You’d be hard-pressed to find a goth that doesn’t like The Addams Family.
They are definitely an icon in the culture. I have the main series and movies on DVD. I remember watching the reruns as a kid with the family. It was certainly one of the many influences that got me into goth culture. There was a certain elegance and quirkiness about it that made it fit what I like. They had all kinds of wonderful things from their mansion to all the museum type things in it. They had their own butler. This family had it made. This article will mostly focus on the show and original comics.
Charles Addams the creator of the original Addams Family comics was your standard suit and tie man with a dark twisted sense of humor. The comics scattered throughout this article are his.
There are some particular things I’d like to point out about this lovely family that we all adore. One of the earlier episodes, they end up fighting with someone that’s trying to get their kids in school. They were all content with teaching the kids on their own, but they legally had to give in and send their kids to school. Gomez remarks something like, “What’s the point of having kids if you just send them away all day”. Then one day, Wednesday comes home crying because of the stuff they were teaching in school. This family would have definitely been for the modern unschooling / homeschooling movement.
Some people have pointed out that they don’t have jobs, but they are uber rich. Gomez is always playing in the stock market, where he at least sometimes loses money but then just shrugs it off comically because he has so much. They have random treasure chests and safes and bundle of money in drawers. Where did their money come from? It is kind of a mystery, but they do expose a bit about it in some episodes. There is an episode where they try to get insurance, but the insurance guy doesn’t want to give them any. Gomez ends up getting the insurance guy on his side when he exposes that his family inherited several big businesses that were very important to the insurance company. The Addams family is basically a venture capitalist
family (or something of the sort) that owns all kinds of property that they inherited over several generations. In one episode (maybe the same) Gomez says something like,” We Addamses haven’t worked in generations.” It is also mentioned that they got some of their gems and wealth from ancestor pirates.
Politics is part of the show in some episodes. They don’t seem to take any particular position as far as republican or democrat. They have always supported the losing presidential candidate. In general, the show seems to be more antagonistic towards politicians, if any view is taken at all. At one point, they ask a campaigner if the L in the candidate’s middle name stands for Lucifer. The campaigner, seeing how creepy the house is, said yes, thinking he could win a vote that way. This is making fun of the way politicians just say whatever to get votes (consistent, true, or not)
They get plenty of guests on the show, and they are always quite lovely to them. But somehow they are always misunderstood and scare people away. At one point, a Beatnik shows up. They find him strange and question his tattoos, piercings, and slang, but end up thinking he was alright. The show doesn’t seem to approve of modern social justice warriors (SJW) stuff, as it made fun of the beatnik. I recall fat jokes. The romance between Morticia and Gomez would probably have todays SJWs screaming rape, since Mortica never seems to be in the mood, but Gomez keeps trying to kiss and romance her. Then there are times when guests are involved in similar things with other characters; like fester and his lady; or lurch and his crush; or the mix-up between Pugsly, his teacher, and Gomez. There was plenty of cultural appropriation (a good thing); French and Italian language appropriation between Gomez and Morticia’s. The show displayed a time when men were men, women were women, Itt was it, and Thing was a thing.
In conclusion, The Addams family is a much beloved goth capitalist family that poked fun of politicians. They hated mandatory schooling (state indoctrination). The goth culture has never really been about politics or economics, and accepts people of all types. It’s always been about aesthetics and music. There has been a particular movement of SJW plaguing it (like they plague everything) that want to get rid of some of it’s best parts. Important parts of the culture have always been dark comedy, shock for the sake of shock (shock rock) and individualism. There’s a weird tendency these days for people to take all these things from the past that were meant for comedy, shock factor, and other entertainment and then do them in a serious fashion. Then they act offended when people laugh, are shocked, or entertained. Modern goths could learn a lot from revisiting this old show, learn how the Addams family dealt with people who had different views than them. You’ll never find 2 goths that are exactly a like. We have all kinds of views regarding politics and economics. Most are probably with the rest of the population and just stay apolitical.
