CNN
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Wednesday Adams does nothing by accident. The most intense and deliberate member of the Addams family, she rarely makes unnecessary gestures, including smiles and jerks.
So when the dancing spirit had a particularly awkward teenager named after her at her school dance in her new Netflix series, it led to immediate excitement, onscreen and off.
The short scene takes up less than three minutes of the entire series, but it’s quickly becoming the most iconic moment of “Wednesday” for how free our kooky filmmaker feels. Her eyes betray a rare, seductive passion. Her legs, normally glued to her side, hang freely. The dance is hers, to be sure—a lot of stiff, tired moves and gestures from decades past. Surely no one can mistake the Wednesday dance for the latest tic-tac trend, right?
Something about this strange dance unleashed the strange in all of us, and it took off faster than a fire at Camp Chippewa. Choreography clips encouraged viewers to watch the series, making it one of the streamer’s most-watched shows (“Stranger Things” anyone?). Its online popularity put Lady Gaga’s “Bloody Mary” back on the charts more than a decade after the song’s release, and it was only featured on fan-made TikToks, not the show itself! “Wednesday” star Gina Ortega admits she choreographed the routine herself — calling out new fans — celebrities included — to give it a twist and even infuse the routine with moves from her cultures.
Wednesday Adams would probably be upset if she knew her moves were made, shockmainstream, but her dance won’t die – and that, he might enjoy it. Here’s what gives “Wednesday” dance its supernatural staying power.
The “Wednesday” dance scene only started a month ago, but it already has a certain “mythology,” said Gina Drinten, an associate professor of marketing at Loyola University Chicago who studies how users of TikTok and other digital platforms express their identities. .
Most of the scene was made up of curtains. Ortega, who on Wednesday played with a teenage girl in Tactic with his dark humor, said he choreographs the routine himself. she counted Among her influences are Bob Fosse, Siouxsie Sioux and the goth dance clubs of the 80s (she probably also sneaked in some references to the TV series “The Addams Family” from the 60s).
What’s more, Ortega admitted that she’s not a trained dancer, making her routines perhaps even more inviting to non-dancers who find routines in tic-tac, Drinten said.
“I’m not a dancer and I’m sure that’s obvious,” Ortega told NME.
But Ortega’s dedication also sparked outrage – she told NME she filmed some dancing while waiting for the results of a Covid-19 test, which later came back positive. This prompted some to condemn the production for failing to follow proper Covid-19 prevention protocols on set – but still, “Wednesday” continued to make waves.
Drentin said the viral trends that stay in the cultural conversation the longest usually don’t just stay on their platform. Look at Korn’s kid: He appeared in a YouTube series praising Cobb, then clips of his appearance went viral on TikTok, and he went on to work after that. chipotleGreen Giant and the state of South Dakota, developing corn offline.
“To have a long shelf life, tech trends have to make that leap beyond the boundaries of tech into a cultural trend,” she said. “Wednesday Dance has benefited in that sense because dance and the Addams Family legacy have been built outside of tic-tac-toe since its inception.”
Another thing that “Wednesday” dance has on its side – the human tendency to learn to dance for social currency.
Think “electric slide,” “macarina,” “cupid’s shuffle”—bat mitzvah and wedding standards, moves most of us know so well that we can do them without thinking. Performing them en masse at the same event may feel like a Pavlovian response to the DJ’s song selection, but it’s also a shared ritual that “creates a sense of connection and belonging,” Drentin said.
“Every gesture and movement enables the person doing it to naturally say, ‘I get it, I get it, we have this shared experience,'” Drinten said.
That’s part of the reason why dance routines, from “Renegade” to Lizzo’s “Curse Time,” so often dominate tic-tac-toe. But contrary to those trends, the “Wednesday” dance was not set to a popular song, although the Kramps punk anthem “Go Go Mac” has since gained some new fans. The moves were easy enough to pick up, Drinten said, “straightforward but unique.”
But it took Lady Gaga to take “Wednesday” into the dance stratosphere. The version that went über-viral on TikTok is a “fancom” of sorts, or a pair of clips, set appropriately to Gaga’s “Bloody Mary,” a gospel song that gets people dancing non-stop. Even Mother Monster herself did a version of the “Wednesday” dance, wearing two long frogs.
Millions of users have since put their own spin on the Wednesday school dance solo, with some users incorporating Polynesian or Indian dance styles into their versions or creating their own Wednesday looks (the thing, the split arm, included! ).
Of course, against Wednesday’s morals, he never considered replacing them. He is completely content on his island, where the sun never shines and old torture devices abound. That Wednesday’s unusual moves have been widely copied could diminish her status as the patron saint of weirdos — except Wednesday’s style and attitude have been copied for decades.
Wednesday Addams has been around in one form or another since the late 1930s—first as an unnamed comic character, then as a toddler on a television sitcom, then in her most famous iteration before “ Wednesday” premiered, as the dead-eyed Christina Ricci. And Wednesday fans have been dressing up like her for decades, Drinten said, often inspired by Ricky’s image. Addams’ biggest baby is no longer a secret that her biggest fans can keep from mainstream pop culture.
Since Wednesday’s debut, she has been a strange icon for those close to Goth because of her unapologetic commitment to solitude and impurity. Yet she is still an “anxiety” among fictional women and girls, Emily Alford wrote for Longreads, because she never softened or became the story’s villains. She is who she is, and she is not changing.
“She brought to the screen a sickly self-acceptance that set her apart, and became an important role model for a generation of girls developing their own slapstick comedy,” Alford wrote.
And now, many of these girls and other users find each other on TikTok, where appropriate communities can grow (or reach real users). The app is “a place for people to find who they are, and more importantly, to find other people who have the same interests as them,” Drinten said, even if those interests include matching up as a particular homeless youth. to be
“Tic Tac actually promotes a lot of reproduction and users can feel pressured to act, perform and look a certain way,” said Drinten. “But Wednesday reminds people to dive into a sea of sameness.”
