Despite all the things it teaches you about the aesthetic unpleasantness of pastels and how to get rid of a rich husband,Addams Family Valuesisn’t exactly what one would consider an educational movie. And yet, to me, it’s value as a learning experience cannot be understated. You see, November 23 is upon us, and, if you’re American, chances are you and your family are getting ready for a nice — or awful — Thanksgiving dinner. I wish you all a very happy holiday, but, having grown up in Brazil, I never once in my life celebrated Thanksgiving. And, yet, I couldn’t stop hearing about it.
As a kid in a world in which American media is everywhere, I was constantly exposed to movies and, most importantly,very special episodes that featured Thanksgiving as a central element. Whenever Christmas was approaching, I was sure to watch at least one Thanksgiving episode of my favorite TV shows. However, the meaning of the holiday completely eluded me, and I was forced to pack those movies and TV episodes alongside others I couldn’t fully understand due to cultural differences. But then, one day, during a trip to the video store, I came upon a VHS tape that taught me everything I needed to know to make sense of Thanksgiving, from its cultural significance to its more problematic aspects. That educational tape wasAddams Family Values.
Addams Family Values
The members of the odd Addams Family are up to more macabre antics in this sequel. This time around, Gomez Addams (Raul Julia) and his wife, Morticia (Anjelica Huston), are celebrating the arrival of a baby boy. But siblings Wednesday (Christina Ricci) and Pugsley (Jimmy Workman) are none too happy about the new addition, and try their best to eliminate the infant. When nanny Debbie Jelinsky (Joan Cusack) appears to keep the kids in line, her presence leads to an unexpected treacherous twist.
What Is ‘Addams Family Values’ About?
Addams Family Valuesisn’t so much a movie as it is a series of sketches held together by the semblance of a plot. Black widow Debbie’s (Joan Cusack) nearly successful attempt to get Uncle Fester (Christopher Lloyd) away from his loving family of weirdos and steal his fortune serves as an excuse to put the Addams in a series of unexpected scenarios, such as an elite summer camp, a honeymoon trip to Hawaii, and even —gasp— the horror of having an adorable, cherubim-like baby. Does it work? Yes. Yes, it does.
Addams Family Valuesis absolutely delightful to watch, even if some of the jokes haven’t aged all that well. From Wednesday (Christina Ricci) being at that age at which a girl only has one thing in her mind — “Homicide” — to Gomez (Raul Julia) proudly announcing that his newborn baby is an Addams to his and Morticia’s (Anjelica Huston) fiery tango at their double-date bistro,Addams Family Valuesis full of iconic moments and quotes. The movie is just as memorable as it is chaotic.
‘Addams Family Values’ Most Memorable Scene Is the Thanksgiving Play
One ofAddams Family Values’ most beloved scenes is the Thanksgiving-themed play in which Wednesday and Pugsley (Jimmy Workman) are forced to participate during their stay in the unbearable Camp Chippewa. Alongside their nerdy friend Joel (David Krumholtz) and the rest of the camp’s outcasts, the Addams kids turn Counselor Gary’s theatrical production (Peter MacNicol) upside-down, and what was supposed to be an ode to the first Thanksgiving in American history becomes a critique of everything wrong with the holiday as well as a rightfully earned revenge against Gary, his fellow counselor Becky (Christine Baranski), and all of Camp Chippewa’s most awful attendees.
For those that loathe Thanksgiving as a whole — and even for some that enjoy it — the scene is the perfect opportunity to laugh at everything the date represents and come out with a certain sense of superiority. But for a child that had just the faintest idea of what Thanksgiving was, the Addams thwarted play was a real crash-course on the meaning of the holiday, its cultural importance, and all the historical whitewashing that comes with it.
The first thing thatAddams Family Valuesteaches about Thanksgiving is that it is an event that transcends the date on which it is celebrated. While thematic movies and very special episodes sometimes mention the so-called first Thanksgiving in the context of the holiday itself, using it as an explanation for why the characters are all gathered for a special dinner,Addams Family Valuestakes the story away from its festive context. Joel, Wednesday, and Pugsley aren’t forced to participate in Gary’s play because Thanksgiving is just around the corner. They’re in a summer camp, thus, the movie takes place during summer, which means they’re a few good months away from the holiday season. At first, this might not seem like much, but when you think about it, this temporal disconnect between Gary’s play and the festive date it is supposed to represent shows that Thanksgiving isn’t just yet another reason for Americans to gather their loved ones for a special meal. It is something far greater than that:Thanksgiving is a founding myth.
‘Addams Family Values’ Presents the Thanksgiving Origin Story Through a Critical Lens
The story of the first Thanksgiving is a story about how the United States of America came to be. All countries have a story like that, frequently more than just one. These stories are usually true to some extent, but they mainly serve to create a glorious past for a country and hide the ugliness in its history. According to myth,the first Thanksgiving was a feastheld by a group of Mayflower survivors in the early 17th century to celebrate their first harvest in the so-called New World. The feast was attended by a group of Wampanoag Native Americans bearing gifts of meat.The turkey matters because legend has it that it was this bird native to the Americas that the Wampanoag gave the recently-arrived pilgrims.In the movie, this “first turkey” is played by Pugsley, who sings his big song just moments before Wednesday gives her own spin on Gary’s play.
Whether this puritan feast truly happened is up for debate, but that’s not really what matters in the story. What matters is that it creates the foundation for a history in which the relationship between English colonists and Native Americans was peaceful and mutually profitable. The problem is this isn’t how things actually went down. Like Wednesday puts it in her speech about why her character can’t fraternize with the pilgrim Sarah Miller — played by camper Amanda Buckman (Mercedes McNab) — and her family, the real history of the relationship between the European colonizers and Native Americans was marked by land-robbing, massacres, destitution, and just overall misery. This history helped shape what the United States is today, and its effects are felt to this day by Native American communities still living in poverty.
As a Brazilian, after watchingAddams Family Values, I believe a good equivalent for the first Thanksgiving would be the first mass,immortalized byVitor Meirelesin a paintingthat has been in every single history textbook I ever owned. In Meireles’ artwork, the 16th century natives are represented as being awestruck by the devotion of the Portuguese, who are peacefully celebrating a religious ceremony after a long journey across the Atlantic. This image is pervasive in our national imaginary and serves as a founding myth of its own — a myth of peaceful colonization that erases a history slavery and forced conversions whose effects can still be felt in the current massacres that take place in the Amazon region.
In one go,Addams Family Valuesmanaged to give me everything all those semi-educational cartoon episodes failed to give me throughout nearly a decade of my media-consuming life. For the first time, I had the context and the critique of this one super important holiday that kept being hammered into my brain for reasons I couldn’t fathom. For the first time, I knew what it all meant, at least on a historical level. ButAddams Family Valuesdoesn’t stop there. DirectorBarry Sonnenfeldand screenwriterPaul Rudnickhad Gary and Becky pick all the white, blonde children to play the pilgrims and give the Native American roles to everyone else. This paints Thanksgiving as not just an American holiday and founding myth, but as a holiday and founding myth for a specific kind of American.
By erasing the pains of Native Americans, the kind of history the holiday helps to uphold also erases the struggles of various peoples of color. Celebrating Thanksgiving, for a non-white or just not Mayflower-bound family, in this scenario, becomes an act of assimilation into a culture. This becomes even clearer in Wednesday’s — or Pocahontas’ — line about how beautiful the pilgrim Sarah Miller is due to her milky-white skin and her sun-yellow hair.
Of course, there is a lot to be critiqued about howAddams Family Valuespresents its takedown of Thanksgiving.There isn’t a single Native American personin the group of kids purporting to bring down the erasure of Native Americans represented by the holiday. The movie also plays into a considerable amount of racist stereotypes that have been following Native Americans for a long time in history. Nonetheless, there is a lesson to be learned from the movie about the origin and the present day relevance of Thanksgiving that shouldn’t be overlooked. In the end,Addams Family Valuesdid not make me like Thanksgiving, though I can still enjoya goodBob’s Burgersspecial episode. What the film did do, however, was teach me why Thanksgiving matters, why so many people celebrate it, and, perhaps most importantly, why it must be critiqued.
