wednesday addams costume

How Wednesday Addams Became a Horror Icon

The short-lived sitcom The Addams Family, based on the characters famously illustrated by Charles Addams in The New Yorker, ran for only two seasons. But that was more than enough time to make the show an indelible part of American pop culture. In fact, it’s hard to imagine a world without the Addams Family, with their spooky mansion, cast of ghoulish characters, and twisted sense of humor. And no character has had as lasting an influence as Wednesday Addams, who helped introduce audiences to the concept of “goth” and remains one of the most recognizable Halloween costumes year after year.

But how did this macabre little girl become so iconic? Let’s explore!

A Long History

Wednesday Addams is part of a long tradition of pale, morbid girls in horror fiction. Readers are probably familiar with stories like Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle and Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, both of which feature creepy young women whose behavior suggests something otherworldly at work. These girls often come across as innocent or even victimized at first glance — but there’s always something

Wednesday Addams is one of the most recognizable characters in American pop culture. She’s been on television shows and in movies since the early 1960s, with a few hiatuses here and there. There are probably very few people in America who don’t know who Wednesday Addams is or recognize her instantly. Wednesday has become a universal icon for all things creepy, spooky and weird.

The question is, how did she get to be that way?

There are many theories, but the most likely answer is this: when Wednesday was created in 1964, she was part of a larger trend that American society was experiencing. The late 1950s/early 1960s were generally characterized by traditional values, as well as a strong interest in science and technology. As time wore on and the nation became more progressive, so did its art and pop culture. The decade from 1963-1973 was an era of tremendous change in America: attitudes toward sex changed dramatically; fashion became more varied and expressive; science fiction gained popularity; horror stories began to move away from gothic literature into modern settings; monster movies became popular again (e.g., Dracula, Frankenstein); etc. Horror writers like Stephen King started writing about real-world fears instead of just supernatural ones (e.g

Wednesday Addams was a character from The Addams Family, a TV show from the ’60s. She’s the daughter of Morticia and Gomez Addams, and the sister of Pugsley and Pubert.

The Addamses are a family unlike any other. They have a lot of money for one thing, but their biggest distinction is that they’re all monsters. They’re also all named after days of the week: Wednesday, Pugsley, Pubert, and so on. When The Addams Family first came out in 1964, it was an immediate hit with viewers.

The show only lasted two seasons, but it became a cult classic thanks to reruns on TV. Wednesday Addams has remained one of the most popular characters in the show because of her deadpan delivery and morbid sense of humor.

Because she was such an iconic character, it may come as a surprise to some that she wasn’t even supposed to be in the show at all! Charles Addams originally created Wednesday as part of a cartoon strip he did for The New Yorker called “Chas’ New Yorker Cartoons.”

When he drew her for the first time in 1938, she was just another member of an eccentric family with no name or backstory. It wasn’t

Chances are that if you’re reading this post, you spent a Halloween somewhere between the ages of four and fourteen dressed as Wednesday Addams.

The Addams Family debuted in 1964 as a cartoon serial in The New Yorker, created by Charles Addams. The cartoons were wildly popular, and spawned a short-lived television series in 1968. In 1991, the Addamses returned to TV in an animated series (and two years later they had their own video game).

But it wasn’t until the release of Barry Sonnenfeld’s The Addams Family movie that Wednesday became an icon of cool. She was darkly funny, intelligent and fierce. She had a knack for putting people on edge without ever seeming to try. She never cracked a smile, but she kept people laughing anyway. Her deadpan delivery made every line she spoke seem like a joke in itself.

Although this incarnation of the character is regarded as the definitive vision of Wednesday, her introduction was not without controversy. Nerd culture has long been dominated by boys – and many boy geeks felt threatened by Wednesday’s arrival into the mainstream, where she became an object of affection for boys everywhere. They didn’t want to share their macabre icon with girls

The Addams Family was a television show for children with a darkly satirical tone. It lampooned the successful nuclear family by presenting an alternative that retained the commercial trappings of the Ozzie and Harriett lifestyle while inverting its cultural elements. The show was both a commentary on the Ozzie and Harriett lifestyle and a celebration of the counter cultural values of the 1960’s. It is only fitting that Wednesday Addams would later become an icon in horror.

The Addams Family aired from 1964 to 1966. That means it debuted in black and white, the same year as Bewitched, and would have been one of the first sitcoms to transition to color when it moved over to ABC in 1965. It lasted two seasons on ABC before being canceled, but its influence lived on in syndication reruns. The show even got a short-lived revival with Halloween with the New Addams Family in 1977 and The New Addams Family in 1998-1999 (which is available on DVD).

Wednesday Addams, the daughter of Gomez and Morticia Addams, is one of the most recognizable faces in American pop culture. Her look and character are instantly recognizable. The pigtailed girl in the striped dress with a scowl on her face who loves spiders and is fascinated by death – that’s Wednesday Addams.

But who was Wednesday before she became a meme? What made her into the icon she is today?

The first appearance of Wednesday, or “Wednesday Friday Addams,” as she was named in this first cartoon, was in 1964 in The New Yorker. In this cartoon, drawn by Charles Addams, Gomez has just told his wife that they have forgotten to name their baby daughter. Morticia quickly names her after the day she was born: Wednesday.

Her next appearance came just a month later in another New Yorker cartoon drawn by Charles Addams. She is standing with her brother Pugsley on either side of their father at the dinner table. Gomez looks proud as he points at each child saying, “I call this one ‘Wednesday’ and this one ‘Pugsley.'” That’s the last time we see Wednesday as an infant.

When we see her next, we finally get an idea of what she will become

The Addams Family was an American comedy television series based on the characters from Charles Addams New Yorker cartoons. The 30 minute series ran for two seasons starting in 1964. A live action movie starring Angelica Huston as Morticia and Christina Ricci as Wednesday came out in 1991 and again in 1993 followed by a sequel, Addams Family Values. The franchise has since been rebooted multiple times including with a 2019 animated film staring Charlize Theron and Oscar Isaac (the former of which will also be playing Morticia in the upcoming 2021 live action reboot).

The show focused on a family of aristocratic monsters living in a gothic mansion with their servant Lurch, who had a habit of responding to the door bell with the word you rang?, their disembodied hand servant Thing, and their pet lion Kittycat. The family members include Gomez (father), Morticia (mother), Wednesday (daughter), Pugsley (son), Grandmama (Morticia’s mother), and Uncle Fester (Gomez’s brother).

The Addams were weird. They were creepy. They were kooky. But they were not scary. The family had many macabre interests but none of them were supernatural or even violent. In fact, if anything, they were