Dracula is a Sex Addict
In Francis Ford Coppola’s adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Dracula is portrayed as a beast who indulges is drinking people’s blood. But is this obsession with drinking blood symbolic of a common issue or taboo in European culture at the time?
Lucy’s character is also heavily associated with sex since the beginning of the film. The Count’s experience with Lucy was on a dark night, when Lucy heard and felt the count calling to her. When Mina found them, it is confusing to the audience that Dracula is supposed to be drinking Lucy’s blood, because it looks so much like a sex scene. This would have been very taboo in Europe in this time period, as outlined earlier by Mina and Lucy giggling over Mina’s book. The count is also not in his human form, but closer to a werewolf covered in in fur. This could be symbolizing the count’s impulsivity in the moment to seduce Lucy and “drink her blood”.
Dracula met Jonathan in his castle in transylvania when the count requested Jonathan to sell him some real estate. During Jonathan’s stay, the Count made a few homoerotic remarks toward him, and as he learned more and more about the castle and the count, Jonathan began to realize he was a prisoner. Jonathan’s interactions with Dracula could be representative of Dracula being bisexual, which would be very taboo in European culture at the time. It also appeared that the purpose of Jonathan’s being there was to use his body to satisfy the Count’s and the three vampiresses’ thirst for blood from the safety of his castle. The vampiresses could be representative of
Another, more unrelated point that I thought of while writing this is the difference between Mina’s relationship with the count and Jonathan’s “relationship” with the vampiresses. This is representative of the difference in views on adultery in Europe at the time. When Jonathan is cheating, he is being seduced by three beautiful women at once but does not seek them out or long from them afterwards. When Mina is cheating, she is having dinner with a mysterious man who she falls in love with and eventually leaves Jonathan for. This difference aligns with the outdated view that women are irrational and will just fall in love with whatever stranger harasses them on the streets, whereas Jonathan was portrayed as stumbling into an affair that he did not fantasize about afterwards.
The Count’s interactions with Mina were very different from Jonathan and Lucy. Mina reciprocated the count’s desires, even expressing she that wanted him to make her a vampire so she could join him. This scene is representative of a few taboos in European culture at this time. Mina was “cheating” because she was sharing such an intimate moment with the count, but the gender role reversal of drinking Dracula’s blood from his chest that was even more out of the ordinary. It is important to note that Dracula did not force Mina to continue to drink his blood, but that she forced herself to finish. This means Dracula’s character role is reversed, because it is normally him that is drinking another person’s blood.
If Dracula is not representative of a sex addict, he is certainly a sexual deviant by the standards of European culture at that time. The deeper message behind that is that sexual deviancy causes suffering and “spreading” it with sexual acts with other people can make them suffer as well.
