Dracula, Culture And Values From Mediums

Hollywood in known for making literary adaptations, and such adaptations will exploit context. Movies bring literary properties to the public that otherwise would not bother to read them. However the “marriage” of literature and film holds their own separate qualities.

It is precisely the point that Hollywood distorts and corrupts serious literature for the entertainment pleasures of a mass audience. In the task of comparing and contrasting the novel of “Dracula” to film extracts of “Bram Stoker’s Dracula”, values, meaning and context discovered lie between discrepancy and similarity. The change from differing mediums, novel and film, reveal characteristics and possibilities of narratives. Through the advancement of technology, modern writers have gained a cinematic approach to their writing. However Dracula, written in 1987 by Abraham Stoker, where the introduction of technology was gradual, forging inventions such as the typewriter and phonograph, made reference to in the novel, had no anticipation of what technology would have an effect on such writings. With society’s fascination with the supernatural, and love of technology, Dracula’s many adaptations, film, stage, have ensured its survival through the passage of time.

To date, the closest adaptation of the original novel is Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The basic overview of the story has the departure of Jonathan Harker from his fiancÐ"©e Mina Murray in London, visiting Transylvania where he has an encounter with the evil Dracula. In England we are introduced to the characters of Lucy, a socialite, and her three suitors. Through terror Jonathan escapes back home, while Dracula arrives in London where he attacks Lucy, Mina’s friend, and Mina herself. Dr. Van Helsing arrives as help with the unknown, and in the end a climatic battle in the Transylvanian Castle Dracula takes place. Dracula is an epistolary novel that consists of journal entries, letters, telegram, phonographic recordings of Dr. Seward, and excerpts from newspaper articles, meaning it was written from a number of perspectives. The film has done its best to this and is witnessed through a variety of viewpoints.

Four key film extracts will be discussed. The introduction of Mina, starting of with a medium long shot of her in the Westenra house, which allows the audience to pay more attention to what is happening in the background, the mise-en-scene being a large decorated room of the Victorian era, including plants, chairs. The setting of the whole room is surrounded by glass, which has the ability to allow natural light. This shot slowly zooms in to the sound of the typewriter and turns into a reverse shot that is a close up on the face of Mina Murray. Her diligent use of the typewriter allows the background noise of chirping birds add to the innocence of her character. Lucy then enters the shot, which goes back to a medium long shot. Lucy and Mina are contrasted; Lucy represents threatening sexuality, whilst Mina represents socially accepted sexuality. Lucy before being vamped contains personality characteristics that are classified as unacceptable in Victorian society. In the film extract, the significance of Arabian Nights reveals Mina’s sexual inquisitiveness in contrast to Lucy’s fantastical application. The neat brown hair and conservative green dress of Mina in comparison to Lucy’s wavy red hair and flowing white dress, emphasize, from Coppola’s deliberate use, the wild passions of Lucy and steadiness of Mina.

This flows on to the evening meeting of Lucy’s three, very different suitors.

The scene mentioned, was adapted from the diary entries of Mina, and letter correspondence between the two ladies, the change from medium has kept Mina’s perspective, however not presented in the style.

Lucy’s three suitors are stereotyped in Coppola’s film by the actors clever use of characterisation, where Quincey P. Morris plays the self assured, loud mouthed Texan; Dr. John Seward is the stumbling doctor with a soft heart; Arthur Holmwood her eventual chosen suitor, the man with money.

The “new” woman, sexual woman, posed a threat to Victorian society. This new breed was seen through Lucy Westenra. In this extract she goes “sleepwalking”, suggesting prostitution, for in the film she wears a glamorous red night dress and her movements are smooth and seductive. The layers of sound, including thunder and howling wolves, lighting being the lightning, foreshadow Lucy’s diabolic end. The deliberate use of colour in the night dress worn by Mina, white reflects her purity as the ideal woman, compared to Lucy’s passionate, desiring red.

From the beginning, Lucy is portrayed as a temptress, prone to promiscuity as she wishes to marry three men; however only after Dracula bit her, her sexuality heightened. In this extract, Lucy, in a way, gets what she desired through a blood transfusion. Blood represents the struggle for sexual ownership. Lucy writes that “”Arthur feels very, very close to me. I seem to feel his presence warm about me”, after receiving her first blood transfusion from her fiancÐ"© Holmwood. The Christian ideals of marriage being a sacred union between two becomes troublesome for Lucy receives further transfusions from Quincey and Seward. Such an act threatens the pious sacred image of marriage, which was maintained in Victorian England; rather Lucy’s desire of promiscuity is achieved.

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