July 28, 2013
Still haven't heard about that job that I interviewed for a few days ago. I was anxious going into the weekend, knowing that I wouldn't hear anything until Monday (tomorrow), but reading this book, working, and spending time with my family have distracted me enough that I'm not losing my mind over it. So, here is another novel that is the origin of a pop culture icon...as a matter of fact, this book basically launched its own genre, which is currently popular again (with TV shows like True Blood or Vampire Diaries, or those Twilight books that are currently not, and will probably never end up on, my list). While I had been disappointed with Frankenstein, I enjoyed reading Dracula, because unlike Victor Frankenstein, the characters in this book weren't whiny little bitches.
I was already somewhat familiar with the story. I've seen the movie Bram Stoker's Dracula a few times. I had a thing for Gary Oldman when I was in high school, and I watched this movie, and others like True Romance and Sid and Nancy because he's in them. The only thing I can criticize about this film is Keanu Reeve's performance as Jonathan Harker. Otherwise, the cast was pretty solid, and as far as I've been able to tell, it's probably the most faithful retelling of Stoker's novel that has been put to film.
Except for one kind of major thing, which makes all the difference now that I've read the book. See, in the movie, they made up this whole back story about how Dracula, when he was Vlad the Impaler (he is never directly identified as being this individual in the novel, but his history of being a noble warrior in the Crusades is described), came home from battle and found that his wife had been tricked by his enemies into committing suicide. So, like, his eternal unrest had something to do with that, and when he saw a picture of Harker's Mina, he saw how much she resembled his former love, and decided to make her his own. So when he goes to London, he charms her and seduces her, even though she does go off to tend to Jonathan and marries him (as in the book). Mina, in the movie, is torn between her spiritual lover Dracula and her husband Jonathan, and she willingly submits to becoming Dracula's undead slave (though in the book, he threatens her and forces her into it). But as Van Helsing and the other men pursue the vampire, she does help them (as in the book), though at the end she nearly turns on them in favor of her master. Dracula's death is more dramatic in the movie than in the book, too. Something about the way the movie ended, after the whole tension of this affair is built up between Dracula and Mina, never quite satisfied me, and now I know why. Whoever wrote the movie threw that part in, mingling it with the rest of the story (which is mostly told it as depicted in the book), which changed the whole tone.
Mina in the book is a stronger, more admirable character, and she forms strong bonds with the men who are hunting down the vampire. She is an intelligent woman, but lovely and gentle. Lucy, Dracula's first English victim, is much the same way (while in the movie, she's very entertaining as Mina's scandalously sexual friend; the two even share a full-out kiss in the rainy garden, something that is definitely not in the book!). They were probably what the author imagined to be ideal women. Mina was steadfast in her devotion to her husband, and to her friends, even as she was fighting her (literal) internal demons. I kept waiting for her to waver a bit, to say or do or think something that would justify the filmmaker's interpretation, but no. She has no love for the vampire, only pity, as she realizes that destroying him would save his soul as well as her own.
The book, through the famous character Van Helsing (who really does not become a vampire hunter until his old age, in this text, though he's been famously reincarnated into the role of a vampire or monster hunter in some films), acknowledges that the legend of vampires has been alive in some cultures for centuries. Dracula was one of the first texts to solidify the ideas of vampires that are still popular today (like that they do not like garlic, or that holy symbols hurt their powers, or that they are powerless when the sun is up), but after doing a little more digging, I found that Stoker would have been inspired by the novella The Vampyre by John William Polidori, in which the nobleman vampire gets away in the end. Still, I think that most would agree, whether or not they've read the book, that Dracula was the one that really started it all. For better or for worse, you might say. A few months ago, I remember declaring, "I'm really sick of this vampire shit," so I guess you could say it was refreshing to read the original text, and to find it to be a worthwhile read. The characters knew Dracula to be the enemy, and there was none of this vampires and mortals falling in love crap that for some reason so many people seem to get a kick out of.
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Vampire imagery tends to be very sexual. I guess this was the case in the novel, as Dracula attacked Mina multiple times in her bed, for instance, and drank from her neck before forcing her to drink from his chest. Vampires in popular culture today are typically sexual, and some people take the whole vampire thing to extremes. I don't get it, but hey, who I am to judge?
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