Charles Addams by Tosh Berman

 

Charles Addams by Tosh Berman

January 24, 2021, by Tosh Berman

 

January 24, 2021

I just started to read the biography on Charles Addams by Linda Davis, and it brings me memories of being a fan of his work when I was a child. I'm trying to figure out how I got into him, and for sure it was before the TV series "The Addams Family." I liked the Addams Family, but I was more of a fan of his other stuff. Such as his work in the office working world and just the everyday absurdity of life as it is played out in Addams' mind and drawings. It seems he was a boyfriend to Greta Garbo and quite a ladies' man. Lately, I have been reading up on the playboys of the western world from decades ago. I'm attracted to that world because I don't feel I have ever participated in that landscape. I'm one of those fellows who sees a girl, and my technique is to wait for them to approach me. I figured if I sit there long enough, eventually, they will notice me. 

I did a lot of that in High School, and if you find the right spot, you can just sit there and wait. School was never a significant interest for me, except for the quad steps that lead to the lunch area because that is where you will meet people. The girls I met a school were and still are important to me. I do keep in contact with some, but there are some that I lost touch with, and it seems no one knows where they are or if they even exist on this planet. There is a danger to look back because one doesn't see the luggage that comes with it. 

So, yeah, Charles Addams. As a music lover, there is a cartoon where the Receptionist for a business notices at 5pm that the little musicians leave to go home from their muzak studio on the office wall.  It reminds me as a kid watching Lassie on TV, and my dog Rover would bark at Lassie on the small screen. He also went to the back of the TV set to see if there was an opening to get inside the set. For my dog, that was logical thinking. It was the first time I noticed an animal thinking logically about a situation. There's a dog in the box, and therefore…  

Addams caught those moments with The Addams Family as well as others in his work. It's like starting on ground zero and then using your knowledge to understand what's happening at the moment. There is something very Wittgenstein about Charles Addams. 

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.