Did you know that Dracula is the most portrayed character in popular culture? His pale, blood-thirsty mug has appeared in over 540 films, countless books, comics, stage plays and tv series? Inspiring countless other vampire stories and franchises. No matter how many times we kill him off, he keeps coming back from the dead, stronger and more popular than ever. We’re here to tell you why.
Despite Dracula reaching only moderate success in Stoker’s time, his themes of the societal fear of “The Foreign Other” (someone noticeably different than us) and female autonomy end up being a through-line across all the iterations to follow.
No matter how much our society has evolved over the last 130 years, so have our fears. It’s how Dracula embodies these fears that I believe to be the most alluring aspects of the modern vampire, and what keeps him coming back over and over again in his various forms. For us humans, struggling with the daily existential crisis of our mortality, what’s more alluring than the option to cheat death and cash in on the promise of an eternal life of decadence and pleasure?
