"I'm alive and I know what it means to be Lakota."
November 27, 2014 4:43 PM   Subscribe

"... I love the version of the Thanksgiving story in the movie Addams Family Values, because I get to see the Indians win." [SLGuardian]
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome (31 comments total) 31 users marked this as a favorite
 
Speaking of Addams Family Values, I guess this as good a place as any to post the new A Tribe Called Red track that dropped today.
posted by thecjm at 4:44 PM on November 27, 2014 [15 favorites]


Ugh, why do I always expect the comments in the guardian to not be cesspool of idiocy? Today I'm truly thankful for metafilter.
posted by steganographia at 4:58 PM on November 27, 2014 [2 favorites]


That final paragraph is dead on. Loved this.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 5:07 PM on November 27, 2014 [2 favorites]


Anything that serves as a reminder of the '90s Addams Family movies is A-OK by me
posted by DoctorFedora at 5:10 PM on November 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


They have no right to be as funny and smart as they are. And yet they are the funniest smartest movies. Especially this scene which is basically intolerable Basturds.

Also spoiler alert I just realized watching this the other day that the bad guys indisputably die in the end of both movies.

Oh and my favorite joke:
Fake Doctor: ahh then you started feeling the little black monster...(meaning jealousy)
Gomez: (excitedly) Pugsley!

Utter stupid brilliance. How did they come to exist? How could a tv reboot be so faithful to the cartoon and full of nerdy fan service and yet so well made and surprising? I need an oral history. AV Club I'm looking at you.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 5:58 PM on November 27, 2014 [18 favorites]


Anyway, the article:

My family getting together to eat and celebrate our lives on a day that represents the genocide of our ancestors and culture is, in its own way, a “fuck you” to colonialisation.

Damn right.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:01 PM on November 27, 2014 [7 favorites]


Seriously one of the funniest movies ever made. Perfect casting, writing, and production. Endlessly quotable.
posted by ao4047 at 6:03 PM on November 27, 2014




Oh lord they eat the counselors too I'm dying
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:32 PM on November 27, 2014


In Canada, the name "Lakota" conjures up images of Don Cherry and Cold F/X "cold medication."
posted by Nevin at 6:33 PM on November 27, 2014


In case you need a refresher...

"And then comes, the monologue."

That is a well placed comma if there ever was one.
posted by figurant at 6:51 PM on November 27, 2014


Movie discussed on FanFare
posted by The Whelk at 6:52 PM on November 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


Hmm. The original Thanksgiving involved the Pilgrims and the Wapanoag teaming up to fend off the Narragansett. Then the Great Migration happens, and Massasoit's son, Metacomet, decides to put ethnic cleansing on the table to deal with unchecked immigration and the changes in local culture and politics it brings, and is shocked to discover the Europeans are better at it than he is.

This doesn't put the modern USA off the hook, or even the original USA as Henry Knox is writing with furious anger about the raw deal the new nation is giving the original inhabitants... while he forces them to accept it at cannon-point as Secretary of War during the Northwest Indian War.

I'm just saying, the original Thanksgiving is about Americans and Immigrants working together, and that's OK.

Columbus day is bullshit, tho, we need to start celebrating "Galileo Day" or "Da Vinci Day" instead.
posted by Slap*Happy at 7:25 PM on November 27, 2014 [7 favorites]


> "we went through all the usual baby names...Lucifer...Benito...Mao..."

What do you think inspired the first part of my username?
posted by benito.strauss at 8:02 PM on November 27, 2014


we need to start celebrating "Galileo Day" or "Da Vinci Day" instead.

It can literally be any Italian so why not have an Isabella Rossilini day parade?
posted by The Whelk at 8:15 PM on November 27, 2014 [20 favorites]


I love that Amanda Buckman is played by the same actress who was the Girl Scout in the first movie. The Addams have been a thorn in her side for a long time.
posted by maxsparber at 8:33 PM on November 27, 2014 [2 favorites]


I love that Amanda Buckman is played by the same actress who was the Girl Scout in the first movie.

Who went on to be Harmony in the Buffyverse, too. (My friends and I watched these movies on November 1st. They hold up amazingly well.)
posted by Navelgazer at 8:44 PM on November 27, 2014 [6 favorites]


I love that Amanda Buckman is played by the same actress who was the Girl Scout in the first movie. The Addams have been a thorn in her side for a long time.

And now I have to rewatch Harm's Way again.
posted by figurant at 8:45 PM on November 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


"Oh, my little Cacophony!"
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:05 PM on November 27, 2014


I still reblog this gifset whenever it comes around on Tumblr, but lately I've been distracted by trying to figure out what young David Krumholtz is doing off to the side there.
posted by rewil at 9:41 PM on November 27, 2014


Dirty pool, old man! I like it!
posted by ostranenie at 10:12 PM on November 27, 2014 [5 favorites]


And now I have to rewatch Harm's Way again.

Turns out that was a good decision.
posted by figurant at 10:21 PM on November 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


Any Italian? Italian-American?

Then I want Mario Cuomo Day.

To celebrate the esteemed former Governor of New York and/or the lead singer for The Orwells. Either one, really.
posted by spinifex23 at 12:15 AM on November 28, 2014 [1 favorite]


Remember Squanto? More than likely Tisquantum was not the name he was given at birth. In that part of the Northeast, tisquantum referred to rage, especially the rage of manitou, the world-suffusing spiritual power at the heart of coastal Indians’ religious beliefs. When Tisquantum approached the Pilgrims and identified himself by that sobriquet, it was as if he had stuck out his hand and said, Hello, I’m the Wrath of God.
posted by zaelic at 2:45 AM on November 28, 2014 [17 favorites]


It can literally be any Italian so why not have an Isabella Rossilini day parade?

Because Isabella Rossilini is best celebrated at home, alone, with the lights out.
posted by cjorgensen at 7:36 AM on November 28, 2014 [1 favorite]


I'm just saying, the original Thanksgiving is about Americans and Immigrants working together, and that's OK.

You might find this excerpt from 1491 interesting. The whole book is really great reading on pre-Columbian American history, this is just the First Thanksgiving passage. Here's an excerpt about the history of "Squanto":
No record survives of Tisquantum’s first journey across the Atlantic ... Tisquantum would have been tied or chained, to prevent rebellion ... [Hunt, a slaver] intended to sell all of his cargo, including the human beings.

What Tisquantum saw on his return home was unimaginable. From southern Maine to Narragansett Bay, the coast was empty – “utterly void,” Dermer reported. What had once been a line of busy communities was now a mass of tumbledown homes and untended fields overrun by blackberries. Scattered among the houses and fields were skeletons bleached by the sun. Slowly Dermer’s crew realized they were sailing along the border of a cemetery two hundred miles long and forty miles deep. Patuxet had been hit [by Western-introduced diseases] with special force. Not a single person remained. Tisquantum’s entire social world had vanished.

[Seriously, read the whole excerpt, Tisquantum's playing off the Europeans against Massasoit (the leader of the Wampanoag) is fascinating.]
I like Thanksgiving too. But the idea of friendly Indians and Pilgrims sitting down to have a nice turkey dinner is ahistorical nonsense. Dangerous nonsense, it causes us to forget the real history. I love this bit from the Addams Family movie because it points out the absurdity of the delusional history with humor. Me, I mostly think about it with anger.
posted by Nelson at 8:41 AM on November 28, 2014 [6 favorites]


I've read it, and it's fantastic, and you've misread it. The notion that the Pilgrims were responsible in any way for the plagues devastating North America is ahistorical - and the Wampanoag were allying with the Pilgrims, so yes, the first Thanksgiving involved two new co-operative allies sitting down for a meal. It wasn't until after the Great Migration the relationship came apart completely and violently due to a sudden demographic shift.
posted by Slap*Happy at 11:11 AM on November 28, 2014


Fair enough, Slap*Happy. We can celebrate the alliance coordinated by the Indian victim of European slavery and the feckless starving Pilgrims with and against Massasoit. A complex political dance against the backdrop of the destruction of two continents' worth of civilizations caused largely by the unintentional disease holocaust.

For yet another perspective, What Really Happened at the First Thanksgiving? The Wampanoag Side of the Tale is interesting. Mostly a happy story told by Ramona Peters.
So they were very vulnerable and we did protect them, not just support them, we protected them. You can see throughout their journals that they were always nervous and, unfortunately, when they were nervous they were very aggressive.
posted by Nelson at 11:28 AM on November 28, 2014


Because Isabella Rossilini is actually Isabella Rossellini?
posted by lydhre at 11:43 AM on November 28, 2014


Speaking of Addams Family Values, I guess this as good a place as any to post the new A Tribe Called Red track that dropped today.

This piece conveniently has the song and the scene on one page.
posted by homunculus at 6:36 PM on November 29, 2014


It's been on the Blue before, but just wanted to remind everyone of the excellent Adult Wednesday Adams YouTube series, especially considering that Wednesday is at the center of the sequence described in the post. It had a funding round at IndieGogo to make a second season last month and it came in successful!
posted by JHarris at 4:30 AM on November 30, 2014


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