{"id":1465,"date":"2024-10-28T20:05:33","date_gmt":"2024-10-29T00:05:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/?p=1465"},"modified":"2024-10-28T20:05:33","modified_gmt":"2024-10-29T00:05:33","slug":"me-and-dracula-the-mythological-origins-the-other-and-the-journal-entry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/2024\/10\/28\/me-and-dracula-the-mythological-origins-the-other-and-the-journal-entry\/","title":{"rendered":"Me and Dracula: the mythological origins, the “other,” and the journal entry"},"content":{"rendered":"

My first experience with Bram Stoker\u2019s <\/span>Dracula <\/span><\/i>was in middle school, watching the 1992 <\/span>Dracula <\/span><\/i>film with my mom. Despite not being a fan of spooky movies, my mom likes <\/span>Dracula<\/span><\/i>, both the book and the media inspired by it. Considering I have, since my youth, been a <\/span>total <\/span><\/i>fan of the macabre and ghastly, I fell in love with the film and aspired to read the book, which I promptly found a copy of. Since then, I have read the physical copy twice, and listened to a full audiobook once. Once in a while, my mother and I will rewatch the 1992 film.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dracula <\/span><\/i>intrigues me for a number of reasons, one of which I share with my younger self. It had significant influence on the development of the general trope of the \u201cvampire\u201d and its popularity\u2014shaped in Europe \u201cby an intersection of Enlightenment misunderstandings and misinterpretations from the Romantic period\u201d (<\/span>Bohn<\/span> 1). I possessed a deep interest in knowing why vampires might act, think, or exist the way they do in <\/span>Dracula <\/span><\/i>and other vampire media. The idea of the vampire as a form of violent, undead creature originated in Eastern Europe in Bulgaria. Lots of creatures actually predate the notion of the vampire in wider western culture, as it was an exclusively Slavic myth. Additionally, early vampires did not drink blood; the connection between vampires and the \u201cvampire bat,\u201d as well, are complex, and there is much debate on when, exactly, the separate fear surrounding bloodsucking bats and the myth of the vampire merged (<\/span>Dodd<\/span> 110-111).<\/span><\/p>\n

And now that I\u2019ve aged, I have a more detailed understanding of the progression of the vampire into wider western myth. Tales of vampires were often built from a number of inspirations, including the Slavic folk legends\u2014however, other influences were misinterpretations, whether by pure mistake or more sinister cultural assumptions (<\/span>Bohn <\/span>2-3). By this misinterpreted point, non-Slavic peoples considered the vampire to be basically this: an undead being that sucks the life out of others. It further transformed over the Romantic period into a \u201cSlavophobe cliche\u201d (<\/span>Bohn<\/span> 3), indicating a strong fear of \u2018the other\u2019\u2014an unsurprising development after having always been somewhat intertwined with stereotyping. This history is especially prevalent in Bram Stoker\u2019s <\/span>Dracula,<\/span><\/i> racial and ethnic stereotyping intertwining with its fantastical version of real-life.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Stereotyping, culturally fearful and ignorant origins are not uncommon for many of today\u2019s popular spooky monsters. Also common is an intersectionality within this fear of \u2018the other,\u2019 in which ethnic and racial lenses intertwine with feminist and queer theory. This is what intrigues me most about the text and its related literature currently. I am now able to put a finger on the relationship between my complex feelings about women, \u2018foreignness,\u2019 and sexuality in <\/span>Dracula, <\/span><\/i>and marry it with my appreciation of its format.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The book is told through letters and journals, enabling a wide range of character perspectives and a few unique lenses from which to piece the story together. This stylistic choice is not only effective from a horror or gothic perspective, but also deeply laced with the intricacies of the \u2018otherness\u2019 I\u2019ve been speaking of. The form of letters and journal accounts plainly mirrors early misinterpreted and stereotype-based western Enlightenment writings inspired by the original vampire myths. Additionally, whose writings have been curated and collected from the fictional world of <\/span>Dracula <\/span><\/i>raises important questions of who has been denied a personal point-of-view, or even of the included writers, whose points of view hold the most merit and importance. What is left out of letters or journals within the book, or how the more disturbing encounters with vampires <\/span>are<\/span><\/i> described, also points to questions of sex and sexuality. The stylistic chapter formatting of the book that first intrigued me is intricately woven with the origins of the western vampire that interest me and its strategic cultural usage, punctuated by consistent fears regarding gender and sexuality. In other words: my interest in deconstructing <\/span>Dracula <\/span><\/i>has only increased since my childhood, and the deeper I go, the more complicated (and therefore, perhaps, scary?) it gets.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Works Cited<\/span><\/p>\n

Bohn, Thomas M. \u201cIntroduction: The Vampire as an Imperial Category.\u201d <\/span>The Vampire\u202f: Origins of a European Myth<\/span><\/i>. Translated by Francis Ipgrave, Berghahn, 2019, <\/span>https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1515\/9781789202939<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dodd, Kevin. “Blood Suckers Most Cruel: The Vampire and the Bat In and Before Dracula.” <\/span>Athens Journal of Humanities & Arts<\/span><\/i> 6.2 (2019): 107-132.<\/span><\/p>\n

Works Referenced<\/span><\/p>\n

Popa, Ileana F. \u201cCultural Stereotypes: From Dracula\u2019s Myth to Contemporary Diasporic Productions.\u201d <\/span>VCU Scholar\u2019s Compass<\/span><\/i>, 2006, scholarscompass.vcu.edu\/cgi\/viewcontent.cgi?article=2344&context=etd.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Dom\u00ednguez-Ru\u00e9, Emma. \u201cSins of the Flesh: Anorexia, Eroticism and the Female Vampire in Bram Stoker\u2019s Dracula.\u201d <\/span>Journal of Gender Studies<\/span><\/i>, vol. 19, no. 3, 2010, pp. 297\u2013308, https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1080\/09589236.2010.494346.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My first experience with Bram Stoker\u2019s Dracula was in middle school, watching the 1992 Dracula film with my mom. Despite not being a fan of spooky movies, my mom likes Dracula, both the book and the media inspired by it. Considering I have, since my youth, been a total fan of the macabre and ghastly, … Continue reading Me and Dracula: the mythological origins, the “other,” and the journal entry<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5136,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[145914],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2024-blog-posts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5136"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1465\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}