"Useful as a bucket with no bottom."

[greygirlbeast]

There's something I'm going to get over and out of the way up front, and then we can move along to other things. But, firstly, those who read this journal need to know, truly need to know and believe, that I am not to be told - ever - what I may and may not write about here. For example, should you be so clueless a git as to tell me that I must "

Comments

[ext_999196]

I have only seen the early episodes of the show, mostly before they even had Barnabas Collins, did it become more campy as the show went forward, or am I missing something?, because those early shows don't seem campy to me. This is an open question for anyone.

[greygirlbeast]

I have only seen the early episodes of the show, mostly before they even had Barnabas Collins, did it become more campy as the show went forward, or am I missing something?, because those early shows don't seem campy to me. This is an open question for anyone.

I don't mean campy in the over-the-top Rocky Horror Picture Show, drag-queen sense of the word. I mean it in a more subtle "there's no way these guys are taking this shit seriously, it's just too silly" sense of the word. Which the cast essentially confirmed.

[stsisyphus]

I suppose it's an important distinction to be made between High Camp and the "campiness" inherent in any melodrama/gothic romance (which I understand Dark Shadows was originally supposed to be evoking; and I mean "gothic" in the original 18-19th century literary sense), or any television show which is essentially a televised stage production with minimal production values.

[greygirlbeast]

Yep.

[readingthedark]

So true. Walpole had a giant helmet fall from the sky, so Gothic has always tightroped the uncanny and the absurd--but it's one thing to be true to the story and characters as things become uneasy or unusual, and something altogether different to undercut the melodramatic elements by mocking them.

[greygirlbeast]

Yes! (short answer)