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« on: April 14, 2005, 03:53:57 PM »
Just a couple of historical comments on this thread...
I believe the decision not to SAY "vampire" on the air was a conscious strategy on the part of DC and the writers to try to make the first Barnabas storyline more realistic. You'll also note that before 1795, they never confronted Barnabas with a cross. I think that was deliberate--to try to create a new space for a new kind of Undead that would owe less to the existing portrayals and more to the imagination of the viewers. Of course they did use quite a lot of traditional "Gothic" iconography in the physical portrayal of Barnabas... so there was a give and take between the traditions and something that was new.
ABC had an office called Standards and Practices that was internal to the network and I believe all the scripts had to be stamped by that office. In a book that came out several years ago about the first Barnabas storyline, the editor reprinted a memo from the S & P office which was, I believe, addressed to the producers and directors and had to do with scenes involving Willie, Jason and Barnabas. They were concerned that Jason not be insinuating that he thought Willie and Barn were a gay couple in a scene with Willie in which he had some smirking dialogue about his former playmate's "light housekeeping" duties in the Old House.
I think the business about a male vampire not biting another man in the throat, etc. also came from S & P or from a presumption about how they would react--so, if this was censorship, it was more or less self-censorship.
The Bible-thumping crowd did conduct campaigns against DS but I think it was all too small scale for the network to bother over. I never heard about it at the time. I have to say I get a giggle out of the idea of DS as "the devil's favorite TV show."
G.