The Evolution of Dracula
This website is designed to explicate Bram Stoker's Dracula and various film interpretations using the following critical methods: Historical Criticism, Psychological Criticism, Feminist Criticism, and Reader Response. These critical methods will be defined and used to give merit to the many Draculas and show the ways in which the character and story of Dracula has evolved with time. |
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Play the video clip before you. Listen to the dark intonation of the organ as its player directs it with precision. Watch his solemn, pale face study the music with such intensity that he does not falter in his playing as the camera pans his face and hands. Admire the pure beauty of the white church as the organist in the black suit loses himself in a world outside of his own reality. Where does your mind go? Perhaps the angels observing the performance from above or the stark whiteness of the scene put your mind at peace; or maybe, the gargoyle-like faces around the organ, the pale intensity of the sole man in the video, the organ keys that move themselves below the row in which his fingers play, or the music itself take you to a dark place, where you hide in terror of undead beings, those which thirst for your blood and creep in this dark place at their full potential.
If you are familiar with Bram Stoker's Dracula and its many film interpretations, then you of course are aware that this exact piece by Bach has been used on countless occasions as the theme music for the character of Dracula, a character originally brought from the depths to personify the idea of fear itself as a vampire, feasting on the blood and vitality of others to keep his own mortality.
What is so compelling about characters such as Dracula and his fellow iconic vampires that has kept people interested and fearful for centuries? While dismissed as fictional beings purged from the minds of those afraid of being damned to hell, the vampire myth has grown and evolved around the different movements of history, whether it be a movement of religion, sexuality, feminism, or even technology. Dracula himself has changed through from the original film interpretation in the 1930s through today, becoming less as a symbol of fear and death and more as a symbol of sex, virility, and immortality.
Take a look, if you dare enter the dark world of a soulless being, and see for yourself what exactly compels us to continue the idea of vampires into its own source of immortality: we may indeed tell ourselves that there is nothing real about vampire creatures that live forever, but Bram Stoker's antagonist has in fact been very much alive since 1897 in the minds and imagination of those familiar of the tale.
If you are familiar with Bram Stoker's Dracula and its many film interpretations, then you of course are aware that this exact piece by Bach has been used on countless occasions as the theme music for the character of Dracula, a character originally brought from the depths to personify the idea of fear itself as a vampire, feasting on the blood and vitality of others to keep his own mortality.
What is so compelling about characters such as Dracula and his fellow iconic vampires that has kept people interested and fearful for centuries? While dismissed as fictional beings purged from the minds of those afraid of being damned to hell, the vampire myth has grown and evolved around the different movements of history, whether it be a movement of religion, sexuality, feminism, or even technology. Dracula himself has changed through from the original film interpretation in the 1930s through today, becoming less as a symbol of fear and death and more as a symbol of sex, virility, and immortality.
Take a look, if you dare enter the dark world of a soulless being, and see for yourself what exactly compels us to continue the idea of vampires into its own source of immortality: we may indeed tell ourselves that there is nothing real about vampire creatures that live forever, but Bram Stoker's antagonist has in fact been very much alive since 1897 in the minds and imagination of those familiar of the tale.