Jun 8

Jun 8 [Pride 2021] Queer Homes and Chosen Families in The Curious Creations of Christine McConnell

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A wolf-man creature howls at the moon. Abandoned and cast out, we will never know where he came from or what he really is. All we know (from a sign haphazardly hung around his neck like a noose) is that we should not feed him flesh. Could he be dangerous? Is he alone because he is dangerous?

The wolf-man stumbles upon a house on a hill. Before he can wonder if he will ever know the comforts of such a home again, a beautiful woman opens the door. She smiles at him. The creatures by her side ask what he is – everyone always does – but she assures them they need not worry about labels.

“What is this place?”, he asks the beautiful woman. “This is our home”, she replies, “And it’s a place where the strange and unusual are safe and welcome.” She smiles again, a smile that recognises the truth of him: he is only dangerous because he is alone. But no longer.

She gently discards the sign from his neck.

The Curious Creations of Christine McConnell first aired on Netflix in 2018 as a hybrid cooking show/sitcom starring Christine McConnell: baker, artist, and DIY crafter extraordinaire with a penchant for all things creepy and spooky. By her side are a ragtag cast of puppets that make up her home and family: Rose, a girly yet crude raccoon with an insatiable appetite for sex and sweets; Rankle, an ancient Egyptian cat who never lost the God complex; and the newest edition to their family, Edgar, a werewolf/wolf-man who is slightly dim but has a heart of gold. The show follows their daily lives as the odd balls on the block all the while instructing viewers how to bake a Victorian mansion out of gingerbread or spiders out of caramel toffees.

But as Edgar’s introduction into the family in Episode One suggests, the appeal of Curious Creations tends towards the show’s curiosities as much as its creations. The show was (and is) immensely popular with alternative and queer communities online and, as someone who takes such a perspective, I would like to offer a reason behind the show’s success that has less to do with McConnell’s baking artistry and more so with her ‘made’ family. Curious Creations recreates the traditionally conservative nuclear family home unit as kind of haven for queer folks, protected by an equally strange and unusual mother.

In the tradition of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children and X-Men’s Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, the home of Christine McConnell is a metaphorical safe space for queer people deemed too odd for the ‘normal’ world outside. But in contrast to Headmistress Peregrine and Professor Xavier, McConnell is not a teacher at a school, but a mother of the home. Though not Rose, Rankle, and Edgar’s biological mother, she is nonetheless their life-giver: she reanimated Rose after a rubbish truck crushed her to death, she resurrected Rankle by reading the spell he was sold with at an antique store, and she rescues Edgar by taking him in and baking him bones made of chocolate and peanut butter rather than flesh.

Episode Five details Rose’s birthday and McConnell explains that they celebrate on the day she ‘made’ Rose rather than Rose’s biological date of birth; the show takes on Frankenstein as an intertext here, the ultimate queer child narrative, but rather than lament her creation, McConnell throws Rose a surprise party, kissing her goodnight at the end of the day and promising to always love her. In an explicitly queer rhetoric, family in Curious Creations is both chosen and made rather than a product of biology.

McConnell herself is a reimagining of the Angel of the House trope in representations of motherhood in fiction. “The kitchen of the perfect hostess is always open”, McConnell informs us. Following the likes of Morticia Addams of The Addams Family, McConnell is the perfect lady of the house – just with a spooky twist. But McConnell goes one step further than her 1960’s counterpart by bringing a vintage aesthetic, not vintage values, into the modern day. Her clothing and home (everything from kitchen appliances to décor) is 40s and 50s inspired, heels included. She is polite and cordial to disgruntled neighbours and maniacal family members, even when they call her a “freak” or “weird”.

Most importantly, the show implies that McConnell, like all great ladies, comes from a wealthy family. Episode Four introduces Cousin Evie, a widowed duchess corrupted by the family fortune which her parents actually left for McConnell. Throughout the episode, a few characters make comments about McConnell’s creations such as “Why can’t you just buy it?” or “You know we have real china, right?” when she makes a tea set out of chocolate. In addition to its queer recreation of the mother figure (at one point, Evie threatens to throw out McConnell’s ‘closet’, as it were), the show also performs an anti-capitalist reimagining of a great lady of the house who instead of hoarding wealth for her family alone donates her fortune to “the local leper colony”. Curious Creations reinterprets a perfect mother (the angel of the house, the dutiful hostess) as someone empathetic and kind rather than conservative or reactionary.

But McConnell functions as a mother not just for the creatures that live with her in her home, but for the audience also. In Episode Three, McConnell informs us that her grandmother introduced her to baking and her love of cooking is as much about spending time with family as it is creating delicious treats. In the cooking portions of the show, McConnell talks directly to the audience (one of the shows running gags is Rose, Rankle, and Edgar asking “Who is she talking to?!” whenever McConnell begins explaining her recipe to the audience), walking them through each step of her curious creations as I imagine her own grandmother spoke to her as a child. For a lot of queer people cast out of their own homes, this experience of being handed down family traditions like baking can never be. Watching Curious Creations is therefore an imaginative experience of having a mother instruct the audience how to bake and prepare meals. Through a fantastical reimagining of the perfect mother, Curious Creations nourishes and feeds the queer child in the audience as much as McConnell feeds her own guests and family throughout the show.

The Curious Creations of Christine McConnell invites a queer reading for its rhetoric of self-made and chosen families. The show reminds us that biology does not determine a family any more than family determines biology – anything and everything can be reimagined, redesigned, or recreated (including tropes of motherhood itself). Indeed, whether an old sofa or a dead cat, resurrection is McConnell’s speciality; as her name implies, Christine is a Christ-like figure, but with none of the fire and brimstone that queer people constantly have to look over their shoulder for.

She is a mother that welcomes the strange and unusual into her home rather than kicking them out. She is a mother that breaks (and bakes) bread with weirdos rather than condemning them to loneliness and isolation. She is a mother who literally ‘makes’ her own family, whether it be out of stitches or cake. In the end, just as a house can be made of bricks or gingerbread, a family can just as easily be chosen as it is inherited, and Christine McConnell reminds us that, whatever our foundation, a family is first and foremost made up of sweetness – kindness and sugar alike.