Hi Readers! It’s co-editor Gail! I’m coming back at ya with my thoughts from the first half of my Halloween moviethon. I’ve been enjoying revisiting old favorites as well as some first time viewing. I went into this not knowing what exactly I would find to talk to you all about, but much to my surprise, a lot of the movies in this section had well done and relevant social commentary about different aspects of wealth beneath all the spoops. So without further ado, let me share with you my favorite examples.
SPOILER WARNINGS JUST IN CASE YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THEM!
Addams Family/ Addams Family Values-
The Addams Family have often been seen by fans as “#goals” from Morticia and Gomez’s relationship, to their happy family dynamic, and to them being unapologetically themselves. Through watching both live action films I discovered that The Addams family should also be our goal for how rich people should be. The Addams’s are rich. They live in a mansion, their kids go to school and eventually summer camp with other rich children, they have servants and they go to fancy restaurants in caves. But, to make a pun, this is not what they value.
The Addams’s do not care about their money, they care about each other. In one small instance, the Addams’s donate some art to a charity auction and buy it back for thousands of dollars because Morticia and Gomez turn bidding into a flirtatious game. But that is only a minor moment in a double feature where the “bad guys” are always those trying to get or already have immense wealth and privilege. In both movies, the villains are after Fester in order to get the Addams fortune and in both movies this leads to the family being separated from each other. Both times this happens, Gomez becomes a broken man, not because he is potentially losing his vast wealth, but because he misses his brother.
Meanwhile, at camp, Wednesday leads a revolution on the white privileged campers and staff in the name of the Native Americans of the first thanksgiving and those that once lived on the land the camp now stands on. While Wednesday herself is also white, her back up in this endeavor are other campers who do not fit the white, skinny, blond and popular mold. Some of them are even disabled. Wednesday’s revolt is a statement that she recognizes her own privilege and understands that she has it because those without it both in the past and in present day are ridiculed and killed by specific oppressors that she refuses to conform to being like.
In the first movie, Morticia reminds an amnesiac Fester of the Addams Family credo:
“We gladly feast on those who would subdue us”
I don’t know about you, but that greatly reminds me of the phrase
“Eat the rich”.
The Haunted Mansion-
While the haunted mansion can be seen as just a fun family halloween comedy with classic Eddie Murphy goofs, what can easily be overlooked is that the underlying plot of why the Evers family is even pulled into this mess is due to an interracial love story that ended in tradgedy. Edward Gracey and Elizabeth were in love and ready to run away together and while we don’t know the exact circumstances of if or how Elizabeth as a black woman had wealth herself, we know that in the 1890’s their relationship would not have been accepted by aristocratic society. When Elizabeth’s murderer is revealed, their reasoning is that running off with her would have been a mistake. While maybe unintentional given that this is a Disney film lead by mostly black actors, there is still a subtext that the reason being with Elizabeth would have been a mistake for Gracey is that she was black and the implication is that marrying her would ruin his wealth and status.
Stigmas about interracial and interreligious relationships still exist in our world today and we must continue the work to end them. How many lost loves are out there due to bigotry? How many lives exist because of it?
Vampires V.S. The Bronx-
This is one I found last minute and changed around my list to watch. This movie is a clever comedy that uses a classic horror trope as a metaphor for gentrification. In this film we see the tight knit black and lantinx communities in the Bronx get invaded by vampires under the guise of a real estate company. Through the eyes of our teen/preteen protagonists, we see how their neighbors and local businesses suddenly disappear and get replaced by apartments and stores targeted at wealthy white people. It demonstrates how when gentrification happens, it’s as if the culture and community of the area has the life sucked out of it as a vampire would do with their victim yet it is allowed to happen because those in power believe that no one would care if the people from these places go missing. What we should be doing is investing in these communities so they can thrive, not pricing out the people who already live there for the comfort of privileged folks.
Igor-
Igor was a flop back in 2006 for many reasons. But rewatching now I found it to be quite bold and deep. The story takes place in the fantasy kingdom of Malaria where there are constant clouds and darkness making it impossible to profit from crops. The king therefore devised that in order for the kingdom to still make money, evils scientists will create dangerous killing machines and then blackmail the rest of the world into paying them not to use them. This of course creates massive inequality between the wealthy scientists, and their Igor servants who are essentially slaves. The main Igor we follow wants to be an inventor to pull himself out of this inequality and prove himself that he is worth more than what society deems him. He creates a Frankenstein’s Monster style woman named Eva including the special ingredient of an “evil bone”. Unfortunately for Igor’s plans, once she is brought to life, Eva wants to be an actress, not evil.
Towards the end of the film when Igor must rescue Eva from the mind control of the villains triggering her evil bone, this film makes the ballsiest move I have ever witnessed in children’s animation. It presupposes that like Eva, we are all born with evil inside us and we choose whether or not to act on it. I am unsure if I agree with that sentiment but I respect this movie for going there.
Igot goes on in his speech to reveal that the king had been lying to the people of Malaria as it was him who hid the sun with a weather machine. He explains how the king led the people to believe they needed to be evil to survive but they didn’t. This resonated with me as this statement tracks into our own reality in conversations about wealth and economic inequality. Our leaders use capitalism as a way to breed inequality and then tell us to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, to step on others to get ahead if we have to because it’s a dog eat dog world out there. When in reality, it’s the same people at the top hoarding the resources that could help everyone.
So yeah, turns out Halloween movies are great explorations of wealth. I encourage you all to give these films a watch. They were all super enjoyable and funny but still managed to fit in ideas to make you think.
-Gail
P.S.
Issue #1 is out now! Please give it a read. Our contributors sent us wonderful pieces and I am so proud to be part of presenting it to the world! Shout out to co-editor Meagan for all of her fantastic hard work!
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Gail Bello is a poet and playwright from Waltham, Massachusetts. She graduated in 2019 with a BFA in Creative Writing and a minor in Theatre from The University of Maine at Farmington. Find her previous publications at https://thaumaturgedramaturge.wordpress.com and follow her on Twitter @AquajadeGail