Okay, okay, I admit it: I am big fan of Dracula movies, and have been
ever since I was a little boy. Since
the time I was allowed to sit up late on Friday night and watch the old horror
films playing at 11.30 p.m., I have been happily horrified by the Count. For me, the 1931 Universal version of Dracula
by Bela Lugosi was the definitive
one, although it was not until I was much older and learned of things like
German expressionism in film and actually read Bram Stoker’s original novel
that I came to fully appreciate it. Film
historians report that it was much scarier to audiences when it first played in
theatres than it is now in our jaded present when nothing is left to the
imagination. And of course Lugosi’s
Hungarian (sorry: Transylvanian) accent has become something of a caricature of
itself. But even now the film continues
to please, and not just for its nostalgia value.
After
the Universal version of Dracula, other Draculas followed in theatres soon enough,
such as the Hammer film version, released in 1958. Hammer films tended to specialize in the use
of colour (the classic Universal films were shot in black and white), and gore
(hence the colour), and well, cleavage.
After all, adolescent boys formed a sizable part of their target
audience. But in both Stoker’s text, and
in the Universal and the Hammer versions, Dracula was a figure of brooding evil,
a curse, a pestilence, something revolting. (The rat-like version of the Count in the 1922
German film “Nosferatu” captures the feel of it quite well.) The line between good and evil was thickly
drawn then, and no one was rooting for the bad guys, even if Dracula did look
cool in his cape. When Van Helsing and
the good guys cowed Dracula by confronting him with a cross, and finally drove
a stake through his heart, they vindicated the power of goodness. We all cheered.
Then
in the 60s, things started to change. We
began to lose faith in the government, in authority, in the church. Truths previously held to be unassailable
suddenly began to be questioned, and challenged, and denied. Long held standards of right and wrong
started to waver, and the line between good and evil started to get
blurry. Even monsters didn’t look so
monstrous anymore. When Dracula stepped
back into the movies in 1979 in the person of actor Frank Langella, he wasn’t
quite the brooding figure of evil and menace that we remembered when he was
played by Universal’s Lugosi and Hammer’s Christopher Lee. In fact the IMDb summary of the film
describes him as “handsome, charming and seductive”.
Film critic Roger Ebert wrote that Langella “gives the fate of his character a certain nobility”. Another reviewer described Langella’s Dracula
as the “sexiest Dracula ever”, and as “one classy and charming count”. The cape notwithstanding, no one ever
described Dracula before in such glowing terms.
Clearly something was afoot culturally.
Then
in 1992 came the Francis Ford Coppola version, “Bram Stoker’s Dracula”,
subtitled, “Love Never Dies”, though it might have been subtitled, “Writers
Never Read”, since clearly the writers responsible for the text had never read
Stoker’s original with any sort of understanding. Here Dracula is a noble, pious fighter for
the Christian Church (the “Christian right”?), a poor guy who undergoes the
tragic loss of his beloved wife by her suicide, and who gets betrayed by the
heartless Church as a result. He then
turns into a vampire (the details are a little fuzzy), but continues to pine
for his lost love, his wife. She is
somehow later on the same as Mina, Jonathan Harker’s fiancee, and at the end of
their tragic vampiric romance, Dracula asks her to kill him because he just
can’t stand to be a bad guy anymore.
“Give me peace,” he begs her. His
face turns from ugly to beautiful. She tearfully
kisses him one last time, then drives a sword through his heart as he
asked. His lips tremble; he looks
peaceful. Heavenly music plays, and his
soul floats up to heaven (or something; again the details are fuzzy). End of film.
Happy day. Roll credits. Love never dies.
For
me the problem is not simply that Coppola has turned the villain into the hero,
thereby tromping all over Bram Stoker’s original portrayal of Dracula and
turning the story on its head. More
significant is how Christian symbols in the story have been demoted and
dethroned.
In
Stoker’s original text, and in both the Universal and Hammer versions, the
Cross is the invincible weapon
against Dracula, and is an emblem of goodness, the power through which God and
light overcome evil and darkness, and drive them helplessly back. Dracula recoils at the mere sight of a cross,
and is neutralized by the Host (i.e. the Eucharistic wafer). This is all the more significant, since
Stoker was a Protestant Irishman, one who (in the words of his character
Jonathan Harker) “had been taught to regard such things as in some measure
idolatrous”, but he used these Christian symbols anyway as powers which could
instantly and effectively overcome evil.
In Stoker’s day and even in the 1960s, the Christian Church and its
symbols were symbols of goodness, and of God’s power over evil. But not in Coppola’s version. Though Coppola retained the scene wherein a
lady insists that Harker wear a cross around his neck to protect him from
Dracula’s evil power, one wonders why:
when one of Dracula’s brides is confronted with this cross, she simply
hisses at it and it dissolves. Some
protection. It is the same later in the
movie: Van Helsing holds a cross to protect
himself against Dracula, and instead of being cowed by it, Dracula says, “You
cannot destroy me with your idols”, and stamps his foot (really?), and the
cross bursts into flame. Again: some protection. What once functioned as an effective
Christian power over evil is now utterly powerless before that evil. Christian symbols are no longer potent and
protective. And what does end up saving the day at the end,
you might ask? Romantic love. Cheesy
romantic love.
Once
again, the point is not simply the bad writing, but the fact that the film
accurately mirrors and in fact charts the decline in Christian power in our
culture. Earlier, the Church represented goodness, and
the power of goodness to overcome evil.
Now the Church does not represent goodness, and its symbols are weak,
pathetic, and useless. Vampires are not
the bad guys anymore in popular culture—we
are. Our cross is no longer the power of
goodness, but an idol, fit only for burning.
In its place, our culture now has romantic love—or, more precisely, good
feelings and good intentions. We see
this reflected in our modern culture wars:
the Christians are the bad guys who heartlessly condemn and judge; the
ones weeping with compassion and mouthing words about love and refusing to
judge are the good guys. Times sure have changed in Transylvania, and
in North America. Christians are now the
ones who just don’t understand about love.
And vampires, what about them, that poor, persecuted, misunderstood
minority? Apparently, when faced with
the sunlight, they don’t die any more.
They sparkle.
To a degree, it's an unfair stereotype to show Christians that way.
ReplyDeleteTo another degree, we have brought it on ourselves, and need to take it on the chin.
I don't believe North Americans fully appreciate the influence folk religions, from within Old World cultures, can shape Christian beliefs into superstitions. The 20th Century vampire films, oddly enough, graphically captured the spirit of folk religion in the way it obscures physical and spiritual reality. Today Christian civilization is being victimized by an anarchy of violence, in many different forms, that perceives and rationalizes that there is no actual sanctity in human life, just sentiment. The sacramental life as a means of grace is meaningless outside of Christian culture where dying to the world is perceived as weakness and total defeat. The Perception of Power shifts from one Golgotha after another in human history, but the Cross and the Candle continues its sacramental grace and presence among the Faithful who live with them.
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