Dracula - Blog Posts
I read Bram Stoker's Dracula right after changing the course of my studies. From a fine university I went to another brilliant one. Everything around me seemed to take new shape and I had to learn new customs. In this phase, when my brain was forced to let fresh things pass, I found myself absorbed in this piece of literature, which I had been meaning to read for quite some time then. And so it was, I read it and found it interesting and original. On the contrary, I felt it wasn't a perfect match for me, since it was set in and meant to be understood in another era.
Time passed and I concealed my Dracula experience in the back of my head. This period, however, came to an end, when, yesterday night, I stumbled upon Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula (1992), and I couldn't resist, so I watched it.
The cast is near perfect, Keanu Reeves being probably the only odd one out, since he looked way too young and inexperienced to take on the role of Jonathan Harker. But all in all, Gary Oldman (Dracula), Winona Ryder (Mina Harker) and Anthony Hopkins (van Helsing), acted so stupendously, that left me breathless at certain points of the film. The directing was also terrific--of course, what else could we anticipate seeing Coppola's name on the credit roll.
Before saying anything I must remark, that I'm a huge supporter of book adaptations, so I had a very positive attitude towards the movie beforehand. At the very end of the film, it sadly turned into bitter disappointment. But remember, I write this, having established, that it was almost perfectly made.
Dracula's original story operates with stereotypical characters and countless elements brought in from superstition--not strictly, just in comparison with contemporary ways. The story has its twists and mysteries but those aren't as shocking and sudden as it would be expected from a current book. It begins with a solicitor, Harker's visit at castle Dracula and an encounter with the monster, Dracula. From here the count goes to London, seeking new lands to hunt humans. Harker's fiance, Mina is staying at her friend's place, at the same time. This friend, Lucy, has a habit of sleepwalking. When Dracula arrives to England, she, conveniently, happens to be the easiest target. The count feeds on her regularly, killing her little by little, until it gets too suspicious and Lucy's noble admirers, joined by professor Abraham van Helsing, unite to discover what torments the woman. They come to a right conclusion eventually but then it's too late and Lucy's transformed into a hellish creature, so they are forced to kill her, in order to grant her eternal rest and avoidance of godly condemnation. The fellowship decides to hunt the original vampire down and through Mina they get acquinted with Harker, who just returned, having scarcely survived his stay at the count's castle but is now resolute to bring down destruction upon the demonic creature. Dracula, moving on from Lucy, also turns Mina into a vampire, or comes really close to it, and then the men (and Mina) enter into a tight chase him and kill him.
In Stoker's novel, Dracula is a very instinct-driven killer. He only seeks base things and is not a bit a human. We don't get to see his backstory’s smaller details, only that he used to be an important and extraordinary man, then, at some point, he attended the Scholomance and has been like this ever since, only growing greater in his abilities. The only thing he engages in, apart from killing and turning people into vampires, is experimenting with ways to become more efficient at his other pursuit. Stoker wrote him as someone, who is led by evil and nothing else.
Dracula has one equal: van Helsing, who is almost identical to him, with the crucial difference of being motivated by good--by christian ideas in this story, mixed with superstition.
The movie tried to remain true to the source material in regards of the plot and interfered where intellectually a renovation seemed due. For example Coppola kept the means, by which the mourners of Lucy hunted the count but fundamentally changed the motives of Dracula. He tried to give sense to the character and so came up with the idea, that it would be of bigger service to the plot if the count was led by romantic feelings. It is supposed to give depth and seriousness to the drama. However, it works only if we fail to understand Stoker's original intents or if we are reluctant.
In the movie the count is fueled by grief and longing, after his dead wife, tragically killed hundreds of years ago. This event is where the movie’s Dracula experiences his extreme disappointment in the church and turns to other sources. The director takes it even further: Mina is somehow the reincarnation of Dracula's dead wife--this is very explicit, since she has actual memories from her past life. They both recognize each other and are gravitated to each other, even so, love each other honestly.
The movie has another important aspect: All of the good characters are humanized. The screenwriter threw away the naive figures and applied contemporary materialist tools to repaint them.
Coppola took the good characters and made them as bad as any other man and took the evil one and made him as good as any other. But what are the vampire hunters without a high ground? Dracula, in the other hand, has a morose reason behind all his evil-doings and is thus legitimized, made the victim of the story.
Stoker painted a picture, that was clearly white and black and then came Coppola, saying 'Hey dude, life's more complicated, than that'. Of course life is more complicated, than that but Stoker had an entirely different meaning. In his story: There is a transcendent world, there are transcendent values. In Coppola's vision, what we get is very grounded: we all are the same (not equal but identical!), regardless from the appearances, and the idea that everyone faces something after they're dead is as old as Stoker's vampire, and just as much an entertaining element of folklore but nothing more.
The movie denied the concept of good and bad. It rationalized that if we were Dracula, we'd probably end up doing things that could be deemed wrong, yet we would be as valiant as humans ever were. This is not necessarily killing or whatnot but we wouldn't be perfect if our lives weren't perfect. Dracula was demonic but with a certain justification. He had to be killed, of course, but it was tragic, in contrast with Stoker's ending of the story, where it was a relief.
Originally I liked Dracula's story because everything the characters did, even when they killed the abominations created by the count, or the count himself, served other purposes, than to increase the spectacle of the story. The hunters freed souls and granted them such things, that were impossible for the victims to attain on earth any more but existed nonetheless. Stoker believed in morals that aren't based solely on practicality but on a grand concept, that there exists the metaphysical and good above the world we know--that there exists God.
so at a used book store a couple months back i found an annotated copy of dracula, and now that dracula daily is a thing, i’ve finally gotten around to reading it.
they have the fuckign. chicken paprika recipe that knocked out our boy johnny.
now you too can upset your mild-mannered stomach so badly that you have fever dreams of a sexy haunted castle
thankful to Dracula Daily for teaching me that this Hark a Vagrant comic is literally exactly what happens in the book
When everybody is online at the same time and the dash is thriving 😌
Ur crazy
oHOOOHOOHOOHROJRSDJFKSEKLJBSEKJFBSEKF
i stayed up until after midnight in my timezone just for him to be honest
speaking of renfield. I GOT THE DRACULA VERSION ILLUSTRATED BY BECKY CLOONAN IN THE MAIL YESTERDAY AND HER ILLUSTRATIONS ARE SO COOL
kyaaaaaaa!! >/////<
ill add renfields first mention to this post when i get it in the mail tomorrow!! :3
Eats you
oHOOOHOOHOOHROJRSDJFKSEKLJBSEKJFBSEKF
i stayed up until after midnight in my timezone just for him to be honest
speaking of renfield. I GOT THE DRACULA VERSION ILLUSTRATED BY BECKY CLOONAN IN THE MAIL YESTERDAY AND HER ILLUSTRATIONS ARE SO COOL
kyaaaaaaa!! >/////<
ill add renfields first mention to this post when i get it in the mail tomorrow!! :3
I have no context for this but at the same time it completely makes sense
Best thing to wake up to
tried animating (???) something again :3
renfield when nothing happens:
i have a bunch of ideas for things to add so this is still unfinished but... idk how to draw them.. 💔
Peter MacNicol, Darla Haun & Karen Roe as Renfield & Dracula brides in:
Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995) by Mel Brooks
Costumes by Dodie Shepard
Production Design by Roy Forge Smith
Make-up by Jane English, Alan Friedman, Carol Schwartz & Todd McIntosh
Leslie Nielsen, Peter MacNicol, Steven Weber, Amy Yasbeck, Lysette Anthony, Harvey Korman & Mel Brooks in:
Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995) by Mel Brooks
Casting by Lindsay Chag & Bill Shepard
Greta Schröder as Ellen Hutter in Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922) by F. W. Murnau
Isabelle Adjani as Lucy Harker in Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (1979) by Werner Herzog
Lily-Rose Depp as Ellen Hutter in Nosferatu (2024) by Robert Eggers
Vampire
Sources: SigningSavvy, ASLDeafined
[Image ID: vampire in American Sign Language. Hand in bent V handshape taps the side of the signers neck. Hand and mouth, which is depicted with fangs, are drawn in red. End ID]
Thank you, Butterfly!
all right so here's the schedule of when dracula daily will be updated, as gleaned from the archives
please share this, it was a pain in the ass
Regarding May 12 Dracula Daily / Re: Dracula,
SO! Cloaks do not “spread out like great wings” when you’re crawling face-down the side of a building UNLESS you have arranged some hooks or clips or some such to keep the cloak in place.
I wanna see Dracula getting annoyed at his cloak, which keeps falling over his head when he’s climbing downward head-first, Until he finally devises some method to attach the cloak to his wrist and waist / thighs / ankles, which cleverly keeps the cloak spread out on his back despite the best efforts of gravity.
Can anyone here draw? Or has anyone already done this? Please point me to the right place!
Is it weird that I’d love to see all the various children of Dracula from media over the years in a sitcom as actual siblings? XD
remember back in the twilight heyday when people would be like “edward SUCKS. vampires aren’t supposed to be sparkly and broody they’re supposed to be scary and monstrous and powerful!” like. yeah im sure that would be great in a romance love triangle story aimed at teenage girls
A long time ago I read Dracula in Spanish and now I'm going to read it along with everyone else and maybe it's the time but I didn't remember it was SO FUCKING RIDICULOUS THIS IS HILARIOUS.
There's something hilarious about how so much subsequent media has positioned Vampires and Werewolves as, like, binary opposite entities, and then you read Dracula (1897) and realize that wolves are that guy's preferred solution to every problem. You'd say something to Dracula about "ah yes, werewolves, vampires' great eternal enemies," and he'd just be like "you mean my subcontractors?"
how dare adaptations make dracula/mina the ship when first of all, jonathan is the obvious gothic heroine of the book, and second of all mina would put the fear of God in dracula for touching her man. she proposed to him as soon as he woke up from his coma and MARRIED him while he was in the sick bed of a catholic hospital, this girl is Not Normal either
She had sorcery in those eyes, and he was bewitched, besotted, begone.
Gothikana | RuNyx
If the OG Monster Movie Monsters got Gothic Horror remakes in the early 2000s
After thinking how Phantom of The Opera and The Mummy got remakes in the late 90s-early 00s I was thinking what if the other Universal/Movie Monsters got the same gothic horror remakes and….
Christian Bale-Dracula
Jared Padalecki- Frankenstein’s Monster
Shawnee Smith-The Bride of Frankenstein
Bruce Campbell-Lawrence Talbot/The Wolfman
Jake Gyllenhaal-Dr Henry Jekyll//Skeet Ulrich-Edward Hyde
Heath Ledger-Dr Jack Griffin/The Invisible Man
Matthew Lillard-Count Orlok
there was a young patient who swallowed a fly,
he swallowed a flyyyy
becausedr.sewardtoldhimtooooo
I hope he won't poo
Someone should rewrite There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly, but with Renfield instead of an old lady. I think it would be delightful.
Dracula: does not eat or drink
Jonathan "it's probably fine" Harker: He must be a very peculiar man!
Dracula: has no reflection
Jonathan "probably nothing" Harker: that was startling
Dracula: literally lunges at his throat
J. "Crucifix Beads" Harker: !?!?!??
Queer vampires are the elite of the society