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ADDAMS FAMILY VALUES (1993) dir. Barry Sonnenfeld
#Someday i gotta write the fic where Mortica meets a Pastel Goth and has to revaluate her Aesthetic Philosophies#Morticia my darling! You have The Vapours!#I never Knew Gomez!#I never knew pink could be so menacing! It was like looking into a terifying parallel dimension! it was wretched! It was horrifying!#It was- She collapsed onto the fainting couch in Peak Gothic Fashion- EXHILARATING
This was far too good to leave in the tags
*SLAMS HANDS ON TABLE* LISTEN.
I would read the hell out of a found family fic with Debbie
and the Addamses. I have toyed with writing one but have other
priorities.Prefacing this with I know Debbie is a murderous
narcissistic sociopath and in real life anyone would be justified in
running the hell away from her and her karmic retribution death was
justified. But the Addams Family conceit is “yay comedic
sociopathy!” And, somehow, redemption. At least to the point of
“evil has standards.”I haven’t seen the movie in several years, so my memory for
specifics may be off. But the “everyone in electric chairs while
Debbie monologues about how everyone who said they loved her didn’t
give her what she wanted” scene could have turned into a
reconciliation. That was when she was most vulnerable to it, I think.
That was an opportunity to share the family credo:“Sic Gorgiamus Allos Subjectatos Nunc” or “We
Gladly Feast on Those Who Would Subdue Us.”It could have been a “you really are one of us / I really am one
of them” moment. Especially if Morticia and Debbie had previously
been able to talk about the intimidating potential of pastels and the
subtle horror of a superficial WASPy veneer. The ability to mold
yourself and fit in with anyone can be dangerous. Media
is full of spies and ninjas and assassins who are most deadly because
they have honed that ability.Debbie could have opened up about how aggressive normalcy can be
wielded as a weapon. Reminisced about how she selectively makes
people question their own sanity, makes them feel disturbed in a way
they can’t quite identify and others would dismiss as paranoia.
“But she’s so normal!” How it allows her to get away
with murder.Ahahaha, figuratively, of course! *demure little wave of
hand*The neighborhood busybody goes to tea at Debbie’s house. Her
perfect house. With her perfect garden. Plants a bit too uniform.
Windows a bit too clean. Curtains a bit too identically parted. Tea
at a fancy table in an opulent room that seems a bit too big,
ceilings a bit too high, crown molding lovely but somehow looming.
Light a bit too harsh, casting shadows in sharp relief. Tea set laid
out a bit too perfectly, everything evenly spaced to the millimeter.
Sitting across from a woman whose posture is a bit too
mannequin-like. Hair a bit too stiffly styled, not a stray flyaway in
sight. Clothes soft in color but a bit too crisp. Smile a bit too
wide, teeth a bit too white. Lipstick a bit too red. Eyes a bit too
dead. Everything the busybody strives to be, but somehow better–
threateningly better.Dolores Umbridge, but subtle. Stylish.
Debbie and Morticia could have had some fascinating discussions
about the philosophy and psychology of human perception of threat. Of
how there seems to be a spectrum of normalcy based entirely upon
appearance and how being too far to either end of it is equally
threatening. Debbie prevented this after the marriage by
enforcing isolation from the family, so that connection would have
had to be forged during the live-in nanny period. When Debbie was
weaponizing her ability to fit in.If Debbie had been able to to falter from her goal for one
afternoon and really listen, if she had studied the family and molded
herself to fit and found that the only major mismatch between her and
them was aesthetic, had found she didn’t have to hide as much of
herself as usual to accomplish fitting in, had allowed herself to
make the logical leap to “I could actually belong here while also
having everything I ever want because they throw their money around
freely and worshiping your wife is expected here,” things
could have gone so differently when she had that breakdown.Picture Debbie Addams, former Black Widow (quite a reputation to
have in that family), Pillar of the Community who bankrolls a charity
to give kids whatever they fucking want for
birthdays/Christmas as a way to bandage and eventually heal that
first snapping point. If word gets to Debbie that a kid is being
mistreated, a polite discussion fails to accomplish change,
and their abuser just so happens to have an accident,
especially one that reveals their true selves to the community…
well. “Oh, my, karma works in mysterious ways, doesn’t it?”Meanwhile, she could use her most violent fantasies as romance
with nigh-indestructible Fester, who would worship her. Their
anniversaries could become grand destination vacations in which Debbie plans attempted murder and they mutually find it hot as hell.
Fester would be proud of her increasingly clever plots– if Debbie’s
niece thinks she’s sloppy, well, she has to up her game.Picture Debbie and Morticia Addams out to brunch, high fashion yet
stark pink-and-black contrast at a quaint sidewalk cafe table. Often
perfectly lovely, though Morticia’s hats often seem more suited to
a funeral than Debbie’s, which always make people think of ladies
going to church on Easter Sunday. They keep to themselves, are
polite, and tip enough to pay their server’s rent for the month.
But when those women overhear just the wrong thing, if you say just
the wrong thing, they both turn and look at you and Morticia’s
face remains neutral as you are barely worth her notice, an annoyance, but Debbie’s
face slowly approximates a smile. But that is not a smile. Those eyes
are either dead cold or calculating and that mouth is baring teeth,
bright pink or red lipstick framing them and screaming look at
these teeth that are five seconds away from tearing your throat out
while still smiling. They don’t say a word– they don’t have
to.People are very well-behaved within sight or earshot of the Addams
women.Wednesday learned the potential for a smile to be disturbing to
the normal while she was at that summer camp. Given a reconciliation
between Debbie and the family, what could Wednesday have learned from
Debbie? I think she’d be calculatingly interested in how to make
her face a more effective weapon. How alarming it is to others when
you go from foreboding to bright or bright to foreboding so suddenly
it’s dizzying. How pleasant to blink-and-you-miss-it
homicidal back to pleasant makes people doubt their
sanity. It makes me wonder about the potential for Wednesday Addams:
Pastel Goth.Just
I would love to see something like that.
I mean, on the one hand Debbie is the villain precisely because the Addams Family is playing around with appearances vs substance; the Addams Family taps stereotypical imagery of creepy horror movie stuff. Their mansion is the dilapidated old mansion surely haunted by ghosts or at least lived in by a creepy rich recluse, Wednesday is the Creepy Child that in a horror movie would be doing terrible things to an adult who can’t convince anyone that they’re the victim here, Morticia is dressed very similarly to eg Maleficent, Lurch is literally Frankenstein’s monster, Thing is a disembodied hand…
… but then in the movies and cartoon they’re largely a very sweet and loving family. (Aside Wednesday and Pugsley’s relationship, which is a morbidly lighthearted version of sibling hostility, the kind fiction often treats as cute and harmless even when realistically it’d be deeply unpleasant) And in fact a recurring element is that a big part of why they creep people out is because they’re a great family, where the superficial elements are a great excuse to latch onto and point at to try to get other people on their side. (And then in Addams Family Values we also have Wednesday drawing attention to how Thanksgiving is kind of a horrifying holiday when you look at the history between colonists and natives, and how the issues in question haven’t even gone away, which all the ‘normals’ in the movie really don’t want to acknowledge, which is a similar idea from a different angle)
So there’s something of a theme in Addams Family stuff that many people wear normality as a mask that doesn’t really fit: they make the right noises to seem nice, wear the right clothes to be respectable, keep up with the Joneses to fit in, etc, but seeming nice isn’t the same thing as being nice. Looking respectable isn’t the same thing as being worthy of respect.
Debbie being an aggressively normal-seeming actual factual serial killer is the most extreme, in-your-face version of this, with no softening of the message. (Unless one counts the comedy factor of her being increasingly frustrated by the family)
On the other hand… if you reframe things as if Debbie is the protagonist, the movie is kind of tragic. She wanted to actually be loved and couldn’t properly see or engage with the Addams Family being genuinely loving because she’d long since become embittered and wouldn’t know love if it embraced her in a bear hug. She was murdering for money because she’d given up on being loved -that she apparently lacks a conscience merely made that emotionally easier a path, it wasn’t actually the driving reason for her making that choice. And she’s Aggressively Normal not because that’s her aesthetic, but because that’s what other people respond to positively -you can even make a case she’s aggressively normal in an attempt to be loved For Realz on some subconscious level if one wants, instead of assuming it’s purely a part of her black widow routine, in which case the tragic-ness is magnified; in that scenario she’s desperately trying to be loved even to this day, but honestly doesn’t know what love looks like (Which, by the way, is thematically consistent with the larger Addams Family themes, in that ‘normal’ people engaging in the rituals of loving couples may simply be going through the motions; Debbie may not know what real love looks like in part because ‘normals’ are so often faking that looking to them for guidance is a fool’s errand), and that’s why her appearance and mannerisms are so sculpted, because it’s literally never crossed her mind someone might actually love her for who she is, herself.
(It’s been a bit since I rewatched the movie so while I want to say she explicitly says she hates the routine she’s put on I’m not 100% sure that’s actually correct, so I’ll not delve into it beyond noting that if I’m recalling this correctly it’s consistent with the above)
This makes Debbie integrating with the Addams Family a lot more interesting than just Pastel Goth Wednesday (Though that’s certainly an intriguing image), in that Debbie integrating with the family would be a journey of self-discovery for Debbie. What does The Real Debbie even like? What would she wear, if she wasn’t picking her clothes for best effect for her black widow routine? What would she do with her hair, as prior? How would she carry herself? How would she talk? What would her hobbies be? It’s easy to imagine Debbie first throwing out aggressive normality in favor of something more like the Addam’s Family’s aesthetic, only to, over time, bring back the bits and pieces of what she actually did like about her appearance. (Which could potentially organically lead to the pastel goth aesthetic, incidentally) It’d also be interesting exploring her and Fester’s relationship, in that Debbie’s entire adult life -and possibly much of her childhood- was apparently based on molding her appearance and mannerisms to what she expected to please others, and it’d be interesting exploring the process of her coming to realize she doesn’t really need to do that with Fester and having to actually think about what elements of her behavior are a mask she actually dislikes vs what elements are things she genuinely likes about herself.
This can even ‘humanize’ Debbie, as the sharp distinction between the mask she wears and her hidden intentions probably warps her underlying psychology in ways she doesn’t even recognize. That is, Debbie does a lot of Nice And Normal things explicitly as part of wearing her mask, and her awareness of this fact would obscure from her whether any given case has other motives. Maybe Debbie has a habit of being nice to children as part of her mask, and so doesn’t realize she actually likes being nice to children. In such a case, Debbie would presumably start out believing she actually dislikes or even hates children, and slowly work out that it’s not quite that straightforward.
So you could quite naturally have sweet, heartwarming moments that are an organic outgrowth of Debbie’s journey of self-discovery that grow out of her serial killer history, instead of contradicting it.
That’s a very interesting possibility in and of itself…
… and even better, it’s a natural argument that she is, indeed, a perfect fit for the Addams Family, combining sweet and loving with dark and dangerous exactly like, say, Morticia.
And returning to thematics for one moment, it’s even a thematic victory for the Addams Family… well, values. Embrace the strange and disturbing! Shower it with love! Normal values say Kill It With Fire To Protect Your Family, but we make it a part of our family, and quite successfully.
…
And then one day, Debbie sees someone who, like she once did, cloaks themselves in normalcy because they see no other way to get people to like them, and she reaches out to them to show them a different way…
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