“I find social media to be a soul-sucking void of meaningless affirmation.”
-Wednesday Addams, “Wednesday (Netflix)
Have you ever found a movie, show or other piece of media that sets out to make a statement, but the creators are so enamored with themselves and their own biases that they end up making the opposite point? “Don’t Look Up” tried so hard to be anti-Trump and “pro-science”, but the President in the movie ends up being an elitist Hillary Clinton wannabe. Perhaps the greatest flaw in the filmmakers’ plan is the plot point of “trust the science”. In the movie the scientists who know the truth and are trying to tell the public about it are shunned, censored, and silenced. Like the way people who were questioning the mainstream “science” were treated during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The latest piece of multimedia to trip over itself in this is Netflix’s Wednesday. Truthfully, I’ve never been much of a fan of The Addams Family in any form. The pseudo-goth kookiness never really interested me, nor did everyone’s fascination with Wednesday Addams. However, after seeing about a million of the Wednesday dance tributes and virtually everyone saying that Wednesday is an amazing show, I decided to check it out. After viewing only one episode, responding to one tiktok video about Latino representation in the Addams Family, and one YouTube clip about this dance craze, I can safely say that Wednesday is full of it, and here’s why:
1. The Wednesday Dance videos aren’t even playing the right song.
We’ve all seen them. The seemingly endless stream of e-girls, dance studios and one Andrew Tate impersonator doing the “Wednesday Dance”. This simple, albeit catchy, dance number which Jenna Ortega choreographed herself took the internet by storm. The only problem is that many people have imitated the original copycats using the same remixed version of Lady Gaga’s “Bloody Mary”. The original scene from the Netflix series uses “Goo Goo Much” by The Clamps. This is one of many instances where a tiktok trend becomes a sensation without even getting all the details right.
2. Wednesday is unlikable
For a character who is incredibly popular with “outsiders”, Wednesday would be horrible to be around. In the first episode, Wednesday simultaneously gives support and emotional abuse to her own brother, dismisses her father as an idiot, attempts to murder and manages causes permanent disfigurement to a fellow student, berates her own mother to the point of emotional abuse. Her first interaction to her new roommate is to remove her décor and judge her, someone she doesn’t even know, simply because she doesn’t align with Wednesday’s aesthetic. This is hilarious considering Wednesday’s whole deal is “being her own person”, yet she falls into every goth stereotype and judges literally everyone. It’s shocking to me how Wednesday has so many fans considering how awful she is as a person. At her very best she’s unpleasant, and at worst she’s dangerous. When people stay away from her it’s self-preservation, not bullying.
3. The Addams Family isn’t Latino
Or at least they aren’t exclusively Latino. Before calling for my tarring and feathering, read on. One of the many talking points about Wednesday when it was announced was people being allegedly upset at Gomez Addams being played by Luis Guzman. I really didn’t want to unpack this, but after seeing a tiktok video with some obnoxiously self-righteous, and likely college freshman, girl said “Where do you think Gomez came from?”, I feel inclined to open the bag. So let’s start with ol’ Gomez. First, Gomez is a Spanish name. Spain is in Europe, so based on the name alone there’s nothing concrete. The argument for Gomez being Latino seems to come from his portrayal in the 1991 film by Puerto Rican actor, Raul Julia. But Jake, I hear you say, if he has a Spanish last name doesn’t that make him Latino? There’s certainly a debate there, but if we’re going with the dictionary definition of Latino, Gomez would have to hail from Latin America, which isn’t Spain. Furthermore, Gomez is a surname in Spanish, but Gomez is his given name. His family name is Addams. Funnily enough, there is no controversy over Gomez’s name throughout Latin America because his name isn’t even Gomez in the Hispanic American dubs, his name is Homero. In addition to the problematic name origin, his name wasn’t originally supposed to be Gomez. When the first television series was being developed, the characters had no names yet. The decision for Gomez’s name was left up to the actor portraying him to choose between Gomez or Repelli. Actor John Astin chose Gomez. It was during this television series that the Gomez character was fleshed out and distinctly identified as Castilian Spanish, both by Gomez himself and by his wife Morticia. Morticia incidentally often refers to Gomez as “bubele” which is either Yiddish or Bavarian German for “darling”. It’s also worth noting that Morticia is known to speak French. All of these linguistic quirks suggest that she is of some sort of European and/or Jewish ancestry. Speaking of Morticia, in Wednesday she is portrayed by Catherine Zeta-Jones. Jones is often mistakenly identified as a Latina actress, but I hate to burst your bubble. She’s Welsh. Technically Welsh-Irish, but still far away from Latin America.
I’m not saying that the Addams family can’t or shouldn’t be played by Latino actors. At best the family’s ancestry is ambiguous and that’s by design. The only issues I have are the bad arguments for why they MUST be Latino. Jenna Ortega is bringing the character to new levels of fame and popularity not because of her ethnicity, it’s because of her take on the character, her performance. The Addams Family is supposed to be a satire of the traditional, ideal American family. Their ethnicity has no bearing on this unless it is played for laughs, which up to this point has largely been the case. So how about we all just enjoy the latest version or, as in my case, choose not to? If, however, we’re going to treat everything as a social commentary, at least get the details correct. All three of these issues, and many more, exist solely because of the landscape of social media today. Very few people take the time to verify or find the truth of what they see online and what’s worse, they perpetuate information without caring whether it’s accurate. There are a great many “social causes” and “points of view” that can trace their genesis to social media. The Wednesday series’ controversy and fanfare share the core aspect of being largely overblown or outright false. All of it has been perpetuated by people on social media not wanting to take the 2 minutes to 6 hours (I’m a nerd, deal with it) to look into something someone on the internet told them.
