Bill KeveneyBEVERLY HILLS, Calif. – There's blood and violence in Fox's Scream Queens, but co-creator Ryan Murphy sees it as being much different from his FX series, American Horror Story.
"Scream Queens is a much more satirical, cartoonish quality (to the violence) than American Horror Story does, which is much more sexualized and darker at times," he told writers during a Fox panel at the Television Critics Association summer press tour Thursday.
Murphy, also a creator of Glee, said he found it interesting that he and fellow executive producers Ian Brennan and Brad Falchuk received more network questions about language and sexuality than for violence in Queens (Sept. 22), a comedy-horror mix.
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"Language and the girls having an empowering sense of their sexuality ... get the most attention and the most pushback," he said. "Violence is cool" to the same network standards officials.
Queens focuses on a college sorority with a murder mystery in its past and a campus with a killer clad in devil clothing in its present.
When the writers were asked about the harsh and sometimes offensive comments made by sorority leader Chanel (Emma Roberts), Jamie Lee Curtis, the iconic Halloween star who plays a college dean who forces the exclusive sorority to open its doors to all, pointed to the show's satirical focus.
"It is a social satire and actually we say what people think. We live in a bubble where (people are) all trying to behave and look a certain way. This flays imagined behaviors of human beings," she said. "Everyone is wearing a mask and this show peels off that mask each week."
The characters "can say anything as long as they stay true to their screwed-up moral code," Falchuk said.
As far as the show's perspective on sororities – and fraternities, which also are featured – "It's hard to look at them now and not (see them) as a little bit antiquated," he said.
Skyler Samuels, a real-life sorority member who plays Queens sorority newcomer Grace, said some recent news stories have featured fraternity and sorority "boys and girls not making the best choices" but that the characters can bond and also display a "good brotherhood and sisterhood."
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