Comparing The Addams Family Sitcom and 90s Movies

even if you've never seen the 1960s sitcom you probably know about the adams family [Music] just those four notes alone are enough for most of us to instinctively snap our fingers first brought to life by cartoonist charles adams in the new yorker in 1938 the family has since been described as an attack on the cliche and the antithesis of the norman rockwell post-war american life but what does that actually mean what does it mean to be television's answer to whatever you don't like about the 20th century in this video i'm going to try to answer that question by breaking down how the addams family subverts mainstream american culture and how their commentary on normalcy changes over time there are many versions of the addams family including a cartoon from the 1970s where pugsley is voiced by none other than child actor jody foster and new ones are popping up all the time but i'm going to focus on two iterations the sitcom that ran for two seasons from 1964 to 1966 and the versions most recognizable to millennials like myself the two films from the early 90s 1991's the addams family and it's very popular sequel that adam's family values the more tv savvy of you will wonder why the monsters aren't in this video more the jokey answer is that we don't stand a knockoff but the real answer is that i think their sensibilities don't quite align with the adams's despite some aesthetic similarities for more on that i'll direct you to lindsay holliday's video on that topic before we get into it i want to take a moment to thank the sponsor of today's video shutter shutter is a premium video service brought to you by amc networks that offers an unbeatable unique selection of expertly curated horror supernatural and thriller films because they're sponsoring this video you can go to www.shutter.com right now and use the promo code be kind rewind to get 30 days for free this is an incredible opportunity for anyone who loves movies if you're a huge horror buff and something 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titles like vicious fun the mortuary collection and pg psycho gorman plus all the best horror documentaries and the hit creep show tv series from executive producer greg nicotero of the walking dead right now we're in the midst of shutter's annual 61 days of halloween a two-month super-sized celebration full of new movies and series so there's tons for you to discover it's usually just 5.99 a month or 56.99 a year for ad-free unlimited access to shutter's unique collection of exclusive and original films and series horror classics and blockbuster hits but again because they're sponsoring today's video you can try it right now for free it's time to indulge in the spooky season go to www.shutter.com and use the promo code be kind rewind to get 30 days free [Music] one winter morning former nbc executive dan levy saw a copy of charles adams book home bodies in the window of a bookstore inspired by the macabre illustrations he approached the artist with a pitch turned the series into a television show a sitcom chronicling the daily lives of this gruesome group adams agreed and thus the adams family was born the gimmick of the show as in the comics is that the adams's aren't your average american family their tastes and sensibilities are offbeat to say the least so a good portion of the comedy comes from average americans interacting with the adamses and running away in either fear of or disgust at their strange habits because gomez and morticia don't work and the kids don't really go to school their lives are very contained within their home so for this dynamic to work anyone who comes into their home immediately needs to understand that something isn't right that something is very visibly different this is why the costuming and production design of the show are so important and additionally why they can tell us so much about what was considered normal or ideal for american families in the 1960s so let's start with the more straightforward stuff costuming now some of the members of the family like uncle fester and the butler lurch are kind of self-explanatory you aren't going to see that many people walking around who are that overtly spooky but although gomez and morticia might look relatively more normal they were off just enough to seem out of place as a suburban couple gomez favored a boxy pinstriped suit and a mustache much more stylish in the 1920s and 30s than in 1964 when most tv dads paired slim cut solid suits with a clean shaven face morticia's tentacle-like black dress came straight out of the comics but you won't see other tv moms of his era aside from lilly munster sporting a dress like that they rarely even touched the color black her hair also jet black and parted down the middle and hanging along with relatively little styling was almost the exact opposite of the most popular styles for women of the early 1960s hair sprayed to high heaven hair was short structural and voluminous morticia's look was something audiences would have automatically associated with horror as her closest aesthetic match in 1964 would have been vampyra a television horror hostess from the 1950s whose look was also inspired by charles adams cartoons in fact there are so few figures to compare morticia's look to that papers sometimes mistakenly stated that carolyn jones who plays morticia was starring as vampyra oddly enough by going against the grain of popular dress in the early 1960s gomez and morticia accidentally ended up looking more like part of the youth culture poised to redefine trends for the late 1960s and 70s i mean consider the fact that if anyone looks like gomez morticia it's sunny and share the duo released their first album look at us which includes the famous i got you babe in 1965 during the show's second season and fun fact sunny actually wrote some music for the adams family which is a long story so what about where the atoms is actually live the interior of the adam's home was a reused set from the 1964 film the unsinkable molly brown dark stained woods with ornate detailing grand architecture that made the home feel out of another era or world set designer ruby levitt an eight-time oscar nominee best known for her work on films like the sound of music chinatown and new york new york created an aura one paper described as 19th century horror with touches of the bizarre that would have given edgar allan poe nightmares strange knickknacks sit next to uncomfortable looking furniture pieces that confuse guests when they visit like this conversation chair morticia's peacock chair is elegant but extravagant and showy more intricate and less mass-produced more for the aesthetic than the function which once again is essentially the opposite of the design standards of the mid-1960s the modern designer creates beauty through simplicity designs in straight delicate lines designs in graceful curves beauty of function as well as beauty of form mid-century modern furniture is very trendy these days but this was after all the literal mid-century so most of the homes you'll see on television during this time reflect that mode of interior design the stephen's home in bewitched for example showcases sleek modern furniture with simple shapes and bright colors so does the nelson home in i dream of jeannie the petri home on the dick van dyke show and any number of sitcom families except of course the munsters one other thing about the atoms decor sets them apart scattered throughout the house you'll see not only the creepy and kooky things like their bobcat alarm clock but also objects and artifacts from non-white cultures all around the world we see indigenous asian and african works and also hear about the many ways in which the adams family engages with non-white cultures in their daily lives some examples there's a recurring gag about gomez's membership in the zen yogi society to my knowledge the only non-white person who enters their home in the series is from the zen yogi society morticia plays the shamisen a japanese instrument and the family often requires the assistance of dr mbogo a quote unquote african witch doctor the whole point of the show is that the addams family is strange and unorthodox and therefore unlike the average american family so by including these objects and behaviors the show is also making an implicit statement about what it means to be a normal american which is to say american-ness as defined by 1960s television is eurocentric whiteness anything else is exoticized and therefore scary by extension each of these behaviors and objects earn a confused or fearful look from visitors at some point during the series in the episode uncle fester's illness dr embogo approves unable to make house calls so dr milford comes over instead where's your mask and spear what the last doctor we had came like that he's a stand-in for the audience unable to believe or take seriously what he's hearing about the first doctor who was called you'll have to forgive him he's used to our old family doctor but he's busy with his tribe and this happens in nearly every adam's iteration even the cartoons that's the balinese way of saying hello oh yeah well this is the shaggy way of saying goodbye there are a lot of ways of reading this subject on the one hand if we're supposed to ally ourselves as viewers with the adams family and we do then their openness and admiration for these things should serve to demystify or normalize them if our friends like them shouldn't we but on the other hand if the joke is constantly eek scary when you're talking about other cultures specifically non-white ones it also serves to other them and teach audiences that their fear must be justified after all we love it when the atoms is played with dynamite but that doesn't mean we do it ourselves it's definitely a mid-60s treatment of race but one that i think demonstrates that the atom's sensibility or values differ significantly from the mainstream in ways that can be read as very political now the other thing about the addams family is that they're a hundred percent oblivious to the fact that everyone they meet considers them strange someone will come into their house see something weird sprint away and then they'll come up with some far-fetched excuse to explain why that person suddenly fled it wasn't that they were scared they must have just had a meeting or something it never once occurs to them that they should try to be like everybody else or that they could have done something to drive people away compare this to i dream of genie or bewitched families that are keenly aware of what makes them different and actively hide those differences from everyone they know wild things happen to samantha stevens as she hides that she's a witch but no one's afraid of coming into her home no one does a double take when she walks down the street as long as you put on a normal palatable front you'll be embraced by your neighbors the adams family is the opposite they seem to be saying it's okay to be yourself but also maybe don't be surprised if everybody wants to shun you for it their magic though is that they make this look extremely appealing in fact their family dynamic is so positive that it is almost utopian because they aren't meant to be like your typical suburban family they by nature aren't worried about the same things other families are and can sort of excuse themselves from many of the concerns and anxieties we see play out in other contemporary sitcoms gomez may be the patriarch typically a breadwinner role but he doesn't work and has no ambitions whatsoever to do so there are no office quarrels promotions or chances of being fired that could ruin his day instead the adams's are members of the idol rich earning passive income from the stock market and owning plantations and mines all around the world this is actually ethically probably the worst thing about them money to him is like a hobby to be made or lost he's certainly not scraping for it and rarely is he ever interested in pursuing it for its own sake which might be the least american thing about him that or the fact that he doesn't mind being taxed and actually runs for office when the family thinks their taxes are too low gomez darling it's the tax bill on this house it's interesting to consider this strange belief of gomez's aired the same year congress passed lyndon johnson's tax bill which basically set off the endless series of tax cuts over the next 60 years as for morticia a lot of people who talk about her do so in the context of her fellow glamour ghouls vampira elvira and sometimes lily munster but i think it's almost more interesting to place her in the context of other magical mid 60s housewives like jeannie and samantha stevens as deborah baker beck points out in her article how the media frames feminism american women of that era were expressing growing dissatisfaction with their isolation in the home these shows were trying to acknowledge the impending release of female sexual and political energy while keeping it all safely in a straitjacket with a twitch of the nose or a quick blink they demonstrated limitless power within and yet were limited by the roles society could realistically imagine for them morticia though not magical in the same way feels powerful because she's written to be immune to the trends and standards of the average american housewife of her time morticia is quite traditionally feminine but she never feels inhibited by her gender in the entire series i counted one time when something was explicitly stated as a gendered role or action and it wasn't even about morticia oh no it you have to be a girl to be a stewardess it is not unfair that's just the way things are this isn't to say there aren't gender divisions after all gomez isn't the one who trims roses or knits but at the same time they share a lot of hobbies and do a lot of things together to a degree that other tv couples don't morticia will play with gomez's trains with him they fence together they play other sports together what's more morticia often wins without gomez acting like a sore loser even though no one in adam's family works in the nine to five sense gomez supports morticia's career aspirations when she has them compare this to a show like ozzie and harriet where that same year one character worries she might not be feminine enough because she's so handy at fixing things around the house meanwhile ozzy insists that he drive home instead of harriet but there's nothing that makes a man look sillier than to drive up with his wife someplace and she's doing the driving and then there's gomez who can't even drive in that way gomez and morticia's partnership is quite equal for the time period they're so extremely secure in their relationship that morticia is able to avoid many anxieties expressed by wives on other television shows take for example laura petry played by mary tyler moore on the dick van dyke show as glorious a couple as rob and laura were and they were even laura faced existential crises about her role as a wife and mother from time to time in one famous episode my blonde haired brunette from 1961 laura fears that the romance in her marriage is fading i wonder if he's getting tired of me i never noticed these lines before maybe he has in an effort to ignite a new spark she dyes her hair blonde it doesn't go well and of course rob loves her the way she was and back to brunette she goes it's a very cute very funny episode but that kind of humor never appears in the addams family gomez and martisha are remarkably confident in their relationship carolyn jones told one paper gomez thinks i'm the sexiest thing this side of sophia loren we adore each other and instead of taking our violent tendencies out on each other gomez crashes trains and morticia feeds her carnivorous plants it's not that other tv couples weren't madly in love with each other no one could watch an episode of the dick man dyke show for example and think rob and laura were simply tolerating each other but what sets gomez and morticia apart is that they're explicitly physical for a 1960s tv couple they're very handsy gomez constantly clutches morticia and famously kisses up her arm any time he hears her speak french she never rebuffs his advances she simply delays them letting the audience know exactly what they'd be up to when the cameras weren't around magnifique fish that french all right call it just a moment darling later later this was a very conservative era in television when many married couples still had separate twin beds in their bedrooms so how did the addamses get away with such flagrant displays producer nat perrin explained in the atoms chronicles by stephen cox it was so flamboyant we never had any trouble this is really the key i think as romantic as they were it's almost always so eccentrically presented that it easily slides into camp or a kind of non-threatening sexuality that said their behavior is also tempered in ways that other shows weren't they almost never kiss each other on the lips and we only see their bedroom once or twice in the entire series in other words they'll hint at an off-screen life but won't give you any other details as to what that might look like all of these things combined the show ends up becoming a rebuke of the way americans construct narratives all wrapped up in a whimsical little package the show constantly asks you to wonder why you think certain things are normal and what structures are in place that cause you to think that way maybe the best example of this is in the pilot episode a truant officer comes to the atom's home and informs gomez and morticia that they actually need to send wednesday and pugsley to school they agree and send them off for the first day but the kids come home crying and upset why father it was terrible they killed him mr hilliard the dragon what dragon who killed a dragon shining armor he killed the dragon it's meant as a joke like ha ha they aren't rooting for the night like they're supposed to but really it's asking something kind of profound to flip forgone conclusions on their heads to reconsider traditions and narratives from a new perspective they're very ahead of their time in this way how many other films these days are trying to do exactly that some more successfully than others and how relevant is that process of unlearning and relearning to cultural movements of 2021 the way they stand up for the underdog is something the 90s films would take to the next level [Music] friday november 22nd 1991. critics bemoan the lack of original ideas in hollywood the title wave of sequels remakes and seemingly worst of all movies based on old tv shows seems to speak a tightening of whatever pipeline there is to that which is innovative and fresh the addams family which opens today might be the exception that proves the rule wow they uh they really had no idea what was coming huh in 1986 producer scott rudin approached charles adams about a potential film reboot of the adams family and in 1991 against all odds given the nightmarish rights and studio issues to get that thing off the ground the addams family hit screens across america this time with raul julia angelica houston and christopher lloyd as the leads another quick share fact the studio initially wanted cher to play morticia but the producers agreed that it would unbalance the film whatever that means they instead approached angelica houston who upon being offered the role replied if you don't mind me asking why not share and listen i get the instinct but also you can't tell me angelica houston wasn't born to play morticia when this is her actual mother i mean come on the filmmakers insisted that the film was a reflection of charles adams original cartoons not a cinema reworking of a sitcom roon stated no one ever tried to come close to the sensibility of the tv show that's only kind of true i mean the movie borrows plenty of gags names and visuals from the show the costumes are largely the same though slightly more ornate than in the series and the house is very similar although it has a more run-down cobweb ridden haunted feeling more like the monsters than the quirky eclecticism of the sitcom family but there were some changes made to the characters thing becomes a disembodied hand rather than an arm in a box rather than being morticia's uncle fester becomes gomez's brother morticia frankly doesn't seem to do as much as she does in the tv show she's made to feel more ethereal and otherworldly kind of stoically gliding through the house and gomez is much more competent than he is in the show as a businessman as an athlete even as a lover morticia never needs to deny his advances to get him to focus he never takes it too far at inappropriate times and if he does she's usually down wednesday and pugsley also play a much bigger role in the films particularly wednesday in the sitcom the children rarely show up and frankly they don't add much when they do besides their atypical interests in headless dolls or stealing road signs their demeanors are very much like those regular children the 90s films however give us burgeoning teen idol christina ritchie who having starred with cher in mermaids was already an experienced film actress by the time she joined the cast and really adds a lot with her performance inspired by lydia dietz in beetlejuice she adopted a deadpan persona for wednesday that has essentially defined the character in every iteration since by the time the second film rolled around it was clear to the filmmakers what they had and she earned a significant arc of her own which don't worry we'll get to generally speaking as rudin stated the 90s films are much more interested in the dark humor of the comics than the bumbling broad comedy of the sitcom screenwriter paul rednick told buzzfeed that he didn't recall anything having to be cut from the film to maintain a pg-13 rating and side note incredible that they stuck with a pg-13 rating i remember there was one moment on set when director barry sonfeld called his wife gleefully and said guess what today i throw a baby off a roof so once that proved normal there were very few boundaries so the films give the adams family permission to more boldly embody the things the sitcom only had permission to hint at the gags are slightly more violent than the shows though never bloody or injurious we hear a lot about dynamite and knives in the sitcom for example but we almost never actually see them certainly not being used by children here that's the joke we see it all the time gomez and morticia are much more passionate and measurably less flamboyant although still silly to a degree and there's definitely no skirting around the issue here in the adams family values they say it plainly and clearly with none of the usual illusions then mommy kissed daddy and the angel told the stork and the stork flew down from heaven and left a diamond under a leaf in the cabbage patch and the diamond turned into a baby our parents were having a baby too they had sex unlike the show the films allow the family to engage with strangers quite regularly outside the home and the quote unquote normal people they meet tend to be more accepting of them than their 60s counterparts some of whom would recoil upon simply hearing the name adams these interactions become the film's best source for comedy because these adams's are not as shy about their distaste for mainstream trends values and culture not in a way that's off-putting or pretentious but more like playful mockery rather than being obtuse about how they don't fit in they embrace it probably best exemplified in this 100 percent perfectly written line in the addams family values delivered to the absolutely iconic debbie jelinski played by joan cusack you have married fester you have destroyed his spirit you have taken him from us all that i could forgive but debbie what pastels the sitcom does occasionally go there but not quite as often and rarely is it as biting one example of them actually doing that comes in episode two when pugsley joins the boy scouts and his parents have no idea how to handle it we've lost him but perhaps the best way to illustrate this difference is to show how they approach christmas in the episode holidays with the addams family everyone goes to great lengths to convince the children that santa is real and caps off the evening with a rousing rendition of we wish you a merry christmas [Music] the 90s film makes no such effort to appease the jolly christian culture instead in a joke ripped right from the comics they stand over carolers at their front door and empty a cauldron on them by extension the sitcom's roundabout rebuke of american culture becomes more explicitly political in the 90s films particularly in adams family values which takes the idea of reframing cultural narratives to the next level in a scheme concocted by their nanny debbie wednesday and pugsley are sent to camp chippewa for the summer toward the end of their stay they are forced to participate in a play depicting the first thanksgiving why a thanksgiving play in the middle of summer we'll never know the chipper waspy popular white kids are asked to play the pilgrims everyone else plays the native americans a clear message about how power structures see race desirability and american-ness this is a pretty dark joke but it's also a bold statement that the 60s sitcom certainly wouldn't have had the gumption to make the film takes it a step further wednesday playing one of the native americans is set to deliver her lines in the play when she goes rogue once again reframing the narrative you have taken the land which is rightfully ours years from now my people will be forced to live in mobile homes on reservations your people will wear cardigans and drink high balls the adams family separates aesthetics from values as one critic observed of the 1960s sitcom i have some difficulty reconciling the innocence theme with the father adam's pleasure at colliding trains or the little girl who plays with headless marie antoinette doll or the stuffed sword fish with the man's leg in his mouth but truthfully i found the addams family a lot more attractive than some of my own neighbors who are sweet and conventional on the outside and creepy on the inside life isn't a disney movie where the shadowy cackling outsider twirling his mustache is the clear and obvious bad guy more often than not the worst people look as beautiful and normal as can be the villains in their story are scheming murderers yes but they're also just everyday narrow-minded people who prioritize conformity and exclude others the adams family universe makes that clear and teaches a new ethos in the meantime as director barry sonnenfeld told the new york times the acceptance of eccentricity and non-conformity is what the movie is all about it seems like we should all be a little more like the addams family thank you again to shutter for sponsoring today's video as a quick reminder you can go to www.shutter.com and use the promo code be kind rewind to get 30 days free [Music] so [Music] you

Channel: Be Kind Rewind

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Length: 29min 42sec (1782 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 28 2021