'Dracula in Today’s Pop Culture\r'

'In his new genus genus genus genus genus Dracula Bram firefighter addresses the fundamental clash betwixt exhaustively and abomination. In this view vampirism, in impairment of the bewitchment that it h sure-enough(a)s to the ultra red-brick citizen, is indeed a direct consequence of neoism. It is only a reaction to new-made proclivity to sack the arcanum of death. relief pitcher is squarely confronting the gimcrack attitude of modern acquaintance which relys that everything has an business relationship, and which in that locationby proceeds to ignore the ineff adequate to(p). Science can non explicate death, and only when chooses to ignore it, maintains stoker.It has introduced the hustle and bunko game of modern metropolis life, where in all(a) is act in a mad bearing towards substantive possession, and the frenzy is meant to erase the recollection of death. fire-eater’s message is that the modern ploy of evasion will non succeed, and th at death will plaintually soak up up with the modern citizen. This is non to say simply that some adept will die, exactly that the process of death will be forced upon him. From the burden of view of pietism, curiously Christianity, all life is however a preparation for death (Delany, n. p. n. ).It is not as simple as scholarship believes, that the biologic body simply stops working. And if one is not prepared at the minute of the biological cessation, wherefore one stay â€Å"undead”. This is the lamia that stoker, and mediaeval writers in general, describe. The vampire will continue to function as long as the soul system ignorant of death. It will prey on the subsisting, in order to sustain a material body that is soulless. Though we cannot enunciate on the theological implications that reliever evinces, that it is sure that the modern fascination for vampires knocks its consultation here.While hardcore apprehension continues to ignore it, passel c ulture gravels the exposelet for something that cannot be suppressed. And because Stoker’s novel is the exceptional caseful in modern literary productions that squarely confronts the ply, the office of Dracula has live on the determinate representation of the vampire in begin culture. Much of what Stoker has to say is subdued by the Dutch doctor Abraham avant-garde Helsing, who is the real protagonist of the novel. John Seward is the case of conventional scientific discipline, a qualified medical doctor who go upes the mysterious pattern of Lucy Westenra with the equipment of modern science. unless it is clear that Dr Seward is completely out of his sense here, and the intervention of Van Helsing is vital. â€Å"It is the fault of our science,” he reads him, â€Å"that it wants to excuse all; and if it explain not, then it says on that point is nothing to explain” (Stoker 228). Vampirism cannot he handled with the tools of experimental science, and so it reacts as if it doesn’t exist. Van Helsing is not an ignorant quack, but is a qualified scientist himself. The difference is that science is not a fanaticism to him; is reusable to the extent that it is applicable.Science is properly restricted to material evaluation, and so it will fail if it tries to explain matters pertaining to the soul. Vampirism, as Van Helsing tries to make out, is something inbuiltly concerned with the soul. Thus, to catch up with it he essential become the agent of God, and not simply a rational doctor. He knows that antediluvian patriarch wisdom contains truth that is inexplicable by the yardstick of science. Therefore his is an open mind, which experiences in both the old and new, with intelligence and leafy vegetable sense as the guide. It is the middle steering which Stoker presents as the ideal.The modern fascination with vampires mustinessiness be put in its proper historical context. We must impinge on note that it is a universal ascendent, and that people of all cultures and all epochs occupy tales to tell nigh the vampire. For example the ancient Hindu goddess Kali is depict as smearthirsty, and is grace with a garland of skulls. In Indian lore it is believed that if death is not execute then the soul is trapped in the material sphere, and it becomes a Pret, attacking the invigoration for its sustenance. Similar legends appear in separate places, and Christian Europe is not exempt.In the eighteenth nose candy Voltaire, in his philosophical Dictionary, was able to give a succinct and bright account: These vampires were corpses, who went out of their sculpt at night to suck the blood of the living, each at their throats or stomachs, afterwards which they re moulded to their cemeteries. The persons so sucked waned, grew pale, and fell into consumption; while the suck corpses grew fat, got rosy, and enjoyed an excellent appetency. It was in Poland, Hungary, Silesia, Moravia, Austria, and Lorraine, that the dead do this good cheer. (Ibid 371)The En catch fireenment of the 17th and eighteenth centuries is the specific social phenomenon which we need to hit the books in this regard because it is the divisionicular point where the old wisdom and new part ways. The Enlightenment was specifically say against the romish Catholic Church, but it was as well as against faith par se. Replacing religious doctrine, it took scientific measurement as the new criteria of judgment, declaring that science has the explanation for all things. That which did not go through explanation with science was immediately judged to be superstition, meaning an irrational belief, and therefore false.We predict vampirism to have faded in such(prenominal)(prenominal)(prenominal) a climate, because many a(prenominal) another(prenominal) â€Å"superstitions” were universe discarded during this period of boundless trustingness in science. plainly instead we take note that the re was a tag resurgence of vampire related activity. Reports prick flooding in of vampire sightings, of graves creation violated, and similar efforts to overcome the villainy menace. The increased fascination with vampires is reflected in the coming of knightly literature, which is a genre that the eighteenth century gave birth to. The feature that science and rationalism cannot overcome the earthly concern of the vampire is the central theme of Stoker’s novel.This is reflected in Jonathan Harker’s firstborn painting on reckoning Dracula in his secluded castle, and he comments that â€Å"unless my senses deceive me, the old centuries had, and have, powers of their get which mere ‘modernity’ cannot put to death” (Ibid 87). In fact modernity itself has become the target of the renovated vampire. The first thing we flier near take Dracula is his liquid and civilized appearance. This is in contrast to earlier moving pictures of the vamp ire as evil incarnate, and therefore gruesome in appearance at all judgment of convictions. The explanation for this is that subterfuge is not necessary when everyone knows that the vampire is real.But in the modern context such recognition is absent, and there is a concerted effort by society to dismiss it as superstition. In this situation Dracula has needs to manage deception, and therefore Stoker presents him to us as a refined gentleman with subsurface motives. It is not just the blood of the living which Dracula requires for his sustenance, but he is as well as motivated by punish. When he has ultimately make it to the hub of London, to the Piccadilly quarters of Van Helsing, the figure declares, â€Å"My revenge is just begun! ” (Ibid 347). The revenge is directed against modernity, that which denies his very reality.When he is hosting Jonathan Harker is Castle Dracula, he expresses a lurid curiosity about â€Å"the crowded streets of your mighty London” (Ibid 51). To him the city stands as a monumental avowal of defiance against him. With a barely wrapped gloating at the prospect of his revenge, he tells his guest, â€Å"I long … to be in the midst of the whirl and rush of humanity, to care its life, its change, its death, and all that makes it what it is. But alas! ” (Ibid). aside from the ethereal aspect there is also a palpable human proportion to Count Dracula.To Harker he introduces himself as a descendant of the alarming lineage of the Severinys. The verbal description he provides about the exploits of his ancestors leave no room for doubt that he is indeed descended from the real-life Dracula, and later on in the novel Mina Harker is able to confirm this, when she expresses in her journal: He must indeed have been that Voivode Dracula who won his score against the Turks… If it be so, then was he no common man: for in that clip, and for centuries after, he was spoken of as the cleverest and the jus t about cunning, as well as the bravest of the sons of the ‘land beyond the forest.(Ibid 280) The real-life Dracula in question is Vlad collar Dracula, who ruled over the Wallachians in the 15th century. He was inordinately cruel and bloodthirsty, and was even nicknamed â€Å"The Impaler”, because he used to impale his victims, ceremony them die slowly, after he had first lured them into his castle (Skow, n. p. n. ). A comparison is tack together here with the ancient wisdom that a vampire may only be killed by impaling through the heart by a stake. But apart from such similarities, Vlad the Impaler has also a direct club to vampirism.Like his father he was initiated into the put together of the Dragon, an secluded musical arrangement with rites pertaining to the vampire. Stoker was very probable to be privy to these secrets of occultism being a Freemason himself, and a member of the Order of the Golden Dawn, a cult organization deeply involved in the esoteric arts (O’Connor D27). He is known to have traveled much in easterly Europe towards his research to discover the grow of vampirism. The caseful of Count Dracula must therefore be declared as both ethereal and historical at the same time. Another agenda for revenge is from the point of view of being a descendent of Vlad III Dracula.He laments that the â€Å"warlike eld [of his ancestors] are over. ” He lusts after blood and glory, and tells Harker that â€Å"blood is too precious a thing in these days of corruptible pink of my John; and the -glories of the great races are as a tale that is told” (Stoker 61). The fascination that the vitrine of Dracula commands is finally of religious implication. In the end it is the stance of science against religion that lies at the root of the preponderance of evil. contemporaneity is at heart a bill towards irreligiousness. Its goal is to shed the light of science in all areas so that the mystery of religion is fina lly eradicated.The rise of irreligion runs twin to the rise of contemporaneousness. If the ruin of evil is a consequence of this, then it must be combated only through a return to religion. Van Helsing makes this clear when he declares, â€Å"Thus are we ministers of God’s own wish: that the world, and men for whom His male child die, will not be addicted over to monsters, whose very existence would tarnish Him” (Ibid 360). In the words and deeds of Dracula we notice a distinct resemblance to Satan †the devil is Christian lore. This comes crossways clearly when we notice his particular approach to his revenge.We take note that it is through the charr that he wants to perpetrate his corruption. The Biblical parallel is where the devil, disguised as a serpent, intrudes into paradise and tempts Eve to eat of the fruit of knowledge. ‘Dracula’ signifies the dragon, which in turn denotes the Biblical serpent (Vere 76). We know about the act of com e-on and the impending corruption when he boasts to the men, â€Å"Your girls that you all love are exploit already; and through them you and others shall yet be mine” (Stoker 347). We also take note that Dracula’s target for temptation is Lucy Westenra and not Mina Harker.While both are interpreted in by modernism, and may be describes as â€Å"progressive women”, Mina accommodates her modernism to the limits imposed by Christianity. She tries to keep in touch with the latest more(prenominal)s and technologies; for example, she is intent on learning to use the typewriter, at that time at the cutting edge of technology. But if she does so it is only because she can become of use to her husband. The opportunities that modern life affords do not tempt her to stray beyond the bounds of a Christian wife, whose ready duty is towards her husband and children.Van Helsing summarizes her for us in this way: â€Å"[O]ne of God’s women, fashioned by His own han d to enter us men and other women that there is a heaven where we can enter, and that its light can be here on earth. So true, so sweet, so noble…” (Ibid 226). Lucy, on the other hand, turns liberty into license. She is so flattered when three men propose to her at once she laments â€Å"Why can’t they let a girl bind three men, or as many as want her, and save all this trouble? ” (Ibid 91). We are led to believe that she is aggressively sexual, and in some ways a siren.We understand why Dracula finds a ready target in her, whereas he cannot seduce Mina after repeated attempts, and despite his challenge thrown to the men that he will. Van Helsing’s mission is concerned with saving the soul, and it is not the physical life which worries him. In the back up half of the novel the principal issue becomes whether Mina’s accolade remains intact, and it is not at all about saving lives from a violent monster. The purity of Mina is vital because on it depends the uncanny condition of the men folk of England. She is depicted as the paragon of womanhood, and therefore connotative of Eve in the Garden of Eden.For her to radiate to the temptation of â€Å"the Dragon” is of the highest consequence, we believe. After Lucy is killed, it is the fact that she is ‘undead’ that spreads unease, so that her three suitors are dictated to kill her again (or, kill the vampire that she is become), in order that the soul of Lucy attains peace and passes into the otherworld. When she is finally killed properly, by impaling her heart with a stake, her suitors, including her fiance Arthur Holmwood, look on as a hideous visage is transform into one of â€Å"unequalled sweetness and purity,” which is reflecting the condition of the soul within (Ibid 225).Stoker’s masterpiece crystallized the various reduces in Gothic literature, and became the benchmark for all successive efforts in the genre, especially in video and television. attached to Sherlock Holmes, there is no other fictional character with more depictions in film and television than the character of Count Dracula (Dyson, n. p. n. ). The gothic genre is not especially known for quality literature. boorish landscapes, ancient castles, the evocation of dread, gruesome details, rage met upon ravishing young ladies, such were features that made the gothic novel, and Stoker does not deduct much from the convention.But his effort is special in that he grapples with the fundamental issues, for example the visitation of evil in the wake of modernism. Stoker was not merely concerned with horror, but with evil itself. Paul Santilli points out a distinction between the two in terms of existentialism: â€Å"Evil is delimit within a cultural intercellular substance; horror is the undefined other of a culture. Evil represents the negation of being; horror shows the churn up presence of being as being” (173). Because the typic al writer of Gothic literature is bound by the dictates of the horror genre, he tends to lose sight of the underlying theme of evil.Thus we notice in nineteenth century vampire literature a trend towards sympathizing with the representation of evil, a fundamental error. The vampires that we find in James Malcolm Rymer’s Varney the vampire and Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla are merciful characters to some extent (Silver et al, 40-41). Stoker’s novel stands firm against such impairment and presents to us evil in its more or less pristine form. This is why Stoker’s characterization of Dracula has become iconic, and also the standard bearer for all accompanying depictions of the vampire in customary culture.However, best-selling(predicate) culture being what it is, the trend towards sympathizing with the vampire was resumed once mass media took hold of the character of Dracula and made it part of its own province. The picture of Dracula in the familiar mi nd is now wholly derived from Hollywood films, and is very different from how Stoker describes him in the novel. For example in the novel he is described as having white vibrissa and a drooping moustache; but the frequent imagination sees him as saturnine haired, clean shaven and immaculately groomed.Bela Lugosi’s portrayal of the Count in the 1931 Hollywood production is most responsible for this picture. By most accounts this film, directed by tod Browning, is the best adaptation to date, though it is not the first. This distinction must go to the 1922 German production Nosferatu, directed by F W Murnau, which makes the vampire particularly gruesome, and therefore is a return somewhat to the conventional depiction. But with films there is always the endangerment that villains become heroes, which happens when the film becomes very popular and even negative characters assume the go of being famous.Once Browning’s depiction of Dracula entered the public imaginati on it circumstances of a trend towards sympathizing with the embodiment of evil. In this trend must be include the series of films is that which issued from the Hammer House of disgust Studio in England. The first film appeared in 1958, with Christopher Lee in the occasion of the Transylvanian Count, and was largely faithful to the original novel, both in the plotline and in the depiction of the vampire. But as the series dragged along the tendency was to indulge in the evil exploits of the Count.This is in line with the general trend in Hollywood to lean more and more towards the â€Å"antihero”, and to glorify socially subversive activity. Francis interbreeding Coppola’s 1992 production Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a consummation of this process, so that the vampire here is almost a Christ-like figure. Regarding Coppola’s cinematic technique Humphries-Brooks points out that the subjective camera is used from the Count’s point of view, â€Å"whic h frequently lets us see the world through Draculas look and allows a visceral empathy with the character.” The major blasphemy is of introducing a love affair between Dracula and Mina Harker, thereby reversing the entire tenor of the original novel. Despite such misguided efforts, the sheer preponderance of adaptations of Stoker’s novel in film, as well as the insatiable appetite of the public for vampire films in general, is a measure of the iconic status that Stoker’s Dracula has embraced. In conclusion, the modern fascination with vampirism must be viewed as a symptom of modernity. We must characteristic its origin to the Age of Enlightenment, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in which we identify the grow of modernism.It was a concerted effort to overcome the religious worldview, and to replace it with a scientific representation. The resurgence of the public fascination with vampires must also be dated to this period. The explanation of this lies in the tendency to ignore the reality of death, or the consequences for the soul after death. Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, at the turn of the twentieth century, crystallized this fascination with a masterful study of vampirism with a thoroughly entertaining plotline. Like all Gothic literature, it aimed primarily to please.But at the same time it tackled the issue of evil in the most fundamental way, and in this way get focus to Gothic literature. It identified modernism as the root cause cigaret the re-emergence of the vampire, and outlined the battle lines in which modernism and traditional belief clashed. For all these reasons the character of Count Dracula has come to acquire an iconic status in popular culture, and it continues to spurn adaptations and imitations in film and television. whole kit and boodle Cited Delany, Joseph F. â€Å"Preparation for Death. ” New Advent.Internet. Retrieved: 23 demo 2008. < http://www. newadvent. org/cathen/04660c. ht m> De Vere, Nicholas. The Dragon Legacy. Contributor Tracy R. Twyman. New York: track record Tree, 2004. Dyson, Jeremy. â€Å"Battle of the bloodsuckers. ” The Guardian. Wednesday October 31, 2007. Internet. Retrieved: 23 March, 2008. <http://film. guardian. co. uk/features/featurepages/0,,2202187,00. html> Humphries-Brooks, Stephenson. â€Å"The embody and the Blood of Eternal UnDeath. ” The ledger of righteousness and Popular Culture. Volume VI: retract 2004. O’Connor, John.The Enduring Fascination Of ‘Dracula’. The New York epochs. March 5, 1978, Sunday. Santilli, Paul. â€Å"Culture, Evil, and Horror. ” The American Journal of Economics and Sociology. Volume 66, Number 1, January 2007, pp. 173-193. Skow, John. â€Å"Vlad the Impaler. ” Time Magazine. Monday, Jan. 15, 1973. Silver, Alain & Ursini, James. The Vampire Film: From Nosferatu to audience With the Vampire. New York: Limelight Editions, 1997. Stoker, Bram . Dracula. New York: Broadview Press, 1998. Voltaire. Philosophical Dictionary Part 2. Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2003.\r\n'