Dracula a metaphor for the aristocracy?

[alfredo]

I love movies and I should have caught this.

http://www.wired.com/underwire/2011/09/john-landis-movie-monsters-2/?pid=4676

Landis says: "Christopher Lee's Dracula is certainly impressive. He was really the first Dracula to have fangs. Also in The Horror of Dracula (remake), his Dracula was so powerful and sexy. The red eyes are only occasionally. He's such a physically imposing guy and has such power and presence as an actor. The most interesting thing to me about Dracula is — John Carpenter talks about this — he's essentially the aristocracy. Count Dracula literally sucks the blood of the peasants. All monsters are metaphors."


------

As we can see, Count Dracula is the ancestor of today's predatory capitalist.


Good article on movie monsters.

http://www.wired.com/underwire/2011/09/john-landis-movie-monsters-2/

[HopeHoops]

1. Nah, man. I think it's just some good horror shit.

[alfredo]

3. It works in more than one level.

[Beam Me Up]

2. leaches, vampires, mosquitoes...

"Death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people."

Yeah, any sort of blood sucking thing.

[alfredo]

4. Coal Barons are like ticks.

[blkmusclmachine]

5. Dracula Perry.

I love it!

[BanzaiBonnie]

6. Monsters who feed on our life blood

Of course the Dracula myth is about the aristocracy. He's the monster who comes from the heart of the arisocracy. He lives forever.

[RaleighNCDUer]

7. And that is why VAMPIRES DON'T SPARKLE! NT

[RandiFan1290]

8. Bob Marley 'Babylon System'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bb-SjlhHCIM

We refuse to be
What you wanted us to be;
We are what we are:
That's the way (way) it's going to be. If you don't know!
You can't educate I
For no equal opportunity:
(Talkin' 'bout my freedom) Talkin' 'bout my freedom,
People freedom (freedom) and liberty!
Yeah, we've been trodding on the winepress much too long:
Rebel, rebel!
Yes, we've been trodding on the winepress much too long:
Rebel, rebel!

Babylon system is the vampire, yea! (vampire)
Suckin' the children day by day, yeah!
Me say: de Babylon system is the vampire, falling empire,
Suckin' the blood of the sufferers, yea-ea-ea-ea-e-ah!
Building church and university, wo-o-ooh, yeah! -
Deceiving the people continually, yea-ea!
Me say them graduatin' thieves and murderers;
Look out now: they suckin' the blood of the sufferers (sufferers).
Yea-ea-ea! (sufferers)

Tell the children the truth;
Tell the children the truth;
Tell the children the truth right now!
Come on and tell the children the truth;
Tell the children the truth;
Tell the children the truth;
Tell the children the truth;
Come on and tell the children the truth.

'Cause - 'cause we've been trodding on ya winepress much too long:
Rebel, rebel!
And we've been taken for granted much too long:
Rebel, rebel now!

(Trodding on the winepress) Trodding on the winepress (rebel):
got to rebel, y'all (rebel)!
We've been trodding on the winepress much too long - ye-e-ah! (rebel)
Yea-e-ah! (rebel) Yeah! Yeah!

[starroute]

9. So is Frankenstein's monster a metaphor of the peasantry?

He's strong, he's tough, he can live on minimal sustenance, but he's not pretty or well socialized. He implicitly threatens that if he can only get a bride, his offspring will rise up and take over the earth and drive its former rules to extinction.

And -- in the plays and movies, if not in the original book -- he is the creation of the aristocracy but eventually destroys them.

[shireen]

10. better one: leeches.

http://www.fcps.edu/islandcreekes/ecology/freshwater_leech.htm

[Uncle Joe]

11. I couldn't agree more and I believe that's why the corporate media have brought them so much into

vogue as of late, being the protagonists of movies and television instead of being portrayed as the villains, this is just part of the subliminal brain washing process.

Thanks for the thread, alfredo.

[alfredo]

14. Modern vampires are social outcasts. It's more about growing

"different" than politics. There's also the "Shane", mysterious stranger component to the modern vampire. The mysterious stranger has no history, and no identity other than his/her actions. The mysterious stranger (good vampire) could be the strength we gain from the righteousness of our cause.

[cali]

15. oh what nonsense.

vampires- monsters of all kinds- have been part of the human engagement in storytelling since time immemorial.

[Uncle Joe]

18. But originally vampires were the villains, not the protagonists. n/t

[BOG PERSON]

23. i agree the recent trend of heroizing vampires is a sign of cultural exhaustion

[felix_numinous]

12. He's not the one with this observation..

http://www.thesocialleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/vampiresasaristocrats.pdf --Vampires as Aristocrats? (Just found this site, The Center for Social Leadership, it sound sort of socialist:) )

[BOG PERSON]

13. in wall-e, robots are the proletariat

humans are the bourgeoisie. the restoration of the ruling species (humans) depends on one traitorous robot who gets corrupted by hollywood depictions of romance and bourgeois sentimentality. hollywood also teaches wall-e that it is a male and another robot, eve, is a female. why wall-e doesn't learn it the other way around, that it is a female whose "life" is incomplete without a male partner to share it with, is a question that the filmmakers never answer. a distressing movie.

[lunatica]

16. Well Cheney is the undead, so yeah.

[aikoaiko]

17. A count (male) or countess (female) is an aristocratic nobleman in European countries. (wiki)

:shrug:

[malaise]

19. Damn he looks like Romney

:evilgrin:

[moondust]

20. You know what the wingnuts and baggers would say:

Dracula is the government.

[alfredo]

21. They blame body odor on the government.

[moondust]

22. Of course it's the aristocracy that tells them it's the government!

[alfredo]

31. They also say our government is evil. Because we live in a democracy,

we are the government. Tea baggers who buy into the hatred for our government are, in some respect, self loathing.

[Norrin Radd]

24. The character "Lord Ruthven" in "The Vampyre" by John Polidori

was the first aristocratic vampire in literature. He predates Stoker's Dracula by seventy-eight years.

[BOG PERSON]

27. are there any examples of peasant or burgher vampires in literature?

[Norrin Radd]

32. Yes, but not many that are famous characters.

Probably the most well-known character who started out poor is Claudia in Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles.

[Bucky]

25. Is the Wolfman a metaphor for the furries?

[Fire Walk With Me]

26. Dracula=castle. Peasants=fear of Dracula. Yes, I agree with the above metaphor

but as a nerd must pick nits...Max Schreck's Nosferatu, 1922, clearly had fangs. Unless he is not strictly or specifically "Dracula".

"War of the Worlds" was a thinly-veiled class relations drama as well.

[Octafish]

28. Outstanding metaphor. Kubrick's ''Eyes Wide Shut'' was full of them.

The differences between the monsters and humanity couldn't be any clearer than the corruption that started taking hold of the good guy's integrity. Awesome OP and thread, Alfredo. I hate vampires.

[blogslut]

29. Possibly

However, I've always thought vampire tales were more of an allegory about sex.

[Kaleko]

30. Sucking the lifeblood out of the innocent and gullible,

then turning the most desirable among them into what you are yourself: a soulless creature of the shadow realms between life and death, forever doomed to hunt for fresh prey to satisfy your insatiable hunger for what you've lost yourself... yep, that's the guys who run our corpogovernment, alright.

[socialist_n_TN]

33. Oh I could EASILY agree with this premise

And remember that Stoker was writing in an age where socialism was pretty prevalent. I do think that you would have to go back to Stoker to attempt to prove this theory.

But yeah, I could see it.