Dracula and Brexit

WARNING: Embargoed for publication until 00:00:01 on 05/07/2019 - Programme Name: Dracula - TX: n/a - Episode: n/a (No. n/a) - Picture Shows: **STRICTLY EMBARGOED UNTIL 00:01 HRS ON FRIDAY 5TH JULY** Dracula (CLAES BANG) - (C) Hartswood Films - Photographer: Robert Viglasky

I recall one of my professors back in college, Dr. Elmore, making a comment in class one day about how those with degrees in English Literature, or Literature of any sort, really, don’t care to watch the news. “It’s the same old stuff,” he said. (I’m paraphrasing a bit.) “We (meaning Literature majors) get the news from the classic books we read, and the poetry, because the same themes are there. Human nature never changes.” I agree with him. While I do try to stay relatively well informed about current events, I don’t *like* reading about them. And while I do see the exact same themes explored in Fiction that I see on the news daily, I don’t care for it when works I love in Fiction are linked to things I do not love in the mundane real world.

Here is an example, an article linking DRACULA (specifically the new BBC miniseries starring Claes Bang) to Brexit. From the article: “From his home in eastern [sic] Europe, the count [sic] travels to Britain to buy up its real estate and add its women to his harem, bypassing the need for a passport or immigration documents and threatening British manhood in the process. Seen in this light, Dracula offers a clear application to our times.” And this version of Dracula is picky about whom he bites, it would seem: “There is no direct correlation with itinerant agricultural workers, however, as Dracula seeks to infiltrate the highest echelons of society. In a warped version of late 19th-century eugenics, we discover that Dracula’s choosiness about his victims is the secret to his vampiric success—consuming only the blood of the best enables him to retain his human qualities. Hence his appetite for the British Empire.”

I do not hold with those who claim that the primary theme of DRACULA (the novel) is xenophobia, but I will allow that it is one of the several themes addressed. It seems this new filmed version touches on it even more directly.

By TheCheezman

WAYNE MILLER is the owner and creative director of EVIL CHEEZ PRODUCTIONS, specializing in theatrical performances and haunted attractions. He has written, produced, and directed (and occasionally acted in) over two dozen plays, most of them in the Horror and True Crime genres. He obtained a doctorate in Occult Studies from Miskatonic University and is an active paranormal investigator. Is frequently told he resembles Anton Lavey. And Ming the Merciless. Denn die totden reiten schnell!

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