Beyond Genre: Bram Stoker’s Dracula
Reclaiming The Female Horror Tradition
The motion picture Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), directed by Francis Ford Coppola, has been a constant cinematic favourite of mine. To this day, it remains a beautifully lurid tale that reflects some of humanity’s deepest fears and passions. Its appeal lies in its traversing of genres, and its success in the defiance to be pigeon-holed. This essay is going to establish how not just genre but also gender shapes the way the film can be perceived and deciphered — and how it reclaims the horror tradition for its female fans.
Defining Genre
There are various aspects and factors (so called “genre conventions”) that can define a genre, for example a certain plot pattern (like a detective film following the investigation of a crime), an emotional effect on the audience (e.g. horror films or comedies), or a manner of presentation (like telling a story through music). Some genre groups are be defined by a shared subject or theme, as might be the case for Bram Stoker’s Dracula: Here, the vampire is the central figure. But can vampire films shape a whole new genre?
The Iconography of Vampires
A subject genre always features some kind of conventional iconography, i.e. “recurring symbolic images that carry meaning from film to film” (Bordwell & Thompson, 2013, p. 53), or a shared syntax. This overarching syntax encompasses common themes and repeating semantic elements like ‘The Vampire’ itself, ‘The Expert’, ‘The Bite’, ‘The Infection’ and ‘The Destruction’ of The Vampire. (Kane, 2006, p. 9)
The semantic element of The Vampire deals with the character’s appearance, disposition and mannerisms; the same applies to the semantic element of The Expert (i.e. the vampire hunter). The element of the The Bite refers to the vampire’s attack and how victims react to it; the element of the The Infection explores how the vampire deals with his vampirism, while The Destruction examines how he is destroyed and by whom. These semantic elements can be established by analyzing the mise-en-scène of different films within the Dracula canon, all of which used Bram Stoker’s eponymous gothic novel, published in 1897, as their original source.
Uncertain Ground
As film scholars have pointed out, “genre is a concept that stands on uncertain ground” (Lacey, 2005, p. 84). Genres change and evolve over time; some films don’t even fit into just one category, constituting “hybrids” that borrow and combine elements from different genres. This can help to reinvigorate a genre which might have stagnated and lost its appeal to audiences — a fate once suffered by the vampire narrative. In his book The Changing Vampire of Film and Television (2006), Tim Kane differentiates between three stages of vampire film: the ‘Malignant Cycle’ (1931-1948), the ‘Erotic Cycle’ (1957-1985), and the ‘Sympathetic Cycle’ (1987-present).
During the Malignant Cycle, the films based on the book — including Dracula (1931), Dracula’s Daughter (1936), Son of Dracula (1943) and Return of the Vampire (1944) — were “highly experimental” in the way they explored the semantic elements of the vampire film (Kane, 2006, p. 21). A lot of new elements (which were not taken from the book but invented by the filmmakers) were introduced but also abandoned. Amongst others, a new form of The Vampire’s destruction was developed: Dracula’s vulnerability to sunlight.
Sex Sells
With the Erotic Cycle, including Horror of Dracula (1958), Blacula (1972), and the two Dracula films from 1974 and 1979 respectively, the narrative shifted towards the sensual and sexual aspects of vampirism. The Vampire’s victims split into two groups: the ones he disposes of thoughtlessly, and the ones he treats with (relative) kindness. Love scenes involving The Vampire became more popular, like the ones between Frank Langella’s Dracula and Lucy Westenra in the 1979 version. During the Erotic Cycle, The Expert (Van Helsing) takes on a more important role and becomes an active screen character that — with the help of stakes, a mallet and a cross — “accomplishes the final destruction of the vampire” (Kane, 2006, p. 44). In contrast to this, Francis Ford Coppola, director of the 1992 version, chose a different outcome: Instead of Van Helsing, Mina Murray brings about Dracula’s demise in the final scene of the film.
Sympathy For The Devil
The third and most recent cycle of the vampire cinema is the Sympathetic Cycle. At the beginning of this stage, films like The Lost Boys (1987), Near Dark (1987) and Interview with the Vampire (1994) emerged. As the name suggests, this stage focuses on the vampire as the hero — or at least a “sympathetic villain” (Kane, 2006, p. 89) — and often includes a romantic storyline for them. The films of this cycle seem to unravel the previous syntax of the vampire narrative, moving the central character (i.e. The Vampire) away from the aristocratic realm and putting them within “the context of everyday life” (p. 88). For instance, The Lost Boys takes place in California during the 1980s and focuses on a group of teenagers who are faced with vampirism. This sudden shift of the narrative into a modern context seemed to be necessary to revive the vampire genre. Kane argues that it needed to adjust itself according to the ever changing taste of the audience, which had grown tired of the repeating semantic elements of the earlier vampire cinema. In order to achieve a revival, vampire films of the ’80s and ’90s meshed several different genres with the vampire narrative to create a genre pastiche. Thus, The Lost Boys can be classified as a teenage horror comedy.
Moreover, films of the Sympathetic Cycle portrayed their vampires as likable, encouraging the audience to identify with them. Most of them are struggling with their vampirism as they perceive it as a curse. Coppola picked up on this twist within the vampire narrative which is why Kane suggests that Bram Stoker’s Dracula fits into the Sympathetic Cycle, even though Dracula is once more elevated to aristocracy and the plot taken back to its original time and place, i.e. London close to the fin de siècle. The film’s script writer, James V. Hart, decided to not just go by the novel as a source for the film’s plot but also ground it in history and base the leading character on the Romanian Prince Vlad, also known as Vlad the Impaler. He ruled the region of Wallachia during the 15th century and served as an inspiration for Bram Stoker’s novel.
The Vampire’s Plight
Coppola’s film includes flashbacks to Dracula’s previous life as Prince Vlad providing a backstory for his vampirism: Thinking him dead, his beloved wife Elisabeta takes her own life and is denied a church burial. When he discovers this, Vlad renounces God and the church, and thereupon receives the curse of vampirism. As Dracula, he now has a motivation for his actions and “makes the audience empathize with his plight” (Kane, 2006, p. 106). Unlike previous Draculas (especially from the first two cycles), he is no longer merely an evil creature or a two-dimensional antagonist. Instead, Dracula turns into a misunderstood protagonist who is remorseful and ashamed of his condition. This becomes apparent in his behaviour towards Mina, the reincarnation of Elisabeta: When he finally gets his chance to transform her into a vampire, he becomes reluctant and utters the words “I love you too much to condemn you”. This underlines the dualism of his character: He is predatory and animalistic on one side, and a gentleman and loving being on the other. For cast member Winona Ryder (Mina), ‘Bram Stoker’s Dracula’ isn’t even really a vampire movie:
“To me it’s more about the man Dracula, the warrior, the prince. He is unlike any other man — he’s mysterious and very sexual — attractive in a dangerous way.” (Coppola & Hart, 1992, p. 80).
Cinematic Vampire & Vampiric Cinema
Metaphorically speaking, cinema itself has the qualities of a vampiric creation and medium: The birth of cinema is closely intertwined with the beginnings of the vampire film (Weinstock, 2012). Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) is one of the first and “most significant” vampire films, a pioneering piece within the history of cinema itself (Weinstock, 2012, p. 58, 80). It is therefore no surprise that Coppola took much inspiration from this piece of German expressionist cinema and incorporated some of the techniques and images used in Nosferatu into his own version of the vampire narrative, e.g. Murnau’s “dramatic shadow motifs” (Coppola & Hart, 1992, p. 52). Like Count Orlok, Coppola’s vampire emerges from darkness and in some scenes merely manifests as a creeping shadow.
Coppola also makes various references to and closely links the vampire with the birth of cinema. When Dracula and Mina first meet, they end up at a vintage film theatre where several silent movie snippets play in the background creating a “consciously cinematic” atmosphere. These scenes emphasize “both the cinematic nature of the vampire and the vampiric nature of cinema”. (Weinstock, 2012, p. 77)
Defying the Gatekeepers
In the eyes of the specialized horror press, the “gatekeepers of the genre” (Austin, 2002, p.131), so to speak, Bram Stoker’s Dracula did not meet their criteria for what constitutes a horror film. Commentators like The Dark Side, a UK magazine covering the field of horror cinema, derided the film as a “a love story without a remotely believable scenario” (Jaworzyn, 1993, p. 9), joining in a gaggle of reviews that “feminised and/or banalised” Coppola’s adaptation of the vampire narrative (Austin, 2002, p. 132/133). However, the film’s success speaks a different language:
It ranked ninth-highest-grossing film of 1992 worldwide, scored three Academy Awards, and provided Gary Oldman with what The Guardian calls his “finest screen role”. After almost three decades, Bram Stoker’s Dracula is still described as a “visual feast” and said to have “aged like a fine a wine”.
After establishing that the vampire cinema has always been more than just a horror trope, it has become more than clear that Bram Stoker’s Dracula can and should not be viewed through the lens of just any one genre, and that the vampire narrative isn’t merely a horror sub-genre. Instead, it should be understood as a “colonisation (or vampirisation) of various genres”, a hybrid or super genre (Weinstock, 2012, p. 125). After all, throughout its history, the vampire cinema existed along a whole continuum of genres including not just horror, but also fantasy, romance, comedy, science fiction and even western. The only constant is the vampire itself and Bram Stoker’s novel as the “vampire Ur-Text” (p. 17). The hybridity is the reason for its staying power.
The Female Gothic
With Bram Stoker’s Dracula, screenwriter Hart and director Coppola mixed elements from different genres trying to target cinemagoers beyond the “‘core’ horror audience, perceived as predominantly male” (Austin, 2002, p. 117). They put an emphases on emotional relationships, probably hoping this would attract a so-far untapped female audience and with them a “commercial opportunity” (p. 120). In reality, this simply acknowledge the female horror audience that was there already but had been ignored for decades.
Gothic horror has always had strong female influences and therefore many feminine aspects. Literary critic Ellen Moers coined the term ‘Female Gothic’ with regards to 18th and 19th-century women novelists and their works, establishing that one of the typical features of the Female Gothic is a female protagonist who is victim and heroine at the same time (1972). This is a fitting description of the character of Mina, who, on the one hand, is compelled by Dracula, and on the other, compels him. After all, she personifies the reason for his curse of immortality.
This version of the vampire narrative evokes empathy for and even identification with the monster, as well as a fascination with monstrosity, which, according to film scholar and audience researcher Brigid Cherry (cited in Jancovich, 2002, p. 174), is “an important factor in the continuing appeal of horror for women”. However, she cautions not to mistake this “feminine viewing strategy” to be emasculating or weak (p. 176). Instead, it is merely different from the interpretive strategies of someone who is unfamiliar with the position of the oppressed in a system of patriarchal repression.
Sublime Terror & Paralyzing Horror
As mentioned above, this gender disparity in perception isn’t new but has already been identified within the literary genre of Gothic fiction, where distinctions have been made between Male and Female Gothic tradition. Kari Winter, professor of American studies at the State University of New York at Buffalo, asserts that this disparity stems from the different ways men and women experience fear: Men tend to fear “the Other” (including women, which in turn creates a point of identification with the fear-inducing “Other”, i.e. the monster, for the female viewer), whereas women fear “the terror of the familiar: the routine brutality and injustice of the patriarchal family, conventional religion, and classist social structures” (Winter, cited in Ackley, 1992). In the tradition of the Female Gothic, Bram Stoker’s Dracula resonates strongly with this type of fear, which has been described as ‘Terror’ rather than ‘Horror’ by many scholars including 18th-century author and Gothic fiction pioneer Ann Radcliffe herself. She characterized Terror by its “obscurity” or “indeterminacy” regarding the treatment of potentially horrible events, which leads the audience toward the “sublime”, i.e. an abstract feeling of dread that precedes the actual horrifying event, and “awakens the faculties to a high degree of life”. In contrast, Horror has an almost paralyzing effect “with its unambiguous displays of atrocity”. (Radcliffe, 1826, p. 150)
Or, in the words of Gothic literature expert Devendra Varma:
“The difference between Terror and Horror is the difference between awful apprehension and sickening realization: between the smell of death and stumbling against a corpse” (1966, p. 130).
This might be the reason why some (especially male) viewers and critics fail to recognize Bram Stoker’s Dracula as part of the general horror genre: They only regard the metaphorical “stumbling against a corpse” as real horror, completely disregarding the “smell of death” as a valid source of fear, even if it isn’t as palpable. To disregard this, you have to be either unaware of or numb to Terror as a crucial narrative device within the horror genre. It provides a terrifying crescendo that builds suspense and heralds a horrifying climax, and it has been used by many influential horror authors such as Stephen King. In his non-fiction book Danse Macabre, the bestselling writer even declared Terror to be “the finest emotion”, with which he aims to “terrorize the reader” above all.
“But if I find I cannot terrify him/her,” King continues, “I will try to horrify; and if I find I cannot horrify, I’ll go for the gross-out. I’m not proud.” (1981, p. 37)
The Real Terror
In the context of Coppola’s cinematic Dracula tale, the emphasis lies on the terror invoked by the different horror themes. Vampirism itself can be interpreted in different ways. In times of a global health crisis like the current COVID-19 pandemic, the age-old fear of unexplained diseases and their connection to human animalism is an especially pertinent interpretation of the vampire’s condition: SARS‑CoV‑2 has been found to be of animal origin, scientists even suspect bats to be the source of the virus.
Ironically, bats are closely related to vampirism, making the topic (and the film) eerily relevant.
Research conducted by neurologist Juan Gomez-Alonso indicates that a “major epidemic of rabies in dogs, wolves, and other wild animals”, together with Slavic folklore, gave rise to vampire legends in 18th-century Eastern Europe (1998). Rabies and vampirism show striking similarities (e.g. the method of infection through bites or blood to blood contact), which suggests that, failing to find physical explanations for the puzzling phenomena associated with the death and decomposition of the infected, people filled in the gaps of their knowledge with folktales, as research conducted by Jessica Wang, professor of history at University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, suggest.
“People associated witchcraft and occult forces with animals,” she says, “as well as the crossing of the line between animals and humans. I think a lot of the fear was based on the fact that humans are animals and what happens if people concede that line rather than try and preserve it.” (Johnson, 2011)
Subverting Horror
With its mixing of horror and romance (including eroticism), Bram Stoker’s Dracula doesn’t just concede this line between the human and the animalistic, it actively tears it down, just like the film tears down the cultural walls around the horror genre. While horror literature has been widely accepted as appealing across the sex and ages ranges, horror films and their marketing have long been geared towards an adolescent male audience, which has created what Cherry calls a “female exclusion zone” (1999, p. 1).
Conversely, the 1992 adaption of the vampire ‘Ur-text’ took on a female perspective after decades of the ‘male gaze’ as the dominant frame of reference within the horror film mainstream. This becomes especially clear at the end of the film, which — as mentioned above — differs from Bram Stoker’s original story in one conspicuous aspect: Instead of the men bringing about Dracula’s demise (and leaving Mina as the female protagonist in a passive position), she becomes active and pleads mercy for the vampire after he is gravely wounded by her male companions.
Furthermore, the solution isn’t simply the traditional Destruction of the Vampire: Mina allows him salvation by breaking the curse of eternal life and reuniting him with his lover in death (illustrated by the chapel’s fresco in the last frame before the credits). At last, she takes action into her own hands and breaks with the stereotype of the woman as a passive victim. While Bram Stoker arguably advocated for “the active suppression of women” with his portrayal of Mina (mirroring the predominant opinion of his 19th-century contemporaries) (Clippard, 2017, p. 79), the film version of 1992 supports female emancipation by leaving the vampire’s fate in Mina’s hands, who, in turn, decides to liberate Dracula from his affliction — almost like passing on the torch of emancipation.
Love Never Dies — But We Do
For some, the ending might be too romantic in its overtones, even though Dracula’s death is very graphic creating an uncomfortably stark contrast to the theme of undying love. Nevertheless, the notion that “Love Never Dies” yet is always going to be upstaged by death (after all, Dracula has to die to reunite with his love) conveys its own kind of horror (or terror?). However, it might be too subtle to be noticed by those who are only susceptible to the blunt gore and violence of slasher movies. Which is not to say that women can’t enjoy those types of horror flicks! Time and again, market research has shown that women enjoy horror entertainment (Cherry, 1999) and one report on the popularity of Madam Tussaud’s Chamber of Horrors, a long-running horror exhibit, even stated that, as a result of biological attributes such as the monthly period or childbirth, women “can put blood and gore in context and generally cope better than men” (Saw Associates & Cantor cited in Cherry, 1999, p. 27). Therefore, it comes as no surprise that most female horror film fans prefer subtle, psychological horror, the kind that horripilates (i.e. makes your hair stand on end), as it stimulates their imagination and allows them “to dwell and embroider on what they find scary” (Cherry, 1999, p. 35).
Indulging the imagination seems to be a general priority for women when watching a film, no matter the genre. Which leads us back to our initial question of how genre can be defined and whether films like Bram Stoker’s Dracula fit into just one of them: As Jancovich states, “different audiences have different senses of how genres are defined and where the boundaries between them lie” (1996, p.11), and when focusing on the audience rather than the film itself, “any definition of the genre is bound to be irrelevant since the individual viewers taking part in study will undoubtedly hold their own ideas of what films constitute the boundaries of honor (or, indeed, what is horrific)” (Cherry, 1999, p. 29–30).
With this in mind, there can be no doubt that ‘Bram Stoker’s Dracula’ doesn’t just belong to the Horror genre, it transcends it with its feminine coding of the genre, and reclaims it for the oftentimes marginalized and invisible female audience, reminding us all of the “important and enduring tradition of horror produced and consumed by women” (Jancovich, 1992, p. 18). Part of this tradition is to subvert the genre, demonstrated by women like Canadian filmmaker Mary Harron, who directed the controversial horror cult flick American Psycho. In an interview, she once pointed out how this intentional subversion is often confused with ignorance:
I make a horror film and it’s not a horror film. None of my genre movies function as genre movies. When people see the conventions, they think they’re going to get the straightforward genre — I don’t give them that and they get mad. People see that and they think I don’t understand the conventions because I’m not a good filmmaker. (Harron, 2014)
Harron’s acclaim proves these people wrong, however, it also highlights how scarsely represented, and therefore unorthodox, the female horror tradition has become. Bram Stoker’s Dracula helped breathing new life into it, and inspired generations of women like me to stay true to their own vision.
References
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