Nosferatu vs. Dracula

Having just watched Nosferatu, I feel compelled to write a bit about Bram Stoker's Dracula, the book on which this film is based.

Last year, in my English class, we read his novel, and I wrote a paper about some of the themes throughout, which I find to be prevalent to the film as well.

My thesis was about the roles of men in Victorian-era society (as portrayed in the novel) falling along a binary axis of male sexuality: the “unnatural” homosexual male, and the excessively stereotypical dominant heterosexual one. Because this post could easily get out of hand if I went into the main points of both, I’ll focus on the “unnatural” interpretation.

In the conservative times in which this novel’s story was placed, anything “unnatural” (such as homosexuality or, I don’t know, vampires) was considered in direct opposition to God’s will, consequently making it evil. Examples of this in the film are plenty: the Count’s magical appearances and disappearances; the doors opening and closing of their own accord; the rapid, unnatural speed of his horse-drawn carriage; his power over others, even those far away; his sleeping with his eyes open in a coffin; his disgustingly long and crooked fingers – the list goes on.

The townspeople at the inn Hutter stayed at crossed themselves in fear at the mention of the Count’s name, unable to bear the thought of his ‘otherness’. In contrast, wooden crosses framed Ellen, the pure character, on both sides during the scene of her pining at the beach. The presence of God in the characters’ lives, whether directly or indirectly, was the deciding factor in whether or not they were evil or “sinful,” as the book Hutter found would put it.

The Count in Nosferatu was not depicted as being homosexual as much as the one in Dracula was. The only moment I can think of that could be interpreted as such would be the one in which he tries to lick Hutter’s finger and asks him to spend more time with him. Nevertheless, both versions of the vampire as “abnormal” (in appearance and demeanor), create a feeling of “uneasiness which [the characters] always [have]” when they are around the Count” (Dracula, 26).

In the book, the plague is not so much what is being spread, as is the “corruption” of pure souls by the vampire. My interpretation of this in my paper was that the men with Van Helsing who set out to destroy Dracula had recognized the threat that the spread of homosexuality (read: unnaturalism) would hold over the conservative and religious Victorian ideals of their time. So, with the help of God, they fought the “corruption” of the traditional gender roles idealized by their society.

I also went into the associations of the wolf and bat/mosquitos with the vampire character, basically saying that his blatantly animalistic, lustful behaviors towards his victims stressed the immorality of his kind, and Victorian citizens saw such conduct as an attack on their society’s values.

The Count poses the threat of consuming the morality of susceptible – but otherwise decent – citizens through his sexuality. Take, for instance, the character of Ellen. She was portrayed as a naiive, pure, ideal woman of her era. She was decent, for sure. She was even troubled by Hutton’s ‘killing of the beautful flowers’ that he gave her as a token of his love. Yet, she was still succeptible enough to the Count’s power to open her window, and to almost jump off her balcony.

The Counts in both Nosferatu and Dracula are representative of the damage they could inflict upon the conservative society of the “normal” world as the prime motivators and instigators of the plauge-like spread of abnormalism.

Thoughts?