The Addams Family - The Paranormal Nature of The Addams Family

The Paranormal Nature of The Addams Family

Unlike The Munsters, which explicitly stated its characters' supernatural origins, the exact nature of the Addamses is never established. They all seemed to share a bond with the occult and supernatural. Uncle Fester was often portrayed as something of a mad scientist, and Grandmama as a potion maker, and Morticia states that her study is spells and hexes in the 1991 movie "The Addams Family" but, these activities don't really explain the Addams's seemingly immortal state. Much of the food they live on is inedible or outright deadly to normal humans, and they take an interest in painful activities like walking across minefields or having a sharp pendulum cut them in half.

In the 1960s television series, virtually every member of the family demonstrated some uniquely inhuman trait:

• Morticia was able to light candles with the touch of a fingertip.
• Morticia asked a visitor if they minded if she smoked, then crosses her arms and literally starts "smoking" (emitting curls of smoke from her body).
• Gomez was remarkably athletic, his cigar lights the instant he drew it out of his breast pocket and extinguished when replaced, and he could perform complicated calculations in his head (making a mechanical sound as he did so). He often told time by reading the time from his wristwatch (which ran slow), then his pocket watch (which ran fast) and then calculating the difference between the two.
• Fester generated both electricity and magnetism, and powered a lightbulb in his mouth as a party trick. Also, he could play gramophone records with his finger instead of a needle and his mouth instead of a speaker. In The New Addams Family he could also explode at will without harm. Additionally, he suffered from a severe migraine that can be cured by clamping his head in a vise, and apparently caused no harm upon him. He also liked to recharge in his electric chair.
• Grandmama, in addition to being able to whip up potions of varying effects, could fly on a broom.
• Pugsley was able to hang from tree branches by his teeth, a trait that is only referred to and not seen. He was also depicted as being able to survive any mortal injuries including his sister's attempts to kill him. He was also a bit more normal (personality-wise) than the rest of the Addams clan.
• Six-year-old Wednesday was strong enough to bring her father down with a judo hold, and able to survive any mortal injuries inflicted upon her by Pugsley.
• Lurch, a Frankenstein's Monster look-alike, had superhuman strength.
• Thing, who was only seen as a hand reaching out of various boxes around the mansion, could apparently travel from box to box almost instantaneously.

None of these traits were considered unusual by any others in the family, but treated simply as individual talents that anyone might possess. All took pleasure in enduring such experiences as lying on a bed of nails, being stretched on a rack, and so forth.

Occasionally, the 1960s series featured guest characters who shared the Addams's tastes, which—along with the fact that the family obviously purchased its yak meat, explosives, etc., from somewhere—implied an entire subculture of people who shared the family's tastes (as seen in several Charles Addams cartoons). In contrast, the Addamses themselves considered such things as daisies, chocolate fudge, the Boy Scouts, and other such traditionally "wholesome" things—as well as any distaste for such things as swamps, octopuses, and hanging upside down from the ceiling—to be odd, if not outright disturbing. Fester once cited a neighbouring family's meticulous petunia patches as evidence that they were "nothing but riff-raff".