From: egnilges@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Edward G. Nilges)
Subject: Coppola's DRACULA
Originator: news@nimaster
Organization: Princeton University
Date: Thu, 24 Dec 1992 22:53:26 GMT

Lydia Sargent (Z, Dec 1992), points out that Coppola's new film revives 
the implicitly sexist message of Bram Stoker's novel: that women like,
always and everywhere, to get raped by strange old guys.  There's a
couple other undercurrents of which even Coppola is probably not aware.

First of all, this movie continues the tradition of the user-friendly 
monster.  While there are strong reasons why one might want to do this,
among them convincing the audience that the unfamiliar Other might not
be so bad, the user-friendly monster generally encapsulates "male"
traits.  Thus, Disney's Beauty and the Beast has the attractive woman
and externally ugly male, and Coppola's Dracula is transfigured at the
end into his "beautiful soul".  This is not a spoiler, for you know
half way through the book that old Vlad, stalking Winona Ryder through
19th century London streets (in a contemporary era where the state
of California has found it necessary to pass laws against this conduct)
is really a Nice Guy.

Note, though, that Winona's female friend and Dracula's vampire houris,
who ravish Keanu Reeves in the castle, are NOT rehabilitated in this
fashion.  In (fictive) reality, of course, both the houris and Winona's pal were
at one point in their "lives" beautiful souls, and indeed they made no
conscious choice to rebel against God, as did Vlad in the first scene
of the movie.  But the logic is that to be a cool monster, you must be
(like Freddy in Friday 13th) a MALE monster.

Also, it was irresponsible of Coppola to celebrate Vlad's warfare against
the Turks in an era when a bogus anti-Moslem crusade on the part of Serbia
(which neighbors Vlad's Transylvania) is being used as a pretext for
spilling rivers of blood in the manner of real-life, "ethnic cleansing",
Vlad-the-impaler conduct.  Stories of vampirish rapes of women and of
trucks from which rivers of blood flow are being printed; but they are 
ignored by a world in which it's easier for United States Marines to abuse
the press on the beaches of Somalia, than to put a stop to Serbia's conduct. 
I was shocked that precisely as Serbia uses anti-Muslim racism as 
a pretext for its war crimes, Coppola at the SAME time used the "Turkish
horde" (which in point of fact brought peace to the Balkans) and its
conduct as an excuse for Vlad the impaler.

In short, being male, Christian and white excuses a lot, even as it
excused Michael Corleone.

And the artistry of the film is not that great.  Coppola piles on the
filmic cliches and references to fin de siecle art to such an extent
that one loses the thread of the narrative in a profusion of "yo,
this is a movie" images.  There's nothing wrong per se with "yo,
this is a movie" images, indeed self-conscious movies are usually better
than "yo, this is really happening" movies; but the chiller monster 
genre is one in which you HAVE to say to the audience, "boo, this
is really happening."

I'm beginning to feel that Steven Spielberg, of 
all people, is a better moviemaker than Coppola; while I had all sorts
of political reservations about Hook, chief of which was the relevance
of the spiritual journey of a stock jobber to that of working men, I
was nonetheless enthralled, indeed I saw the goddamn thing several
times.  I won't be buying the video of Dracula.
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