The Addams Family, The Beauty Of The Macabre
The Addams family is without a doubt, one of the best known on the small and big screen. Just hearing his name makes you want to snap your fingers to the rhythm of his unforgettable music. The world’s most special family has been hosting our Halloween parties for years, making fun of death and surprising us with their taste for the macabre.
When we think of horror cinema, we are looking for films that surprise us, that make us experience the feeling of fear in our seat. We want to feel the horror but knowing that it is nothing but fiction. We find a certain pleasure in it.
Some think that horror cinema is comical because of the implausibility of some films and the large number of clichés present in them. Others would never see a movie like this alone.
Making a spectator feel fear is more complicated than it looks. Indeed, different emotions come into play, as well as subjectivity. We could apply the same assumption to comedy. Making people laugh is a really complicated task, and even more so if we want laughter to be unanimous.
What if we take all these horror shots and apply them to the comedic register? This is precisely what The Addams Family does and this is where the secret to success lies.
A reminder of history
Throughout history, there is an infinite number of artistic works related to death. In addition, the amount of cult works that we find since the birth of mankind remind us of the transience of life. Human beings are always very attracted to death, to the unknown.
Thus, this concern has been represented by different artistic works. Even cemeteries can become open-air artistic spaces; good examples would be the monumental cemetery in Milan or the Recoleta cemetery in Buenos Aires. Let us not forget either all the previous works such as the pyramids of Giza or the cult of death in prehistory represented by the dolmens.
Ultimately, there are many traces of the past that worship death. No matter what culture or place in the world, we will always find a representation that reminds us of that famous Latin saying, Memento Mori . Indeed, we know that we are all mortal although our way of interpreting this differs from place to place. This cult, meanwhile, was shrouded in mystery and over time turned into terror.
Anything that is unknown or that in some way poses a threat to our life will turn into terror. The genre has thus fed on fears, the occult and above all, death to produce works – whether literary or cinematographic – which connect with our desire to remain alive. But, can we consider another reading?
Of course, the horror itself has evolved and adapted to the different eras that it has gone through. Nevertheless, this genre has certain aesthetic elements that are easily identifiable and likely to flirt with comedy. If there is anything more daring than the horror itself, it is precisely laughing at it. Thus, the frightening monsters can become friends or even ridiculous objects.
In the 19th century, Gothic fiction took on fundamental importance. Therefore, it generated several subgenres. We have a good example which illustrates what will later be called a “horror comedy”: Sleepy Hollow by Washignton Irving published in 1820. From then on a large number of titles followed.
More recently, in cinema and television, we can cite some well-known films such as Gremlins (Joe Dante, 1984), La Petite Boutique des horreurs (Franck Oz, 1986), Hocus Pocus (Kenny Ortega, 1993), Mars Attacks (Tim Burton, 1996) or Beetlejuice (Tim Burton, 1988).
Cinema sometimes invites us to laugh at our fears, to laugh at the absurd conventions that sometimes surround our lives.
However, there is no doubt that the family we are interested in today is one of the best for laughing at death. She survived the passage of time and managed to combine laughter and horror in perfect harmony. The Addams family has been part of the horror comedy imaginations of generations.
The Addams family, a macabre laugh
The American cartoonist Charles Addams surprised in 1933 with a series of caricatures in The New Yorker newspaper . These macabre characters parody life in black humor. In the 1960s, these cartoons eventually inspired a famous television series: The Addams Family . But it was not the only family that ruled television at the time, on another channel. This series about a relatively similar family was called The Monsters.
Black humor and the adoption of horror clichés and then parody them served as the basis for an authentic satire of contemporary values. So what was normal got weird. And everything that was out of convention was revered. This technique draws a kind of upside down world which amuses the viewer with this bizarre aspect. However, at the same time, it invites him to question his own values.
We are all born into a society that influences our decisions. It enables us to distinguish right from wrong. However, this type of genre invites us to adopt a new perspective, a humorous point of view that breaks with traditional patterns. The success of The Addams Family is such that one television series was not enough. It was adapted for the cinema and a musical was even born.
His characters are layers of horror cinema, but brought back to everyday life. It is not ghostly apparitions that should terrorize the neighborhood, but rather particular “neighbors”. This brings us back to the idea of freak that characterizes any individual who, for one reason or another, does not meet the norm at some point in time.
The Addams escape any convention but have their own morals, their own rules. In addition, they look at our world trying to understand its meaning.
In addition to the laughable nature, it is interesting to see how one manages to break with conventional values, with the rules and to question them with irony. This is not unique to horror comedy. We can also apply it to everyday life. What if the normal is completely the opposite? We would undoubtedly criticize any behavior outside this framework.
For example, as if we had been taught – like in Morticia – that roses are more beautiful without their flower, only with their thorns. We would cut them off and we would admire the beauty of the thorns, finding it strange that someone was admiring the flower and its petals. In the end, it all depends on the point of view and what we have learned in society.
This game with the contrast, in the end, makes people laugh but does not put aside the material for reflection. We reverse the values, we consider the macabre to be beautiful and we end up questioning everything. In addition, we must not forget that for many people the aesthetics of horror can turn out to be exceptionally beautiful. And that beauty, like taste, is something completely subjective.
Conclusion
Our life is ephemeral, our time on Earth is closely linked to death. Why be afraid? Why not make fun of it? The Addams family have been doing this successfully for decades. It brings us a kind of breath, of relief which makes our passage through life (or death) more pleasant.
Our life is often tragic. It is bitter and it is not as we dreamed it would be. This is why laughter is a therapy, a catharsis that relieves us in the darkest moments.
The Addams have thus managed to captivate us with their particular point of view about the aesthetic, the correct, the moral, the comical. And they captivated us so much that, even decades later, they continue to fill the cinemas of our cities.
Our thoughts It’s not always easy to say goodbye to a series. Not when we’ve spent many years and many hours alongside characters …
