The Addams Family is undoubtedly one of the best-known film and television festivals in the world. Just by hearing your name, we want to snap our fingers to the rhythm of your unforgettable music.
The most unique family in the world has always lit up our Halloween nights, mocking death and surprising us with their taste for the macabre.
- When we think of horror movies.
- We look for films that surprise us.
- That make us feel afraid in the comfort and tranquility of the chair.
We want to feel terror, but to know that what we see is just fiction. One way or another, we appreciate these demonstrations.
Some people find horror movies funny because they tend to be unlikely and because of the large number of shots they contain. There are also those who would never see such a movie alone.
Scaring a viewer is much more complicated than it looks, because different emotions and subjectivities come into play. This same premise could be applied to comedy: making people laugh is a very complicated task, especially if laughter is to be unanimous.
Why don’t we take all these horror shots and read them in a funny tone?That’s exactly what the Addams family does, and that’s where the key to their success lies.
In the face of history, there have always been many artistic manifestations related to death.
The number of cults we have found since our first steps in the world greatly reminds us of the ephemeral nature of life. Human beings have an immense curiosity about death, for the unknown.
This concern has been reflected in several artistic events, even cemeteries can become outdoor art spaces, some examples would be the monumental cemetery of Milan and the cemetery of Recoleta in Buenos Aires.
Moreover, we cannot forget all the above manifestations, such as the pyramids of Egypt or the death cult of prehistory reflected in the docmens.
In short, many vestiges of the past honor death. Whatever the culture or part of the world, we will always find an event that reminds us of the Latin theme as popularized and known as Memento Mori.
Because if we know something for sure, it is that we will all die, although our way of interpreting death is different from one place to another. This cult, in turn, was shrouded in mystery and, over time, led to terror.
Anything that is unknown or that somehow threatens our lives will produce terror, in this way the genre feeds on fears, occultism and above all death to build works (whether literary or cinematic) that connect with our desire to stay alive.
Of course, terror has evolved and adapted to the different patterns and ages it has traversed, but it contains some aesthetic elements easily identifiable and susceptible to comedy.
In fact, if there’s anything bolder than terror it’s just laughing at it, so scary monsters can become friends or even objects of laughter.
In the 19th century, Gothic fiction became fundamentally important and consequently deviates into certain subgenres.
In this century, we have a good example that draws what will later be called the “horror comedy”. We’re talking about Sleepy Hollow, Washington Irving.
In film and television, films such as Gremlins (Joe Dante, 1984), The Little Shop of Horrors (Frank Oz, 1986), Abracadabra (Kenny Ortega, 1993), Mars Ataca!(Tim Burton, 1996) and Ghosts have fun (Tim Burton, 1988).
Cinema sometimes invites us to overcome our fears, to laugh at the absurd conventions that surround our lives.
But there is no doubt that the family we care for today is one of the ones that laughed most at death, have survived intact in the passage of time captivating admirers from all corners and ages, combining laughter and terror in a harmony like no other.
The Addams family, for obvious reasons, is part of the imagination of several generations when it comes to horror comedy.
American cartoonist Charles Addams surprised in 1933 with a series of cartoons in The New Yorker, depicting macabre characters embracing black humor and parodying everyday life.
A few decades later, in the 1960s, these cartoons eventually inspired a well-known television series: the Addams family, but it was not the only family to reign on television at the time, because there was a series from a very similar family. , called The Monsters.
Black humor and the adoption of horror clichés to parody them later served as the basis for a satire on contemporary values. Somehow, the normal became the different, the strange, while anything beyond the conventional was revered.
This technique describes a kind of world upside down that entertains the viewer with his strangeness, but at the same time invites him to question his 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 type of gender invites us to adopt a new perspective, a view that, based on humor, breaks down. our traditional patterns.
The success of the Addams family was such that a television series was not enough, films, animated series and even a musical have appeared.
His characters are reproductions of horror films, but taken in everyday life. There are no more ghostly apparitions that should scare the neighborhood, but particular “neighbors. “
In a way, all this brings us back to the idea of the monster, of all those individuals who, for whatever reason, do not correspond to the regulations at any given time.
The Addams escape all conventionalism, but they have their own morals, their own rules and look at our world trying to find meaning.
The value of the element of laughter is to see how you can break with conventional values, break with the rules and question them from irony. And it’s not something unique to horror comedy: we can apply it to everyday life.
What if what is considered normal was the exact opposite?We would certainly criticize any behavior that goes beyond our norm.
For example, if we had learned, like Mortia, that roses are more beautiful without their flowers, that is, leaving only their thorns, we would surely cut them and let ourselves be carried away by the beauty of the thorns, finding strangers those who admired the flower and its petals.
After all, it all depends on the point of view and what we learn in society.
This contrasting game ultimately makes you laugh, but doesn’t neglect the reflective component. The values are reversed, the macabre is taken as beautiful and we end up questioning everything.
In addition, we must not forget that, for many people, the aesthetics of terror can be of exceptional beauty. Beauty, like taste, is completely subjective.
Is it our ephemeral life, our passage through the world is deeply linked to death, why be afraid?Why not make fun of it? The Addams family has done it 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 is bitter and it is not as we had dreamed; Laughter is, therefore, a therapy, a catharsis that relieves us in our grayest moments.
In this way, the Addams managed to captivate us with their particular view on aesthetics, correction, morality, comics, and have captivated us so much that, decades later, they continue to destroy the theaters of our cities.