Faith & Entertainment Series | The Joke is that They’re Happy: The Addams Family & Unconditional Love

by Ellen Huang

I’m of the opinion dark humor saves lives. There’s some catharsis in being able to joke about darker things in life, almost as if laughter helps us fear a little less. The Addams Family is bursting at the seams with dark humor— after all, it’s a family of gothic people who delight in everything witchy and spooky—and yet I find there’s something about them that is so…wholesome.

The running humor in the black-and-white TV series is the shock of people who encounter the Addams and enter their lovely home. The Addams live next to a cemetery, they house the most unusual pets, their children play with headless dolls and explosives, and they have connections with people all over the world that the neighbors would consider crazy and strange. Living among their family, the Addams also have a towering Frankenstein-monster-like butler named Lurch and a disembodied hand called Thing that helps them with the mail, both of which the Addams are very warm and appreciative to as if they no less than were regular people.

Creepiness aside, you’d also notice that their family dynamic actually looks really healthy. Gomez and Morticia are very passionate, affirming, and supportive of each other as equals. Their children Wednesday and Pugsley work together and stick up for one another often. They speak very fondly of their dead family members and are always very hospitable, be it to the fuzzy creature made of hair Cousin Itt or to any old mortal human that comes their way. The kooky family’s even comforting to watch, because they just seem to be overflowing with love.

Funnily enough, what is biblically said about love can almost all be applied to The Addams Family. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. (1 Corinthians 13: 4-5 NIV).

I think film reviewer Lindsay Ellis (aka Nostalgia Chick) hit the nail on the head when she said:

“The joke isn’t that they’re cruel or bad at parenting or have any particular disdain for the world at large. They aren’t unkind to their neighbors or to the animals, and they’re deeply devoted to their children and to each other. They joke is that they’re happy.

“The Addams Family is missing a lot of the typical sitcom tropes. There’s no mother-in-law jokes, no arguing over who is supposed to fill what gender role; both Morticia and Gomez spend roughly equal amounts of time parenting the children, and the most remarkable is the relationship between Morticia and Gomez [. . .] usually working together. Rarely will party A keep something from Party B but for the most part they form little schemes together as partners. Both are heads of the household and they almost never disrespect each other — in a genre where that’s usually the joke.

“But the reason the Addams are happy is really because they exist outside of society’s expectations. Gomez is a man child who plays with his trains and that’s fine. Morticia fences with her husband and plays with weapons often. And it doesn’t occur to them to care what people think.”

Something that stands out to me as really refreshing about The Addams Family is that they actually don’t dramatize their weirdness like many other edgy goth characters in media. They don’t compare themselves to others or get defensive about who they are. They normalize. Everything they offer their confused neighbors is genuinely out of kindness + hospitality into their home, and their lived realty is that what the world thinks of them doesn’t even exist.

No one in their house is a burden, none of their odd friends are monsters, and not even the normal humans who judge them are given anything but the benefit of the doubt.

They simply live, and they love unconditionally, and in doing so they show us another way.

I wonder if Christianity in particular is supposed to do that: show another way.

The earliest Christians, being a minority so moved by Jesus that they were even willing to die as believers, showed another way. In a world where family was defined by long genealogy lines, they found family outside of blood, following Christ’s example of emphasizing spiritual siblinghood (Matthew 12:48-50). They were to recognize the Other as part of the same Body and no longer let differences divide them (Galatians 3:28). In a world of hierarchy and oppression, they were motivated by hope and provided for each other, even to the point that “there was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold” (Acts 4:34 NRSV).

Christians were eyed suspiciously for their chosen community, their delight, for their dangerous hope, for believing anything was higher than their emperor. People judged them for their weird ritual of claiming to eat a body and drink blood (perhaps there is danger in literalism) and rumor would spread that Christians were a cult, cannibals, rebels, troublemakers. Was it some kind of joke, how they caused a scene in their nonviolent protests such as turning the other cheek when backhandedly slapped, or giving their cloak also when demanded for their coat, or running an extra mile when forced to go one mile? Why did they see humanity where they didn’t have to? In fact, in an 8th century description of Chinese Christianity, engraved as a Xi’an stele inscription, Christians were known for their unusual ways of not keeping slaves, but regarding all men, regardless of high or low status, as equals. (Source)

The early Christians, being an actual minority (much different than today), lived outside of societal expectations. They didn’t hunger for power but acted as if they didn’t need it. They were grounded in a culture of loving the neighbor and the stranger, a faith in the unseen, a delight despite darkness, and a repurposed symbol of resurrection out of what used to be an execution device. They laughed without fear of the future. They declared where, O Death, is your sting? They would become even more undignified than this. They were to be known for their peculiar ways of loving even their enemies, believing greatness is found in the one who is a servant to all, and fearing no death for their liberated way of thinking.

In the film The Addams Family Values, even when the Addams are all hooked up to electric chairs by the villainously entitled Debbie Jellinsky, who yells, “So long, everybody! Wish me luck!” the Addams are prepared to even wish her good luck (killing them). It’s ambiguous, but I’d like to think this is because they already knew that it wouldn’t kill them. (Other interpretations include that they sympathized with their enemy, loved their enemy the entire time. After all, they later bury her in the family graveyard).

Granted, we are mortal human beings, and it isn’t best advised to actually be oblivious to the rest of the world (especially during a pandemic!). Maybe in these days, we actually should hold a healthy fear and responsibility for affecting others’ lives. Maybe rejoicing about the afterlife isn’t the only faithful response to death. Maybe we can hold space for negative emotions about abusive enemies. Yet all this can be true while looking at things another way. All while living into an inclusive, redefined family dynamic such as that of the adoptive, hopeful, diverse kin—dom of God.

The joke is that they’re happy. They don’t need power, they don’t need to be in the majority, they don’t need a spirit of dominance nor conformity. They’re living as they’re created, and they’re happy.

I feel our progressive “introvert church” Christ Kaleidoscope can be that kind of light. Where love is patient, love is kind; it does not boast, nor envy, nor insist on its own way. It does not dishonor, keep record of wrongs, nor rejoice in wrongdoing. We honor everyone.

What if love couldn’t run out? What if there was room for anyone to be family? While justice and prophecy will win out, what if the powers that kill the body but not the soul were not to be feared? (But please wear a mask, the Addams would probably encourage that kind of mysterious look while saving lives still anyway). What if we were happy being the inclusive outsiders?

And perhaps in doing so, as Madeleine L’Engle would say, we’re “showing a light that is so lovely that [people] want with all their hearts to know the source of it.”