January 7, 2021 by Tosh Berman

 

January 7, 2021

My first feelings of sexuality, beyond Brigitte Bardot on the big screen, is Morticia Addams. Not an actual living person, but a cartoon figure, made and drawn by Charles Addams. He was married three times, and it has been reported that he based this character on his first wife. That's not the truth. He married three women who looked like his character Morticia. I'm a fan of any artist/writer who bases their work on their sexual obsessions. To me, there is a connection between "Tom of Finland" and Morticia. It's desire drawn to perfection without any interference from the real world. The Addams Family is a series of single-panel cartoons that Addams did from 1938 to his death in 1988.  It wasn't until the television show came to be that these cartoons became officially called "The Addams Family."

Besides being hysterically funny, I was drawn into their world as the ultimate outsiders of society. But they are also aristocratic, which is another strong magnet for my love of a family tainted with horror but still holding on to some form of a tarnished system but existing. Morticia, with her tight black dress, fitting her perfect figure, and a love that is clearly forbidden in polite society. She was one of my first cultural heroes as a child and teenager. I adored the Television show as well, but the cartoon anthologies that I purchased over the years became the blueprint of my sexuality. 

Over the years, the blending of the 1960s TV show and the cartoons become one to me. I can't comment on the full-length movies that came out later because I never saw them. Carolyn Jones will always be Morticia to me. Her remarkable eyes as she dissects her fictional husband Gomez as a weapon, but one made of desire and power. Charles Addams is clearly an artist with tremendous dark wit, but also in the service of Eros.