The Addams Family: The Beauty Of The Macabre
The Addams family is, without a doubt, one of the best known in the world of television and cinema. Just by hearing his name, we want to snap our fingers to the rhythm of his unforgettable tune. And it is that the most peculiar family in the world has been entertaining our Halloween nights for many years, making fun of death and surprising us with their taste for the macabre.
When we think of horror films, we look for films that surprise us, that make us experience the sensation of fear from the comfort and tranquility of the armchair. We want to feel the terror, but knowing that what we are seeing is nothing more than a fiction. Somehow, we find some pleasure in these manifestations.
There are those who find horror films comical because of how implausible it can sometimes be and because of the large number of clichés that usually appear in it ; and there are those who would never see a film of the genre alone.
Making a viewer feel afraid is much more complicated than it seems, since different emotions and subjectivity itself come into play. We could apply this same premise 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 those clichés of terror and read them in the key of comedy? That is precisely what the Addams family does and therein lies the key to their success.
A review of the history
Throughout history, there are countless artistic manifestations linked to death. Likewise, the number of cults that we find from our first steps in the world greatly remind us of the ephemerality of life. The human being feels an immense curiosity for death, for the unknown.
Thus, this concern has been reflected in various artistic manifestations. Even cemeteries can become artistic open-air spaces, a good example of this would be the Monumental Cemetery in Milan or the Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires; without forgetting, of course, all those previous manifestations such as the Egyptian pyramids or the prehistoric death cult embodied in the dolmens.
In short, there are many traces of the past that worship death. Regardless of the culture or the corner of the world, we will always find some manifestation that reminds us of that Latin topic so popularized and known as Memento Mori. Because if we know something for sure, it is that we are all going to die, although our way of interpreting it differs from one place to another. This cult, in turn, has been shrouded in mystery and, over time, has led to terror.
Anything unknown or that is, in a certain way, a threat to our life will produce terror. In this way, the genre fed on fears, the occult and, above all, death to build works (whether literary or cinematographic) that connect with our desire to stay alive. But … is another reading possible?
Of course, terror as such has been evolving and adapting to the different canons and times it goes through. However, it has certain easily identifiable aesthetic elements that can lead to comedy. And if there is something more daring than terror, it is precisely to laugh at it. Thus, monsters that were terrifying can become friends or even laughable objects.
In the 19th century, gothic fiction gained fundamental relevance and, as a consequence, led to some sub-genres. In this century, we have a good example that draws what will later be known as “horror comedy”; we talk about Washington Irving’s Sleepy Hollow . From this moment on, countless titles would follow this trail.
In film and television, some well-known films stand out such as Gremlins (Joe Dante, 1984), The Little Shop of Horrors (Frank Oz, 1986), Hocus Poccus (Kenny Ortega, 1993), Mars Attacks (Tim Burton, 1996) or Beetlejuice (Tim Burton, 1988).
Likewise, in Spain, the director Álex de la Iglesia stands out for offering us the clichés of terror (even the eschatological) in the key of comedy with titles such as El día de la Bestia (1995) or Las brujas de Zugarramurdi (2013). The cinema, on occasions, invites us to mock our fears, to laugh at the absurd conventions that sometimes surround our lives.
But there is no doubt that the family that occupies us today is one of those that has best laughed at death, has survived intact the passage of time, captivating admirers from all corners and ages, managing to combine laughter and terror in a tune without equal. The Addams family, for obvious reasons, is part of the multi-generational imaginary of horror comedy.
The Addams family, a ghoulish laugh
The American cartoonist Charles Addams surprised in 1933 with a series of cartoons in The New Yorker. These were ghoulish characters who embraced black humor and parodied everyday life. A few decades later, in the 60s, these cartoons would end up deriving and inspiring a well-known television series: The Addams Family . But this was not the only family that reigned on television at the time, in a different network, a series of a fairly similar family called The Munsters was broadcast .
Black humor and the adoption of horror clichés to later parody them served as the basis for an authentic satire of contemporary values. Somehow, the normal became the strange, the strange; while everything that was out of the ordinary was revered. This technique draws a kind of upside down world that amuses the viewer by its strangeness, but, simultaneously, invites them to question their own values.
We are all born into a society that influences our decisions, makes us able to discern between what is right and what is wrong. But these types of genres invite us to adopt a new perspective, a point of view that, from humor, breaks our traditional schemes. The success of the Addams family is such that it was not enough with a television series, but rather movies, animated series and even a musical were made.
His characters are traces of horror movies, but taken to everyday life. They are no longer ghostly apparitions that should frighten the neighborhood, but rather peculiar ‘neighbors’. In some way, all this refers us to the idea of the freak , of all those individuals who, for whatever reason, do not correspond to the normative at a given moment.
The Addams escape from all conventions, but they have their own morals, their own rules; and they look towards our world trying to make sense of it.
What is interesting, in addition, about the laughable element is to see how it is possible to break with conventional values, break with the rules and question them from the irony. And this is not something exclusive to horror comedy, but we can apply it to everyday life. What if the normal thing was totally the opposite? Surely, we would criticize all that behavior that was outside our norm.
For example, if they had taught us, like Morticia, that roses are more beautiful without their flower, that is, leaving only their thorns, surely, we would cut them and let ourselves be carried away by the beauty of the thorns, finding strangers who admired the flower and its petals. In the end, it all depends on the point of view and what we have learned in society.
That game with contrast, in short, produces laughter, but does not leave aside the reflective component. Values are inverted, the macabre is taken as beautiful and everything ends up questioning. In addition, we must not forget that, for many people, the aesthetics of horror can be exceptionally beautiful. And it is that beauty, like taste, is something totally subjective.
Our life is fleeting, our passage through the world is deeply linked to death … Why fear? Why not make fun of it? The Addams family has done this successfully for decades and has given us a kind of sigh, a relief that makes our passage through life (or death) more pleasant.
Our life is tragic many times, it is bitter and it is not as we had dreamed it, therefore, laughter is a therapy, a catharsis that relieves us in our grayest moments.
In this way, the Addams managed to captivate us with their particular point of view about the aesthetic, the correct, the moral, the comic. And they captivated us so much that, even many decades later, they continue to sweep the theaters of our cities.
