When people hear that Dracula has made it on the curriculum at Saint Benedict Hall they are curious and ask some questions. Chief among these is the simple “Is this a good thing for Christians to read?” To which I offer the following response which, although not exhaustive, may help us to clarify why we read Dracula.
Dracula is not merely a vampire tale; it is the vampire tale. The ‘vampire’ as a cultural icon find its genesis in Stoker’s novel. Indeed almost the entire horror genre (whether film or books) can be traced to Stoker’s Dracula and Shelley’s Frankenstein. Though neither Stoker nor Shelley were Christians, their works are crucially important for our study: they tell us what modernity is; they tell us about ourselves. What does this mean?
After the Enlightenment, amidst all of the good things that fruited from it, modern society began a slow departure from the enchanted worldview of Christianity and from Biblical faith. The result was a malaise, a sickness, a kind of horror capable only in the wake of the social rejection of God, which has fermented over time and seems now to be exploding all over us.
The best of the horror genre, born in Frankenstein and Dracula, is something of an accidental apocalypse. Horror exposes the fault lines of modern secularism. The greater the exposure, the greater the subversion, the more majestic the work. Good horror, like the Book of Ezekiel in the Bible, loudly proclaims “the Emperor has no clothes” and shows us the sorry ends of society when it is ruptured from the Gospel of Jesus. To be clear, this is not a justification of cheap horror, just as a great fantasy story isn’t a justification for pulp paperbacks about polka-dotted wizards and horn-crowned barbarians. The problem with trashy horror films is not horror, the problem is cheap mass-market trashiness. I can commend The Lord of the Rings and condemn Amazon’s paltry Rings of Power just as I can commend Dracula and condemn almost every film version of it.
If Frankenstein artfully shows us the error of secular modernity’s promethean vanity, Dracula shows the lie in living for yourself, the libido dominandi. You and I, your kids and my kids, are inundated with the Enlightenment myth that we should “live for myself” and “follow your heart” and “live your life to the fullest”. While these make nice graduation speeches and hallmark cards, they cloak a steep nihilism and an unapologetic will-to-power. The saccharine pop song that subtly encourages me to “live for myself” heedless of the lives of others and the Disney movie that tells me to “let it go” regardless of what happens to others are in fact encouraging me to be a vampire. It is not without reason that Dracula is the most filmed character in history, out-pacing the second place (interestingly, it’s Frankenstein’s monster), by more than 100%. We live in a vampiric culture. If the rule of Jesus’ Table is “my life for yours” the ordering principle of a vampiric culture is “your life for me.”
Whether Bram Stoker meant to compose a scathing critique of modernity, or whether it was all one glorious accident is besides the point. The story is what it is. The gospel, as one literary scholar has suggested, “the story that can’t not be told.” The story Stoker tells is a good story: an evil power which lives for itself is shown to be truly evil, sin is exposed as the horribly all-consuming destruction it is, instrumental reason alone is not powerful enough to beat back the darkness, what is needed are Gospel signs (silver crosses, communion wafers, prayers) and redeemed creation (garlic and wooden staves), together a band of friends joined only by their love for others fight against the darkness at total personal hazard and vanquish evil. It is a fairy tale in the best and truest sense.
In an age where the dominant symbol is the vampire, the lesson that Dracula teaches is not “evil does not exist,” nor is it the Enlightenment myth that “science and progress can beat evil,” but rather that “the God of peace will crush Satan under your feet” (Rom. 16:20). We are also reminded that, unlike the quest of Count Dracula, the Gospel does not promise us undying life. It promises us something better: Life which rises again.