How Mina Murray Became Dracula's Girlfriend
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- Опубликовано: 13 окт 2024
- Sometimes the hot vampire boyfriend is not the best choice. SPONSORED BY SKILLSHARE:
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Today we are gonna talk about one of the OG final girls in Gothic Literature: Mina Murray-Harker and discuss these changes to her role and what they say about the evolution of Dracula.
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Failure to know how to read a map disclaimer* got mountain ranges mixed up. I am allowed one a year. xx
Wrong side of the caucus mountains is a top tier joke though…
@@jacobcoolguy Facts. Damn, I'm taking that one 🤷🏿😂
well damn i saw the disclaimer after i commented. i'm eastern european. i'm allowed to blunder once in a while too...
"Sometimes the hot vampire boyfriend is not the best choice"
Sometimes it is the slightly unhinged, white-haired malewife who would rather go to hell than abandon you
Yeah, malewife is a good description for Johnathan. Between his retiring nature, and Mina being the more assertive and dynamic, especially for a Victorian novel heroine, it's pretty easy to see if you genderswapped them they would be an idealized marriage for the time period.
@@morganrobinson8042 I love Jonathan, but I don't like the word malewife. It kind of sounds like it's inventing new ways to re-apply gender roles. Does it have to be inherently 'wifey' to be those things instead of husbandy? Feels like kind of just replicating sexist standards.
Malewife is perfect! It plays with the misconception that only women can be wives.
@@Graid I think with terms like this it's best to consider how they're used and why. Malewife is universally very tongue in cheek, because "my wife, who is a man" referring to a man who isn't traditionally masculine, is a funny and offbeat way to mess with gender roles. You don't have to like the term, but you do have to be taking it a little too seriously in order to see it as sexist.
I know, it's why I hate the versions where he abandons her for being "impure" for being a vampire or for being sexual. That was the exact OPPOSITE reaction he had in the book and arguably the whole point of his character: Dracula terrified him, vampirism terrified him, but he was willing to embrace it all so Mina wouldn't go through it alone.
People want Mina to have a hot vampire boyfriend while ignoring that the in-text avenue exists to give her a hot vampire husband. Just turn Jonathan and let them be adorable forever.
Jonathan is essentially having a lot of vampire traits by the end: He can climb walls like Dracula. He can lift things that take 12 men to lift, just like Dracula. He has white hair like Dracula. He has burning eyes like Dracula. His touch gets cold as ice like Dracula. He gets "burning eyes" like Dracula. He swears to become a vampire for her.
So Mina already has a hot vampiric boyfriend.
@@nenakarra2579❤
Seriously. If you want an adaptation where Mina gets to kick ass, take names AND have a hot vampire boyfriend, just have Jonathan come back from Transylvania as a Friendly Neighborhood Vampire. Except what's happening is that Dracula is starting to slowly kill Lucy, and it's eventually discovered that Jonathan is a vampire, so fingers start to get pointed at him instead of Dracula. Mina knows FOR SURE it isn't him, because he stays with her every night because he takes marital duties most seriously (love that for them), so cue the crazy chase where Jon and Mina go after Dracula and do everything they can to clear Jon's name.
@@irinakermong1217I love this idea
That would defeat the purpose of the Victorian critique of comphet and purity standards.
"My feminism does include letting women lie down." As a bedbound woman, I appreciate that.
Amen! I'm AFAB nonbinary, and I've had to spend a lot of the last 3 yrs in bed thanks to Long Covid. Disability does NOT = weakness. My feminism has never had a place for discrimination against the disabled and chronically ill.
Thank you for sharing!♥♥♥💖💖💖
@@thing_under_the_stairsI hope you get better soon ❤
@@ieatgremlins Thanks! My health has been improving, very slowly, but slow is better than nothing. It's really good to know that people care!
Jonathans willingness to become a vampire alongside Mina is SO romance and that any adaptation would throw that away for a boring love triangle is a crime. Jonathan literally survives the nightmare that was his time at dracula's castle, comes away bedbound and unable to even speak of it, sees the horror of Lucy's transformation and Dracula's unfolding plans and STILL. loves his wife so much that he would follow her into vampirism? WHAT kind of the-horror-was-for-love does Dracula have that Jonathan doesnt. the DEVOTION. the WILLING WALK INTO HELL. the ROMANCE.
Jonathan set the bar for husband material
@@billuraral1870 Relationship goals: Morticia and Gomez Addams, and Jonathan and Mina Harker.
TBH, if anyone had a romantic connection with Dracula, it was Johnathan. I mean, man had to be rescued from Dracula's Brides by Dracula, who yells "This man belongs to me" and had lines like "Then the Count turned, after looking at my face attentively, and said in a soft whisper:- 'Yes, I too can love'"
There is no hetero explanation for that dialogue
There is a a very plausible theory that Stoker was gay and Dracula was his Villian Crush, representing the type of foreign man that both attracted and.repelled him and thus the book.isnt just about how the vampiric foreigners will corrupt England its about how dare.they make Bram"s pp hard.
Jonathan *is* bi (because I'm bi and I said so), but he has
1. A fiancé whom he adores more than life itself,
2. Standards.
*cough* Dracula 2020 *cough*
DRACULA LITERALLY IN TEXT BLOWNED HIM A KISS AND I'M SUPPOSED TO THINK JONATHAN IS THE LEADING LADY HERE?
Can we talk about how infuriating it is that people insist on romanticizing dracula and mina's relationship when Dracula literally symbolically rapes her in the book?!
Yeah, he's her rapist, nothing about the "drinking blood" scene was consensual!!!! Also, props to Jonathan for refusing to victim blame/slut shame his wife
Yeah, the Dracula/Mina pairings literally sicken me because of how the story is presented in the book. Like make a vampire romance, sure, but not THOSE TWO. >.>
@joannamarieart Usually I'm allllll for vampire romance, but Dracula isn't that. AT ALL
Agreed! AIN'T NO WAY that "Dracula" is a romantic novel...in any sense of the adjective. Count Vampyr (No. really; look it up -- that was Bram Stoker's place-holder temp name for the character before he decided to name him after Vlad Dracula. But that's a whole other story.) is a quite literal stalking predator.
Totally. Dracula was an amazing example of gothic horror. It was never intended as a romance, *except* for the beautiful relationship between Mina and Jonathan. We should all be so lucky to find a partner like either of them!
“The movie by Sophia Copolla’s dad” that flew by and was so funny and so perfect.
It really is something that Bram Stoker gave us a surprisingly egalitarian picture of a happy Victorian marriage in Jonathan/Mina, and subsequent adaptations of his work completely fail to do anything cool with that.
This whole video is just giving me the impression that 90% of film writers are just incredibly boring and creatively bankrupt people.
The following adaptations are critiques using material from the book.
@@jjj7790as someone with a minor degree in creative writing, I can tell you some of this is from the way we are told to think about marketability of our stories and cater to the audience. As a mixed race (white, Chinese, black, etc) person the biggest criticism my teachers always gave me was about relatability. I was told to write from my experiences, and yet my characters weren’t relatable enough to a wider audience so a publisher wouldn’t take a risk on my work. Funny since I hit three of the biggest racial demographics I though my relatability was pretty wide spread myself. I think the problem doesn’t stem from the writers so much as the amount of pressure writers are under to cater to the wallets that approve the scripts. Production companies only take risks when they reasonably expect them to pay out. If you look at recent movies that took some risks, they were in properties that already guaranteed buts in seats and the controversies just amounted to free marketing campaigns.
Another thing I appreciate is that while both of them are symbolically assaulted by Dracula, Jonathan is the one that gets the “rape and revenge” story. He’s gaslit, assaulted, and toyed with for months before managing to strike back and escape, chases Dracula across the continent, gets his own “fang” weapon (the kukri) with the explicit desire to bite Dracula back, and then culminates the story by bodily throwing Dracula’s coffin out of the wagon and staring him dead in the eye as he slits his throat with the kukri.
Calling Dracula his own servant reminded me of the scene where the carriage driver does a runaround quick change to open the door as Dracula like he’s Danielle in Ever After.
And he has three other vampires living with him they just don't bother helping
@@morganalabeille5004 They basically just materialize out of the woodwork to prey on Jonathan and then get all huffy when Drac says "No." That's pretty much all they do
There's at least one version where he literally packs and carries his own luggage. Like he puts the dirt in the boxes, loads them onto the wagons that are to take them to port, then unloads them himself once the Demeter-equivalent arrives in London. They did not pay any extras to pretend to be minions. There's also one where his creepy crawly creatures of the night are like... armadillos and a possum.
@@chloeanzai7344 In the book he hires people to carry his stuff until he figures out that vampiric dirt magic doesn't prevent him from carrying the boxes himself
@@chloeanzai7344 It's probably a bit weird that I know this off the cuff - but it's the original Nosferatu from the 20s, and the original Universal Dracula from the 30s, respectively.
So interesting to hear you say that Mina is the first final girl in gothic literature. She's the only person bitten by Dracula in the novel who doesn't die or become mad. She survives because she stays true to what she believes to be right. Dracula alienates people, he literaly wants to make Mina into a vampire wife he can manipulate. The vampire by essence drains people of their souls, the blood is just a vessel ; Lucy was more naive and innocent and her character wasn't as strong as Mina's. Mina's the og it girl really, she survives Dracula because even when he drains her of blood, her strength of character and values don't diminish. Even Van Helsing and the masculine characters are not as strong as her, it feels so good to finally have some respect for my girl around here !
100% on the final girl aspect and how awesome Mina is in the book, though there was no dead wife in the book - Dracula had no lost love or tragic backstory, he was purely a villain motivated by conquering England (because he had been a conqueror in life), consuming life and spreading his curse.
I'd also argue Lucy wasn't doomed by her character, but by the people around her not having the right information and leaving poor Lucy completely in the dark about what was happening to her. Lucy's death is just tragedy and there's no part of it that is her fault.
@@WandersNowherre I feel like Lucy's fatal flaw compared to Mina was how naive she was, I agree with you it isn't her fault though because compared to Mina, she had been sheltered in life by her mother and friends. Her death is really tragic in the book.
@@mayssasaafi Could you kindly give a specific example of her naivete and how you believe that contributed directly to her demise?
@@jaginaiaelectrizs6341 What contributed to her demise was her weakness of character and how little she knew of the world. It's not a bad thing at all, I adore Lucy. She was just a 19 year old girl, easy prey to Dracula. You cannot blame a 19 year-old for being naive with men or not knowing of danger or still having a child-like wonder the way Lucy did. That's exactly what makes her so likable in the first place. I'm not saying that she was naive in an insulting way, it just is that way when you're 19, Dracula just used it against her.
@@mayssasaafi Unless you are reading it purely symbolically or exclusively through correlative inference alone(i.e.= because Lucy was of weaker character than Mina and because Lucy did meet her own demise while Mina survived)-how exactly was it that Lucy's weakness of character contributed to her demise[ or made her exceptionally more vulnerable to fall prey to Dracula so easily], though?
And, don't worry, I wasn't at all assuming you meant it in an insulting way(!). I was just curious, if and what your personal thoughts or reasonings were, more specifically than just these broadest strokes. 🙂
(( Also, it may be fair to note that - for me, personally - someone 'not knowing very much of the world' and someone 'being weak[er] of character' are(in my own opinion) two very different and separate concepts[ though perhaps sometimes overlapping a titch here or there]. So, I'm sure that factors into my own perspectives a bit too. Which could perhaps be[ or become] relevant, maybe, for the sake of any further discussions. ))
And while correlation can make interesting observations of parallels to be drawn or such thematically, in reality, correlation does not automatically create causation. So, just because she was of weaker character or was more ignorant of the world than another character and did come to a more tragic demise than the other character, does not necessarily mean that was automatically how or why she met a certain end while another character did not; especially when there are so few a sampling of other female characters even present within this particular story at all[ let alone of relative or significant similarity] for much if any comparison of notable trends or such to truly be made. So, really, I was just wondering if or what it was specifically that bridges the gap officially into causation in your mind. (If that makes sense?)
I'm not challenging your take on it, really, just re-examining things from a slightly different angle-purely for the sake of thought/discussion, that's all. 😁😊
I actually think personally that Lucy is of a lot stronger character than she is typically given credit for by either readers or even the other characters within the novel, just in an entirely different way than the other characters of the book tend to recognize or praise; although it is certainly true that she was woefully sheltered and ignorant of the world, and even if she had not been there was unfortunately simply no possible way with how the particular circumstances and/or order of events unfolded that Lucy could have been armed in advance with the same foreknowledge that could have perhaps helped better brace her for what she would face as did fortuitously prepare or forewarn Mina somewhat afterward. (I mean, simply knowing more of the world by itself, would not necessarily have given her more knowledge of the dangers of vampires such as Dracula specifically nor how to fortify herself against and/or combat them; it's not as if the novel says that is a commonly known hazard of the world, outside of those who happen to have the misfortune of being caught up in such plights themselves.) But possibly that's all just me and my own weird way of seeing things. Lol
You can tell Princess has been deep in the victorian lit research hole when she comes up for air throwing around words like swarthy LOL
Truly.
Another character that's horribly butchered by movies is Van Helsing. The book version is a kind, soft-spoken, empathetic, deeply devout man who always takes into account the emotional wellbeing of the group. He has so much empathy for Jonathan, Lucy, Mina and Arthur. The 1992 film version, though played excellently by Anthony Hopkins, comes off as a complete psychopath.
Absolutely! Not to mention he isn't really a vampire hunter. When explaining the threat of Dracula to the others, he cites his information as coming from either myths or Jonathan's journal; he has no first hand experience outside of Lucy's case.
Every time an adaptation makes Van Helsing a professional vampire slayer instead of a goofy, kind, but interpersonally flawed medical doctor, to me it takes away part of the horror. Because part of the fear comes from the fact that there is no expert in dealing with Dracula: the cast is scrambling around in the dark. Van Helsing doesn't have all the answers, he's just unusually open-minded to the possibilities.
Plus when they make Van Helsing a badass vampire hunter they usually retool other cast members in less flattering ways or cut other characters' roles down or out completely.
@@AlashiaTuol I think that might be due to the influence of Hammer Horror films, starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. And unfortunately... I can't really complain because to me, Peter Cushing is the best van Helsing. He's kind, empathetic, good with children, polite, respectful to a fault, has A+ fashion sense, treats everyone with dignity, respect, and even talks to them as if each of them is his intellectual equal, no matter what. My favorite Hammer Horror movie with him is Brides of Dracula - no Christopher Lee as Dracula, but it could be renamed "Why Abraham van Helsing is Perfect Husband Material" and no one would notice.
That being said, if you want a van Helsing that's fairly accurate to the book, check out David Suchet in the BBC adaptation of Dracula. The film itself is a bit hit and miss, but David Suchet is one of the best things about it (and Jonathan and Mina are actually in love in it!).
To be absolutely fair, book him doing Victorian medicine *also* could be read as a lunatic of sorts, as he is eternally cheerfully ready to mutilate corpses, break into places, drug people silly, etc... and the gang happily lets Lucy-as-baby-Vampire prey on multiple children because Van Helsing wants to leave her alive long enough he can convince Arthur this was real- the sardine tin of suitors in the tomb was closer to an audience in an operating theatre than that they needed to be there.
@@mothmaiden "Sardine tin of suitors" is from now on the only term for the trio I will ever use. And you're right, he comes equipped with a touch of mad scientist, but he is consistently very nice about it.
Even Dracula: Dead and Loving It had a more book accurate take on Van Helsing, and in THAT he was a surgeon who liked to troll his students with decaying organs.
I was today years old when I learned that Lucy would have picked polyamory if she could.
Honestly, the fact that she and Jonathan get shafted as a result of Mina being turned into Dracula’s LI was always the most frustrating part for me. They didn’t deserve the hate.
This makes me think since Dracula really wanted Jonathan was he trying to work his way into a polycule? There has to be a comedy version of this where Dracula is just too awkward to ask Jonathan out and they are relieved when they can be openly bi instead of competing
@@youtubeuserremainsanonymou9022 Never forget: "How dare you touch my man?" -- Drakula Istanbul'da, 1953. The only thing he shares with his wife is food.
@@youtubeuserremainsanonymou9022 He didn’t want to share Jonathan with his brides, though
@@animeotaku307 it is a different dynamic. I think he just was bad at getting a divorce as who knows how long he was last close with those girls.
Lucy Westenra reverse harem novel is somewhere on my to-do list of books I need to write.
There really needs to be a version of the story where it's an explicitly stated bi polycule being harrassed by Dracula. I want that pls.
Working on it, still negotiating with our ghostwriters.
Hey the story's public domain, so...
That reminds me, I still need to read Hunger Pangs by Joy Demorra. It's a bi poly relationship romance between a vampire, a werewolf, and a ??? I really want more bi poly vampire stories with deadly stakes.
i think the eroticism angle of dracula could be explored in his and jonathan's interplay of seduction and manipulation rather than anything between dracula and mina but hollywood isn't ready for that i guess
Hollywood will never be ready for that
Also here for this
This is why we have Lestat + Louis (and Armand + everyone)
@@animeotaku307 Uh, can you say Interview With The Vampire?
Hollywood can barely acknowledge that men CAN be assaulted, giving Jonathan his canonical “rape and revenge” story is well beyond them
I first read Dracula in college and fell in love with the pieced together style it was written in. I love the idea of Mina compiling all the written records after the adventure is over and collecting it in an organized volume. Also, my man Quincy also deserves justice for how every adaptation steals his killing shot on Drac and gives it to someone else. My guy died a hero and the Harkers named their baby after him. Quincy Morris is the only valid oil tycoon nepo baby.
Not to mention his proposal to Lucy was the best even though we're all like "you just met her yesterday? Slow down, partner." He basically says he isn't fit to fix her shoes and when Lucy rejects him, Quincy just takes it in stride and isn't an asshole about it.
Quincy is *painfully* American, but a genuine badass. Everyone absolutely should read the OG novel, not only because Jonathan and Mina deserve better, but because the whole human cast deserves better, including our Bowie-knife wielding rich roughneck Texan.
I just finished Dracula this week and as a Texan myself, I was pretty thrown by how the count died. I always assumed he got the ol' wooden-stake-to-the-heart in the end. That's the go-to pop culture vampire killing method and they'd already successfully used it earlier in the book. But naw, turns out a bowie knife works just fine. It left me wondering if Helsing just, like, wasn't aware of that. Because stabbing someone in the heart with a knife seems significantly easier than hammering a three-foot wooden stick into it.
@@xx99Username99xx I apologize for only coming to this very late, but that last line is what I assume; the team don’t actually know anything about the Un-Dead save what they learn from direct observation and what sounds right from the Professor’s well of folklore and weird cryptid facts. As much as as they need to act decisively, they’re flying fairly blind.
Thing is, the men of the book repeatedly talk themselves into not sharing information with Mina, first because she is a woman that should be protected and not be made aware of the horrors of the world and later due to the established link with Dracula. And EVERY SINGLE TIME this goes HORRIBLY. Not just when she gets bitten. When the boys go to Europe to hunt down the fleeing Dracula, they fudge it. They only get back on track after they reunite with Mina and she tells them what the next logical steps for Dracula would be and what logically they should do to get him.
And some other instances. EVERY time they stop including Mina, things go downhill, fast.
It's that Victorian idea that middle- and upper-class women are fragile creatures who must be protected as much as possible. Nobody stops to consider that it's this failure to communicate that results in Lucy dying because her mother doesn't know what the garlic is for, or that knowing the danger would help Mina protect herself in the first place.
And this is exactly the subject of criticism for the following adaptations.
I couldn't stop thinking about this when I read the book! If any of the male characters /actually/ communicated with the women in the novel, so much of the heartbreak and horror would have been avoided. Every time they decide to loop Mina in on their plans she comes in with some crucial insight, information, or ideas. Without her, they would have been totally lost.
Can I just say: Let Lucy have her harem of himbo husbands damnit.
But in all seriousness you perfectly captured how I feel about adaptations of Mina's character across media and my growing frustration with it. It's like people take out all the things I love about Mina and throw them aside in favor of hooking her up with Dracula. Not to mention how often this also comes at the expense of John's character because people have to twist him to make him the less appealing option and destroy what is in actuality one of the most healthy relationships I think I've ever read in a book.
Honestly, from what I read of the book, the character who seems to be crushing the hardest on Lucy is Mina.
@@koboldcatgirl to be honest I'm pretty sure Jonathan wouldn't mind if Mina was dating both him and Lucy (also Lucy can have her three himbo husbands and Mina, polycule all around), he loves her a lot and he likes Lucy, as long as Mina was happy and he could still be with her he would be soo supportive.
@@koboldcatgirl that's very true but then again who says they can't date too? It seems everyone gets along well enough it could work with the lot of them, Jonathan included of course.
.I feel like Jonathan is too much the stiff Victorian Englishman in the beging but he improves as the book goes on. Mina is strong all the way through and she clearly deeply loves both Lucy and Jonathan. That said Lucy seems to be one of those open hearted person who loves pretty much everyone.
@@stephennootens916 she is! That's one of the reasons I get so mad at adaptations overly sexualizing her and basically trying to 'justify' why she 'deserves' to get turned instead of focusing on the tragedy of such a pure and loving soul being taken and then twisted into the exact opposite against her will.
It's weird that it's always played for sympathy, when if Dracula is able to resist turning Mina into a vampire, that means he isn't literally devoid of conscience, he CHOOSES to be evil all those other times. Also, he totally stole this from the Mummy, the reincarnation romance was his whole thing!
YES! It's the Mummy's thing! Dracula already has so much going on, he doesn't need to steal from other monsters.
HAHAHA, this made me laugh. Dracula is moving in on the Mummy's arc...So true!
@@JerzCe73 White boy knew he had no swag, so he had to borrow some from a cooler, sexier monster.
Well the Mummy technically stole from Dracula XD The Mummy (1932) is essentially Dracula but swap all vampire stuff with Egyptian stuff.
I’d say that Mina’s plotline transformation stems from Dark Shadows. It was an insanely popular 60’s-70’s supernatural soap opera. The vampire in that is sometimes credited with popularizing the “sympathetic vampire is humanized by loving the reincarnated wife involved in his creation” story trope. It was part of the proto- ‘cute-boy vampire’ movement.
In another universe fandom could've made Jonathon and Mina an early version of Rick and Evelyn of Mummy fame.
I've heard people say 'the Mummy is the best Dracula adaptation' and yeah yeah it kinda is
well theyre wrong, the best Dracula adaption is Vampire in Brooklyn @@WandersNowherre
@darkservantofheaven that's a good point. Haven't seen that in years but I remember being surprised how genuinely intimidating Eddie Murphy was
Don't let your dream stay dreams. Write the fanfic you would like to see in the world. 😁
Yes, we stan Jonathan!!!! With too many adaptations we are robbed of his sweet-british-cinemon-roll-turned-white-haired-anime-boy-wife-guy energy. Also, Mina is probably one of the best & badass written characters, yet most adaptations treat her like shallow eye-candy for the villain?
In the book it was more oh Jonathan has a fiance, why not mess with her or use her for some end. It was anything but love
Lucy being transformed by Dracula is one of the scariest parts of the book, and is often left out in adaptions. That mother-daughter relationship is really key to the horror. And also adds so much tragedy to Lucy’s death
Yes! All the really good horror in Dracula is in Dracula haunting Lucy and her slowly decaying despite the best efforts of modern science. The more iconic castle and abbey scenes are so cliche gothic that a modern audience can't take them seriously, yet they always get the spotlight. They really should make an adaptation that's initially from Lucy's perspective.
@@Oxtocoatl13 yeah it's sort of like what red from overly sarcastic productions said, to paraphrase, "What makes dracula different is that the horror follows them home." Like the beginning is totally gothic horror cliche, but that's not where the stakes are, Johnathan manages to escape the castle alive. It's when Dracula comes to England, to where the character's homes are, and he starts killing them off, is when things get serious.
It's been amazing to see Daily Dracula revive people's interest in the original book and the original versions of the characters; wherein Lucy is everyone's beloved sweetheart and what happens to her is an undeserved tragedy, where Van Helsing is a kooky old mentor figure rather than a baddass vampire hunter, (we kinda owe that to Peter Cushing) where Mina and Jonathan are one of the strongest and most egalitarian couples in Victorian literature and both of them as a unit are really Dracula's true nemesis, and where Drac himself is ... kinda just a total bastard. No lost love, no tragic backstory, just an abusive monster of domineering cruelty and hunger.
NGL I also miss THAT Dracula from the interpretations. Total Bastard Dracula is not only an actually vile, scary bad guy, but also allows the protagonists to feel like a heroic found family struggling to defeat an unstoppable evil who has hurt and traumatized them (especially Mina, Jonathan and Lucy)
I've always been far more horrified by the "vampire is basically the same person that you knew, except w/o the soul and empathy that made them human". That's such a terrifying idea to play with. Something like Phineas Gage's tragic tale, but now with supernatural powers and a desperate need to grieve for the person you knew while still needing to kill who they've now become.
Yeah i read dracula daily last year and i was so disappointed when i found out that mina is shafted in most adaptations. I love Mina and Jonathans romance and it sucks they try to replace it with Dracula, which she has zero chemistry with and was allegorically sexually assaulted by
That's pretty much the issue with this whole approach: the rape/sexual assault victim falls for her rapist, the rapist is excused because he's sexy or something, and they try to pass it as consensual because reincarnation and destiny or something. And Mina ends up depicted as a slutty cheating enabler.
@@ludovico6890
Anno Dracula - a alternate universe and ending to Bram stoker's Dracula has Jonathan Van Helsing and Quincy Jones be dispatched by Dracula and Mina becomes a mindless vampire bride.
Dracula den marries the Queen of England and becomes her husband / consort and reveals the existence of vampire kind.
Yup, those who have creative control over the character of Mina tend to do her dirty: like, she is not a damsel in distress/clueless/Bella Swan-ish kind of nymphomaniac in the book. The irony is that B.Stoker wrote her in a certain way and she is 180 degrees away from it in the movie called Bram Stoker's Dracula 🤔
When you have to steal the 'reincarnated love interest from a past life' angle from The Mummy lores in an effort to get around the absolute lack of chemistry or even mutual respect b/w your chosen pairing....
Side note: can we talk about Lucy for a second? Why is there never a dracula adaptation that actually focuses on Lucy? Lucy was a beautiful, charming, popular lady with many suitors. She was kind and well-loved, with her and Mina being from two completely different backgrounds. They portrayed Lucy as this shallow, vapid character or this outrageously promiscuous one. Now don't get me wrong, I am a promiscuous woman myself so this is not from judgment, it's not fair to Lucy's character. Lucy is a well-loved socialite in the upper cusps of Victorian society: her being sleazy or cheap would have been SCANDALOUS in that time and certainly Sir Arthur Holmwood wouldn't have married her. She and Mina represented two aspects of the "ideal Victorian woman" and Lucy was curious and unfortunately susceptible to Dracula's influence. He turned this wonderful and kind woman into a child-eating MONSTER, Lucy's death was the catalyst for uniting everyone together to defeat dracula. That's why seeing her become this seductive, wantan, violent thing is so horrifying for the men who try to drive a stake in her heart, she's just a shell of what she was.
He murdered Mina's best friend, and she always forgives him? I've heard interpretations that Lucy was the one he was truly after and Mina was for revenge, corrupting a loyal and devout Christian woman to punish the rest but I don't know. Lucy is never developed enough and you never feel anything for her death. It's horrifying and awful, and her character is never developed enough for you to feel anything apart from "yay she's out of the way."
It sort of perpetuates this role that the "easy one" is the one who is discarded and used and the one who "resists" is the one he TRULY wants: this age-old "playing hard to get" scheme. I understand it, I do but not at the expense of painting Lucy in this shallow, slutty light where she is not worth anything at all. I'm not trying to lecture people into not liking their tropes, but I just wish Mina was developed more than just "ooh but he's so alluring." The bram stoker one sort of makes sense since she is his reincarnated lover, but the rest of them like WAHHH.
Not to mention Quincy Morris, Mina and Jonathon literally named their CHILD after him and we have absolutely no idea who he is, he has maybe 2-3 lines if not ommitted entirely in every version.
I will add: There's not even any "curious" part of Lucy's book vulnerability - she's unconscious/sleep walking through the various episodes she's attacked in.
The Closest I've seen is Guy Maddin's Dracula:Pages From A Virgin's Diary, which focuses pretty much exclusively on Lucy for the first third or so of the movie.
Lucy had most time in book and she was a ok character, I just didn't like her cuz I didn't but no she's not done justice in movies. And I actually hardly liked mina. It's not I didn't empathize with them. I did. It's just have you noticed in all Victorian lit they can make up rand stories and get women locked up and all that. And from that genre lens first off everybody looks worse than they are because one second I read I blame men, next second it's the women. Then you look at context and at least in dracula all the men were educated but had no clue how to deal with supernatural because at first they almost wanted not to believe
Also if you interpret things that happen to the women as being an outward example of suppressed things or curiosity or whatever it can be said they should explore psychology of that and one could maybe argue no one is bad but nobody is innocent
I'm convinced that Lucy is only made out to be the sleezy/slutty character is because the book describes her as a blonde haired, blue-eyed beauty and they gloss over that Lucy and Mina are from different financial/social circles. Hollywood saw a pretty, young, blonde socialite and immediately slapped her with the sexualization sticker because it would be easy to do on screen.
As to your curiosity if Mina's attack was revenge for Dracula not being able to get Lucy, I do think it was revenge, but not for Lucy. I think it was revenge on the whole party for foiling his plot with whatever he had plans for the house he bought in Purfleet. They beat him to it and made him flee, so his decision to target not just the party's princess, but the party's scribe would have crippled the group physically and emotionally and I think Dracula knew this.
Funny thing is, if he hadn't done it, they would never have been able to track him down to kill him, so his own pettiness was his undoing.
I would love a female camaderie focused adaptation with the girls at the center and Dracula as just the sexually predatory antagonists. I also really dislike the trend (often present in fandoms even when the narrative doesn't do it) that there is ONE female character we must root for, the other is only there to make her look better by comparison. We're not allowed to like, enjoy, appreciate, support, root for multiple women and I hate it.
We almost had it with the Dracula TV series where Lucy was secretly in love with Mina-only to be violently rejected, seduces Jonathan into cheating (which is a betrayal of both her and his character IMO), and then becomes a vampire anyway.
It was a 2010s show, so a lot of the gay rep feels very “we’re gonna titillate the audience by showing two women kissing” than anything meaningful that’s true to the characters.
Like I’m all for exploring the queer vibes of the characters that was subtextual in the source material but not like that???
Like it’s so easy-Mina and Lucy have a very intense almost romantically coded friendship, Lucy has a triple himbo husband polycule at her beck and call, and Jonathan feels very heterosexual things when alone with Dracula. Like you can do so much with it and what do we get? A bury your gays cheating sapphic or dumb Mina/dracula fanfics
All too often, that's also in the mainstream material. There has to be _the_ heroine and all other women are there to demonstrate her perfection. Just as there is _the_ hero and all other men are there to show him off. Perhaps because writing an ensemble cast is difficult, but more likely because that's what the writers want.
Yes exactly. Every adaptation just goes out of their way to make Lucy look bad compared to Mina, like Mina can’t be a strong smart character unless Lucy looks weak or stupid or slutty. Even the original stage show from 1924, which the Universal movie adapted their film from, rewrote Mina to get all the guys and have all the brains and Lucy to be jealous of her popularity and susceptible to Dracula’s bite because finally some guy is noticing her for a change. And even in that play Dracula is still more interested in Mina then he is in Lucy.
I think it’s just done to make Dracula look good. After all if Lucy is a well rounded character then it would be hard to like Dracula after he kills her.
Ok penny dreadful is mash up of Victorian lit but we had good female characters. In the prequel comics Lucy was helping hunt dracula to save mina. Vanessa was female lead but she had selfish moments and was possessed a few times and as much as they all tried to fight to save her she was not ideal Victorian lady. Catriona wore suits. In sequel comics the Frankenstein monsters bride tried to help fight against end of world. And though he tried, Vanessa for years resisted dracula.
I'm just saying that I like how this show did dracula story and that unfortunately just dracula screen adaptations just don't have everything
Jonathan being willing to become a vampire to stay with Mina makes me go crazy! They are so in love!
The fact i had to read Dracula to learn about "Mina Harker compiles the text of Dracula to inform the boys they're in Dracula" is astounding.
The fact i was not ever told "Mina realizes she can use Dracula's powers against him" is wild.
The fact that NOONE talks about Mina Harker saying, quote, that due to her husband's schedule she's "A TRAIN FIEND", clearly exhibiting a clear special interest in the things, is downright ludicrous.
Mina Murray-Harker best girl, hands down.
It really shows both my age and the type of fandom spaces I frequent b/c as someone who has never read or watched Dracula I fully thought Dracula and Jonathan were the forbidden romance of choice. Hearing that most adaptations are fully making up shippy Mina/Dracula lore when Jonathan is the one trapped in his house and playing cat-and-mouse is really shaking everything I thought I’d gleaned secondhand.
I mean the Jonathan/Dracula community deserves more food in the mainstream but you know ... cowards.
Like… it was right there in the book. Ain’t no way you can have your villain be all “he belongs to me!” and NOT come away thinking that it was probably in the, for lack of a better word, romantic sense.
You are not wrong. It's strongly implied a kind of sexual attraction between Dracula and Harker. Of course, it isn't consensual.
Read the book. It isn't great, but it's the source material and everybody who watches a Dracula movie should read it.
@@julietfischer5056 I have to disagree there. It's one of my all time favorites!
I reread Dracula recently and was surprised to find how smart, competent, skilled, powerful, passionate and compassionate Mina was. She provided leadership with her mental and moral strength and even expressed pity for the curse suffered by the vampire. Nothing like the helpless victim portrayed in so many of the old vampire movies.
Old vampire movies if no connection to dracula shouldn't be compared. You got vampire movies then you got dracula. The point is vampires have victims, so in the not dracula movies the vampire is just sketching on women or maybe has diff motives. Dracula is just one character
I like that you point out the simple goodness of the human characters in the book, something that's missed by pretty much everyone who reads the story. Dracula himself isn't even really a "character" - he's a walking, talking force of nature - a shapeshifter, amorphous, protean. He represents a terrifying intrusion of unknowable evil that these mundane and happy people - Harker's a real estate agent, for God's sake - must now grapple with and change themselves in order to defeat. I'm not going to lie, when you talked about how Jonathan would rather become a vampire himself than leave Mina, I teared up a little...
Spot on
Yesss!!! I LOVED Mina and how alive she was, how she rallied everybody, how she was partnering with her husband, not just a passive object. Thank you for calling this out!
This video has restored the years of my life that were stolen from me by the decades of takes I've seen defending Coppola's film as the "definitive" adaptation for Dracula.
Seriously no lies in this entire vid. Mina is simply THE best. When I recommended this book to a friend, Mina was the first and only characrer they talked about and that stupid hairy palmed loser barely came up in the conversation. She desperately deserves an adaptation that places her at the central focus, her and Lucy too frankly. I've always felt it was a missed opportunity to never see Lucy and her suitors displayed as the healthier parallel to Dracula and his three "brides", who to the audience are all just nameless conquests stripped of not only their souls, but even the simple dignity of getting named.
As overbloated as The Count's legacy may be at this point as some apex monster of monsters in pop culture's mythology around him, I'd kill to see a more honest Stokerian interpretation where he's truly just the ignorant, trifling, "child brained" pest that he is who depends more upon the privileges of his status (particualrly over Jonathan) and the socially encouraged ignorance of the supernatural that allows him to thrive... arguably more than any of his actual powers do. He doesn't deserve an audience's sympathy, we ought to be saving that for the motley crew of queer/autistic/mentally ill weirdos that he could've never hoped to account for in the collateral damage of his master plan.
No, because we watched the '92 movie at school and that made me indifferent to the book for years, partly because I thought Mina was ungrateful and selfish. Then I read the book and mourned all the time I lost without knowing the real Mina, her amazing resourcefulness, and her wholesome relationship with everyone around her. This video speaks to my soul, thank you!
Fun fact about Dracula's "brides", they're never called brides in the original novel. It is unclear what their exact relationship to him is. It is sometimes speculated that the blond one is his wife and the two that resemble him are either his daughters or sisters.
How's that work because in books Dracula's wife unless blonde was is not mentioned and far as sisters ok but in sequel book Elizabeth is a cousin so ...
Or they're simply his pets/concubines.
@@AshePBlack there is no sequel to Dracula. You are talking about adaptations or retelling. What the original commented said is true about the original Dracula.
Aw I really liked the initial title about Mina being turned from Protagonist to Romantic Prop for Dracula. It's what drew me to this video!
Here's how you get Mina a vampire boyfriend, without Dracula - have it be that Jonathan was turned at Dracula's castle.
This. It almost feels like that’s where the book is leaning for a while.
My corgi's name is Mina Barker (instead of Harker - went with the Maiden name) - completely inspired by the character in the book. She is strong, brave, smart and loving (both my dog and the character). Thanks for highlighting what a hero Jonathan is. Have never seen him get justice in any film adaptation!
I've been enjoying the Re: Dracula podcast and I am struck by how Mina is just ON it. She's organised, forward thinking, strategically minded, and knows a heck ton about train schedules. My kind of woman! 😊
I’m listening to it too and Literally Mina steals the whole fucking show like how do adaptations get it so wrong it’s baffling
I LOVE the Re:Dracula podcast and I ADORE Mina. They did her so well, she's perfect. Everyone's perfect, really, for the way I read them.
My favourite part of the whole podcast is the way they play a western guitar riff every time Quincey speaks for the first time in an episode, lmfao.
I thought there was no going back after Keanu's british accent, but this video actually makes me want to know more about Jonathan's original character.
i love jonathon! he’s shafted in LITERALLY every adaptation he’s in, but in the novel he’s a very sweet character and ends up becoming pretty badass
There's a whole podcast thats just the text of Dracula in chronological order, called Re: Dracula! The cast is great and Ben Galpin is a terrific Jonathan.
Mina’s modern treatment gives me real “Persephone was actually okay with Hades kidnapping her cuz it’s hot!” and I *hate* it. Also, yes. Team Kikyo.
The whole myth of persephone is very difficult to grasp because it as been reimagined countless times. And while he did kidnap her and she didn't want that it wasn't as bad as the reimagined version in the rape of persephone. While he did do the deed the earliest account actually puts the blame on Zeus as he was the one to orcastrate the kidnapping as her father. Though any interpretation is very valid
@@maritzar.r.9966she was abducted. This was an allegory for girls being married off or dying young. That’s still pretty bad.
Except they actually loved each other, and she wasn't kidnapped but they fell in love and she was very respected and loved by Hades. Also can we not act like women don't do dumb shit because of sexual attraction?
@@whatreallymatters571 shut up lol
THANK YOU for this! I've been railing against this trope for decades but you put it so eloquently. Justice for Mina, Lucy, Quincey, Jonathan, and Arthur!
Renfield too. Every adaptation ignores how much Jack screwed him over.
@@morganalabeille5004 Jack is the worst doctor ever, even considering the state of mental health treatment at that time. I stg he is the messiest mess of a man. I think for all its faults Dracula Dead and Loving It at least hints at what a worthless doctor he is.
@@angrynerdgirl and not to mention the iconic portrayal of Renfield! Still the best take on the source material in all 😄
“Sometimes the hot vampire boyfriend is not the best choice.” - Team Jacob
Team Alice but yeah Jacob was good... In the first book =)
Go for the white haired anime boy who wields a kukri and might have some strange vampire related powers due to being fed on by Dracula.
He also directly states that if Mina becomes a vampire he wants to become a vampire too why does no adaptation explore that possibility
It worked out with Diana Bishop but that's because she has the power to end Matthew and he finds that hot actually.
Same thing with Marcus and Phoebe. She is a human but a nerdy one who is competent and tells him to use his position to make things better and Marcus can't help but worship her.
Still surprises me that people read Dracula without realizing that Stoker was attracted to guys.
dude worked in the theater, was totally scared of his male crush......him and Oscar Wild must have sippin the same tea.....that goes for Byron and Polidori (Polodiri with a hate boner for Byron.....victorians are funny like that
@@darkservantofheaven he was actually friends with Wilde, and they had a brief friendship break up when Stoker married the lady Wilde was also courting.
If Stoker was into boning any number of dudes he absolutely could have- no reason to assume repression when bisexuality is right there.
@@mothmaiden I have watched a VerilyBitchy video that states there is quite convincing proof he was scared or at least unwilling to engage his feelings for men. You can be repressed *and* bisexual.
@@Pan-optic Agreed. I always clocked Stoker as a repressed bisexual myself too. That complicated situation with Oscar Wilde was likely more complicated than it looked on the surface! As for comments about Byron and Polidori, we all know about Byron and Shelley (not Mary, her husband), and I think Polidori was probably pretty jealous that he wasn't quite pretty or interesting enough for Byron.
@@Pan-optic- The Victorian era was not for people outside of the cis-het definitions of men and women. Keep it on the downlow and maybe you can escape censure, but don't dare act on it.
*slams fists on table* THANK YOU!!! Mina being reduced to Dracula's reincarnated lost love in so many adaptations does her character such a disservice. She arguably is the most important person in the vampire hunting crew. And fantastic points made about Lucy being innocent and pure while still being very polyamorous.
(anyway, thanks for making this video, I'm literally starting a graphic novel adaptation of Dracula next month that focuses on the girls and this is helping me get HYPED)
Oooo! Can please share the name of the graphic novel you’ll be reading?
When Victorian men can write better women than modern Hollywood....
GOOD LUCK please we need the graphic novel
I would love to hear you comment about the "girlfriending" of Irene Adler in all of the various Sherlock Holmes adaptations that have been pissed out over the years. It kind of irks me that the only woman in the Sherlock Holmes canon who successfully bests him at his game is constantly nerfed into a snarky love interest that Holmes invariably gets to outsmart in all of these dumb stories. (The recent BBC adaptation being the worst.)
I wrote a paper on Dracula movies back in grad school, and I felt the need to write early in the essay that "a person under a spell cannot give consent" to illustrate that none of the Dracula interactions are not consensual.
THANK YOU. This is a video I clicked on the second I saw it. I'm a huge Dracula novel fan and have been saying this for years. Mina and Jonathan have such a beautiful relationship, and her ACTUAL dynamic with Dracula- their mirrored traits and the fact that Dracula was drawn to and harmed the people she cared about- is far more interesting than trying to force her to actually be in love with him, to have a pre-existing connection with him, and making Jonathan out to be the worse choice in comparison to him. This shit goes deep! Even Bram's descendant, Dacre Stoker (alongside screenwriter Ian Holt) even wrote a sequel to Dracula... which completely butchers every character (figuratively and literally- Jonathan is written to be abusive and then is killed off) in favor of pushing a Dracula and Mina love plot! (because of course, Dracula lived. Of course). They *say* it's based off the book and the movies, but it's clearly, 100% the 1992 FFC adaptation, down to the detail of Lucy being a redhead.
The "reincarnated vampire lover" trope can probably be traced back to Dan Curtis' original Dark Shadows from 1966. They introduced a vampire, Barnabas Collins, who had a whole plot with a girl in town having a strong resemblance to his long dead past lover. It became HUGE, and brought the show's dwindling ratings way up. He became one of the most beloved characters of the whole show. He was introduced like, 200+ episodes into the run and was not supposed to stick around long, but he completely stole the show. Now he's the main thing people think of when they think Dark Shadows.
Dan Curtis even did a Dracula adaptation in 1974 and, of course, included the reincarnated lover trope. Because if you know what brings in the viewers, why wouldn't you? (Blacula also used the trope in 1972, I would presume at least in part inspired by Dark Shadows. It's more obscure these days, but it was highly influential and well known back then). It's everywhere now. It hurts me to see it become an inseparable part of how Dracula is seen by the majority of the population. I get that dark, bad boy romance is big, and the monsterfucker appeal, but it's the pairing of Mina with someone who hurt her and her loved ones so deeply and even forced himself upon her when her love with Jonathan was so devoted and pure that makes me so opposed to it. Dracula had way more sexual tension with *Jonathan* than he ever did with Mina, but no one wants to adapt THAT.
Also, the most accurate Dracula adaptation? Alucard 2008 and I'm not joking. It was made on a shoestring budget, has modern technology, Dracula is called Alucard, and it's set in the town of Nilbog... but otherwise covers the novel well. It's 2 1/2 hours. I love it so much and think any Dracula fan should watch it. Good luck finding it though, lmao.
So true king
Dark shadows eventually went multi media and I believe Barnabas eventually went for or became best friends with Julia... But anyway, I read that dracula sequel but actually we will never know because yes it's based on book and movie but stokers distant relative had stokers notes, and we never get to see those or know what and why stoker changed stuff when he wrote dracula. So let's not make assumptions on books based on movies. Even though that book was bitter sweet for me. I'm kinda the person who likes live another day stories, not to happy. And what you glossed over was all characters but Quincy and dracula did die in end. So who cares how did characterization. At least it was well written. I mean I hate what sequel did to Jonathan and I hate fact after used dracula and mina trope that mina actually cheated on dracula with Elizabeth bathory, so no mina had no clue who she was with. But I thought changes to timeline were cool. However here's another thing to consider. I do believe Jonathan at least drinking more is believable for trauma he went through. Where that went off rails is they changed whole character no explanation. But also there is nothing in sequel book on mina having a past life married to dracula. Go back and show me quote because you don't explain book well. Is it masterpiece, sadly no but it is not all movie based
Coincidentally, we just played a RPG AP last night where we players got isekai’d into the Dracula novel, and unsurprisingly, the player who was Mina was the most level-headed of all of us.
I have this running theory that Mina as Dracula's reincarnated love interest is the result of Dracula and Mummy adaptations eating each other's tails. Over the past thirty years, more Dracula adaptations have absorbed Imhotep's "I have crossed oceans of time to find you" backstory, while Mummy films have given the Mummy Dracula-like powers, albeit with an Egypt and/or desert theme.
“If you don’t know those train schedules how are you going to save London from the undead?” PREACH!! #Minastan4life
I've never read the book but your assessment of Jonathan and Mina reminds me of Rick and Evie in The Mummy 1999. I think a modern Dracula movie could see them teaming up to defeat the seductive monster who's ruining their lives.
I’m a #1 Jonathan Harker defender. Than went through so much and still helps fight Dracula after everything is true bravery. Sometimes the vampires aren’t the ones you should go for my friends.
I haven't finished the video yet, but I would argue this trend of shafting the female's actual love interest in favour of the problematic gothic byronic vampiric male character is also repeated by fandom too when the narrative doesn't give it to them. I don't think this is restricted to women, but main characters are often not seen as their own by fans, but just for them to project on the character and so they want them to be with who THEY are horny for even at the cost of the character itself.
Well even in book it wasn't love but dracula seduced mina to a point which is why her resisting was considered honorable. And even though Lucy wanted multiple men doesn't mean she was an overall bad person
The "she don't love herself" ABSOLUTELY KILLED ME HOW DARE YOU 😂😂😂
I love Dracula. When asked which I preferred, Dracula or Frankenstein, I always say Dracula BECAUSE of how amazing Mina is. She's a vibrantly self-aware character who allows herself to grieve, how to allow the men to do their thing as she understood them, being able to buckle down and do her part, and how frequently the men praise her but never in a 'strong female character' way. Gods, so many modern authors could learn from Stoker.
Thank you for this!! Dracula is the most adaptationally distorted book ever written and it kills me. I really hope we get a film version someday that does Jonathan and Mina justice!
I’m an old lady, honestly old, graduated high school during the Carter administration, found you because your title was intriguing. Stayed because you’ve done a lovely well thought out video here.
Mina is no MarySue and deserves better than Girlfriend of BadBoy, too, so yay you.
That said, I’m bemused every time, from the old lady perspective, to watch you young’uns talk about what’s iconic vampire, when my Vampire Phase happened before Anne Rice. At the time there was almost nothing vampiric out there except Dracula and a few Dracula honorifics. Which I basically memorized, that’s how few there were. And I wrote a small thesis for my Gothic Horror lit class freshman year on the topic of how Dracula would not have been able to spare the blood needed to sustain (ahem) erection. (Frank Langella’s movie was out around that time, and it was sexy. *He* was sexy. He could make his eyes jiggle, uncanny, anyhow.)
I was young. Things change. I guess vamps *can* spare the blood nowadays. Wink.
THANK-YOU!! It pains me every single time there's a Dracula adaptation and Mina is enough a nothing side character or Dracula's romantic interest, like have they even read the book!? The answer is no; bc if they had they'd realize Mina is the protagonist AND the strongest, smartest chracter of the batch. Ugh, just absolutley frustrating to see this woman go from incredible badass heroine to damsel in distress.
I've read some of the contemporary reviews for Dracula, and was surprised to learn that it was not a big success initially. Critics and audiences in England disapproved of some of the things you mentioned in the video. British heroes taking on a foreign threat played well, but they didn't like that the team that hunted down Dracula contained a woman in a prominent role, an American, and was led by the Dutch Van Helsing. They suggested it might have been more popular with a somewhat smaller cast (wink wink) or if had been published earlier when these types of "exotic" inclusions would have been more thrilling. The play remained more popular than the novel in England, but the novel took off in other English-speaking countries where the "diverse" Dracula hunters were a perk rather than a turnoff.
So. . . a century old version of "WOKE AGEDNA RUINS STORYTELLING"?
I'm okay with Coppola having his own take on this public domain story. But why does everyone else have to do the same thing? It's a public domain story with the most used public domain character in all of fiction--write your own take on him, dammit!
Great video Princess!
I think the most upsetting thing to me about how Mina has changed from the book is that the scene where Dracula drinks from her and is caught is very much meant to be and is read as a rape allegory. So it’s therefore upsetting to see her effective rapist become her lover in adaptations
THANK YOU! Dracula makes for an amazing, genuinely off-putting villain, so just let him be one! Mina and Jonathan are *such* a badass power couple, and we need more of that. Mina is not the only damsel either -- for a while, Jonathan is as well! I love the scene where they take a walk and Jonathan is the one who holds onto her arm, which was seem as strange and emasculating, but Mina doesn't care! She lets him hold onto her arm because she loves her silly little guy and is there for him.
Besides, the angle of the human characters esentially being a vampire hunting dnd party is something that absolutely needs to be focused on more, i love my unlikely mismatched vampire killer brigade
The phrase "the goth novel version of Leslie Knope and Ben Wyatt" made me choke on my water! Don't drink and laugh, kids...
Massive Dracula book fan! I have been AWAITING this video for 37 years
Woooooo
"...by Sophia Coppola's father." Love it.
Im so glad you did this essay. It freaking drives me crazy that Mina is changed from a badass vampire hunter to a victim. Grrrrrrr.
Thank you for putting a finger on what always weirded me out about "Bram Stoker's Dracula" and the sexualization/romanticization of the Mina/Dracula relationshiip.
i've been wanting a decent analysis of Dracula and especially the romanticisation of his and Mina's relationship for so long, thank you for delivering! i think it's abundantly clear in the October 3rd entry that Dracula assaults Mina in a way that is suggestive of SA: him threatening Jonathan's life if she doesn't submit, speaking of drinking her blood as taking his pleasure, and pushing her to drink his blood in a way that is described as a child forcing a kitten's nose into milk to make it drink. i listened to Re: Dracula this year, the podcast form of Dracula Daily, and there is just no way you can listen to Mina's screams of horror and think there is any possibility of a romance there.
After reading (and loving) the novel Dracula I’d been excited to check out the Coppola movie and literally couldn’t get through it because I was so annoyed at how they tossed out the narrative for the Mina/Dracula “”romance””. I’m hopeful that the upcoming Karyn Kushuma adaptation will give the novel/character justice
It got scrapped
HELL YESS I ADORE BOOK MINA SHE'S SUCH A BADASS
also!!! one adaptation I 100% adore is the re: dracula audio drama version!! in the same way as dracula daily, its posting every documented day and all the voice actors are *phenomenal*, as well as the audio editing, it gives me chills/pos
I just finished reading the original book and I was shocked to see that there's no romance between Dracula and Mina! He's pure evil and "r@pes" her. And also Jonathan is great and so supportive of her throughout it all.
Thanks for making this video, adaptions making Dracula made into some kind of love interest/romantic figure always bothers so much, especially after reading the book where he isn't that way at all.
It's such a breath of fresh air to recognize the feminism that is inherent in novels and classic literature where women were not necessarily empowered in the way modern women are. Yes, Mina was a woman of her time, but that does not mean she was useless, off in the corner fainting onto her chaise. She didn't balk at gender conventions of the time, or judge Lucy for fitting into an ideal of womanhood. She was a loving wife to her husband; she was feminine; and she aligned with the many social standards of the time, but that doesn't mean she was not also courageous, intelligent, outspoken, and strong. Women don't have to be overtly sexual in order to be empowered, and I think that is something adaptations struggle with.
Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
It can seem cringeworthy old-fashioned sexism to have the idea of the group of men rallying around the idea of protecting Mina, but. . . well, okay, Lord of the Rings. A bunch of professional badasses and three in-over-their heads Hobbits band together to protect and guide Frodo. The emotion of the two scenes is IDENTICAL, they'd play out the same way if Frodo was a woman or Mina a man. This is a person who is in danger, we have the means and desire to protect them and help destroy the thing that imperils them.
Similarly, Van Helsing at one point says Mina "has a man's brain," which I can picture making many throw the book across the room in disgust, and miss his next words: "The brain a man should have if he were very gifted." Van Helsing is a professor, spends most of his time among men also in academia, and is saying Mina is smarter and more put together than most of THOSE men, for whom being smart is an avocation. The phrasing may raise hackles, but this is actually a huge, sincere, awesome compliment on Van Helsing's part.
And then, of course, there's the bit where, after chapters of congratulating themselves on how good an idea it is to keep Mina out of their planning sessions, to spare her any shock from the things they must do and discuss, they realize how badly that decision has backfired. "It was immediately decided that Mina should be kept in full confidence, that nothing, no matter how painful, should be kept from her." The men realized they screwed up and change their behavior.
AHHHH I love this so much!! Thank you for making this! I read Dracula for the first time last month and I couldn't get over how Mina deserved better. When I finally took a look at the various popular adaptations - I was so mad! I haven't been able to find anyone else who also sees Mina's story in the same way that I did. Mina is an incredible character and her relationship with Johnathan is actually so much more interesting and appealing than turning her into a plot device or arm candy for Dracula. She's a badass final girl who deserves better and you basically summed up all of my thoughts haha. THANK YOU lol #JusticeForMina
Mina was a freaking badass in the book, with her determination, courage, and so fiercely intelligent she even gave Van Helsing a run for his money.
Thank you! For me as a Romanian, Dracula is a fraught topic. I think I first learned about him when I saw the ads on TV for the 1992 movie (must have been about 7 or 8 when they aired it) and it gave me endless nightmares. I haven't read the book, cause 've felt saucy about it, but your video is definitely making me want to read it :D (just selling the book as a bisexual polycule story really is good advertising to specifically me!) After many years avoiding vampire fiction, I've felt ready this year to give it a chance. Great video!
This year, there's been a podcast adaptation of Dracula called "Re: Dracula," which has been absolutely amazing; it's basically a serialized dramatic reading of the novel. The actors are all fantastic, the sound design and music are incredible, and there's some big names in it, so you should check it out! Anyway, in the podcast, Mina is played by Isobel Adamakoh Young, who is a Black woman, and I think this adds some very interesting subtext to her character. For example, after Dracula bites her and performs the "vampire baptism" in which he forces her to drink his blood, in the original novel, we already get a sense of Mina's emotional labor. She's accidentally burned by a communion wafer (which ward off vampires in the book), and feels guilty, as she believes the mark means she has been rejected by God. Of course, Jonathan comes to her defense and never blames her for being assaulted, but she still feels pressured to be perfect and useful despite how much pain she's been through. Mina, who is already intelligent and extremely capable, always feels the need to prove herself, and when this element of racial subtext is included in Adamakoh Young's performance, there's a sense that she doesn't just feel this pressure due to her gender, but also due to racial pressures as well. It's also very obvious when Van Helsing condescends to her at first and underestimates her intelligence; the podcast uses the same text as the book, so while in the text, this is due to gender and not to race, but again, with Adamakoh Young playing Mina, we get the sense that by challenging Van Helsing's perceptions of her, she's confronting both sexist and racist stereotypes, and that Van Helsing's "benevolent sexism" also carries an undertone of racism as well.
On the subject of "Dracula" and race, it's very interesting to me how the modern Dracula fandom interprets racial diversity in the characters. Not only is Mina commonly depicted by fans as dark-skinned, Quincey and Jonathan are also often depicted as POC as well. There's also interesting modern interpretations of the theme of race and ethnicity within the book; while Dracula is sometimes interpreted as a demonization of immigrants and foreigners in England, he can also be interpreted as a colonizer obsessed with his own racial superiority, and a reflection of England's own fears of being on the receiving end of its own colonialism. Tumblr has a big "Dracula" fandom, and one thing I see discussed there a lot is how while Jonathan is prejudiced towards the eastern European ethnic groups he encounters, putting trust in local traditions instead of English customs is what ends up saving his life when he accepts the crucifix from the Transylvanian peasants in the beginning. And while the Romani characters are depicted as villains in the book, I've also seen sympathetic interpretations of them as well. The fandom also places a big emphasis on the bonds between the protagonists, and- while shocking for Tumblr- usually doesn't see Dracula as sexy, but rather as an abusive creep bent on destroying everyone's happiness. It's a really fascinating community, and it's really neat to see how a large group of young, typically left-leaning people engage with this text.
So can I just comment on a thing you said mid paragraph? Book says nothing on how mina looks, best one can do on context of social class and all is maybe she's white. But there's adaptations that even describe her as blonde, which that's way worse when you consider how ruin her character. Umm I know you typed way more I'm just throwing this because I always have this talk what characters should look like but hate when ppl are like oh one movie is definitive look
@@AshePBlack While Mina's appearance is never described, as you said, I don't think there's a problem with readers interpreting her looking one way or another. It doesn't "ruin" her character; it just lets them view her in different ways.
I love vampirism fantasy and obviously I love Dracula. So I cannot begin to explain how much I hated Coppola's adaptation. All those changes that even significantly reduced the terror of Stoker's book are a disgrace. I loved this video for pointing out what a terrible decision was to change Mina's relationships.
Thank you Princess!!! I've watched a ton of dracula adaptations and always end up incredibly disappointed just for this exact thing. I remember when I watched the Coppola one I was so angry because of what they did to the Mina I remembered from the book, taking from her her leadership and courage and ugh, it's truly so annoying. Also when I read it I felt Dracula's dealings with Mina were more a punishment to Jonathan than interest on her.
Anyways, thank you so much for this video!
i have been obsesseddddd with dracula all year bc i read it for the first time and i am going as mina for halloween. she is so brave and kind and the only competent character in the entire book. i was just looking up reference photos for my costume and i opened youtube and saw this :’) so excited princess never misses!!!!!
I'm only a minute into the video, and already my hackles are... risen? Whatever. I KNOW this is a thing, but Dracula is my cat's favorite audiobook, and Mina CARRIES THE TEAM. I have played that audiobook so many times to calm my kitty down that I know it inside and out, and MINA CARRIES THE TEAM. It feels like an important subversion of tropes. If Mina's not there to CARRY THE DAMN TEAM it ain't Dracula. Alright that's my rant. Going to grumpily watch the rest of the video. ... Mina carries the god damn team.
After watching the Hammer Films Dracula with Christopher Lee recently, I'm fully on board with the link between Dracula and Mina being that Jonathan tried to kill him and did kill his hot vampire gf so he went "Oh word? Aight Imma turn you, then sail all the way to England to steal yo girl". We love an extremely petty villain.
Justice for Mina and Lucy.
I dream of a visual media adaptation or reimagining that let's Mina and Lucy be closer to who they are in the text.
Also, that acknowledges that Arthur and John become husbands after Quincy dies. I just... I have so much love and appreciation for the relationships between Arthur, Quincy, and John and I despair at how often it's overlooked. More positive representation of male intimacy and friendship.
Every man should be so lucky to have a bro like Quincey Morris or Jack Seward in their lives.
I’ve had in my little brain vault for a while to write a story with a Mina, vampire Lucy, and their men all being in a little polycule and fighting supernatural creatures together
THANK YOU
Mina is a great and her relationship with jonathon is great,
I hate when adaptions make Jonathon a shit or have Mina be “too good,” for a loser like him, the dude went through way too much hell escaping draculas castle just to be treated like this.
And like, the obvious rape allegory of Dracula forcing himself on women should be obvious to literally everyone
Instant like
Edit:also as a side note, as a historical nerd, I am sick of the comparisons to Vlad Draculesti in pop culture, Stoker very clearly took the name and and location and nothing else, he was only excited by the fact “Dracula meant Son of the demon,” without knowing the connection to the actual origin, son of the dragon, and while Romanians love making money off the Dracula tourism, they generally don’t like comparing their national hero to a literal bloodsucking monster.
Edit: also also, I think Bram Stokers glorification of the English characters is interesting because Bram Stoker himself was Irish
He was Protestant so is probably what we’d today call “Anglo Irish,” and avowed unionist, but he was writing for a Victorian audience and he knew the kind of characters they’d love to root for.
Yeah and it is like they rarely add anything interesting to Dracula other than vague ~hotness~ and its like if I want to watch hot dudes with mid personalities I can just catch up on some shonen anime.
@@Princess_Weekes like you say, vampires had been sexy before and that’s the thing that’s stuck
But Dracula barely qualifies as a dilf, he’s a creepy old Romanian dude with bad posture, I can see how he became a sexual icon, but in the original text he was very clearly made as a “predator.” In both the literal and metaphorical sense.
Next year you should do Frankenstein and how there’s like, 0 decent adaptations of Mary Shelly’s book
@@seanmcloughlin5983 There's a Hallmark one with Luke Goss, Alec Newman, and Donald Sutherland that's very close to the novel.
And Stoker did get his shot at the English, when saying that Jonathan rushing into a train station and demanding a ticket home, the people could tell by his "violent demeanor" he was English, and put him on the train that would take him as far away from them as possible.
You should give 'Nosferatu the Vampyre' (1979) a shot.
Dracula: “I wish I could partake of the love which is between you and Jonathan.”
Mina/Lucy: “Nothing in the world - not even god - can touch that. And it will not change, even if Jonathan never recognizes me again.”
The entire conversation is great. She basically flips the power dynamic through sheer intensity until he's overwhelmed by her decisiveness and leaves: ruclips.net/video/Z-I8mIljF6I/видео.html
It's Werner Herzog's remake of the 1922 silent black and white film set against the Black Plague in the Netherlands. I'd consider it to be the most feminist version of Mina ('Lucy Harker' due to the 1922 Nosferatu switching up the names for copyright reasons) without making her an outright action girl, though admittedly it does come at the expense of the other characters. There is no Lucy and her suitors, no brides, Jonathan is uncool as usual, and Van Helsing is actually the naysayer in this one, but it's also much more existential and does a better job of conveying the depth of her love for her husband. Dracula's also a weird little rat man, as he should be. For queer tidbits: Dracula essentially SAs Jonathan and wants to be the third wheel in his and Mina's relationship so he can vicariously experience love. I watched it during Covid lockdown and it felt very apt: the entire town and its government throwing a party at the end of the world while only Mina/Lucy attempts to actually solve the problem. It's also quite funny, though in a very dry, situational/visual manner (ex: Jonathan climbs out his window via bedsheets, it's too short, he falls, is knocked out, and wakes up to a small child playing the violin over him).
I think while Van Helsing is easy to see as a conventional hero Jonathan is more of a survivor. He survives against the odds but struggles to get over the experience. He can seem like a wimp from a traditional macho perspective but he fills an important narrative role. A big part of what makes the vampires in Dracula scary is how they terrify Jonathan at the start. One of the things I liked about him and Mina is that they're comfortable accepting help from each other.
The idea that Mina was into Dracula after the really horrible way he'd killed Lucy made Mina seem callous and a bad friend. I never liked that.
This video is PERFECT. You get it!!! My wife and I have a monthly rant about how so many fans and adaptations fail Mina & Jonathan & Lucy, and I am so vindicated by your video essay. I have a baby now, I don't have time for bad takes about the Harkers! And thanks to you there are finally some good takes on the scene. Thanks for the fun and thoughtful video essay (as always)
Massive Dracula fan here! Mina became one of my all time literary faves when I read the book. So I was weirdly put off when I saw the "Dracula A Comedy Of Terrors" play in NYC. It's new this year and utterly fabulous....except they switched the girls' names???? Like, "Lucy" was married to Harker, seduced by Dracula, and gets to go on the vampire hunting quest. "Mina" was played by a man in drag (hilarious, truly), had NO suiters because she was homely and awkward, came on to Dracula, and the first to be turned. I just kept thinking...WHY??? these women are not interchangeable! Why switch the names??
Anyhoo, love all the points you made in this! Your videos are always a treat!
The Inuyasha ED playing over all the reincarnated lover snippets had me absolutely dying each time sksksksksk!!!
Yesssss
I had a sudden vision of a remake of 99’s Mummy in 50-100 years with Evie falling in love with Imhotep when Rick is Right There. (And yes I do know the original movie had that plot line but when there’s a love story that’s so wholesome and iconic, you don’t mess with it!)
So yes. Thank you so much for this. Having Mina be in love with her and her friend and lover’s abuser is… yeah. Gross.
halfway in the video you said "Polyamory can be cute and innocent" and like BAM, instant fucking subscribe
"👏Lawfully 👏 wed locked 👏 sex"
thank you for this
the sexy Dracula/Mina depictions in like all adaptations have been bothering me since Dracula Daily and Re: Dracula have blown up
Mina's "secretarial" skills are, for my money, THE SINGLE MOST AWESOME MOMENT IN THE NOVEL. Everyone had bits and pieces of the puzzle of Dracula, but Mina was the one who transcribed and compiled all these letters, journal entries, newspaper clippings, and so on into a clear picture, a foundation the group could work off of to begin laying out their plans to defeat Dracula.
Much as I love seeing badass people with badass skills and abilities do badass things, it's much harder, I feel, to write a convincingly smart character using their intelligence to defeat a foe. Stoker pulls it off, Mina gets to use her smarts to form the basis on which everyone else will succeed. It's an extremely satisfying moment, after Dracula has murdered poor Lucy and caused such pain to all these other characters we've grown to love, when everyone reads Mina's text, looks at each other, and says "Okay, now we know what we're up against." I LOVE THAT.
Another of my favorite scenes in the book is when, after Dracula attacks Mina, and she starts saying she's "unclean," Jonathan says no, he still loves her, and if there is a way to save her, they will find it. Essentially, not only does Jonathan not slut-shame Mina or consider her "defiled forever" because she was assaulted, when she starts thinking those things about herself he firmly states he doesn't believe any of this is her fault, thus there is no shame on her. Similarly, we don't see Mina's reaction specifically to Jonathan being attacked by the Weird Sisters, but she never expresses anything but sorrow and compassion for Jonathan, never getting angry that he "cheated" on her. I picture an accurate Dracula adaptation, with the actors for Jonathan and Mina being so good that, when Jonathan affirms for Mina that he still loves her even as Dracula's victim, they have a nonverbal conversation the audience can SEE. "You didn't blame me for the Weird Sisters, because you love me and understand me. I love and understand you, so I cannot and will not blame you for this." "I don't deserve you, Jonathan." "No, Mina, it is *I* who does not deserve YOU." "Very well. We deserve each other, then." "Agreed." Followed by the most passionate snog Victorian sensibilities would permit in front of others.
"Dracula is about love." YES! Love, specifically The Four Loves, are the emotional core on which everything else hangs.
Lucy and Mina are so close they consider each other sisters, and you can even say that Mina is more family to Lucy than Lucy's own mother, demonstrating familial love.
Arthur, Quincey, and Seward are THE BEST ride-or-die bros, representing the love between best friends.
Jonathan and Mina, obviously, are romantic love.
And the group bands together to destroy Dracula less to get revenge for Lucy (though that's certainly a factor), and more out of fear of what Dracula will do if left unchecked. Demonstrating unconditional love, putting the good of the whole human race above their own safety.
I guess, carrying the metaphor on, Dracula and Mina in adaptations represent superficial, "hot guy I want to bone" "love." Which isn't really love at all, just lust.
I feel like the reason Mina acts the way she does towards Dracula in the 90's version is that that movie seems to be less interested in exploring well developed characters and their dynamics with one another, and more in exploring general themes through the characters and their interactions. So Mina doesn't have a "relationship" with Dracula, as much as for her, Dracula represents unwanted, dangerous but irresistible desire, which is part of the human condition, so she reacts to him not like she would react to another individual she has a relationship with, but the way an allegorical person reacts to their own human condition.
And it's badly written, so...
Dracula from the Final Voyage of the Demeter is the most iconic Dracula of the newest years
Yes, yes, yes, YES! Damn yes! That's why I follow you. For intelligent, educated content that sets the record straight.
aw hell yeah! Me and some friends recently formed a bookclub and read Dracula and I had seem the movie adaptation with Winona Ryder before (full disclosure, even then I didn't like any of the Dracula/Mina elements XDD)
and I was aghast at how they did my girl dirty. Also Dracula def. had the toxic hots for Johnathan, you cannot change my mind.