate Addams Family Tree. This is by design! It doesn't' matter! And it shouldn't matter!

The Addams family is, deliberately, and inversion of the nuclear family, an antithesis. It's horizontal, democratic, without hierarchies, it's open, it has no definite borders, the relations among members are fluid, and the glue that holds it all together is love not blood.

There are hybrids and monsters in the family, people from different races and sizes and colors - Morticia is coded Jewish, Gómez is canonically "Castillian" (read Spanish/Latino), Itt is Itt, etc, etc -It is all a huge metaphor! The Addams family is hybrid, international, interracial, immigrant, queer, weird and proud of it... in the US of the 1960's!

And it should be even more now!

This is why it is so shocking that there are no canonically queer characters in Wednesday (2022)! It makes no damn sense!

(Yes, I know, Eugene's moms -background characters irrelevant to the plot, an afterthought to fill a quota...)

It says a lot about how conservative/evangelical American TV has become over the last few years.

Netflix, you cowards!