watching the 2018 milwaukee ballet production of dracula and y'all the dracula/jonathan pas de deux is amazing
it’s beautiful and creepy and sensual and horrifying all at the same time
crap, i don’t know enough dance terminology to make this coherent, but the way they’ve been utilizing going en pointe in act 2 is fascinating. like, aside from when they’re doing turns and stuff like that, all the women are walking around on the flat part like regular people. but then dracula bursts in and everyone is down in the dark except lucy, who is now on her tippy toes and basically floating across the floor to him in a trance and the contrast is so eerie
also i just realized it was mean of me to talk about this without telling anyone where to watch it. here’s a link to the official video from the milwaukee ballet account’s @ Home series https://vimeo.com/469873929/5ee47dee00
continuing the trend of being both sensual and beautiful and horrifying, the drac lucy pas de deux is also fantastic.
also, repeated theme the way dracula just kind of flings them around at times, like they’re not dance partners but just toys to be played with and literally tossed aside. in the jonathan one he just like yote him 15 feet or something crazy across the stage, and in this one he’s just positioning her like a ragdoll, the choreo is so good
agh no no no i hate this! D: lucy! :(((
looking forward to and dreading the drac mina one if they’re all gonna be this good but also upsetting lol
oh good, an ensemble mourning scene, that’s cool that’s fine i’m handling this gracefully
oh damn, though, she does feral really well too. cool thanks this is a great place for an intermission because i’m feeling totally emotionally stable (:
one video game site describing the game's premise:
"In the trailer, Harker was perceived as a much more efficient and courageous vampire hunter, as opposed to the classic portrayal of Jonathan Harker in Bram Stoker’s books and films, including Dracula."
sir... sir... he literally killed dracula in the book...
I think this broke me just a little more. My camel back was already broken under so many straws, but I think this one made me collapse back in on myself.
So.
There’s a lot to be said about the inspirational power of great works of media. Stories and masterpieces that spur wonder, love, and awe. The ones that give you a goal to aspire to in your own creative endeavors. The strive to match up to something great can do a lot.
But I’ll tell you, friend. There is nothing quite as empowering as pure, unbridled spite. Just full-on loathing for every piece of half-assed, fan fictionified, self insert-riddled, character-botching, absolute shrug of a creative work that tries to hide under the disguise of a public domain title to cover for its inadequacies, and not only getting away with it because so much of the audience hasn’t read the book, not only profiting off of it, but leaving a nigh irremovable stain on the entire pop cultural mind that is so hugely, categorically, monstrously Wrong, that the ‘understanding’ of the book and its characters is treated as offhand. Because 'everyone knows’ it.
“Sure! Everyone knows Jonathan Harker doesn’t have any real vampire hunting experience! That’s all Van Helsing’s shtick, what with him being the very definite for-real nemesis of Dracula, ha ha! Nice of these video game people to give the little guy a shot, eh?”
Just. Wow.
I am ready to make so, so much Jonathan Harker shit. Barking Harker? Sure. Absolutely. Doc’s open right now. But maybe I’ll do more. Love is my kindling, but bile is the fuel on the fire.
I can do Jonathan Harker as the Superior Dracula, complete with ripping Coppola’s reincarnation love interest gimmick out his asshole and doing the Romantic Dracula Trope real justice. Why? BECAUSE IT’S ACTUALLY JONATHAN AND JONATHAN CAN PULL OFF THE WHITE-HAIRED PINING UNDEAD ROLE BETTER. How about that?
How about I make a whole ass script and screenplay for a Dracula series actually in line with the book? No creative license! No Dracula-wolf sex scenes or cheating fiancees or jealous suitors or dodging the el gee bee tee edges or turning Van Helsing into an anime man who saves the day! Just actual events that actually happened in the 125-year-old book that every modern adaptation is too cis-straight-scared to do! How about that?
How about I eat the heart out of every single Van Helsing-centric Monster Hunter series and anime and make it all about the Harkers, their friends, and/or their descendants? How about that?
How about the Harkers getting an eternal vampiric honeymoon after the Transylvanian trip goes bloodily south and they just go about their undead business forever and Dracula is nothing but a footnote in their story which he always was anyway? How about that?
HOW ABOUT I FLOOD THE WORLD WITH DRACULA CONTENT WHERE DRACULA IS NO MORE OR LESS THAN THE SADISTIC VILLAIN HE’S ALWAYS BEEN AND GETS HIS ASS KICKED AND HEAD CHOPPED LIKE THE LOSER BASTARD DESERVES???
HOW ABOUT THAT????
I WILL LIVE TO SEE A WORLD THAT REGISTERS EXACTLY HOW BADASS JONATHAN HARKER AND ALL OF THE HUMAN CAST IS, A WORLD THAT SEES DRACULA FOR THE UNDEAD UNDERWEAR STAIN HE ALWAYS WAS,
FOR I WILL CRAFT THAT WORLD MYSELF UPON THE BONES AND BLOOD OF THE INFINITE BASTARDIZATIONS THAT CAME BEFORE THEM!
I SHALL NOT SUFFER THESE ICE-COLD 'lol no I never touched the book but I kinda remember the wiki for the Coppola movie’ TAKES FOR ALL ETERNITY. I WILL REWRITE THE PUBLIC OSMOSIS UNTIL ALL THEY KNOW OF DRACULA IS THAT JONATHAN HARKER KILLED HIM IN HIS DIRT BOX.
Anyway.
To all my Dracula Dailiers out there. I say again. Join me. While our little book club did wonders, the fact is, not a ton of people are going to ever bother with the dusty old novel. Spinoffs and sequels? Sure. But not (what they assume is) a dry old classic. Which leaves audiences and filmmakers caught in a perpetual profit and expectation-based loop.
People assume Dracula is Sexy-Suave Count Fuckula and that Mina hooks up with him while Van Helsing and [INSERT HUMAN NOBODIES HERE] are pushed to the sidelines. So that’s what directors will keep churning out. Ditto for makers of books, comics, shows, and video games. It will just keep going in the same rut.
Unless we put some new blood out there. There are so many possibilities. So much that can be made to finally drag the spotlight away from the Count and give it back to the characters who deserve it.
So please. Please. Make that Dracula-derived thing you’re unsure about. Even at its most indulgent and outlandish, you have read the book. And you know more about what you’re doing than literally any so-called professional who’s churned out their tired knockoffs of knockoffs. (Or the folks who take their opinions from the same.)
They both talk about growing up together, so I have to presume they are roughly of an age, but Lucy reads as much younger, or perhaps simply less mature. They are observedly at different stages in their lives: Lucy is in the initial stages of a courtship, living with her mother, going out to concerts, concerned with slang and fashion (or lack thereof); Mina has a fiancé (and this seems by no means a recent development) and a job.
The job thing is super interesting to me. Both Mina and Jonathan have jobs, and their jobs are respectable but not prestigious. Mina is an assistant schoolteacher, probably having stayed on at the school she attended. Jonathan is a solicitor, via apprenticeship - a workaday attorney, crucially not a member of the Bar (which is/was reserved for aristocracy). Jonathan actually seems surprisingly young to be able to afford a whole wife. I saw one estimate put him at like 21? (Began his clerkship around 16 5 years of apprenticeship culminating in his exams). Contrast Lucy commenting on on Dr. Seward being only 29 and already well-established. Victorian men often only became marriagable in their 30s. No wonder he’s so invested in his business trip succeeding.
Lucy does not seem like she has a job. Mina is talking about shorthand and stenography and lady journalists and participating on Jonathan’s career; Lucy is talking about Boys and appearing inscrutable in the mirror and going out to the Pops and being Not Like Other Girls. We know Mina cooks because Jonathan is collecting recipes on her behalf. I do not think Lucy cooks. I don’t think she needs to.
None of this is a judgment against Lucy! It is just that Mina feels like an adult and Lucy feels like a child, or on the cusp. Which… is correct if that poster who said she was 19 had their information right. They are at different places in their lives.
But I also think that Lucy is much richer.
We don’t know much about her background (yet? idek) but she is being courted by three very wealthy men. Arthur Holmswood, soon to be Lord Godalming, is aristocracy (he hasn’t got a job either). And he is in conversation with Lucy’s mother. Dr. Seward does work for a living, but the position he holds is a prestigious one - the head of an institution (not a newly fledged junior member of a firm). And we haven’t met Quincey Morris yet, but I believe he’s the son of a Texan cattle baron (so comparable to aristocracy only American). He hasn’t got a job either. And Lucy is sought after. Reminds me of “…at whose exalted shrine / a world of wealth is sighing.” Whomever she chooses, Lucy will probably have servants, assuming she doesn’t already.
Lucy just seems much more of an ingenue - younger, more innocent/sheltered, happily concerned with things that don’t matter
It makes me curious about how these people all know each other in the first place
I’m less knowledgeable about this era of high society than slightly earlier ones, but my top guesses would be:
Lucy’s family are nouveau riche, not landed. This one I’m almost certain about. Then either
Mina’s and/or Jonathan’s father worked for Lucy’s; or
They all lived in the same relatively rural area (cf Middlemarch, or Anne of Green Gables for similar dynamics).
It’s also likely that either Jonathan’s father was a solicitor as well, or someone close to the family landed him the apprenticeship. If the Harkers were close with the Murrays or Westenras, then one of their fathers might be responsible.
This is our conjecture on my end though, never having read the book before. Just based on tropes and patterns I’ve picked up from reading a lot of Dickens et al.
we’re reading Dracula for one of my book clubs, and I completely forgot that the book starts out as quite an enjoyable travelogue—having just passed the bar exam, Jonathan Harker is essentially on his first real business trip, and keeps making little notes to ask for recipes, or that he’ll share such-and-such about the landscape with Mina.
I also forgot that Jonathan Harker has a Kodak camera (he used it to take pictures of the London estate for Dracula) which leads me to assume that the 21st century version of Jonathan Harker’s journal is actually a series of instagram posts that start getting really, really weird.
Someone much more skilled at photography than me needs to make an Instagram account….
