Rationale:
My feature article will be exploring the depth of romance and how and why Coppola decided to develop theses deep ideas of love. I will also be discussing Coppola’s decision to use very old film techniques. This is will allow the reader of the feature article to further understand why Coppola did the things that he did and therefore allow them to have a better understanding of the film. I will also be exploring the attitudes, values and beliefs that were held in the time period of the original novel and how Coppola developed and presented that to a modern 90’s audience. TRUE LOVE’S DARK BITE
Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 hit, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, reimagines the timeless Dracula tale and creates a twisted love story that allows contemporary audiences an insight into a surprisingly relatable fable, as Taylor Ellison explores… Bram Stoker’s Dracula
Love is not black and white and Francis Ford Coppola’s ageless classic Bram Stoker’s Dracula epitomises the many layers that come with romance. The dark love story highlights the romance of the gothic horror and still manages to convey the fear and terror that cemented the original novel as an iconic and memorable classic. Coppola’s imaginative view of a timeless tale embodies the gothic genre, with strong themes of romance, sexuality and lust, as the complexity of love is exposed. Coppola allows us an insight into his processes when creating this epic narrative.
Why did you decide to establish a backstory for
FW Murnau’s 1921 film Nosferatu is an appropriation of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula. Despite it being an appropriation, explicit gothic conventions remain evident, which explore societal fears and values. These fears and values differ from Dracula, due to distinct contextual influences of different time periods.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula is not only a classic story of men and monsters, but a dramatic reactionary work to the perceived threats to Victorian society in nineteenth century England. In modern times there have been many film adaptations of the novel, each developing a unique analysis or criticism of the literary text within the framework of the society and time period in which it was created. The 1972 film Blacula is one of the most culturally specific variations on the story of Dracula, and highlights many of the themes and messages found in Stoker’s original text. Among the primary similarities between the novel and the film is the portrayal of race, sexuality, nationality, and culture, and the characterization in each work speaks to the
Anyone who has ever seen one of the several adaptations of Dracula as a movie will know that it was intended to be a horror story. Stoker goes to great lengths in order to create an
Are there still connections between Bram Stokers famous novel Dracula and modern day society? In Dracula, Stoker expands on many themes that indeed exist today. Not only does he touch on the most obvious theme, sex. He expands on gender division and good versus evil. Some say since times have changed the themes I introduced have changed as well, leaving connections between then and now irrelevant. However, I feel that although times have changed they still have roots from the time of the novel to now. In this essay I will expand on the themes of this novel while connecting them to modern day society, the critical texts I have chosen and will mention later on in the essay are a good representation of the commonalities between the chill, dark Victorian days in which the era that Dracula was written in and modern day.
Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” is a story about a Vampire named Count Dracula and his journey to satisfy his lust for blood. The story is told through a series of individuals’ journal entries and a letters sent back and forth between characters. Bram Stoker shows the roll in which a certain gender plays in the Victorian era through the works of Dracula. This discussion not only consists of the roll a certain gender takes, but will be discussing how a certain gender fits into the culture of that time period as well as how males and females interact among each other. The Victorian era was extremely conservative when it came to the female, however there are signs of the changing into the New Woman inside of Dracula. Essentially the woman was to be assistance to a man and stay pure inside of their ways.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a story of horror, suspense, and repulsion. The main antagonist, Count Dracula, is depicted as an evil, repulsive creature that ends and perverts life to keep himself alive and youthful. To most onlookers that may be the case, but most people fail to see one crucial element to this character. Dracula is a character that, though it may be long gone, was once human, and thus has many human emotions and motives still within him. Let us delve into these emotions of a historically based monster.
Perhaps no work of literature has ever been composed without being a product of its era, mainly because the human being responsible for writing it develops their worldview within a particular era. Thus, with Bram Stoker's Dracula, though we have a vampire myth novel filled with terror, horror, and evil, the story is a thinly veiled disguise of the repressed sexual mores of the Victorian era. If we look to critical interpretation and commentary to win support for such a thesis, we find it aplenty "For erotic Dracula certainly is. 'Quasi-pornography' one critic labels it. Another describes it as a 'kind of incestuous, necrophilious, oral-anal-sadistic all-in-wrestling matching'. A
In a particular addition of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, Maurice Hindle had suggested that “sex was the monster Stoker feared most.” This essay will examine the examples of this statement in the Dracula text, focusing on female sexuality. The essay will also briefly look at an article Stoker had written after Dracula which also displays Stoker’s fear.
This essay will attempt to discuss the two gothic tales ‘Carmilla’ and ‘Dracula’ in relation to cultural contexts in which they exist as being presented to the reader through the gender behaviour and sexuality that is portrayed through the texts. Vampire stories always seem to involve some aspect of sexuality and power.
The relationship that exists between gender, sexuality and sexual practice is one that is not static, but is ever changing and shifting dependent upon the society in which it exists (Brickell, 2007). This essay aims to describe how Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, Dracula, presents a “characteristic, if hyperbolic, instance of Victorian anxiety over the potential fluidity of gender roles” (Craft, 111-112), whilst also inverting and subverting conventional Victorian gender patterns through the characterisation and portrayal of the vampire women residing in Count Dracula’s castle, Mina, and Lucy as well as the ‘feminine’ passivity and submissive depiction of Jonathan Harker.
Though it appears on the surface to be an engaging horror story about a blood-sucking Transylvanian man, upon diving deeper into Bram Stoker's novel Dracula, one can find issues of female sexuality, homoeroticism, and gender roles. Many read Dracula as an entertaining story full of scary castles, seductive vampires, and mysterious forces, yet at the same time, they are being bombarded with descriptions of sex, images of rape, and homosexual relationships. In Francis Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula, Stoker's presentation of homoeroticism is taken, reworked, and presented in a different, stronger light. Coppola does much in the area of emphasizing a homoerotic relationship between Mina Harker and Lucy Westerna: a relationship Bram Stoker
The protagonist and story of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula have been widely interpreted and adapted in films throughout many years. Despite almost a century of time since the initial publication, Dracula has maintained its ability to frighten and mesmerize readers. Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula; however, utilizes the erotic romance of the original novel in order to depict a tragic love story. The film accurately follows the general plot of the novel, yet presents the characters in a unique manner that provides for a different appreciation of the characters.
The story of Dracula is well documented and has stood the test of time since it’s Victorian age creation. More times than not, literature writings are a reflection of the era from which they are produced. In the case of Dracula, Vampire literature expresses the fears of a society. Which leads me to the topic I chose to review: sexuality. The Victorian Era was viewed as a period diluted in intense sexual repression and I believe that Dracula effectively exploited this as the fear of sexuality was commonplace in the society. In this paper I will examine Bram Stoker’s Dracula and highlight his use of sexuality. I will analysis the female sexuality that is prevalent throughout the book, the complexities are at work within the text, and the
Bram Stoker’s Dracula does not follow the norm of the nineteenth century novels, that is, it is not written in a straightforward narrative but instead comprises of a collection of letters, journal entries and diary scrawls. Apart from that, it also includes a ship's log, numberless clippings from newspaper and also, a "phonograph diary.” This form of writing invariably helps in developing the “mystery” aspect of this horror novel since it either gives us no information about a particular thing or gives us information from various points of view so that it is impossible for the readers to come to one conclusion and they keep playing with different possibilities in their minds.
Bram Stoker’s ingenious piece of work on writing Dracula has set the expectation for gothic novels all over the world and time to come. The mindset of writing Dracula through the Victorian Era really sets the tone for the reader by creating a spine-tingling sensation right through the novel. With this in mind, Stoker wouldn’t have been able to succeed his masterpiece without the effective uses of symbolism, imagery, foreshadowing, and its overall theme.