Weekly Thoughts 3/4/23

I liked that the first of these posted in the middle of the day. I could have written this yesterday and posted at lunch, but I don’t have that kind of foresight. Speaking of lunch, I noticed something about my creative process recently. I listen to podcasts and old YouTube videos while I draw, because I like reruns, and I figured it was the same as listening to music. I mean, I’ve heard it before, it’s not new information that’ll slow me down. Comparing my output while Quick Question is playing to my output during my work breaks and when I’m listening to music, and I clearly am slowed down by podcasts. But that won’t stop me from doing it, at least not for a while. I have to rebuild my music collection now that my phone has decided it won’t play my old stuff ripped by Windows Media Player. Age, it’ll get ya.

That’s enough of that. I want to talk for a second about the show Wednesday, and not just because I also watch Netflix shows I’ve already seen while I draw (I have S2 of iZombie to finish right now). If you haven’t seen it yet, I would suggest checking it out. It’s fun, Jenna Ortega is a national treasure, Thing is a standout, and the Wednesday-Enid friendship is magic. That said, it’s got a lot of problems with it. Some are more minor, like how the detective work is Wednesday accusing people of things on a hunch and occasionally being right. The mayor’s son has no character arc, and he appears every couple episodes to do whatever’s convenient for the plot.

The big issue is that the show is dressed in themes of oppression and liberation, and it’s just not necessary. Like, I don’t want to sound like Fox News, it’s just not a storyline that fits every narrative, you know? It’s a teenage school detective story starring Wednesday Addams, that’s what they wanted to make. That’s all they needed to make. The framing of “outcasts v normies” feels like someone wrote “replace outcast with an actual term later” in the story bible, and then no one did it. It’s all very bare bones and doesn’t really say anything particularly interesting or unique about the issue; having some identifiable perspective beyond “obvious problem is bad” is the baseline for any story. They cast Wednesday as a Latina woman and had a diverse cast, set them all against the spectre of racist colonialism, and then spent the whole show talking about a vague, catch-all, story-specific identity instead of addressing the actual issues. Sure, we’re all in this together, but we don’t all face the same struggles. Plus, it’s awkward at times, with the Black mayor being the vehicle for modern oppression.

It’s also a notable issue because of the isolation of Wednesday herself. The school was pitched as a place full of people “just like her.” No one else in that school is into the macabre goth thing the Addamses are super into. Ok, sure, despite being “outcasts” who are totally separate from normie society, they all have normie values and sensibilities because that’s a more convenient perspective to write standard teenage drama from. But no one, not even the rest of the Addamses, is acting like they don’t understand emotion to the extent that Wednesday does. They play on the idea that she’s trying to be independent by pushing people away, but they don’t address the idea that Wednesday is the ultimate outcast in the more literal sense of the term. What makes her different from everybody else? What does it mean for her? Is that going to be where she finds the strength to defeat the normative pilgrim? No, her strength comes from becoming more like everyone else. I get that the lesson makes sense – no one’s an island, strength comes from unity – but the nature of her mindset is notably distinct in a way that goes beyond learning a lesson.

I’m fairly convinced that Wednesday is neurodivergent in some way, and that’s why she is such an outsider in a family of outsiders, attending a school of outsiders. It would make a lot more sense than her lack of backstory, and it would set up a much stronger idea of her position in the story and world. She has to be the one to stand out, because she can’t blend in. If the writers had wanted to be explicit and intentional about it, they could have had that undercurrent the whole season. It could have highlighted how even places meant to uplift and validate difference can miss certain differences, and how identity groups can never fully contain a person. She spends the season butting heads with the headmistress, who represents a conservative, socially accepted approach to outcast integration; it would have been relatively easy to weave in an element where Wednesday has trouble accepting what’s good for the many because she recognizes how bad it is for her individually, due to how the headmistress’s approach ignores her particular needs.

But like I said, I would have preferred they didn’t do the outcast thing. Wednesday coming to terms with how she’ll never fit into neurotypical society and getting recognition as she unravels a school mystery, that would be a show I’d like to see. The issue in this show is one I’ve seen before, in iZombie (callback!) after S2. The introduction of Filmore-Graves was a heavy-handed way to expand and explore zombie culture, and a lot of it comes down to lazy overlays of the concept of oppression while ignoring how zombies eating people is an actual “they’re not like us” issue. The first two seasons did a great job using Liv’s new zombie life to explore her feelings and experiences while adding an interesting perspective on the morality of everyone’s actions. It was a smaller scale, personal take on the identity of zombie, and it worked great. Shoving through a mini zombie society to force things into that social identity space was the wrong choice, IMO. Wednesday is a great example of that problem as well, where we start with the idea of a group being different than others and move onto miming the idea of oppression without having to do any internal work or address actual concerns (sirens are mind controllers). I get wanting to be socially conscious, and there are options in more personal stories that don’t touch big picture ideas. Going for the big guns when you’re not prepared ends up being clunky and insensitive, which defeats the purpose.