Background: A
cultural history, and Bram Stoker's novel
"A literary work is not an object that stands by itself and that offers the same view to each reader in each period. It is not a monument that monologically reveals its timeless essence. It is much more like an orchestration that strikes ever new resonances among its readers and that frees the text from the material of the words."
Hans Robert Jauss: Towards
an Aesthetic Reception[1]
The cultural history of the vampire
and the social perception of its image do of course also contribute
significantly to the malleable representations of Dracula through the passage
of time. The changing connotations of the growing vampire legend cannot fail to
affect cinematic (or any other) interpretations of the original Dracula text, as Bram Stoker's infamous
immortal character Count Dracula remains synonymous with /and firmly anchored
to vampire lore. The increasingly popularity of vampires and their associated
Gothic realm demonstrates the continuing fascination of Western culture with
some of the key central themes of vampire tales: (im)mortality; fear of the
dead; blood; sexuality; power; alienation. These ingredients are essential in
the supernatural vampire myth, from its origins in centuries old superstition
to its current media-devouring existence. Yet each of the five films I will be
examining draws on or emphasises different aspects of the myths to invoke
distinctive vampire characters.
The origins of the creature which
evolved into Bram Stoker's Dracula began as ancient stories of supernatural
nightflying bloodsuckers such as the lamia,
a Greek mythological monster represented as a serpent with the head and breasts
of a woman and reputed to prey on human beings and suck the blood of children[2].
Whilst containing some thematic characteristics familiar to us through vampire
literature and cinema (such as immortality, ambiguous sexuality, nocturnal
behaviour, invasion and sanguinary assault), these early prototypes were
generally demonic or evil spirits lacking in that defining feature of the
vampire which is the necessity of its death in a natural world in order to
achieve immortality and power.
The
literary evolution of the vampire as we know it today, although
anthropomorphised most famously by Bram Stoker, began to take shape in the
twelfth century. At this time the notion of the dead returning ('undead') in
order to exsanguinate the living was chronicled by English historian William of
Newburgh. Newburgh used the Latin term sanguisuga,
meaning bloodsucker[3], in his
accounts of vampires in England. The specificity of his case reports linked
tenuous past sources of vampire mythology, (such as the outbreak of fatal
epidemics within a village) to a growing body of vampire lore which included Newburgh's
own conclusion that the only permanent protection from the 'undead' was to
unearth and burn the body in the coffin from which he rose at night. Among the
cases cited by Newburgh in support of this claim was the Melrose Abbey case[4]
in which the village's sacriligious priest returned from the dead and walked
each night through the monastery where one night a monk hit him with a
battleaxe. The priest's grave, according to Newburgh, when opened contained a
corpse with the axe wound swimming in blood. He was cremated by the brothers,
and his ashes scattered. Similarly, in Newburgh's account of vampirism at
Alnwick Castle[5], a man
of wicked reputation was killed and buried only to be seen after dark wandering
through the village. His return coincided with the outbreak of an epidemic of
an unnamed (and in some cases fatal) disease. Again, according to Newburgh.
when exhumed his grave gushed forth fresh blood. After his body was burned, the
epidemic ended.
But first, on earth as Vampire sent,
Thy corse shall from its tomb be rent;
Then ghastly haunt thy native place,
"For, let me tell you, he is known everywhere that men
have been. In old Greece, in old Rome; he is flourish in Germany all over, in
France, in India, even in the Chersones; and in China… He have follow the wake
of the beserker Icelander, the devil-begotten Hun, the Slav, the Saxon, the
Magyar."[15]
It is an international journey through mythology,
superstition and the development of science, a temporal evolution of truth, fantasy
and fiction that culminates in Bram Stoker's Dracula, the birth of the quintessential vampire villain and a new
era in vampire literature which soon came to include the media of film and
television. Dracula embodies the
predator, reveals the psychosexual, creates the archetypes, and in its thematic
richness inspires an endless world of fiction. The name 'Dracula' (meaning
devil and bearing the associated connotations of immortality, evil and so on) was
taken from Vlad Dracula, a real life prince of the ancient kingdom of Wallachia
in Transylvania. The motifs entrenched (immortality, bloodlust, travel,
nocturnal existence, garlic and stakes through the heart), embellished (the
ability of the vampire to turn into a bat) or invented (vampires that have no
reflection and need to be invited into a building) by Bram Stoker have survived
over a hundred years to be as popular as ever, and perhaps more inviting of
reproduction, reworking and re-interpretation than any modern literary classic.
For me, five cinematic adaptations stand out as being appropriate for
comparison and analysis:
Nosferatu – A Symphony of Horror
(1922) – FW Murnau
Dracula
(1931) – Tod Browning
Horror of Dracula (1958) – Terence Fisher
Dracula (1979) – John Badham
Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) – Francis
Ford Coppola
[1] Levy, M:
What's Expected of Seinfeld? The
Aesthetic Reception of a Situation Comedy:
http://www.uta.edu/english/mal/sein/seinfeld.html
[2] Microsoft
Bookshelf 1994 Dictionary, taken from The
American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition:
Houghton Mifflin Company: 1992
[3] Melton,
Gordon J: The Vampire Book - the
encyclopaedia of the undead: Visible Ink: Detroit, 1994
[4] Glut,
Donald G: True Vampires of History:
HC Publishers: New York, 1971
http://geocities.com/~holly7361/vamp5.html
[5] Ibid
[6] Microsoft Bookshelf 1994 Dictionary,
taken from The American Heritage
Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition: Houghton Mifflin
Company: 1992
[7] Stoker,
Bram: Dracula: Puffin Books: London
1986: p140
[8] Microsoft Bookshelf 1994 Dictionary,
taken from The American Heritage
Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition: Houghton Mifflin
Company: 1992
[9] Danvers,
Holly: Vampires:
http://geocities.com/~holly7361/pvamp/html
[10] Forever Knight: Tri Star Television:
Sony Pictures Entertainment: USA
[11] The X-Files: Fox: USA
[12] Melton,
Gordon J: The Vampire Book - the
encyclopaedia of the undead: Visible Ink: Detroit, 1994 p xiv
[13] Gelder,
Ken: Reading the Vampire: Routledge:
London, 1994
[14]
Polidori, John: The Vampyre: in Ryan,
Alan (ed): The Penguin Book of Vampire
Stories: Penguin books: New York 1987
[15] Stoker,
Bram: Dracula: Puffin Books: London
1986: p285