Jackson's Comparison

Dracula as a Beast

 

            Within the four takes on Dracula that we’ve seen in class, three films and the original text, a reoccurring attribute to the character is his ability to transform into different animals. In looking at the different ways that Dracula is depicted as a beast, it is interesting to trace the scenarios for which he makes these transitions. While only few of these mediums take liberties to explore this unique power thoroughly, the ones that do are rewarded with not only something effectively horrifying, but substantive as well.

The introduction to the character of Dracula in Bram Stoker’s novel depicts him as both cunning and motivated by instinct. Although one of his more popular and generalized transitions is into a bat, it is when his plans are put into action, arriving in London where he is shown as a wolf leaping onto the shore. This “wolf” is seen terrorizing London, and when amongst similar animals in the zoo, even they howl as Stoker sets an unsettling tone in his novel, and in this scene there is an effect from Dracula’s transition. In Francis Ford Coppola’s film adaptation of the novel shows Dracula as many beasts in contrast with the character’s emotional state. He uses the wolf, unlike the two other films, both showing literally the horrors on the boat, but also to show how Dracula is predatory in nature. For instance in the film Dracula is shown as a wolf when attacking Lucy, who is only a pawn in his quest for Mina, thus the attack is an action of instinct and tact, much like that of a wolf. It could also be mentioned that since Lucy is shown as being a more sexualized character than Mina, a symbolic ending to her natural life in Coppola’s film is in a primal fashion at the hands of Dracula as a beast. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMQoG1KenGM)

            Both F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922), and Todd Browning’s Dracula (1931), are similar in that they only hint at Dracula’s abilities to transform, if not showing the power in a subtle or abstract fashion. Murnau’s depiction of the character is that of a pale man-bat, fitting for the literal adaptation of a nocturnal monster, however this is somewhat lacking, as Murnau’s Dracula is only really seen as this monster and nothing more. Browning’s take on the character is more in the form of a human being, portrayed by Bella Lugosi, and is in fact shown as having sympathy toward wolves howling outside his castle, using a quote from Stoker’s novel, “ah the children of the night, what beautiful music they make.” However where there is no showing of a Wolf in Dracula, Lugosi is seen transformed into a bat in his seduction of Renfeild. The animalistic nature of Dracula in these films is more for effect in horror rather than substance in the character.

            Nina Auerbach is quoted as saying that “every generation gets the vampire it deserves,” and she’s right in the sense that there cannot be a proper telling of Dracula, without the required canonizing of the character, one of the key traits being his ability to morph into an animal. At the end of the day it is up to the auteur to come up with how this power will be translated into they’re respective medium, and whether an audience prefers effect to substance in Dracula as a beast, is they’re decision.