Dracula Q1: Dracula then and now
This book arguably defined many of the tropes of the modern vampire story. But that was over 125 years ago, and a lot has changed in the media landscape since then. from Stoker's unknown and unknowable predator, through the angsty souls of Anne Rice, to the sparkly love interest of Twilight.
There are a couple of issues here to unpack, I think. One is that the tropes have been used and reused over time, and have by necessity been re-interpreted by a variety of story-tellers. The other is that our perceptions of vampires has perhaps changed due to familarity with those tropes. If we all know how vampires are "supposed" to behave, they lose some of their power to be frightening, becoming something familiar if still a little transgressive.
Is Dracula still scary now, or is it a worn-out empty cliche? What would you do to make Dracula (and vampires) scary again?
Comments
Hm, that's a great question. I didn't find the story scary at all - I think that was partly because of the fact that this story set out so many of the themes and tropes that others have followed. But I think it was also partly because of the mode of narration ie via letters, diaries etc. By the time you have read in person Y's diary that person X had written to then saying that they had been frightened a couple of days before, the whole sequence loses a lot of its potential immediacy. (TBH I found a lot of the story something of a slog and hardly ever thought "gosh I must get back and read the next bit").
Modern storytelling, especially in film, is much more immediate - an obvious is example the Blair Witch Project and its hand-held camera style, but I think there are lots of ways that authors and film-makers have tried to move the action much closer to the reader or watcher.
I would argue that the partial narration is the literary equivalent to the "don't show the monster" technique in films like Alien. We don't have an omniscient narrator, so we never get a definitive statement of Dracula, what he does, or what he can do. There's always space for us to imagine what else could be about to happen, and that's where the fear comes from.
Thoughts?
I also didn't find it scary. I'm never really sure if these novels are supposed to be scary. To me, horror has more to do with disgust than with fear, or it somehow lies at the crossroads of those two things. There are certainly some good creepy moments in this novel, and the overall setup is quite creepy. But somehow it lacked a certain drama that I was expecting.
I'm really not all that familiar with later vampire stories. My earliest vampire exposure was probably through halloween dress up and the Count on Sesame Street, neither of which are scary. I have always avoided modern vampire stories because I feel that vampires have long been played out - and I'm just not all that interested. I think those later novels are the empty cliches - the original, by definition, cannot be a cliche. But I can see how someone's appreciation of the original might be numbed by exposure to the imitations, if they experienced those first.
On the epistolic delivery... I'll post my thoughts in the other question.
Scary? No. Creepy? Yes. Creepy is little things that are somehow 'wrong' and slowly build up overtime, and which throw off our innate mental footing. Dracula is very good at that. I also agree with Neil that the epistolary nature of the book prevents a definitive take on Dracula, as you only see different personal views, which also I think feed into the creepiness.
It might have been cool to have one perspective from which the Count was a good-but-misunderstood guy?
The Scooby-Do version?
haha yes, though I was thinking more of Scar from The Lion King, or maybe one of the hyenas - "follow me and you'll never go hungry again!" "couldn't we just take one of the little weak and sick ones?" and so on. I guess it's the difference between being evil and villainous - the Count is the former, while Scar is definitely the latter.
I'm replying only to the part of the question about the book.
I'm not sure that Dracula was meant to be "scary." Stories of aristocrats abusing common people are long standing, and provoke strong emotions. Dracula seems to me to be more about directing "horror" onto its "proper" object. This was enabled by making obvious comparisons with the Whitechapel murders of 1888, which had a similarly short timeline, and were similarly inexplicable by the science of the day. I think Stoker took advantage of their reality, and the absence of a definitive resolution of the agent of those murders, to provide the verisimilitude for his adaptation of The Vampyre and similar stories. Dracula functions to redirect responsibility for the murders, and the failures of the society to deliver a secure life for its vulnerable members, onto foreigners who are motivated solely by hate and lust.
Sorry for the delay in replying.
This is an insightful comment. It reminds me of the analysis of "whodunnit" and other crime fiction, where the detective is the representative of good society. A crime is committed, the social order is transgressed. Then the detective comes in, identifies the transgressor, and removes them. The status quo is restored.
You're right in that Dracula can be read the same way. The idyllic British way of life is threatened by the sub-human foreigner (even described as having a child-like intelligence) and the upstanding noble heroes get to put him back in his place.