Your Dracula

I was listening to a YouTuber talking about Dracula a few days ago and I marvelled again at the story's longevity and reach. Even schoolkids here in Japan know the character somehow, just by pop cultural osmosis. Along with Sherlock Holmes, Frankenstein, and Alice, it's amazing how well characters from English literature of the 19th century have endured. It strikes me that Dracula has survived for reasons similar to Alice. They're both irresistible prompts for audiences and other writers to expand on the characters.

Dracula is barely in the book. He only has a few scenes of dialogue. In the film adaptations, directors, screenwriters, and actors have free range to make him a charming, seductive psychopath, as in the Lugosi version, or an unearthly night creature, as in the Nosferatu movies, or as a tragic, romantic figure, as in the Langella and Oldman versions. The filmmakers can stride forward, confident they've gotten to what they see as the real essence of the character, only for their interpretations to be, in the end, just that; interpretations. These interpretations inevitably reflect the interpreter. Dracula is the frightening, unknowable Other or a reflection of the artist's own darkened self image.

Alice is much the same. Aside from the prefatory poems, the Alice books are remarkably unsentimental and even amoral, particularly for the Victorian era. But most adaptations can't resist adding a love story for Alice or some kind of moral. And, of course, there are the many "dark" Alices, which somehow never seem to be quite as dark as the hints in the original books. Scenes like the baby turning into a pig or the looking glass house have suggestions of horror much bigger than the brevity of their presence.