The sublime underlies the nobility of Classicism, the awe of Romantic nature, and the terror of the Gothic.
-Simon Morley
“I am the monster that breathing men would kill. I am Dracula.”
The meaning of the word sublime has changed overtime and holds special meanings within the realm of philosophy, specifically within aesthetics. Although its meaning, much like its description, has transcended through many schools of thought. In general, the word is understood to mean—that which inspires awe, veneration, and greatness beyond measure. However, many have noted this greatness can also come with a dark side of fear and desire. The sublime is summarized by Simon Morley in his article A Short History of the Sublime (as that which) underlies the nobility of Classicism, the awe of Romantic nature, and the terror of the Gothic. When I first read this summary, I was struck by how this description runs parallel in spirit to Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula and in turn Francis Ford Coppola’s adaption.
Coppola’s vision of Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a cinematic feast of Gothic excess showing the unimaginable greatness of beast, man, and God who all have the power to bring both blessings and curses, health and disease. It is a film where shadows undulate with menace, crimson hues bleed through opulent frames, and whispers of seduction intermingle with cries of terror. Beneath its lush aesthetic lies a profound exploration of the human psyche, particularly the entanglement of fear and desire and how the sublime—that ineffable mix of awe and dread—shapes our understanding of love, mortality, and the unknown.
“I was betrayed. Look what your God has done to me!”
Few films capture the primal connection between fear and desire as vividly as Dracula. From the moment Count Dracula, played by Gary Oldman, encounters Mina, played by Winona Ryder, there is a tension wavering between repulsion and attraction. Dracula’s predatory nature evokes terror, yet his profound love and sorrow draws Mina toward him in a way that feels almost inevitable.
This interplay speaks to Georges Bataille’s exploration of eroticism as a space where boundaries dissolve. In his seminal work Eroticism, Bataille argues that human desire often confronts the forbidden—an act of transgression that mirrors the structure of fear. Mina’s attraction to Dracula is laden with this sense of transgression. By yielding to his embrace, she flirts with death and immortality, stepping into a realm where societal and spiritual laws no longer apply.
The film’s eroticism is not confined to physical desire; it is spiritual, even metaphysical. Dracula’s longing for Mina is tied to his quest for redemption and his defiance of death itself. Desire, in this context, becomes a yearning for transcendence, a theme echoed in Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgment, where he describes the sublime as an experience that transcends ordinary understanding.
“I want to be what you are, see what you see, love what you love.”
At its core, Dracula is a meditation on the sublime. The film’s Gothic landscapes—the jagged peaks of the Carpathians, the labyrinthine corridors of Dracula’s castle all evokes a sense of grandeur that is both beautiful and terrifying. This duality is central to the sublime, which Kant defines as a feeling that arises when the mind encounters something vast and powerful, beyond its capacity to fully comprehend. Kant expounded on the sublime saying,
“The feeling of the sublime is at once a feeling of displeasure, arising from the inadequacy of imagination in the aesthetic estimation of magnitude to attain to its estimation of reason, and a simultaneous awakened pleasure, arising from this very judgement of the inadequacy of sense of being in accord with ideas of reason, so far as the effort to attain to these is for us a law.”
Dracula himself embodies the sublime. His presence is overwhelming—a blend of aristocratic elegance and animalistic ferocity. When Lucy, played by Sadie Frost, succumbs to his nocturnal visitations, her transformation into a vampire is both horrifying and strangely beautiful. This scene captures Edmund Burke’s notion of the sublime as rooted in terror, where beauty and fear amplify each other to create an emotional intensity that is almost unbearable.
The sublime in Dracula also serves to confront humanity’s deepest fears: the inevitability of death and the fragility of moral order. Dracula’s defiance of death, his cursed immortality, forces the characters, and by extension the audience, to grapple with the limits of human existence. Yet it is this very confrontation that evokes awe, as we are reminded of the vast mysteries that lie beyond our understanding.
“There is much to be learned from beasts.”
The sublime is not merely an aesthetic concept in Coppola’s Dracula, but an all encompassing philosophical statement. It is important to note that in Bram Stoker’s novel Mina does not succumb to the dark allure of Dracula and only ever sees him as a monster. However, Coppola has elevated Dracula’s backstory where now he can become a sympathetic character for Mina. For her, he becomes a way to navigate perhaps an even more terrifying threat, her emotional and existential dread.
For Jonathan Harker, played by Keanu Reeves, and Van Helsing, Anthony Hopkins, the sublime manifests as a moral and physical challenge. Harker’s imprisonment in Dracula’s castle and his eventual escape reflects humanitys ability to overcome in the face of incomprehensible terror. Van Helsing’s battle against Dracula is not merely a clash of science and superstition but a confrontation with the unknown, a reminder that some truths lie beyond the grasp of reason.
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Conclusion
Bram Stoker’s Dracula captures the paradoxes at the heart of human experience. Fear and desire, awe and dread. These are not opposing forces but intertwined threads that shape our understanding of love, mortality, and the unknown. By immersing us in the sublime, the film invites us to confront these dualities and find beauty in the terrifying, transcendence in the forbidden.
In the end, Dracula’s curse and in turn his death is a reminder that the sublime lies not in the resolution of fear and desire but in their transformative power towards love and awe, and to hopefully release us all from the powers of darkness.
Reading List
Dracula by Bram Stoker
The Sublime by Simon Morley
Eroticism by Georges Bataille
Critique of Judgement by Immanuel Kant
A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful by Edmund Burke
