Observer wrote:not as many as The Running Man (where I can say the movie was, by far, ages better than the boring book! Arnie "Governator"'s acting and one liners destroyed everything else, lol, it's almost like a premonition of Total Recall) but still quite a lot.
I'm speechless...... I can't believe you actually said that. The Running Man is one of the best sci-fi books I've ever read, a knockout. It knocked the film into the stratosphere, it was incredible. For fear of thread derailment I'll leave it there, but I had to read what you wrote three times to make sure I wasn't seeing it backward.
(Nosferatu is very good btw, watching a bit of it now. I like the old classic stuff. Dunno wtf you're talking about with the Running Man book tho.)
ROBOTRON wrote:I guess I have NO TASTE when it comes to Dracula movies. I think
Fright Night's Dracula and
Val Helsing's Draucla were the greatest portrayals of the creature ever put to film.
Fright Night rules.
Acid King wrote:
That's without looking at citations within the articles or wading through the other few hundred results. I don't know how you aren't aware of well known interpretation of novel as a sexual metaphor. Saying it's just about an undead monster is like suggesting Animal Farm is just about talking animals.
I'm not well aware of the novel being a sexual metaphor, and funnily enough, it didn't leap out at me while I was reading it either. I am aware of how Vampirism has been sexualised commercially and it makes me wonder how much this affects the analyses of a book written in the late seventeenth century.
Let's not be pithy, Animal Farm wears it's subtext completely on its sleeve. The sexual subtext of Dracula simply does not. Stoker writes in a very simple, straightforward manner. His only actual descriptions of sexuality are fairly restrained to commenting on the beauty of someone, or someone's attractiveness. For the time the book was written, the female vampires are very racy, and Harker has an incredible attraction to them he can barely tear himself away from - but Stoker doesn't write that in underlying narrative, just that they're voluptuous and wanton and spellbinding.
Now, being fair to studies made of the book, the premise of a beast flying in through the window to prey on sleeping women could admittedly be seen as taboo and sexual by way of perversion of social values considering the time in which the book was written. I would agree that taboo, and the beauty of the vampire women being desirable and perhaps lustful (while also being pure evil) is something to go on for someone looking to pry a subtext out of the novel. It's worth keeping in mind it doesn't take them too long to get over the fact the chicks look pretty and peaceful lying in their tombs before they shove a stake through their heart, saw their head off and stuff garlic in the mouth.
I suppose that's a metaphor for male dominance in victorian England, suppressing women's rights to sexual freedom by force (see, I can do it too.)
But:
"Dracula is usually seen as a novel about suppressed sexuality, especially female sexuality, for which vampirism is a metaphor. Four of the five women characters are vampires, and their sexual aggressiveness and insatiability are presented as men's secret fantasy and greatest nightmare.
Lucy's transformation from respectable Victorian lady to voracious sexual predator is a cautionary tale warning us of the threat that the Count, through his sexual prowess, presents to civilized society. Such women prey upon innocent children (Lucy and the vampire women both do this) and seduce and drain men, driving them from their reason through their power of arousing sexual desire. Sexuality is only safe when it is monogamous, low-key and sanctified by the production of children within marriage, as represented by Mina before her corruption by the Count and after she is 'cured' of vampirism by his destruction. It is remarkable that Harker has far more sexual interaction with the vampire women in one short scene than with his wife in the entire novel. "
All that steamy, heady sexuality swimming beneath the surface?
The Counts "Sexual Prowess", and Lucy's transformation into a "Voracious sexual predator."
It's a bit much. It's a shame no-one actually asked Stoker if his book about an ancient, waxen, undead blood drinking monster threatening the women of London was actually softcore porn literature.
Stoker might have said he'd written the count and vampirism as a taboo and metaphorical perhaps of the breaking of strict social values at the time,
but it's a story nonetheless.
Stoker had a history in theatre and dramatisation of plays before he wrote the book. All of this ridiculous essay writing:
"Productive Fear: Labor, Sexuality, and Mimicry in Bram Stoker's Dracula"
"Transcending The Virgin/Whore Dichotomy: Telling Mina's Story in Bram Stoker's Dracula."
"(Un)safe Sex: Romancing the Vampire."
"Repossessing the body: Transgressive desire in `Carmilla' and Dracula."
"A Vampire in the Mirror: The Sexuality of Dracula"
"Feminism, Sex Role Exchanges, and Other Subliminal Fantasies in Bram Stoker's "Dracula""
- smacks firmly of people writing for an audience who are clearly obsessed with the commercial link between Vampirism and sexuality.
For me, the hellishness of the book and the straightforwardness of the heroes plight to destroy Dracula was as fresh a telling of the story I'd ever heard. Just weird I had to go back to the source to find it.
A lot is lost in translation...
