The Addams Family – Bitch Flicks

The Terror of Little Girls: The Roundup

Check out all of the posts for our The Terror of Little Girls Theme Week here.

Fucking with Fate: Sexuality, Loss, and Irreversibility in The Returned by Tina Giannoulis

The first episode opens on a 15-year-old girl, the eponymous “Camille” (Yara Pilartz), as she finds herself alone at dusk in the mountains above her town. She starts her journey back home, disoriented and a little confused but otherwise intact, despite having died in a school bus trip four years prior.

Little Girls in Horror Films: Setting the Stage for Female Double Standards by BJ Colangelo

Little girls are often what we associate with innocence. Girls are said to be born out of “sugar, spice, and everything nice,” which attaches a stigma to women from birth that is unrealistic. Society is conditioned to believe this ridiculous myth, which changes the way we value little girls over little boys.

The Terror of Little Girls: Social Anxiety About Women in Horrifying Girlhood by Leigh Kolb

Horror films hold a mirror up to these ideals, distorting the images and terrifying viewers in the process. The terror that society feels while looking at these little girls echoes the terror it feels when confronted with changing gender norms and female power.

Alarming Innocence: The Terror of Little Girls in The Crucible by Laura Shamas

Miller’s examination of the Salem Witch Trials, held in the Province of Massachusetts Bay from 1692-3, depicts the internal, secretive drive of a New England witch hunt, and how paranoia quickly escalates to devastate a marriage, a family, neighbors, and eventually, to cripple an entire community. The actions of little girls set it all in motion.

The Beth Thomas Story: How a TV Film and Documentary Captured a Child Enraged by Kim Hoffman

Tim and Julie didn’t know about the sexual abuse Beth had been subjected to as early as 19 months old by her father. They didn’t know she was suffering from Reactive Attachment Disorder, a condition that surfaces from past trauma and neglect into oceans of disturbing, detached, unresponsive, and apathetic behavior. They couldn’t possibly know that a young girl could be filled with so much—that much rage.

“The Demon” in Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Ren Jender

Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, a BBC production from 25 years ago, adapted by author Jeanette Winterson and based on her own autobiographical novel, is one of the few films in theaters or on TV which contains both a coming-out story and another parallel, equally compelling story. Seven-year-old, red-haired “Jess” (played as a young child by Emily Aston and as a teen by Charlotte Coleman) grows up in a small town in Lancashire, in the north of England, with her strict Pentecostal adoptive parents; her father, always in the background, is silent and her mother (Geraldine McEwan), front and center, quotes the Bible and denouncing the “heathens” all around her.

Self-Made Orphan: Why We Cringe When Karen Cooper Snacks on Her Dad by Julia Patt

The crumbling cement in this relationship is the injured little girl lying on the table downstairs. Her parents are united only on the question of her safety. Unsurprisingly, Karen has no voice or agency of her own. The adults perceive her as entirely helpless— “Maybe it’s shock,” her mother says of her condition. “She can’t possibly take all the racket…”

Vampire Girls: Claudia and Eli by Kathryn Diaz

In the great monster mash team of terrifying children, the vampire girl is varsity captain. On the one hand, they are dolls forever: trapped in their prepubescent bodies for hundreds to thousands of years without a single curl losing its bounce. On the other hand, with hundreds of years of life come hundreds of years of experience, knowledge, even maturity.

Satan in a Frilly Dress by Gloria Endres de Oliveira

However, this form of social shaming does not seem to prevent some of his young disciples from subverting their supposed childlike innocence: when the town is suddenly riddled by mysterious and violent crimes, it is suggested that the children have something to do with it, their leader being Klara, a 13-year-old angel-faced blonde and the pastor’s eldest daughter.

The Volatility of Motherhood in David Cronenberg’s The Brood by Eli Levy

For Cronenberg, Candy represents the symbolic order and influence of the father, precisely what Nola wishes to eradicate. Candy is supposed to come “home to mommy” and have no fatherly influence. The characters in the film are defined by rigid gender constructs, or alternatively, through their attempts at living up to them.

“But I Do!”: Releasing Repressed Rage in The Ring by Rebecca Willoughby

These abstract symbols not only frighten, but link events in the real world to Samara’s cursed tape: this particular creature recalls the “spiders, snails, and puppy-dog tails” that little girls are decidedly not supposed to be made of. When Rachel engages this videotape, notably created by the patriarchal forces that might be seen to repress Samara, she sees Samara in a sparse hospital room in fast motion, staring at the clock as its hands whirl around and around.

Wednesday Addams, Smasher of the Patriarchy by Deborah Pless

She’s not nice, she’s not fragile, she’s not kind or sweet or even vaguely pleasant. She’s mean and angry and cynical and disaffected and sarcastic and snide and everything I wanted to be as a child. She’s also an intersectional feminist. And a little girl. She’s the best.

Femme Fatale in a Training Bra: Orphan‘s Esther and The Questionable Motives of Lolita Haze by Elizabeth Kiy

Movies where young girls are victimized are generally our idea of real world horrors, movies that are too sickening to sit through, but as much as they unsettle us, we expect them. We see these stories in the news every day. What is made truly terrifying and shocking in our culture is the advanced young girl already aware of her powers, and what she can get with them–a girl who knows how to move, how to dress, and how to manipulate.

Wednesday Addams, Smasher of the Patriarchy

Wednesday Addams, as played by Christina Ricci in Addams Family Values — Wednesday Addams, as played by Christina Ricci in *Addams Family Values*

This cross-post by Deborah Pless previously appeared at her blog, Kiss My Wonder Woman, and appears as part of our theme week on The Terror of Little Girls. Cross-posted with permission.

What does it mean to be a little girl? There’s so much cultural baggage associated with female childhood. On the one hand, little girls are pure and innocent and needing of protection. They’re the emotional backdrop of a thousand action movies – the father must get home and save his darling little girl. On the other hand, little girls are threatening. They’re creepy. They’re the demons of a thousand horror movies – the family unit must save itself from the imprecations of a terrifying little girl who wants to destroy them.

And then there’s Wednesday Addams. She’s another thing entirely.

Wednesday Addams was the hero of my childhood. She was little girl who looked sort of like me, who was pasty and awkward, but who took no crap from anyone. Who defended her right to self-determination with a vengeance if needed. Who spoke up for those who weren’t given a voice. Who set fire to her enemies. I’m not saying it was healthy or tame, but she was my favorite character as a child. In a lot of ways, she still is.

Wednesday and her nemesis Amanda (Mercedes McNab)

The Addams Family movies of the early 90s (The Addams Family and Addams Family Values) were the kind of movies that never really made sense logically, but somehow worked all the same. They were loose on plot and big on tone, with outlandish storylines pretty much just there so that the actual Addams family had something to react to.

The movies were like extended improv sessions, where we stuck the Addams family members in weird situations and got to watch how they reacted. See Gomez and Morticia go to parent teacher meetings! Watch Wednesday and Pugsley at summer camp! What’s an Addams family wedding like? A birthday party?

The point of the movies was never the plot, but rather the experience of the characters in contrast to the world around them, and as long as you remember that, the movies hold up very well. They’re still fun and weird and kooky and occasionally deeply disturbing. They’re still deeply ridiculous. And Wednesday is still really, really threatening.

That’s right, threatening. Part of why I loved these movies so much as a kid was because Wednesday, far from being a delicate flower, or even playing second fiddle to her brother, is arguably the most dangerous character in the whole story. She has a sense of apathy and morbid misery mixed in with a violent streak and superhuman strength. She’s very threatening. Especially to everyone she views as, well, a threat.

Wednesday’s first impression of summer camp

Now, admittedly, most of this is coming from Addams Family Values. While I really do enjoy The Addams Family, it’s not until the second movie that Wednesday’s character really crystallizes, and there’s a good reason for that. Simply put, in the second movie, she’s at precisely the right age to perfectly subvert our expectations of girlhood.

In Family Values, Wednesday is directly prepubescent–a tween, if that were ever an appropriate word to apply to her. She’s just on the cusp of developing hormonal urges, secondary sexual characteristics, and a more formed idea about who she herself will be as an adult. But, she is still a child, so she still occupies that cultural space of supposed innocence and vulnerability. She’s at once both a potentially developed teen, and a fragile child.

The movie addresses this dissonance early on. When Wednesday and Pugsley are dropped off at summer camp – as part of a duplicitous plot to get them out of the way – one of the other moms comes up to Morticia and asks after Wednesday. Morticia responds, “Oh, Wednesday’s at that very special age a girl has just one thing on her mind.”

“Boys?” asks the excited upper-class white woman.

“Homicide.”

The expectation for Wednesday in this movie, at least the expectation of those around her, is that she fit into either one or the other roles of idealized femininity. Either she can be a pure and adorable child, something Wednesday is not naturally inclined towards, or she can be a teenage temptress, something she similarly has little interest in. Throughout the film the camp counselors try to turn Wednesday into a normal child, punishing her with Disney movies and singalongs, while a secondary plot tempts her with the offer of romance, albeit romance with an asthmatic, morbid fellow outcast.

Pugsley (Jimmy Workman), Wednesday, and Joel (David Krumholtz)

It’s telling then that Wednesday eschews both of these options. She flirts with Joel (David Krumholtz), but is very ambiguous about whether or not she wants his attention. While at one point she does say a tearful goodbye to him, using endearments and kissing his cheek I think, later she seems utterly uninterested in his existence, and admits that if someone loved her as much as he implies he does, she would pity him and probably murder him.

So, not so much the icon of seductive femininity. But neither is she a convincing child, because Wednesday possesses a level of awareness about the world and frankly alarming superhuman strength that make it virtually impossible to view her as someone in need of protection. Because she isn’t someone in need of protection. She’s not just virtually unkillable, she’s also unconcerned with her own safety. She’s not afraid, and weirdly that’s much more terrifying.

Wednesday isn’t scared of what might happen to her, she’s only afraid of being forced to submit to cultural standards she doesn’t agree with. She’s perfectly willing to risk life and limb (hers and other people’s), but she’s terrified of Disney movies. I would say that if she fears anything, it’s becoming normal.

And that’s a powerful message. The idea that the biggest thing we have to fear is not abnormality but the loss of what makes us distinct. It’s especially poignant coming from Wednesday, because what makes her distinct is so, well, distinctive. As Joel says when Wednesday asks if he’ll ever forget her, “How could I? You’re too weird.”

But let’s bring all of this back around again: how is Wednesday Addams a smasher of the patriarchy? Because she uses this discomfort around her, the fact that adults and her peers have absolutely no way to categorize her and her place in society, to sabotage them. She uses her place as a “child” to speak truth to power, and as a “woman” to make them uncomfortable. I mean, the best example of this, and my favorite moment of the movie, is when Wednesday destroys the camp’s end of summer play.

Wednesday as Pocahontas in the camp play

The play is horrible, a mawkish retelling of the first Thanksgiving that somehow manages to be more offensive than usual. The main character is Sarah Miller, played by Wednesday’s blonde camper nemesis, Amanda, and Sarah Miller goes on long speeches about how superior Western culture is, before admitting Pocahontas, played by Wednesday, and her tribe – played by all of the other camp outcasts.

Wednesday plays along with the script for a few lines, and then takes it on a rapid detour:

“Wait, we can not break bread with you. 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 highballs. We will sell our bracelets by the road sides, and you will play golf. My people will have pain and degradation. Your people will have stick shifts. The gods of my tribe have spoken. They said do not trust the pilgrims. And especially do not trust Sarah Miller. For all these reasons I have decided to scalp you and burn your village to the ground.”

Which they then proceed to do.

Now, this speech is wonderful because it so directly confronts all of the assumptions made earlier in the play, and because it speaks up on behalf of those who are being misrepresented, even though they are not there to defend themselves.* But it’s also wonderful because it’s the kind of thing that only a child could say. Specifically a little girl. I mean, if a boy said that, can’t you imagine the camp directors just picking him up and dragging him off the stage? If a teenage girl were to say it, she would be ruining something for children. If an adult said it, well they wouldn’t be given the opportunity would they?

Wednesday is the only character in the film who can make that speech, and it’s all the more powerful for how it subverts their expectations of her. It’s also worth noting that this speech is followed by a strong reversal. Wednesday, Pugsley, Joel, and the other camp outcasts (who are notably children of color and differing abilities) overthrow the camp leadership, burn the campgrounds, and are actually seen roasting their camp directors on a spit.

The idea of course being that if you’re not afraid of anything, then you can accomplish pretty much whatever you set your mind to. Wednesday isn’t afraid of repercussions or bodily harm, and she has the assurance that her family will support her no matter what, so she’s emboldened to act out. She smashes the patriarchy, literally, and she can get away with it because she’s a little kid. No one’s expecting it. Arguably by this point in the movie they really should be, but they’re not.

I’m not saying Wednesday is perfect. She isn’t. She’s still a very privileged white girl from an unusual but still pretty standard background. She hails from a nuclear family and has never known want or hunger (except maybe voluntarily because she’s weird).

But that’s honestly OK. She’s a slightly problematic representation of intersectional feminism, but at least she is a representation of intersectional feminism. And, even better, she’s an unapologetically outspoken dissenter. She’s sure of who she is and what the world ought to be, and she’s perfectly comfortable telling everyone that–with a smirk and a sneer and a withering glance.

Hell yes, Wednesday Addams is smashing the patriarchy by not conforming to social expectations, being a creeptastic little girl, and inviting you to join her. Right on.

*Arguably one of the only big criticisms that can be made of this movie from a thematic standpoint is that this speech is given by Wednesday, an upper-class white girl, rather than an actual Native American, but it would be hard to change that in the narrative without drastically changing the story, and I think it’s worth having someone say it at least. Still, worth noting, the upper-class white privileged girl really doesn’t speak for everyone.

Deborah Pless runs Kiss My Wonder Woman and works as a freelance writer and editor in Western Washington when she’s not busy camping out at the movies or watching too much TV. You can follow her on Twitter and Tumblr just as long as you like feminist rants, an obsession with superheroes, and sandwiches.

Call For Writers: The Terror of Little Girls

Our theme week for November 2014 will be The Terror of Little Girls (see Leigh Kolb’s “The Terror of Little Girls: Social Anxiety About Women in Horrifying Girlhood” at Bitch Flicks).

Both the horror and thriller genres are rife with terrifying little girls. Sometimes these girl children are possessed by malevolent spirits. Sometimes they’re changelings or aliens, impersonating sweet, innocent beloved daughters. Other times, they’re ambiguous ghosts, haunting our protagonists for justice or revenge, and sometimes they’re just sociopaths who murder and torment their victims.

Scary children are certainly a prolific trope, articulating our culture’s fear of the loss of innocence as well as the unknowable, even alien, qualities of children. However, when we examine why the trope of creepy little girls is so prominent, we’re presented with an even more complex psychology. Little girls embody all that is good and pure; they are innocence and vulnerability. They are viewed separately from women because they symbolize all the potential that our culture embeds in the ideal of womanhood.

The films that depict terrifying little girls are acting out the deep-seated fear of the loss of our culture’s goodness and purity, virginity and innocence. There’s also a collective discomfort surrounding the fact that little girls become women and that womanhood is unpredictable and uncontrollable. Little girls in films like The Exorcist and The Bad Seed embody a premature, preternatural womanhood that is powerful, sexual, and taboo. And they must be stopped, killed if necessary, to neutralize their threat. The logic: though we can’t truly stop little girls from growing up into those subversive creatures known as women, we can engage in the futile fantasy that destroys them before that happens time and time again.

Feel free to use the examples below to inspire your writing on this subject, or choose your own source material.

We’d like to avoid as much overlap as possible for this theme, so get your proposals in early if you know which film you’d like to write about. We accept both original pieces and cross-posts, and we respond to queries within a week.

Most of our pieces are between 1,000 and 2,000 words, and include links and images. Please send your piece as a Microsoft Word document to btchflcks[at]gmail[dot]com, including links to all images, and include a 2- to 3-sentence bio.

If you have written for us before, please indicate that in your proposal, and if not, send a writing sample if possible.

Please be familiar with our publication and look over recent and popular posts to get an idea of Bitch Flicks’ style and purpose. We encourage writers to use our search function to see if your topic has been written about before, and link when appropriate (hyperlinks to sources are welcome, as well).

The final due date for these submissions is Friday, Nov. 21 by midnight.

The Exorcist

Case 39

Night of the Living Dead

The Ring

Supernatural

Children of the Corn

The Addams Family

Phone

Village of the Damned

The Sixth Sense

The Children

The Shining

Alice, Sweet Alice

Silent Hill

The Brood

Orphan

The Bad Seed

Interview with the Vampire

Let the Right One In

Let Me In

The Omen IV: The Awakening

10 Reasons Why ‘The Addams Family’ Is Awesome(ly) Feminist

The cast of The Addams Family

1. Anjelica Huston was 40 when she played Morticia. Considering that it’s very hard for women over 40 (who aren’t A-listers) to get lead parts, that’s already a milestone. But she’s also sexy. Incredibly sexy. Yes, she’s playing the mother of a pair of preteens, but she appears immaculately (and eerily) beautiful in every scene she’s in. How often do we see a mother character who is genuinely sexy?

2. Morticia and Gomez Addams are famously in love with each other. What set the 1960s series apart from all other sitcoms was that this was a married couple who were crazy about each other, instead of fighting. In the film, this tradition of their great love affair continues. There are no mother-in-law jokes, both take responsibility in raising the children, and have a very healthy sex life. So many stories have the love story end at marriage, or have the couple grow to loathe each other over time. Just think of it – a loving marriage was groundbreaking.

3. Addams Family Values explicitly challenges conformist WASPs at the Summer Camp that Wednesday and Pugsley stay at. The siblings absolutely refuse to compromise themselves and pretend to be happy or to enjoy sickeningly sappy things (like Annie the musical). The camp counsellors show favouritism to the traditionally attractive blonde white rich kids, and it’s made quite obvious how hateful and hypocritical they really are. At the end of the movie, Wednesday and the other “outcasts” deliberately sabotage the counsellors’ tremendously racist Thanksgiving play by symbolically enacting revenge for the genocide that Native Americans suffered at the hands of white people.

4. Despite the Addamses having both a boy and a girl child (at least in the first film), it is the girl that gets the good parts. That doesn’t happen very often at all – other examples of media that has two siblings of each sex almost always emphasizes the brother. Christina Ricci’s sarcastic and deadpan portrayal of Wednesday is one of the highlights of an already perfectly cast set of films. It contrasts sharply with the cheerful Wednesday from the TV version, but I can’t be the only one longing for more sardonic brunette girls in family movies…who aren’t the villains.

5. The climax of The Addams Family seemingly has a damsel-in-distress situation…except that it’s been turned on its head. Morticia…enjoys…being tied up and tortured. Yep kiddies, here’s your first introduction to bondage and BDSM! It’s played for laughs of course, as it always is, but notice that when Gomez and Morticia discuss her predicament, it’s with absolute passion. Their kinkiness is just another aspect of their already healthy sex life. And in the end, the damsel-in-distress isn’t really in distress at all! Sure, she needed to be untied, but Morticia was definitely not in any danger.

6. The characters are evenly split male/female. On the male side, we have Gomez, Fester, Lurch, Pugsley, and Tully Alford. On the female side, we have Morticia, Wednesday, Grandmama, Dr. Pinder-Schloos and Margaret Alford. The four leads (arguably Raul Julia, Anjelica Huston, Christopher Lloyd and Christina Ricci) are split evenly too. And, of course, the film passes the Bechdel Test pretty easily.

7. The villain of Addams Family Values, Debbie (played by Joan Cusack), is a parody of the femme fatale. She’s a black widow with the most ridiculous motives possible. She supposedly killed her parents as a little girl because they got her Malibu Barbie instead of Ballerina Barbie. The tropes of the femme fatale are stretched to their absolute limit of believability, which helps to highlight just how silly a character archetype it is. And naturally, the Addamses accept her faults wholeheartedly (as they always do – they don’t judge anyone except those who judge them). They just take issue with her attempting to murder them too. And decorating with pastels. One must never decorate with pastels.

8. The first film depicts a realistic (well, for a bizarre comedy) breakdown of a marriage. Tully Alford is a coward and a liar, who has practically bankrupted his family by relying too much on loan sharks and vainly hoping that his wealthy Addams clients will bail him out (but instead of asking them for help, he tries to trick them out of money). Margaret openly wonders why she married Tully in the first place. A few weeks later, when the Addamses are holding their family reunion in Fester’s honor, Margaret hits it off with Cousin Itt. They dance, and talk together, and Itt is clearly the first person to make her smile, laugh, and open up about her troubles. She is initially guilty about the affection she’s showing for Itt, but it’s obvious by this point that her husband has begun to ignore her completely in his pursuit for money. When Tully “dies” at the end, it frees Margaret to begin a relationship with Cousin Itt. Instead of vilifying Margaret, her loneliness and subsequent happiness with Cousin Itt is depicted very sympathetically. Should she have gotten a divorce instead, I have no doubt it would have also been portrayed sympathetically.

9. Morticia becomes pregnant at the end of the first film, and has a son, Pubert, in the second one. This is another unusual depiction of motherhood. We know that Huston was in her 40s when the films were shot, and her character is probably around the same age since she has teenage children. Here we see an “older” mother getting pregnant and having a child, AND a family where there’s a big age gap between one or more siblings. As someone roughly twice the age of my younger sister, I can’t tell you how much I appreciated that a film recognized that not all siblings have to be born within 10 years of each other. I also appreciated that, once again, it depicted a mother who isn’t traditionally “young” (which I’ll define as under 35). As women wait longer to get married and/or to have children, this is an important social change to recognize.

10. They are genuinely FUNNY. The two films are ones I can watch over and over, and I’ll maintain that they are probably the best feature film adaptations of a TV series ever. They utilize black humour in a way that is both clever and ridiculous (exaggeration being the favourite tool of comedians) without being gory or mean-spirited. I also believe that the films couldn’t have had a finer cast, god rest Raul Julia. I leave you with one of the finest jokes ever written for a comedy film. Happy Halloween!

Girl Scout: Is this made from real lemons?
Wednesday: Yes.
Girl Scout: I only like all-natural foods and beverages, organically grown, with no preservatives. Are you sure they’re real lemons?
Pugsley: Yes.
Girl Scout: Well, I’ll tell you what. I’ll buy a cup if you buy a box of my delicious Girl Scout cookies. Do we have a deal?
Wednesday: Are they made from real Girl Scouts?

Myrna Waldron is a feminist writer/blogger with a particular emphasis on all things nerdy. She lives in Toronto and has studied English and Film at York University. Myrna has a particular interest in the animation medium, having written extensively on American, Canadian and Japanese animation. She also has a passion for Sci-Fi & Fantasy literature, pop culture literature such as cartoons/comics, and the gaming subculture. She maintains a personal collection of blog posts, rants, essays and musings at The Soapboxing Geek, and tweets with reckless pottymouthed abandon at @SoapboxingGeek.