Don't blame Mrs. Meyer
Recently I finished listening to the Dracula audio book. Yesterday, I also downloaded and watched the 1931 film starring Bela Lagosi. I am not going to go into these products in depth because believe it or not, I found most of what they had to offer boring. What I would really like to bring up today is the 1992 film starring Gary Oldman, and Winonna Ryder. I was watching some videos from it comparing it to the book and the 1931 film, (or the parts I did not sleep through.) This is when I had my epiphany: Stephanie Myer is not responsible for emasculation of vampires.
Now before anybody starts jumping to conclusions about this being a pro Twilight and Stephanie Meyer rant, it is not. I just want to show that what she did was the inevitable conclusion, not the cause. People sure do like to rant about how the Twampires do not fit into the more traditional tropes of what vampires are supposed to be, and they do not. Stephanie Meyer did not research into vampires and made up something that drank blood, but was no vampire.
The 1992 Dracula film is when this began. They took a character that was an unseen monster and turned him into this tragic, hopeless romantic, who only did what he did for love. He did bad things but it was all okay because they were all justified in some way.
Dracula was originally written as a rapist. He violated those women. His motives were rarely presented but when they were, it was either revenge or just spite. You hardly ever saw him. Usually what you saw was the aftermath of his presence, and it was not pretty. Two of the best examples of this were a ship floating into a dock by itself with no crew except the captain tied to the wheel, and Lucy looking like a living corpse after she slept. There were no romantic candlelight dances, no signs of remorse from Dracula, and certainly no “love never dies” catchphrases.
Let us compare how the book and the 1992 movie handle Mina’s infection with vampirism. In the movie, Dracula wanted to turn her so that she would join him in eternal life and he loved her. In the book he wanted to make her just another slave like the other three brides he already had and because she was helping Van Helsing against him. In the movie, Dracula decides not to do it because “I love you too much.” Good point there Dracs. Mina then manages to talk him back into it in less than ten seconds with “take me away from all this death.” Death that he caused, but I guess that is irrelevant. In the book, Dracula has Mina’s hand held over her head and forces her to drink his blood despite her protests.
Another thing that the movie does in that scene is bring up Lucy’s death. The book does not. I find it interesting that Mina realizes that he killed Lucy and is all mad punching him and then gets over it real quick and okay, turn me now. Lucy’s death is the most painful and tragic in either the book or movie. The difference is the book plays it like a tragedy, and you do feel her pain through her ordeal. The movie happily justifies it, and then sweeps it under the rug. It uses the old Hollywood standby justification of “she was a slut and had it coming.” They even make her decapitation into a joke by cutting to a pot roast, classy.
Now you are probably thinking I hated the movie. As a movie, I think it was good. It did tell the story much better than the book did. The actors in it were great. It was visually striking. My problem is that they told the wrong story. They turned it into something that it is not. You can have romantic, or heroic vampires, or at least not all be rapists, but do not do that with an established character like Dracula. Would it make any sense to make Atticus Finch into a character that did what he did only for somebody’s love? No, it would not.
So the next time you want to go on about how Twilight vampires are not real vampires and how Stephanie Meyer ruined vampires, think of what Hollywood did with them long before Stephanie Meyer had a dream about a sparkly vampire in the field with his girl, especially Dracula.
Now before anybody starts jumping to conclusions about this being a pro Twilight and Stephanie Meyer rant, it is not. I just want to show that what she did was the inevitable conclusion, not the cause. People sure do like to rant about how the Twampires do not fit into the more traditional tropes of what vampires are supposed to be, and they do not. Stephanie Meyer did not research into vampires and made up something that drank blood, but was no vampire.
The 1992 Dracula film is when this began. They took a character that was an unseen monster and turned him into this tragic, hopeless romantic, who only did what he did for love. He did bad things but it was all okay because they were all justified in some way.
Dracula was originally written as a rapist. He violated those women. His motives were rarely presented but when they were, it was either revenge or just spite. You hardly ever saw him. Usually what you saw was the aftermath of his presence, and it was not pretty. Two of the best examples of this were a ship floating into a dock by itself with no crew except the captain tied to the wheel, and Lucy looking like a living corpse after she slept. There were no romantic candlelight dances, no signs of remorse from Dracula, and certainly no “love never dies” catchphrases.
Let us compare how the book and the 1992 movie handle Mina’s infection with vampirism. In the movie, Dracula wanted to turn her so that she would join him in eternal life and he loved her. In the book he wanted to make her just another slave like the other three brides he already had and because she was helping Van Helsing against him. In the movie, Dracula decides not to do it because “I love you too much.” Good point there Dracs. Mina then manages to talk him back into it in less than ten seconds with “take me away from all this death.” Death that he caused, but I guess that is irrelevant. In the book, Dracula has Mina’s hand held over her head and forces her to drink his blood despite her protests.
Another thing that the movie does in that scene is bring up Lucy’s death. The book does not. I find it interesting that Mina realizes that he killed Lucy and is all mad punching him and then gets over it real quick and okay, turn me now. Lucy’s death is the most painful and tragic in either the book or movie. The difference is the book plays it like a tragedy, and you do feel her pain through her ordeal. The movie happily justifies it, and then sweeps it under the rug. It uses the old Hollywood standby justification of “she was a slut and had it coming.” They even make her decapitation into a joke by cutting to a pot roast, classy.
Now you are probably thinking I hated the movie. As a movie, I think it was good. It did tell the story much better than the book did. The actors in it were great. It was visually striking. My problem is that they told the wrong story. They turned it into something that it is not. You can have romantic, or heroic vampires, or at least not all be rapists, but do not do that with an established character like Dracula. Would it make any sense to make Atticus Finch into a character that did what he did only for somebody’s love? No, it would not.
So the next time you want to go on about how Twilight vampires are not real vampires and how Stephanie Meyer ruined vampires, think of what Hollywood did with them long before Stephanie Meyer had a dream about a sparkly vampire in the field with his girl, especially Dracula.
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