#spent 40 minutes on this when i should've been studying

[devilofthepit]

just watched 1992 dracula last night and i have so many thoughts about the drac-mina relationship (🤢)

i know winona ryder was drawn to the movie in the first place because she was intrigued by victorian repression, and in a way mina's choice of dracula, the highly erotic vampire, is a rejection of those rigid norms that tell her not to be open about her sexuality. i'm in favor of women embracing their sexuality in this context, but so many things make me dislike it. first of all, the most glaring reason why mina being dracula's dead wife feels not at all like a feminist choice is that, abiding by the metaphor of vampirism and blood drinking as sexuality, in the book he effectively rapes her. simply rewriting that scene in the movie to one where she consents is a cheap move and one that seriously pisses me off. another thing, mina being dracula's dead wife, albeit her reason for choosing him, takes away the sense of choice a bit in favor of an expectation that she should be with him. while it is her choice to be dracula's wife, making this choice leads to it being her only character trait, something that directly contradicts her characterization in the book as a strong, smart woman who is a key part of stopping dracula. on that note, the idea of "stopping dracula" itself takes on an entirely new meaning in this movie, one that i find myself wrestling with. as opposed to an Us (British, heterosexual, Protestant, virtuous) vs Them (foreign, queer, Catholic-ish, sinful) conflict as per the book, dracula's threat here is much less external. on the one hand, completely changing dracula's motivation makes him feel like a completely different character; instead of the evil being on a quest for world domination, we get this pathetic dracula who follows mina around and laments that humans don't like him. in my opinion, villains can sometimes just be villains, there's no need to change that, especially when doing so ignores a great amount of the source material. on the other hand, part of what makes dracula in the book so evil is that he is part of the Them, that he's a projection of late nineteenth-century british prejudices. the movie's giving him an actual motivation besides "he's just evil" takes away these prejudices. i appreciate this attempt at taking the book and updating it for a more modern, progressive outlook on dracula, but as i said, it feels out of character, especially for a movie aiming to be the most accurate dracula. however, making a book-accurate dracula would mean painting all foreigners and queer people and sexually active people as evil too, so that's not the right way to go about it either; there has to be a middleground. all this is to say, dracula should be less tragic, tortured soul and more evil, but not if evil = sexuality and foreignness. anyway #notmydracula, by which i mean, sure, have your tortured romantic hero dracula headcanons but don't go around saying that that was in the book. also, the movie almost entirely got rid of dracula's queerness in favor of aggressive heterosexuality, which may be an attempt at not demonizing queerness, but seriously, this movie was so annoyingly straight especially when the book was not. dracula and mina remind me of those annoying het couples that are constantly making out and calling each other sickening pet names. i didn't proofread this in any way because i have no desire to. hope it makes sense love and light <3