Spoiling Romania's Best Ambassador.

I’m currently watching Francis Ford Coppola’s film Bram Stoker’s Dracula again. It used to be listed among my favourites on my blog profile, but I’ve removed it. It displeases me now.

I think the main reason is Coppola’s overblown flights of stylistic fancy. In my opinion they’re self-indulgent and unsuited to the dark, Gothic nature of the story. Consequently, I see them as nothing more than an ego trip. I’ve been at the point several times of becoming more aware of the director than the plot, and that can’t be a good thing. Once the artist becomes more important than the art, we’re on the slippery slope. Or so it seems to me.

I also have to say that Keanu Reeves’s attempts at both righteous indignation and a refined English accent fall rather short of the mark. Together they portray Jonathon Harker as being even more ineffectual than Stoker wrote him. And then there’s the matter of Winona Ryder’s ears…

The End.

Dracula and his Dearly Beloveds are now come to Dust. Literally. But to recap a little:

Where was I? Oh, yes.

VH went by foot to Castle Dracula to despatch the girlies, leaving Mina at the mercy of the wolves. He reasoned, not unreasonably in the circumstances, that it was better she be eaten by a wolf than become a vampire. OK, got that. What was intriguing was the hint that good old upright VH felt the urge to canoodle a little before doing the dastardly deed; but, of course, he didn’t. He kept his nerve intact and his manhood in check and did the business, in spite of the fact that the girlies were wont to shriek rather unnervingly when skewered. Of course, had he cut their heads off first instead of last, they couldn’t have, could they? Maybe he didn’t think of that. So then he returned to Madam Mina who hadn’t seen the sign of a wolf all day, and off they trotted to head the Count off at the pass, as is usually the way of such things.

Meanwhile, the four men had joined forces and were closing on Drac’s entourage. The big man himself was stuck in his box loaded on a cart, the sun still being up and shining through the blizzard, but he was protected by a bunch of fierce gypsies and a pack of wolves. (Ah, so that’s why they didn’t eat Mina. I see.) The heroes closed on their quarry and a fight ensued, and the four Just Men won the day – so implausibly that it was difficult not to snigger, but never mind. Jonathan put his trusty kukri to good use prising off the coffin lid, and that was about that. The Count looked peaceful just before he went pouf, and the bodyguard of gypsies and wolves ran away. And the only one who bought it was the American. Quincy has gone into the hands of God. Shame.

Seven years on and the Harkers have a bonny, bouncing boy. They’ve called him Quincy. All’s right with world again and Dr Seward and Lord Godalming are married. Oh, sorry, just read that bit again. Dr Seward and Lord Godalming are both married. That’s different, right? Right.

So do you want a final opinion on the novel?

Tough.

Fin.

*  *  *

But what the hell am I going to post about now? Frankenstein – must get a copy of Frankenstein. That’s my Christmas wish list sorted.

Today's Drac.

Dracula is returning to its roots. The Count is fleeing back to his native Transylvania and the intrepid hunters are pursuing him to his lair. Two of the men are currently following him up the river in a steamer, while another two are following the course of the river on horseback as outriders. This is fortunate since it decreases the opportunity for them to hold each other’s hands. A few miles away in a horse drawn carriage, Van Helsing and Mina are making straight for Castle Dracula across the wild and increasingly wintry Carpathians. By a stroke of good fortune, nobody ever feels the need to go to the toilet.

At the moment the spotlight is on the good doctor and the beautiful lady, and winter is closing in. As they rest by their camp fire – which is less camp than it would have been had the other men been around, of course – the snowflakes begin to coalesce into the forms of Drac’s three girlies. They’re the ones who tried to bite Jonathan at the beginning, if you remember. According to Van Helsing’s memorandum, their faces are even whiter than the snow, but their lips remain red and voluptuous.

Mina doesn’t like them. She says nothing, but there’s definitely a nose-wrinkling ‘yuck’ suggested by the tone of her expression. I suspect this might be due to her aversion to women of a certain class – they being the only ones who have lips quite that voluptuous and that particular shade of red. Why she makes no mention of God at this point remains a mystery.

Fortunately, the wise and resourceful Doctor has constructed a protective circle to keep the Gruesome Girlies at bay, and it works. Having tried both their glassy, tinkly voices and their low mournful ones to tempt our Decent and Defiant Duo into biting range – all to no avail – the GGs eventually give up and go away. And here comes the sad bit.

The only casualties are the horses, which have, for some reason not made entirely clear, succumbed to the influence of the Count’s lady friends. They’re dead, and that really isn’t on, especially since Mina has made a somewhat repetitive habit of saying what nice horses they are in her journal. However, we must let that one pass, and hope that the duo are now dynamic enough to complete their journey across the Pass on foot.

More to follow, no doubt. Time I had some soup.

God and Tedium.

Dracula, page 309, Jonathan Harker’s journal:

‘My only comfort is that we are in the hands of God.’

Dracula, page 312, Mina Harker’s journal:

‘We are truly in the hands of God.’

Dracula, page 313, Mina Harker’s journal:

‘I do hope that my darling will not run any chance of danger – more than need be; but we are in God’s hands.’

And on top of that, we get regular doses of ‘God will sustain me,’ ‘I pray God will forgive me,’ ‘With God’s help we shall prevail’ etc, etc, etc ad nauseum. I know I have to shut up about this because I’m falling prey to repetition myself, but this God stuff has been going on for about the last two hundred freggin’ pages, and it’s becoming very, very tedious.

Soggy Brave Sausages and the Hands of God.

So what’s new with Dracula tonight? Not much, I’m afraid. The elements I bemoaned in the last Dracula post are still very much to the fore. Here are two examples:

‘“Do as you will,” said Jonathan, with a sob that shook him all over, “We are in the hands of God!”’

The inaccurate punctuation may be overlooked as a typo or archaic convention, but Jonathan is still sobbing and still falling back into the hands of God. Still, at least they don’t have a grip of steel, which is a blessing of sorts, I suppose. Although Jonathan's own hand did 'close instinctively on the handle of his kukri' at one point when Dracula's name was mentioned. Mmm.

 I’m curious to know whatever happened to the stiff upper lip for which Victorian gentlemen were renowned. Stoker’s male heroes – at least the British and American ones – appear to have lips that are about as stiff as uncooked sausages after they’ve fallen into a puddle and become ever so soggy. I wonder what this says about Stoker.

And here’s another one that’s true to form, lifted from Mina’s journal:

‘Later. – Oh, it did me good to see the way that these brave men worked. How can women help loving men when they are so earnest, and so true, and so brave!’

See what I mean? What did I say about ‘twice a page on average?’ That’s twice in two lines. Again, it’s interesting to reflect on the fact that this is a male Victorian author putting words into the mouth of a female character. Did Mr Stoker have a clue about real women, you might wonder.

It’s also interesting to note that the only characters with stiff upper lips in this posh Englishman’s story are a young woman, an ageing Dutchman, and a Romanian vampire. What a traitor.

Tonight's Drac Post.

I intended to make a post about what finally and irrevocably turned me off Stoker’s writing. Problem is, I went back to find the offending passage and for the life of me I couldn’t. Maybe I imagined it, or maybe I’m dreaming about Dracula now. That would be a hoot, wouldn’t it?

Tonight’s episode in which Van Helsing explains what gives the hunters the advantage over their quarry was actually rational, inventive, and adequately written, so I’d better hold fire on a final judgement.

Being now 2/3 of the way through the book, however, I do still have a general difficulty. The intrepid vampire hunters are so squeaky clean, so given to emotional outbursts and the holding of one another’s hands (which usually have grips of steel,) so inclined to speak in a nauseatingly florid language that goes way beyond the bounds of Victorian convention, and so insistent in their frequent assertions that they are working under God’s protective hand, that I sometimes have trouble being sure whose side I’m on.

Colour Shifts and Saying it with Tears.

Tonight’s Dracula update:

(Well, sort of update anyway.)

Having previously remarked on Jonathan Harker’s propensity to colour shifts, we now have a new one. I quote:

‘Then her husband (Jonathan) turned to her, wan-eyed and with a greenish pallor which subdued the snowy whiteness of his hair…’

It seems that while Dracula’s poison is gradually turning Mina into a vampire, Jonathan is offering some compensation by becoming an oompa-loompa. Hey,ho; that’s Victorian England for you – nothing if not well balanced.

And talking of Victorian England, I can’t help noting that the ‘ordinary’ male characters – those whom Mina is want to call ‘good, brave men’ about twice a page on average – are rather excessively given to weeping and squeezing one another’s hands. It is with some relief, however, that when Mina asks them to promise that they will kill her should the vampire’s poison take her too far along the road of diabolical transition, they are too emotional for tears. Oh, good.

Intrepid, but Soggy.

Tonight’s Dracula update:

The intrepid vampire hunters have had their first physical encounter with their quarry. It was a draw, more or less. There were no wrecks and nobody drownded, and nobody got bitten. Phew. So, the field having been neither won nor lost, they retired before sunset to Mina’s lodging in Dr Seward’s asylum, there to keep an eye on her during the dangerous hours.

She makes a nice little speech, in which she tells them that they mustn’t hate the Count. They must hunt and destroy him, but they must remember that he is a tortured victim, too, and so they should see their mission as freeing his mortal soul to go to the place where mortal souls are supposed to go. (Warning: I’m afraid there’s an awful lot of God, Jesus and Heaven in this book.)

Mina’s speech is rational, compassionate and tightly written. You begin to warm a little towards Stoker’s writing – until you read the next paragraph. I can only quote it verbatim to make the point.

‘We men were all in tears now (it’s an extract from Dr Seward’s diary.) There was no resisting them, and we wept openly. She wept too, to see that her sweeter counsels had prevailed. Her husband flung himself on his knees beside her, and putting his arms round her, hid his face in the folds of her dress. Van Helsing beckoned to us and we stole out of the room, leaving the two loving hearts alone with their God.’

So what options do you have at this point, apart from laughing your socks off and then vomiting into them?

Jonathan’s hair has turned white by the way, and his knuckles frequently assume the same hue. His face, on the other hand, is more prone to turning black with thunder. I expect his knees must be red from having himself flung on them, but Stoker spares us this detail.

Drowning, Not Reading.

Tonight’s Dracula update:

Stoker is a strange writer. As previously opined, he writes lunatics and brutality very well, using a style that is tight, eloquent and relatively restrained. His ‘ordinary’ characters, on the other hand, are a bit limp, and his relating of procedural detail is overdone. But now I’ve come to the real problem. We’re in the emotional aftermath of Mina’s assault by the Count, and the excesses are almost wondrous to behold. Whether he was trying to out-worst the worst of Dickens, I don’t know, but page after torturous page is so overloaded with excessive melodrama and mawkish sentimentality that reading them feels like drowning in a vat of disgustingly sweet syrup.

I think I’m just about through it now, and there is adventure in prospect, so I will persevere.

On Self-Betrayal.

Tonight’s note on the progress of Dracula is not amusing. The narrative has reached a new level.

The hunters have broken into Mina’s room and witnessed the final throes of the Count’s assault on her. By modern standards, and with the added dimension of genre familiarity, the simple details seem tame: Dracula has bitten Mina’s neck and drunk her blood, and then forced her to drink his own blood from a wound he has made on his chest. Well, it’s what you’d expect, isn’t it? Yawn, yawn? No. Stoker writes this very well indeed. The sense of brutality is almost palpable.

So now we have two subjects on which Stoker writes very well indeed: the varying moods of the lunatic, and the brutal reality of assault. What does it say of him that he should write of such things with such apparently innate understanding? What does it betray?

Of more personal interest, what do some of the things I’ve written say, or betray, about me? Are writers who write of horror – supernatural or otherwise – merely possessed of an instinctive and disturbingly accurate imagination? Or are they releasing some real dark side of themselves onto the page? In all honesty, I don’t know the answer to that.

Being Less than Credible and Failing the Lady.

Tonight’s Dracula update:

In Stoker’s worst bit of writing so far, the intrepid heroes are ensconced in a very important meeting about how to hunt down the fountainhead of the impending vampire plague, when Quincy – the intrepid hero from Texas – gets up and walks out of the room without so much as a by-your-leave. No one turns a hair at this, and the next thing you know there’s a shot and the window shatters. Quincy returns and says (in paraphrase) ‘Sorry about that. I saw a bat on the window ledge and I don’t like them any more, so I decided to shoot it. Only I missed. Oh, well…’ And still no one turns a hair.

Now, anybody who knows a badly contrived plot device when he sees one will naturally groan at this juncture, because he knows it’s only there so that at some point further on, somebody can say (also in paraphrase) ‘Mein Gott! (Which Van Helsing does say occasionally.) The bat on the window ledge was none other than Count Dracula himself, come to spy on us!’ And everybody else can join in unison with a rousing ‘A-ha!!!’ At which point, Dracula begins to seem like a forerunner of Winnie the Pooh. And it doesn’t quite stop there.

The Boys decide that Mina must play no further part in proceedings, because she is but a weak and feeble woman and wouldn’t stand up too well to the rigours of vampire hunting. And they continue to congratulate themselves, more than once, on the soundness of their decision. In paraphrase:

‘I’m so glad we decided to leave the little lady at home.’

‘So am I; it was a good decision. We are men of the world who have seen much, and even we will be taxed. A mere woman would be sure to crack under the strain.’

(For once, I’m in agreement with the feminists here, but the editor doesn’t pick it up at all. Maybe she decided it was just too blatant to need pointing out. It is.)

So poor Mina goes home uncomplaining and retires to bed, where she is now utterly vulnerable to the white mist that comes in around the door frame and the white face that bends over her as she sleeps. Even those readers who can't spot a crushingly bad plot device will no doubt be getting the picture: The Boys have made a terrible mistake, but will they learn the right lesson from it? We’ll see.

A Pre Post-Feminist.

Tonight’s second Dracula update:

Mina Harker (wife of Jonathan Harker, who started the whole thing off by going to Transylvania to conduct the conveyance of Carfax Abbey and only escaped by crawling down a vertical castle wall) is prominent at this point in the story. She has a forte, it seems, for consoling distraught men – holding their hands, providing a literal shoulder on which to literally cry, and offering to be their ‘sister’ or ‘lifelong friend,’ while actually playing the role of surrogate mother. This would appear to vindicate the editor’s constant carping that she is not a ‘new woman’ (Victorian slang for feminist) at all, but merely a strong and capable one. Dr Van Helsing describes her as having ‘the mind of a man but the heart of a woman.’

I’m not sure whether this says more about the prejudices of Victorian men, or the prejudices of 21^st century editors.

Lucy's Lateness Laid to Rest.

Tonight’s Dracula update:

You might recall the earlier mystery of how the late Lucy was somehow to become later. All is now revealed. The transition was due, of course, to dear, sweet and very late Lucy having been relegated – or elevated, depending on one’s personal inclinations – to the status of Un-dead (sic.) The metamorphosis was immediately made apparent to the company of startled disbelievers by the fact that she now has dark hair. No more ‘sunny curls’ for Lucy. Only late Lucys have sunny curls; later ones become brunettes in order to declare their incontrovertibly bad girl status to the thoroughly disgusted onlookers. (It might also be speculated that there is a matter of colour matching involved. Black makes a much stronger accompaniment to red than blonde, and as Lucy has adopted the habit of biting children and drinking their blood – somewhat indecorously, it has to be said, if the evidence of dribbling is any guide – the change of hue would seem appropriate.)

Deliverance was at hand, however, in the form of Dr Van Helsing and his three little helpers. They went to work manfully with a pointed stick and a hacksaw, so the dear girl is now truly late and guaranteed never to be later again.

Unfortunately, no mention was made of whether Lucy’s newly disconnected head reverted to the sprouting of sunny curls on its ascent to the angelic realm, but I think we may take it as read. Blonde goes much better with white feathers, you see.

Lucy in the Shadows with Fangs.

Tonight’s Dracula update:

The kids living in the vicinity of Highgate Cemetery are staying out late and coming home with bite marks on their necks. This was a common enough occurrence when I was a teenager – though not in my case, of course – but since the late-and-nearly-later Lucy now resides in that very location, I think we’re meant to draw a darker inference.

Apart from that, nothing much is happening at the moment, and Van Helsing’s somewhat unconventional syntax is becoming ever more difficult to decipher.

I will persevere.

Being a Late Lucy.

Tonight’s Dracula update:

Lucy has become prematurely long in the tooth and turned paler than even a Victorian maiden has a right to be. She’s also died, except she hasn’t really; she’s just stopped being human and passed into the twilit realm of the undead.

But of course, we readers aren’t supposed to know this. Only Professor van Helsing is privy to such arcane knowledge at this point in the story, and he isn’t letting on yet. The commentator, on the other hand, is not so reticent. The book is a students’ copy, you see, with footnotes, and one of said footnotes informs us that Lucy’s hair will change colour later. (Later? But she’s bereft of life and rests in peace. She’s already a late Lucy. How can she become even later? What can this ‘later’ mean?) Fortunately, I’m one of the few people who’ve seen the odd film version or two, so it doesn’t matter. But suppose I’d just arrived on a night flight from some Remote Location. What then? Bloody academics!

Meanwhile, poor Arthur (the late-but-not-yet-later Lucy’s betrothed) is sobbing with his shoulders, and Mr and Mrs Harker have inherited a big house and lots of money. That’s about it, really. No nice wolves tonight, just an irritating bat that keeps tapping on the window.

Another Bit Missing.

I just met a really nice wolf in Dracula. His name is Bersicker (a corruption of ‘berserker’) and he only frightened Lucy’s poor mother to death because Dracula made him do it. Once he was released from the Count’s influence, he went back to the zoo for a bit of tlc and an ear scratch from his keeper. That’s something else you never see in the films. Why do they miss out all the best bits?

Wampyr: Perilous in Pink.

I’m warming to Dracula – the novel, that is, not the wampyr. (I thought it would be cool and latter-day pretentious to call him a wampyr.) I wasn’t certain at first, since the initial sequence in which Jonathan takes a trip to Transylvania and gets incarcerated in the Count’s castle contains quite a lot that lacks credibility. Once you get beyond that to Dracula’s voyage to Whitby, however, it becomes surprisingly atmospheric and rather creepier than any of the film versions I’ve seen. My favourite character so far is Renfield, who is even madder than me and doesn’t mind admitting it.

I gather Stoker based his description of Castle Dracula on one of the Scottish castles – Dunnotar, I think, but I’m not sure. And I’ll bet you didn’t know that Lochmaben Castle in south west Scotland is reputed to be haunted by a vampire – supposedly the father of Robert the Bruce. A cashier at the petrol station there told me he wears pink and bounces up and down as though he’s on an invisible pogo stick. I’m serious, and so was she.

Missing the Pearl in the Oyster.

As previously noted, I’m finally getting around to reading Dracula. To be honest, I’m not finding it at all horrific so far. It’s no more horrific than the many film versions I’ve seen. To me, the vampire is the second least frightening monster after those daft zombies. The Count is portrayed as more Machiavelli than monster, his handmaidens come over as mere pouting, selfish girlies, and even the children of the night – the wolves – hardly inspire the terror they ought to.

And yet there is one episode in what I’ve read so far that is truly horrific, and it’s one I haven’t seen used in any of the films. Jonathan has gone exploring in the castle and has encountered the girlies. One of them (the blonde, for some reason that was probably highly significant to Victorians) has taken a shine to his neck and is about to take a bite, when the Count steps angrily in and prevents her. That much is commonly used, but what comes next isn’t. Dracula has been out and about, and has brought a little pressie back for the ladies. It’s a bag, and something is moving in the bag, and although Stoker (rather cleverly for once) doesn’t let the reader see what it is, Jonathan’s journal account leaves us in no doubt that it’s a live child. The girlies are duly delighted and take it away to meet whatever pleasure impulses are driving them. They are unspecified at that point, but one thing’s for sure: an innocent child has been taken from its home and is about to meet a singularly unpleasant end from which there is no escape.

This is chilling in the extreme. It echoes the feeding of live food to predatory pets, of tethering a goat to attract the tiger to the gun, of lowering a live cow into a pen to tempt the dinosaur in Jurassic Park. It’s all about being hopelessly trapped while awaiting a dreadful fate.

So why don’t any of the western scriptwriters pick it up? You tell me. Do they fear it would be going too far, or do they not understand the nature of the horror? Is it too subtle perhaps – not obvious enough, not enough noise, blood or snarling? I’m sure the Japanese would have understood, and I’m sure they would have had no qualms about using it. There’s an interesting parallel in the famous scene from The Audition in which the carpet bag suddenly moves and grunts. There’s obviously something in there, something hidden from the viewer, something awaiting its fate. Yet Stoker has written a piece of genuine psychological horror in his book, and Hollywood has consistently missed it. And so, as far as I recall, did Murnau in Nosferatu. I wonder why.

And I’m developing yet another theory as to what Dracula is all about. I’ll let you know if I still hold it when I finish the book.

Men with Fangs.

Mel has lent me her students’ edition of Dracula. It’s a book I’ve always wanted to read, having always been a fan of cloaks, bats, Bela Lugosi and children of the night (and the music they make, of course.)

So I read the academic preface, and guess what. According to the academics, it isn’t a gothic horror story at all. It’s about female emancipation and Victorian attitudes to homosexuality. And Count Dracula is based on Oscar Wilde.

That’s according to the academics. Maybe it’s because all they have to declare is their genius.