READING BETWEEN THE IMAGES IN BROWNING’S AND COPPOLA’S DRACULA ADAPTATIONS

Abstract

This article presents a comparative study of the two adaptations of Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), Tod Browning’s Dracula (1931) and Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), using Linda Hutcheon’s theory of literary adaptation. Although listed as box-office oriented films, Dracula and Bram Stoker’s Dracula are important examples of adaptation, because each production adapts the novel in a different cultural and historical background and thus they paraphrase the text according to the anxieties of their times. This work explores the author’s and each director’s take on the conflicts about class, gender and “the other” with close reference to the historical background of the novel and the two adaptations, respectively the Victorian Age, the Great Depression, and the 1990s. Moving from Hutcheon’s theory, this study aims at proving that each adaptation with its own dis/loyalties not only reveals its period’s problems using the different interpretations of the Dracula, but also they come up as new texts that enable the audience find new meaning in every choice made by the director(s) which make them works that fit into the definition of adaptation.