Wednesday Addams castrating her brother's bully with a piranha is played for laughs. Sexual violence against teenage boys for minor offences is a despicable thing to laugh at. This should not be featured in a teen rated show aimed at a wide audience.

MRA_TitleIX · 2022-08-18T15:19:45+00:00

I approved this post because OP made a decent comment that is likely to produce good discussion beyond "I hate this thing and you should too." The fact that OP is using it to engage in productive activism is even better!

I'll keep am eye on discussion and if it devolves into outrage bullshit I'll kill the post or lock comments, but I think with OP's starter comment and the good community the sub has cultivated I suspect it will be fine.

Please keep the discussion useful and productive like yall normally do.

To the other mods, as always, feel free to overrule.

nebthefool · 2022-08-18T14:40:08+00:00

This feels weirdly similar to alison's attempted rape of luther in the umbrella academy.

In which a woman commits an objectivley heinous crime that would be considered evil if equivalent were attempted IRL. But also which could and would never be shown in a gender flipped scenario in the same show. The show then just... doesn't address it, or care about it in any way.

Genuinley I don't care to much about individual instances of this sort of thing. I'd much rather live in a world where creative media pushes the boundaries occasionally if nothing else but to see where they are. It's a good way to get a handle on your own morallity and ethics when you are presented with things you disagree with.

But this is not a uncommon phenomenon, more improtantly I suspect people don't like to portray mutilation of women in a happy go lucky way because everyone agrees that's morally reprehensible. So portraying the same thing happening to a man suggests it's still up for debate. That not everyone agrees that's a fucked up thing to happen.

I'd love to have some media portray the same thing in happening to men in a way that accuratley portrays the gravity of such a thing.

WokePyramids · 2022-08-18T15:30:58+00:00

We hear criticism about how violence against women is played for the sake of drama, all the time.

But nothing about violence against men being played for laughs which happens just as much.

Deadlocked02 · 2022-08-18T14:45:11+00:00

I’d be ok with it being played for laughs or as a gratifying comeuppance for a bully if this whole thing wasn’t so one-sided. We know this wouldn’t fly if the genders were reversed, even more if the one getting revenge was a male character against a female one. I can think of very few productions where a male character brutalizes a female one as revenge for something she did. Something of that nature would be controversial even if it was a male protagonists beating the shit out of a female character, so imagine the outrage if it involved something like rape or genital mutilation (which is something that often occurs to male characters in revenge porn movies).

I genuinely believe we could use productions that weren’t afraid of pulling these narratives. Not only for the sake of diversifying the bad guys, who are usually white men, but also to test the waters and see the reaction of audiences. And if they were genuinely shocked by it, point out the double standards.

F-um · 2022-08-18T13:29:03+00:00

I was very excited to watch this series and was eagerly anticipating it, however, having seen the trailer today I know that I can't watch it.

A boy is castrated for bullying Pugsey and calling Wednesday a freak.

This isn't funny. The crime of castration is too serious to laugh about.
This is a double standard. A woman being raped would not be played for laughs in this type of show and a teenage boy being castrated is worse than that. "Hurr Durr genital mutilation is funny when it happens to a man"
This is aimed at family and teenage audiences so it is innapropriate
This diverts from the norm of the show where real violence doesn't occur unless the recepient truly "deserved" it.
The victim is a teenage boy. Teenage boys do things that a grown adult would not because they are not fully developed.

I'm going to write to Netflix and complain and I am considering ending my subscription.

excess_inquisitivity · 2022-08-18T15:41:52+00:00

“The only person who gets to torture my brother is me,” Wednesday deadpans to the team, before unleashing two plastic bags of piranhas into their practice pool. One of the bloodthirsty fish cleanly castrates Dalton, the same water-polo player who said “Hey, freak,” when she walked in.

See, WEDNESDAY didn't do the castration. It was the Piranha!

Arguably, this could be played with an "omg I didn't think it'd go that far!" if Wednesday wasn't already known to be a child with an insane family.

But the Addamses are a twisted bunch.

She's not protecting her brother. With her quote she's protecting her right to her brother, which is very different.

This was the writers' twisted humor, not the character's, and that's why the rest of the show is irredeemable.

irefuse2hateme · 2022-08-18T14:30:43+00:00

I think psychopathy is considered "empowering" when a white woman does it... or at least that's what feminism seems to support (not to mention, any behavior they deem toxic when done by men is somehow empowering when done by women or girls).

I believe they are playing to the tiktok generation of low attention spans, narcissism, solipsism, and misandry. They may also be. Pandering to the formerly "tumblr generation". It's gross. But, the scene plays out like a 2xchromosomes story. "I got sick of men and I castrated a guy, teeheehee, destroy the patriarchy, misandry doesn't exist, and I can't find the right makeup palette to go with my "kill all men/blm-red lipstick"." It's a hard pass for me.

PossumPalZoidberg · 2022-08-18T14:49:35+00:00

Yeah like, almost castrating him, or maybe having him come out with one stuck to his bare ass would be funny. But actually mutilating him and a bunch of other “collateral damage”?

THAT is way more inconsistent than casting a chubby guy as Gomez. It’s supposed to be 50s or 60s style camp violence, not “I spit on your grave” style shit after they, what, call him “pigsley”? Give him a wedgie. What they did was cartoonish violence so detached from reality it was absurd. This was just straight gore that was done viscerally, but they played it straight.

She objectively treats her family way worse than the bullies anyway.

Riccis portrayal had her endanger people, but they never showed her actually doing permanent harm. Only one person actually died in the sequel and two in the original movie.

lastfreethinker · 2022-08-18T14:54:25+00:00

Boarding school is the punishment for this... bullying gets your balls BITTEN OFF by a fish, but genital mutilation of a teen boy which is literally about removing his masculinity and feminizing him is punished with boarding school.

Shit like this is what makes me afraid for my son. I saved him from society's view he should have less sexual pleasure and penis, only to have society think one wrong move and he should be without balls.

hottake_toothache · 2022-08-18T16:41:46+00:00

People don't care about men.

Kuato2012 · 2022-08-18T21:44:32+00:00

Extreme sexual violence and mutilation against a minor, and it gets played for laughs. Absolutely demented. What a time to be alive.

When SNL did that really dark skit with the child molester robot, the whole joke was that the other cartoon evil mad scientists were horrified by how actually evil it was... Not "sexual violence against minors is funny." Also, the skit didn't depict chomobot actually raping anyone, because that would be beyond tasteless.

sexyfrikinllama · 2022-08-30T00:38:55+00:00

I was going to dismiss this as a little extreme, but reversing the genders is actually really important, there shouldn't be a social difference between the treatment of men and women

Silencio00 · 2022-08-19T13:25:24+00:00

Wait what?!

BloomingBrains · 2022-08-23T00:01:09+00:00

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the whole point of the Adams Family that they're actually wholesome and nice despite being creepy on the outside? Or at least that they magically somehow don't do any actual harm to anyone because of cartoon logic? This would appear to completely go against that.

Like with Captain Marvel, these kinds of psycho "girlboss" characters always seem to end up blowing back on women instead of "punching up" at men. Because the message I'm seeing is that "freaky" goth girls are psychos. If they did the same thing with male characters, then Peter Parker in the next Spiderman would pull out a .44 mag and blow his bullies' heads off in the middle of the schoolyard.

I wonder if part of the motivation for this is some kind of feminist fantasy to claim the same "power" that guys sometimes get by reveling in the "predator persona".

International_Crew89 · 2022-08-19T01:10:16+00:00

Almost as atrocious as casting Luis Guzman as Gomez. To play devil's advocate though, horrific violence is kind of a theme in the Adam's Family, especially committed by Wendesday. The only thing that has changed, aside from traditionally leaving out the gore-shots, is that we can look back now and have the awareness to suggest it was never funny or appropriate.

TwizzyMK · 2022-08-18T21:39:36+00:00

What I agree is arguably bad is the likely audience perception of the scene. People will likely get a kind of vicarious enjoyment out of it - but largely because the target is a bully jock, not because he is just a male. Otherwise I think the scene is fine and I’m not sure I agree with the pearl clutching here. Calling for censorship for things you don’t like is bad no matter who does it. Whether it is you for this, or conservatives for heavy metal and video games.

The fact this scene exists is fine. It is entirely consistent with Wednesday’s character. She torments and tortures everyone. It is obviously made for shock value and immediately showcases to the audience that this small female child is cunning, capable, and powerful. All while establishing that she is protective of her family. It’s efficient character writing 101.

If it were a male doing this to another male would you be as offended?

If it is due to the male anatomy being targeted for a violent and dark humoured gaffe, I am not sure it is worse that THAT scene in the recent season of The Boys, which was gut wrenchingly more impactful than this.

omegaphallic · 2022-08-18T14:46:46+00:00

I'm opposed to censorship. This is just fiction. I do like Wensday has her brothers back.

lingdingwhoopy · 2022-08-21T18:54:18+00:00

Lol I laughed.

It's a horror comedy. Who gives a fuck? Handwringing about art is so fucking pathetic whether it's coming from the right or the left.

Also, there is lots of conjecture in the title, saying the bully only did a minor offense to Pugsley. How do you know? You haven't seen it yet.

I have no home on the left when it comes to media engagement. Everything is offensive all the time to everyone.

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