By: Claudio “The Rest of Thing” Cortés 

Describe your dream house, what does it look like? Is it a McMansion on too many acres to mow yourself? Is it a penthouse in a new build? Is it a ranch with massive picture windows overlooking the woods? Is it an ultra modern Mies van der Rohe inspired glass box? How about a mission style constructed in the 30s? I will admit now that my dream house is none of these, my dream house is a brick gothic revival style with a single turret, wrap around porch, greenroom and decorative wrought iron fence with black trim, in other words a creepy old victorian. The kind of house found in the illustrations of Edward Gorey and the mind of Tim Burton. While rewatching today’s film pick I began the introspective exercise of exploring why that is my choice, why does the creepy victorian style speak to me?

In turning the magnifying glass to myself the desire for such a house begins to make more sense. I was a macabre obsessed kid who’s cultural experience seemed to embrace those darker more dramatic elements of life. Like countless of thousands of other brown kids every late october my mother would build an ofrenda, we would decorate it as a family and contemplate the lives of those that we lost. My parents sent my siblings and myself to cahtolic institutions whose whole schtick was essentially the acknowledgement of ghosts. We would explore cemeteries, admire the artistic merits of the headstones and go on hunts for the oldest and most famous names on headstones, we were an odd bunch generally different than the other families in our social circles in our ideas of what was fun for these and a variety of other factors that we will not get into in this film intro. Ultimately we had and still have the key elements that make a family a family, we have love. 

The protagonists of today’s film pick are odd balls used as a mirror to point out the absurdity of the notion of what an average american family is supposed to look like. They showed a young boy that no matter who or what your family looks like, you are no less a family. Today’s pick is the 1991 film adaptation of ‘60s quirky family comedy, The Addams Family. Starring the late Raul Julia and Angelica Huston as Gomez and Morticia Addams, a passionate latinx goth couple, as they navigate life as outsiders in a straightedge society with their equally quirky children and extended family. 

You can revisit The Addams Family for yourself on Netflix.

Today’s musical accompaniment is Brothers In Arms by Dire Straits. 

Keep up with the playlist as it builds Here

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