unforum

[zbeeblebrox]

Epiphany: Slender Vlogs are "Dracula"s visual successor

[qaqa]

Oh, an obnoxious friend of mine hit on this a couple weeks ago. You're both totally right, and I always loved Dracula's unusual style because of that kind of endearing modernity in the presentation of the text. As I told my buddy, if Stoker had written it today, Dracula would be a YouTube vlog instead of prose.

We also discussed the Coppola adaptation, which, you're right, comes very close to trying to capture the quasi-mixed-media presentation of the novel. But I don't think it totally works, and it's aged badly.

[Telos954]

You, sir, need a prize.
Someone get this man a prize!

Really though, that's quite an epiphany you had there. The entire idea of Slenderman seems to be exactly the same. Except, instead of one author writing as several different people, these are several different people contributing to one mythos. It's still the same idea - and a pretty amazing thought - when you look at it like that.

[AngryDeepground]

Oddly, this occurred to me yesterday to. One Dracula related film that reminds me of slender man (though not for writing style) is Nosferatu. The Dracula in that film kinda looks like Slender man is all I'm saying really.

[skeletal_lamping]

I'm actually taking a Vampire Stories course right now (I know, I know), so I'd love to weigh in on this.

I'd seen the potential for connections between Stoker's Dracula and the Slender Man Mythos before, but I'd never thought of it in terms of its mode of story telling, as an epistolary novel/series. I tip my metaphorical hat to you, zbeeblebrox. Seriously.

One of the interesting things my professor for this vampire class has brought up in the nature of technology in Dracula. As a late 19th century novel, Dracula sort of showcases the budding technology of the time, and things like typewriters, photographs, trains, and film have prominent places in the novel (this is one thing that Coppola really brings out in his adaptation, especially film). My professor has lectured on how technology is sort of vampiric in nature, particularly film and photography (but also things like typewriters), saying that film captures the life of what is being filmed, drains it so to speak, and then immortalizes it in an undead form (the film is a un-living, undying representation of something living, or something like that). After that it can be changed and transferred - the undead film has significant control over the living object.

It's sort of the same thing with the Slender Man Mythos, which is very technology and film heavy. The characters who we watch in vlogs are totally at the mercy of the camera, which captures and preserves their fear as well as the Slender Man. The Slender Man, who like Dracula only appears in the recordings of the character, is preserved and immortalized by the camera. Technology is the vector through which the Slender Man is transferred - the camera feeds off of Him and at the same time crafts Him into a sort of living undead creature (or course, we don't really know what He is anyway, soooo yea), one that we never see "in real life" but only in the retrospective posts of the series.

Also, because "we" and the characters of the vlogs are in control of the camera, and not the Slender Man, He is in some essence a creation and portrayal of our own particular fears, never given His own voice but always interpreted by the camera and the eyes behind it (much like Dracula, who was a manifestation of Victorian fears over female sexuality, racial degeneracy, and reverse colonialism, among other things).

Now if only I put this much work into my actual term paper for this class.

tl;dr - The Slender Man and Dracula have the same relationship to technology and it's cool and stuff.

[zbeeblebrox]

That's a good point, skeletal. In fact, even the premise of the novel has a modernized ring to it - Johnathan Harker is essentially the Victorian version of a real estate agent, and he's selling a house to Dracula. It almost sounds anachronistic, but there it is.

And much like the Slenderman, Dracula hardly ever kills anyone. Moreover, those he does kill spend a long time being sick and going crazy first.

Honestly, the more I think about this, the better it seems to fit!

[TheFallenenvoy]

I now have an amazing urge to read Dracula.

[qaqa]

Should've read it already, Shortpack, for shame.