Wednesday is modernisation done right
When Netflix announced a Tim Burton-directed adaptation of The Addams Family, fans undeniably expected the already macabre family to be bathed in an even gorier light. However, that was not how things played out.
Wednesday brings the older child of Morticia and Gomez Addams, the 15-year-old Wednesday Addams, to the forefront. The opening scene solidly establishes Wednesday's morbid nature. It shows her letting loose a school of piranhas on her high school swim team to punish them for bullying her brother Pugsley.
Following her expulsion from that school, her parents enrol her into Nevermore Academy, a school for outcasts that they had once attended. Despite resisting the change at first, a series of murders in Jericho, the town that hosts Nevermore, pulls Wednesday in, unspooling a murder mystery with our teenaged goth at the heart of it.
Wednesday Addams has till now only been seen as a child. She started out as a slightly unsettling kid in the 1960s TV show. Christina Ricci's portrayal of her in the 1990s films made her a death-obsessed girl with murderous tendencies. Jenna Ortega's teenaged Wednesday lives up to all of that. But this comes at a cost.
The witty, biting remarks of a child translate to prideful, condescending behaviour in a teenager, and Wednesday is fully aware of this. It shows the character as a young adult who cares only about her own desires. However, it also shows how her self-absorbedness slowly dissolves, making her more accepting and considerate of those around her.
While this might not be something a canonically accurate Wednesday might do, it suits the young adult tone of the show.
Wednesday draws inspiration from previous adaptations but also establishes that it is its own thing. The macabre overtones of the 1960s TV show and the 1990s films are not entirely disregarded. They are still there, forming a large part of the series' humour and aesthetic ecosystem. However, they don't form as thick a layer over the goings-on in the characters' hijinks as they once did.
This is not necessarily bad. The macabre is a part of Wednesday Addams, and everyone around her becomes accustomed to it as they spend more time with her. This results in the shock of the overall grotesqueness being reduced, but it never disappears.
Catherine Zeta-Jones' Morticia might not be as cold as Anjelica Huston played her in the films. Her concern for her family brings out a certain warmth in her but that does not do anything to drive away the cool regality of her character but rather stresses on it. The rest of the show's cast is perfectly suited to their roles too.
The story has been modernised to a large degree. Gen-Z vocabulary and philosophies run rampant. The show is characterised by teenage flings, heartbreaks, and drama. The difference between typical Netflix teen dramas and Wednesday is that the show uses these various tropes to build contrast between a normal scenario and one that is infused with the delightfully ghoulish charm that the Addams family brings. It tells volumes about the adaptability of the Addams family that even in such an unlikely setting, their aesthetic does not feel outdated or overdone.
Zaima is a struggling student, a failed guitarist, and a poet in need of better poetic ideas. Send her your sympathies at zaima2004adrita@gmail.com