The Romanticisation of Dracula and the Demonisation of Carmilla: An Unfair Imbalance (lots of text).
From my DeviantArt page months ago.
Okay... Time for my tantrums, but I needed to vent it somewhere. I watched a while ago (again) 'Dracula: A love story' (stupid unfaithful and repetitive movie in my opinion, if you ask me) with my mother, and... It's tiring watching Dracula's bloody romanticization. It probably started with Coppola's movie. And yeah, I'm planning my alternative take on the Dark Universe respecting Dracula's characterisation as he'll be Luke Evans's heroic vampire (although I prefer evil Draculas tbh). But oh well, here my tantrum comes...
I'm fed up with seeing how popular culture continues to romanticise Dracula, while Carmilla is relegated to the role of a generic, one-dimensional villain.
Why is Count Dracula seen as a tragic and romantic seducer, while Carmilla is reduced to an "evil vampire" or Dracula's servant? The truth is, I don't understand. Dracula, Bram Stoker's original character, is a monster. He's a being who feeds on the blood of innocents and has no qualms about using his power and "charm" despite in the book he is ugly as hell and reeks like blood and putrefaction) to get what he wants, which is, expanding his curse in the time's center of advance of civilisation.
The original Dracula is a metaphor of rapists, fear of strangers, plague, corruption, evil and "eastern mysticism" probably. The bloody guy feeds the vampire women he keeps with a baby, for not mention that the two female brunettes are his relatives, and there's another metaphor with incest; some pages later he sends his wolves to eat alive the baby's mother who demanded him to return her the child; he turns Lucy, tortures Jonathan, massacres the Demeter's crew, follows and stalks women, have conquer plans, tries to turn Mina of pure spite. And yet, he is described as having a "child's brain" and criminal mentality by both Mina and Van Helsing. The last one keeps mentioning Dracula's incapability of planning forward and planning better, leaving paperwork of properties that the heroes track easily. Mina theorises that Dracula wants to be destroyed, but he remains evil. However, in most adaptations, he's given a romantic twist, a tragic past, and an eternal love that "justifies" everything.
And what about Carmilla, the vampire from Sheridan Le Fanu's novel? She is his precursor, the precursor to many modern vampire literature, alongside Varney and the pioneer Lord Ruthven. Yeah, probably she is a metaphor of what people interpreted as deviations but right now, honestly you should be stupid, or have fear for research and informing yourself, or have almost zero empathy, a close mind and full prejudices to be homophobic (yeah, yeah, I know these were other times, but even like that, Carmilla is a complex character who fits more in a Byronic archetype than a pure evil, much more than the OG Dracula). Even she predates him for 25 years as I said.
However, in most adaptations, she is portrayed as a female version of Dracula, but without the complexity and depth of the original character.
Most Dracula adaptations follow the same pattern: centuries-old vampire with a tragic past, dead wife, and seeks her reincarnation, plagiarized from The Mummy (1932), by the way where it works much better. It's a cliché, and it's boring in Dracula. In fact, if you read Stoker's original masterpiece, you'll see that Dracula wasn't a lovestruck antihero. No, he was a monster.
And yet, Dacre Stoker, more than a century later, included the nonsense of love between Mina and Dracula in his supposed official sequel "Dracula the Undead," which doesn't even respect vampire lore from the OG novel and it's author, even having a female villainess in Erzsébet Bathory (and yeah, you can guess; Dracula actually good and now he turns out to be a champion of God, and Bathory the typical evil woman despite actually having a very tragic past; in fact I was rooting for her over Dracula, and for her vision of giving her version of justice and power to the outcasts and opressed, destroying corrupt hierarchal men).
And what about Carmilla's complexity? Her relationship with Laura, the novel's protagonist? Nothing. Yes, Carmilla isn't a saint. Far from it. But she is undoubtedly a fairly complex character (she makes cruel remarks and has mood swings, but it's obvious she feels remorse and is self-critical. It's also quite obvious that she cares about Laura, even though she wants to turn her into a vampire, since the tragedy is that she can't separate her vampiric nature from her love). It would have been interesting to read more about her past instead of Vordenburg's androcentric speech at the end, where he only talks about his ancestor.
Oh well. I am eternally grateful to S.D. Simper for writing a beautiful new novel (Carmilla & Laura) and to the web series for providing a modern and humorous take. And now to a beautiful webcomic named "Carmilla: the adaptation". I'll soon be getting the sequel comic "Laura," which looks interesting, and it's good to see that the fans (mostly other women) are doing justice to Carmilla and Laura, while the film industry continues making (bad) adaptations of Dracula.
The misogyny is evident in these adaptations that have Carmilla and Dracula together (for example, Castlevania games original timeline and Lords of Shadow where they portray her as his servant and yandere respectively. Something the original Carmilla would never do.She clearly doesn't bow down to any man, she defies norms, and her object of desire is another woman: Laura. And no, Laura isn't a bouncy brunette catgirl like in Dracula X. And of course, Carm is not a yandere obsessed with Dracula as in Lords of Shadow, and her original version wouldn't be ever)..
The Netflixvania show offers a Carmilla who is basically the opposite her description in the book (a bit more mature lady with silver hair, pale skin, blue eyes, in comparison with the girlish, brunette, languid creature she was in the book), have Styria as her home as well, and is much more independent with more proper objectives than her games version... but she is basically a Karen. Although her backstory is quite tragic (enslaved by a older vampire), then empowering (she killed the b*stard), she got a bad ending. And Dracula? A happy ending. This despite being a misanthropic emo who killed and impaled several people for petty reasons even before meeting Lisa. Even if he promised her be less misanthropic and travel, he only made friends with two misanthropic humans (Hector and Isaac). Okay....?
Or other versions such as she being his "bride" in a Batman animation (I don't like superheroes, but I read about it, and it's enough to notice the how poorly they know they character and those adaptations are in name only).
Another one is Vampire Hunter D. One version of Carm, called "Carmilla Elizabeth Bathory" and not Karnstein, is purely evil and is mentioned in a game I own where the Great Ancestor (Dracula, for friends) defeated her because "He hated her bloodthirsty and evil nature." Yes...
Hammer films are somewhat more respectful of Dracula's characterization, presenting him as the force of abuse, misogyny corruption and evil that he is, despite being more bestial than his novel counterpart's attempts to look charming. Good.
And although Ingrid Pitt's performance is legendary and I like it, it differs from the Carmilla of the book being more mature, when being youthful-looking is key to her original character. But in that movie "The Vampire Lovers", it's still somewhat androcentric and Carmilla is made subordinate to a vampiric man in black (again, she wouldn't do that) and give Emma Morton (aka a less intelligent cinematic version of Laura, Despite the fact that Laura, despite being naive in the novel by her sheltered upbringing, is very intelligent and incredibly well-educated to her age and a possibly spiritual connection to the Karnsteins) a flat male triangle love interest. Despite that, I loved the sapphic open tone. The character of Mircalla Karnstein, alias Carmilla, suffered flanderization in the sequels where she was portrayed as evil, even though in the first film she showed a clear love for Emma. And give her a male interest that time.
Female vampires are portrayed as seductive and dangerous creatures, while many male vampires are romantic and tragic. It's a double standard that honestly makes my blood boil. Just watch Coppola's movie. Yes, the Brides and Lucy were iconic and I loved them. But they were simply empty predators, while poor-boy-Dracula was a misunderstood bitter antihero in love.
In the Universal Monsters franchise, Countess Marya Zaleska (based on Carmilla herself and Countess Dolingen from Gratz) was an archetype of the reluctant vampire in cinema. And yes, just like Carmilla, Marya is queer. A tragic figure who by the way, deserves more recognition and representation. But Universal? Out of her movie, they make her a unidimensional villain (basically novel Dracula v.2) in the Halloween Horror Nights maze "Eternal Bloodlines" (supposedly a "feminist" maze, but the female characters fight against each other for men's legacies, when accurately Marya HATES Dracula) or the books "Devil's Brood" and "Devil's Night" by David Jacobs. Either they ignore her existence, as in Epic Universe to change other character's genders or giving the bride of Frankenstein empty development, or they actively try to erase her, like the director of the ridiculous Renfield movie. And Dracula? Although he's a villain in most of Universal Horror media, they turned him a dark hero in Dracula Untold (yes, I plan a Dark Universe fanfic with this movie as part of it, but that doesn't mean I love it so much, and I would prefer the Scholomance origin).
Returning to Carm... Besides there are female vampires that predates her as in Vampirismus and Varney the Vampire, Carmilla is the blueprint of many female vampires in the media. Even Dracula took inspiration from her as I said before.
Carmilla deserves better. We had in a few years like five Dracula adaptations -the Dracula Netflix series, Renfield, Last Voyage of the Demeter, Nosferatu, Dracula: A (silly) Love Story....
And Carmilla? She deserves to be portrayed as the complex and fascinating creature she is, not as a simple villain or an object of desire. So why can't we have a Carmilla adaptation that shows her as the true protagonist she is alongside Laura? A story that explores her complexity and her humanity? A story that doesn't reduce her to a mere cliché?
P.S.: If you are a misogynist or if you justify a clear display of misogyny in the media, please refrain from commenting. Your comment will be deleted anyway.
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