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 hearing your name, we want to snap our fingers in time to your unforgettable music.

The most peculiar family in the world has always been lighting up our Halloween nights, mocking death and surprising us with their taste for the macabre.

When we think of horror movies, we look for movies that surprise us, that make us experience the feeling of fear from the comfort and tranquility of the armchair.

We want to feel the terror, but know that what we are seeing is nothing but fiction. Somehow we enjoy these manifestations.

There are people who find horror movies funny because they are often far-fetched and because of the large number of clichés they contain. There are also those who would never see a movie of the genre alone.

Making a spectator feel scared is much more complicated than it sounds, as different emotions and subjectivity come into play. This same premise could be applied to comedy: making people laugh is a very complicated task, even more so if we want the laughter to be unanimous.

What if we take all these horror clichés and read them in a comedic tone? That’s exactly what the Addams Family does, and therein lies the key to their success.

A review of history

Throughout history, there have always been many artistic manifestations linked to death.

The amount of cults we encounter since our first steps in the world reminds us enormously of the ephemeral nature of life. Human beings feel an immense curiosity about death, about the unknown.

This restlessness was reflected in various artistic manifestations. Even cemeteries can become outdoor art spaces. Some examples would be the Monumental Cemetery in Milan and the Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires.

Furthermore, we cannot forget all the previous manifestations, such as the pyramids of Egypt or the prehistoric death cult reflected in the dolmens.

In short, there are many remnants of the past that pay homage to death. Regardless of the culture or the part of the world, we will always find some manifestation that reminds us of the Latin theme 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 death is different from one place to another. This cult, in turn, was shrouded in mystery and, in time, led to terror.

Anything that is unknown or that is somehow 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.

the evolution of terror

It is clear that horror has evolved and adapted to the different patterns and eras it has gone through. However, it does have certain aesthetic elements that are easily identifiable and susceptible to comedy.

In fact, if there’s anything more daring than terror, it’s just laugh at it. Thus, monsters that were terrifying can become friends or even laughable objects.

In the 19th century, Gothic fiction acquired a fundamental importance and, as a consequence, it drifted into some subgenres.

In this century, we have a good example that draws what will later be known as “horror comedy”. We’re talking about Sleepy Hollow , Washington Irving. From this moment on, countless titles would follow in its wake.

In film and television, films such as Gremlins (Joe Dante, 1984), The Little Shop of Horrors (Frank Oz, 1986), Abracadabra (Kenny Ortega, 1993), Marte Attacks! (Tim Burton, 1996) and The Ghosts Have Fun  (Tim Burton, 1988).

Cinema sometimes invites us to bypass our fears, to laugh at the absurd conventions that surround our lives.

But there is no doubt that the family that occupies us today is one of those that best laughed at death, survived intact over time captivating admirers of all corners and ages, combining laughter and terror in a unique harmony.

The Addams family, for obvious reasons, is part of the imagination of several generations in terms of horror comedy.

The Addams Family, the macabre laugh

American cartoonist Charles Addams surprised in 1933 with a series of cartoons in The New Yorker . They represented macabre characters who embraced black humor and parodied everyday life.

A few decades later, in the 1960s, those cartoons would eventually inspire a well-known television series: The Addams Family . But this was not the only family that reigned in television at the time, as there was a series from a very similar family called The Monsters.

Black humor and the adoption of horror clichés to later parody them served as the basis for a satire of contemporary values. Somehow, the normal became the different, the strange, while everything that went beyond the conventional was revered.

This technique describes a kind of upside-down world that entertains the viewer with 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 this kind of genre invites us to adopt a new perspective, a point of view that, through humor, breaks our traditional schemes.

The Addams Family’s success was such that a television series was not enough. About it, there were movies, animated series and even a musical.

The terror in everyday life

His characters are reproductions of horror movies, but taken to everyday life. It is no longer ghostly apparitions that should frighten the neighborhood, but peculiar “neighbors”.

In a way, all this brings us back to the idea of ​​the freak , of all those individuals who, for whatever reason, do not correspond to the norm at any given time.

Addams escape all conventions, but they have their own morals, their own rules, and look to our world for meaning.

The interesting thing about the laughable element is to see how it is possible to break with conventional values, break with the rules and question them based on irony. And this is not something unique to horror comedy: we can apply it to everyday life.

What if what is considered normal were just the opposite? We would certainly criticize any behavior that departs from our norm.

For example, if we had learned, like Morticia, that roses are more beautiful without their flowers, that is, leaving only their thorns, we would certainly cut them and let ourselves be carried away by the beauty of the thorns, finding those who admired the flower and its petals strange. .

After all, everything depends on the point of view and what we learn in society.

The Addams Family also prompts us to reflect

This game with contrast, in short, produces laughter, but does not leave out the reflective component. Values ​​are inverted, the macabre is seen as beautiful and one ends up questioning everything.

Furthermore, we should not forget that, for many people, the horror aesthetic can be exceptionally beautiful. Beauty, like taste, is completely subjective.

Our life is ephemeral, our passage through the world is deeply linked to death… Why be afraid? 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 enjoyable.

Life is often tragic, it’s bitter and it’s not what we dreamed of; that’s why laughter is therapy, a catharsis that relieves us in our grayest moments.

In this way, the Addams managed to captivate us with their particular viewpoint on the aesthetic, the correct, the moral, the comic. And they captivated us so much that, many decades later, they continue to rock theaters in our cities.