Will Netflix ‘Wedneday’ Avoid ‘Penguins’ Sydrome?

 

If you haven’t seen the Netflix show “Wednesday” and plan to, you may want to move along, citizen. There will be spoilers here. I also discuss “Inside Out” and “Penguins of Madagascar,” but I would plead that not only has the expiration date on spoilers for those long passed, I also won’t get into the details of those plots anyway, which is easy in the “Penguins” case because there are no details of the plot to get into. Anyway: Official “Wednesday” spoiler warning issued. Now, on with the show.

There is a condition that sometimes has an impact on children’s movies in recent years; I call it “Penguins of Madagascar” syndrome.

If you haven’t seen “Penguins,” I urge you not to bother. The wisecracking swimming dinosaur protagonists of this tale have amusing things to say and engage in many slick action sequences. And that’s it. And that’s the problem. There is no character development, because there aren’t really any characters beyond surface personalities. The movie is all flash and dash with no heart.

The best entertainment, particularly “family” entertainment, has levels. Think of the Pixar franchise. There are long arguments to be found online about how realistic the psychology of “Inside Out” is because the underlying precepts of the film are debated by psychologists. Which means some don’t care for the emotional functions as presented in the film, while many people do find them insightful.

As for me, I’m a fan. If “Inside Out” isn’t a text in psychology, at least there is evidence that the people who wrote it have read a psychology text—it’s a family film that has layers. Sure, anger may present masculine stereotypes—even a good film can have flaws that people can legitimately complain about.

Nobody worries about the layers in “Penguins of Madagascar.” It doesn’t have any.

Now, I know the recent Netflix series “Wednesday” is not in the same entertainment universe as “Penguins” or “Inside.” Shame on any parent who lets young children view this series—it’s too brutal, too bloody, too violent, in my opinion, for most pre-tween eyes.

But for those of us who are either beyond our first decade of life experience, or whose teen years were long ago in the ABBA era, I endorse “Wednesday.” I like it.

It’s not a flawless show. I wish, for example, that Enid Sinclair, an amusing sidekick, had been given a bit more intelligent things to say. I was OK with a former Wednesday ending up on the dark side, but not so OK with the exit of Principal Weems, a character who would have been delicious to keep around for another season.

Larissa Weems played by Gwendoline Christie. Netflix publicity image.

It was sort of like seeing Principal Snyder die in Season 3 of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” Then again, in Buffy, the characters were going to move out of high school at that point anyway, and it would have required improbable backflips to bring Snyder to UC-Sunnydale, so maybe he was expendable at that point, from a story-telling point of view.

Not so Weems. One expects that season two of “Wednesday” will be set at Nevermore Academy, a place that will miss its literal giant of a principal.

Still, I found much to like in “Wednesday.” I was not as disturbed by the appearance of her father, who is plumper and frumpier than the smooth movie Gomez. I recall the original Addams Family cartoons, and as many have pointed out, this streaming-service Gomez is true to the original. Also, I don’t mind a character shifting a bit from one interaction of an ongoing franchise to the next—and in this latest version, I found Wednesday’s dad to be an endearing, caring father. Indeed, despite the Goth trappings and dark humor, one thing that makes the Addams Family franchise work is that they really seem to be a family.

Three of the Netflix Addams family characters: Gomez Addams (Luis Guzmán), Wedneday Addams (Jenna Ortega) and Morticia Addams (Catherine Zeta-Jones). A great cast helps make this show work. Netflix publicity image.

And young Jenna Ortega—she has gotten lots of praise for her starring role. She is a delicious Wednesday with her stiff mannerisms, death stare, quick one-liners and, now and then, evil smile. Ortega has arrived.

Which might be unfortunate for Ortega as a human. Hollywood is not kind to its young talent. It can make a starlet fabulously famous for a time, but often leaves them with severe life troubles. It’s not always good to be a multi-millionaire so young.

To be fair, in the few interviews I’ve seen her in, Ortega seems intelligent, quick witted and sharp-tongued. And she was a child star who has found a niche as a young adult—a sometimes rare trick. Perhaps she has her head screwed on tight enough and can navigate the temptations and burdens of entertainment fame. She surely knows far more about that world and its pitfalls than I do.

And I’ve segued from writing about a role—Wednesday—to writing about the actor playing that role. It’s a common mistake, and I want to be clear that Jenna Ortega is not Wednesday Addams, she merely plays her in a streaming video series.

Anyway, I know Ortega was already a successful Hollywood figure before this Netflix show, although I’ve not enjoyed seeing her before. “Wednesday” has surely, if briefly, pushed her from the role of successful actor to a top-tier A lister.

From Wikimedia Commons, based on a screen shot from a YouTube video, Jenna Ortega.

Although there are many complications that sudden superstardom has brought to Ortega:

• A minor tiff with writers during their strike. Ortega noted that she was “unprofessional” and insisted on changing some lines. Writers, grappling with a changing landscape, the onset of AI and long being under-rewarded in Hollywood anyway, did not react well. I hope Ortega recalls that, like all stars, she is dependent on smart writing as well as her own personal talents.

• Speculation about her sexuality. She is a physically beautiful, physically small and very young adult Hollywood female star. On screen, her character in Wednesday stipulates that she will never marry nor have a family. Is Ortega straight? Gay? Bi? Frankly, why does anybody outside of her close friends and family care? She’s 20 years old. It would be nice to give her time and room to figure it all out without a media glare on her private life, although, sadly, that is not the nature of our media. And those who seek the spotlight often find it to be a very hot place to exist.

• The smoking thing. Paparazzi recently caught Ortega lighting a cigarette, and much was made of her mother, a nurse, posting anti-smoking messages on social media after that. Well, I do hope Ortega quits if she has started smoking and does not make it a habit if it’s not one yet.

This one, the smoking thing, feels a little different, to me. Anybody who has  become a star has some responsibility to live a responsible life. So, a minor wag of a digit at Ortega for putting herself in an awkward place vis a vis a deadly habit.

Sure, what she did is legal. Anybody is allowed to do it. And I can see the point of, again, giving her some space. Yet, I do not want any of my young grandchildren to think smoking is cool because a smoking hot young superstar is puffing away.

Maybe she is dealing with stress—smoking is often a habit that arises in stressful situations. The old WWII saying was “smoke ’em if you’ve got ’em.” Wasn’t a good idea for young GIs and isn’t a great idea for a Hollywood star, either.

But it’s not Ortega’s fault that people may idolize her. She is an immature human, living a complicated life as all of us do. As a human, she seems packed with talent, which she displayed in season 1 of “Wednesday.” I’m a fan. And it’s great to see a Latina icon, something not common in our media.

Anyway, where did the Penguins go? Here they come again. Previous Addams Family franchises have a mixed record. I’m not going to comment on the 1960s TV show, although I am old enough to vaguely recall it a bit. I don’t think I was a regular viewer.

As for the 1990s movies, well. Movie 1 and movie 2 are great. Movie 3 had a change in cast and fell victim to Penguin syndrome—the writing was tired and trite and the results pretty bad.

And the recent animated movies follow a similar pattern. The 2019 “The Addams Family” featured, surprise, Wednesday Addams as arguably it’s most important character as the family battled a cable TV show host seeking country-club perfection in a planned town. It is an amusing movie, partly because it’s a dig at HGTV sensibilities. But the 2021 follow-up “The Addams Family 2” makes little sense, is full of action meaning nothing and mostly goes nowhere. Like a penguin.

The live action movie series managed two good installments before stumbling in the third. In the cartoon world, there was one amusing tale followed by a lame one.

I have some hopes for our current “Wednesday.” May the creators, writers, director, talented cast, continue to push story—to have something to share that has some wit and depth. May they not pursue the one-liners so hard that they subsume what every good tale needs—a tale.

And I wish Jenna Ortega well. Good luck, kid. You already know this, but in Hollywood, you need it.

Movies Part I: Lessons From A Blue Dress

From Wired--original dress image in middle, two different color corrections applied on right and left. Read the article in the link below to find out why.

And no, not Monica Lewinsky’s dress-the dress that took the internet by storm recently. The dress that, in the same week Congress was failing to fund Home Security and Jihad John was identified, everyone was talking about.

Proving once and for all that there is little relationship between what people “talk about” and what really matters.

Anyway, the dress of ambiguous color is, according to this article, which I found on Wired, clearly blue. I see the original as white and gold. If you see blue and black, you earn the gold star, or possibly the teal one.

Apparently it’s a perception problem—the issue of how our brain compensates for what it perceives as the prevailing light condition. Years before Photo Shop, the human brain was evolving to color correct our world so that we could see the ripe fruit or the hiding tiger.

What does this dress have to do with movies? Movies, as a medium, are a lot like books. They both require subscription or sales revenue, rather than depending, like most media, on advertising. They are both narrative in form—in fact, there is a close relationship in content between movies and books, although as a reader, I hasten to add that never does the movie recreate the book. The fact that both are narrative media does not mean that they use the same narrative conventions or tools—and a book can almost always tap into more subtleties and interior meanings of things.

The great impact of movies comes from their dreamlike power. Although some are very artistic and complex and make you think, most operate at a cognitively less complex level then books. Books train our minds and enrich our vocabulary. They are like the best lectures in the university of our lives (hang on, students, that’s a metaphor). Movies are the quad, with its nice rose garden, fountain and naked angles in the 19^th century statuary (the university of our lives has a nicer quad than MMU).

We still need the quad. We need the sunshine and the flowers and the angels. I’m not dismissing movies nor saying they are secondary in some cultural way to books. I’m merely observing that they touch us in a different way. And maybe I should have called the movies the art gallery, because they change more and involve more thought than the quad, but now we have to usher our metaphor off stage as it’s getting selfish and occupying too much real estate.

Back to movies. They are the dream medium. Granted, books invite you to enter into a dream world, but it requires more mental work on your part, and the dream world in a book is one that you construct just as much as the author does. My book Harry Potter is not the same as yours or even J.K. Rowling’s, but we both see Daniel Radcliffe as the movie HP.

But, even if movies more clearly communicate the writers’, actors’ and perhaps most of all, the directors’ dreams, even this medium that delivers more intact fantasy passes through our personal powers of perception. We both can watch “Pearl Harbor,” but if I know more about the actual World War II than you do, I’ll probably cringe more.

Anyway, perception is a funny beast. Earlier in this semester, a student in my media class noted that she enjoyed the movie “The Interview” due to its comedy. I found the movie primitive, scatological, irritatingly irrational and just not very funny.

She’s not wrong., she is perceiving the movie from her point of view, and I am from mine. Sometimes the dress looks blue, sometimes white.

The “right” answer in the dress case is blue. The right answer in the movie case partly depends on what you mean.

This week as we discuss movies, we may spend a little time talking about what we like or don’t, and I’ll probably write a second blog post to self-disclose a bit about my taste in movies. But movie reviews aren’t really the point of the week.

Understanding what movies can do, what they are capable of, what they mean to us and our culture, and what the future of movies might be might be--those, I hope, are what we’ll spend our time on, whether the dress is white or blue.

So, blogosphere, chime in. Not about the dress, about perception and movies and how movies compare to other media. Do movies move you? Why ore why not? And which ones, and why?