Oh my god HELLO and welcome to Screen Time with Sarah Ruthless, a podcast about

my #1 favorite activity: screen time. Thanks for joining me in our very rst season,
where I am sinking my teeth into a genre I have avoided all my life… horror

I could not be more excited for this week’s delicious victim, the iconic, aesthetically
drenched, 1992 masterpiece: Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The reason I keep calling it THAT,
by the way, is because Universal Studios still technically owned the rights to the original
1931 title (the one with Bela Lugosi), so Francis Ford Coppola had to throw in homage
to the book’s author to keep from getting sued for copyright infringements! But before I
give away all my fun facts, some trigger warnings for the lm and this episode include:
Vampires! Victorian-era sexual health misinformation! Anti-Semitism! Menstruation!
Judas Iscariot! Rape fantasies? Suicide! Redheads! The Bible! And of course, so, so
much blood.

This might feel like an unusual episode, because I’m not going to be focusing on, like,
the ins and outs of the plot structure or characters or even it’s absolutely IMPECCABLE
production design and costumes - if you haven’t already do yourself a favor and check
out my Instagram because I did a whole costume take over this week spotlighting the
lm’s costume designer Eiko Ishioka who was just an incredible artist and deserves all
our love and attention - because here’s the thing: to me, this movie is fucking perfect. It
combined the very best parts of 90s grunge with the most decadent details from
Victorian England and weaved this tapestry of pure cinematic goth deliciousness. Even
Keanu Reeves is forgivable, because he’s just a bebe! So I don’t have a lot to dissect in
the way of the actual movie. But don’t you worry… I still have PLENTY to say

And I swear to god, I am trying to make these episodes as concise as possible, but the
more digging I do the HARDER IT’S GETTING to contain all my excitement and fun
facts! If nothing else, I am doing my darndest to at least abbreviate those plot reviews,
so here’s an only slightly modi ed version of Wikipedia’s plot description:

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 “In 1462, Vlad Dracula returns from a victory against the Turks to nd his wife Elisabeta
committed suicide after his enemies reported his death. The priest tells him that his
wife's soul is damned to Hell for committing suicide. Enraged, Dracula desecrates the
chapel and renounces God, declaring he will rise from the grave to avenge Elisabeta
with all the powers of darkness. He then stabs the chapel's stone cross with his sword
and drinks the blood that pours from it

400 years later, solicitor Jonathan Harker takes the Transylvanian Count Dracula as a
client from his colleague Ren eld who has gone insane. Jonathan travels to
Transylvania to arrange Dracula's real estate acquisitions in London. He meets Dracula
who discovers a picture of his ancée Mina and believes she is the reincarnation of
Elisabeta. Dracula leaves Jonathan to be fed upon by his brides, while he sails to
England to nd her. Ren eld tries to warn everyone that Dracula is coming, but they all
think he’s insane, and ignore him.

In London, Dracula emerges as a wolf-like creature amid a erce thunderstorm and

hypnotically seduces and bites Mina’s horny best friend, Lucy. Lucy's deteriorating
health and behavioral changes prompt the two men ghting over her to summon Van
Helsing, who recognizes Lucy as the victim of a vampire. Dracula, appearing young and
handsome during daylight, meets and charms Mina. But when Mina receives word from
Jonathan — who has escaped from Dracula’s castle and recovered at a convent — she
travels to Romania to marry him. In his fury, Dracula transforms Lucy into a vampire,
and the men are forced to kill her.

After Jonathan and Mina return to London, they team up with Van Helsing and his gang
to hunt down Dracula, but he gets to Mina rst. Dracula confesses that he murdered
Lucy and has been terrorizing her friends. She is confused and angry, but admits that
she still loves him and remembers Elisabeta's previous life - and asks Dracula to
transform her into a vampire. The hunters burst into the bedroom, and Dracula claims
Mina as his bride before escaping. As Mina changes, Van Helsing hypnotizes her and
learns via her connection with Dracula that he is sailing home. The hunters depart to

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 intercept him, but Dracula reads Mina's mind and evades them. The hunters split up;
Van Helsing and Mina travel to the castle, while Jonathan and his buddies try to catch
Dracula before he gets there

At night, Van Helsing and Mina are approached by Dracula's brides. Mina succumbs to
their chanting and attempts to seduce Van Helsing. Before Mina can feed on his blood,
Van Helsing places a communion wafer on her forehead, leaving a mark. He surrounds
them with a ring of re to protect them from the brides. Dracula's carriage arrives at the
castle, and a ght ensues. Dracula bursts from his cof n at sunset, and is stabbed
several times by Jonathan. Mina can’t help but rush to his defense, and Van Helsing
and Jonathan allow her to retreat into the castle with Dracula.

In the same chapel where he renounced God, Dracula lies dying in an ancient demonic
form; he and Mina share a kiss as the candles adorning the chapel light up and the
cross repairs itself. Dracula reverts to his younger self and asks Mina to give him peace.
Mina thrusts the knife through his heart and as he dies, the mark on her forehead
disappears as Dracula's curse is lifted. She decapitates him, and gazes up at the
painting of Vlad and Elisabeta ascending to Heaven together.

You know, it is so curious to me how, as Nina Auerbach famously put it, “Each
[generation] gets the vampire it needs… an empty vessel into which the anxieties and
fears of the [era] can be placed, examined, and addressed.”1 We’ve certainly seen a
development of the creature in the 21st century, but what were the Victorians trying to
say about them? What were their needs and fantasies when Abraham Stoker’s little
book came out in 1897? OH BOY do we have so many things to talk about! You know
what time it is… *It’s time for some info-dumping, yeah.*

Before we can dive into the complicated worldview of Victorian England, we should start
at the very beginning - who the heck was Dracula, and where did he come from? I

1 Moore, Allison. “Every Generation Gets the Vampire It Needs?” Edge Hill. Sept. 28, 2016.

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 touched on this a little in the last episode: there were plenty of eastern European
folktales about creatures called “nosferatu,” or, “the undead.” But most historians
speculate that Bram Stoker’s infamous vamp was based on a 15th century Romanian
prince named Vlad the Impaler. Although he was born in Transylvania, he actually spent
virtually no time there, because he was too busy out on the road, impaling people! He
didn’t actually adopt the name “Dracula” - which just means “son of Dracul” - until he
was initiated into a secret order of Christian knights known as the Order of the Dragon.
Although in modern Romanian the word “dracul” now means “devil,” in older translations
it was synonymous with “dragon.” And this little Dragon Club only had one imperative: to
absolutely destroy the Ottoman Empire. Vlad lived in a territory called Wallachia (now
part of Romania) and wanted to claim all of eastern Europe for his kingdom. He was
notorious for his brutality and torture, and according to legend, would even dine with the
impaled heads, hearts, and bodies of his victims - sometimes even dipping his bread
into their blood. Sounds like a fun guy

There are some out there who don’t care for the association between Vlad the Impaler
and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, mostly because Vlad was a despicable, horrifyingly brutal
tyrant who slaughtered thousands for fun, and probably didn’t deserve to have his name
immortalized. But you have to remember, this was 1897. Stoker pretty much just read a
bunch of old Romanian folktales, asked local sailors for any weird stories they might
have (like the urban legend of a shipwrecked cargo boat from Romania that was lled
with nothing but wooden crates of dirt; and, when investigated, a giant black dog burst
out, ran ashore, and disappeared into a nearby church’s cemetery) and then by a uke
he heard the name “Dracula” in a history book and was like, “Hey! I think I might just
have an idea for a story here!” …All of that, of course, and the fact that Transylvania
also has lots of cool, spooky castles. Little did he know that this story would become the
precedent for all future vampire lore.

Which brings us to the WHEN of it all. I know I use kind of broad terms sometimes, so
let me be speci c: the Victorian Era is in reference to the rule of Queen Victoria, which
lasted from 1837 until 1901, but often gets lumped in with the Edwardian Era which was

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 right after that from 1901-1910. After that it was WWI, then the Great Depression, then
WWII, and then I guess we just started calling eras by their decade name. All this to say,
the Dracula we know was conceived and written right at the tail end of the Victorian Era,
so right before WWI started.

There are essentially three de ning characteristics of the period: social, religious, and
scienti c. Socially, we started to see the rise of the middle class; up until then, work and
home were very much combined and public, but with the birth of industrialization, work
and home became more separate. This led to the previously unattainable notion of
“privacy,” which soon became one of the trademarks of the era. Along those lines, the
rise of Christianity began imposing a sense of moral reform. “…Evangelical moralizers
developed highly effective techniques of enhancing the moral sensibilities of all family
members and reaching the public at large through intense, very well organized agitation
and propaganda. They focused on exciting a personal revulsion against social evils and
personal misbehavior.”2 But for every action there is an equal and opposing reaction, so
this era also gave us the rise of philosophical utilitarians. They worshipped the gods of
logic and rationalism; and above all else, prioritized progress, ef ciency, and problem
solving, albeit often in a cold, unfeeling, misogynistic, and usually racist way.

So it was against this landscape that Dracula came into being, and this is all relevant
and important because of how the era dealt with sex. This time period epitomized the
Madonna/Whore complex; women basically had only two functions in society: you were
either a virgin or a mother. “…Victorians considered that sexual repression was a sign of
good breeding, and if she was neither of these, she was seen as promiscuous. This
period was marked by the “cult of true womanhood” and the Social Purity Movement. A
woman was only considered a “lady” if [she] repressed her instincts.”3

2 G.M. Young, Victorian England: Portrait of an Age (1936, 2nd ed, 1953), pp 1–6.
3 Pektas, Nilifer.

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 Although I think it’s safe to say that women had it WAY worse, they weren’t the only
victims here. There was a erce dichotomy happening where women were not
supposed to be sexual until they were married, and they were supposed to tame their
husbands, whom everyone believed were “naturally” more sexual. But this logic
effectively rendered married men tame, and therefore inherently “feminine.” And a
feminine man was considered deviant behavior, because it was a “sin” against their
gender. So in order to be truly masculine, a man had to be sexual, but in order to be a
gentleman, he also had to be less sexual. And this all exists under the overwhelming
umbrella of the era’s social code, which dictated that if a man couldn’t control his sexual
urges, that made him feminine too, because he was essentially not in control of his
feelings, and not controlling your feelings was considered a “womanly trait.” It might
seem like there was no way to win here, because there pretty much fucking wasn’t - but
there was one loophole: ultimately, true power all came down to control.

Which brings us to one of the grossest phrases I’ve ever said on this podcast: The
Spermatic Economy. “…In early Christian Europe, fathering lots of children was the
foremost means of proving one's manhood. A guy could be capable of getting it up and
in, but if no offspring resulted, it didn't quite count. At the same time, some of the young
religion's most in uential thinkers mistrusted any kind of sex, and a model of celibate
manliness -- the Soldier for Christ -- emerged. Where the Romans had seen marriage
as a coldblooded business contract, the Christians "moralized" sex and therefore
matrimony

The very rst Christians thought the world was going to end at any moment, so they
viewed any attachments to the eshly life as perilous distractions. …If you had to have
sex, it was imperative to do it only for the sake of reproduction, with one (opposite-sex)
partner to whom one was lawfully wed for the entirety of one's life. As St. Paul put it:
"Better to marry than to burn [in hell forever].”

[But] perhaps the most persistent [theory about virility] is based on a concept [called] the
"spermatic economy," the belief that a man possesses a limited amount of some kind of

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 vital, masculine substance and if he squanders it -- especially in improper ways -- he will
eventually run out. …Women needed sex for their health, and if not restrained could
become insatiable, especially since they lacked the male virtue of self-control. So men
had to be careful, or they'd be sucked dry.”

I discussed last episode how terribly little we understood about the body and its
functions on a medical level, even in pretty recent history. Well, a crucial counterpart of
the “Spermatic Economy” was something called “The Sanguine Economy” - it was the
popular medical opinion that semen was a product of blood. Which, I guess, in their
warped minds, kind of made sense? They knew for a fact that there was a nite amount
of blood in the human body - if you lost too much of it, you would die. So by that logic
(and the fact that the theory had never been disproven) it was sort of a logical next step
to assume that semen was also a nite source. I believe it was Shakespeare who
coined the term “little deaths” as a euphemism for masturbation. And if you have already
accepted both of those notions as medical fact, then I guess you’re really just a hop,
skip, and jump away from associating both bodily uids as somehow connected?

So let’s bring this all back to Dracula: blood and sex are undeniably intertwined. The
very act of a vampire biting a victim is inherently sexual because it is so physically
intimate - there’s no such thing as platonically putting your mouth on someone’s neck,
especially not in Victorian England - and then you have an exchange of bodily uids.
And often, there’s a lot of gasping and writhing going on too! Like we explored in the
episode on John Carpenter’s Halloween, in horror on screen, there’s a ne line between
arousal and violence.

And now’s as good a time as any to interject with a little Sarah fun fact: when I was a
youth - like, way longer than I should have - I was under the impression that vampire
fangs were hollow! That there were like little holes in the bottom of the their pointy teeth,
so that when they bit someone, they just like, sucked in their blood like a straw. And
frankly, I think that’s a really logical assumption for an 8-11 year old to think of,
hypothetically, and I just wanted you all to know that if you too thought that vampire

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 fangs were just demon- avored fun straws, YOU’RE NOT ALONE, it’s a perfectly valid
theory! Anyway…

So imagine for a moment that blood was, like, Bram Stoker’s code word for a sexual
uid - DRACULA JUST BECAME A REALLY DIRTY BOOK! I mean, there’s a whole
scene where the two men ghting over Lucy offer themselves as blood donors for her
transfusion, and Van Helsing puts both of their blood into her veins… that was just a
metaphorical orgy! Along those lines, Lucy’s death scene is also bizarrely (and
intentionally) sexual. More or less, Dracula popped her cherry, and now she’s a
vampire, which has effectively emasculated the men wooing her - because he got to
taste her rst. But they are able to get their “manhood” back by killing Lucy - plunging
the ever phallic stake into her heart (again, while she writhes and screams). So then we
add this other layer to the metaphor where death is a type of consummation - and once
again blood might as well be a sexual uid. …And lest ye forget, the traditional method
for siring a vampire involves draining all the blood of the victim and then the victim
drinks the blood back from the vampire. As Buffy once so eloquently put it, “It’s basically
just a giant suck fest.” So I mean, if you think of it in those codi ed terms, it becomes a
sexual act with a surprising emphasis on equal satisfaction - which isn’t something
you’d probably expect when you hear the words “Victorian-era sex.”

But remember that Nina Auerbach quote: “every generation makes the vampire they
need.” I think the people of Victorian London desperately needed this, and the fact that
we’re still talking about it today segues into my next point, which, believe it or not, is
going to be even more uncomfortable!

I want to talk a little bit about rape fantasies, because I think there’s actually an
interesting connection between them and the alluring ctional world of vampirism. I have
zero judgment and will not be party to kink-shaming, but this is admittedly not a fantasy
that lives in my spank bank, so I am handing the reigns over to a writer who spoke to
women that do, and a clinical psychologist who weighs in. The following is from the

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 2017 article “Why do half of women have fantasies about being raped?” by Ellen Scott
for metro.co.uk

“The fantasy of being raped, also known as non-consensual and forced sex fantasies, is
common. …Recent research indicates that between 31% and 57% of women have
fantasies in which they are forced into sex against their will. For 9% to 17% of those
women, rape fantasies are their favorite or most frequent sexual fantasy. …And it’s
incredibly important to note that while rape fantasies are common, this does not mean
that women secretly want to be raped. There is a huge difference between acted out
role-play, imagined scenarios, and real-life experiences. No one asks to be raped, no
one deserves to be raped, and how common forced sex fantasies are in no way justifies
unwanted sexual contact of any nature.

It’s difficult to know exactly what these fantasies entail, because, well, they’re going on
in someone else’s mind. But the women we spoke to [who’s names have been changed]
mentioned that their fantasies of forced sex steered away from experiences that would
be close to reality. Rather than lines of consent being crossed by friends or bosses,
[they] fantasized about high drama situations in which [they were] forced to have sex to
survive, entering into sexual contracts rather than having [their] right to consent taken
away from [them] outright.

Amy*, 26, says a common fantasy is being kidnapped and held hostage, then having
one of the guards forcing her into sex to keep her safe. Tasha, 24, fantasizes about
thieves breaking into her house and being so attracted to her they have to have sex with
her against her will.

In both scenarios, the women said they start out by resisting advances, then begin to
enjoy the sex midway through. It’s giving up the fight and giving in to desire that’s the
turn on, rather than the very real trauma of real-life rape. But for other women, fantasies
are more true to life. For some it’s not about feigned struggle, but imagining consent
and control being ripped away as a major turn on.

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 Why is this? Why are so many of us aroused by forced sex when we’d be horrified by
the reality of it? Why do [some women] find the idea of rejecting sex, then doing it
anyway, a turn on? Dr. Michael Yates, clinical psychologist at the Havelock Clinic,
explains that there are a few theories. The first is that women’s fantasies of
nonconsensual sex come down to lingering guilt and shame around female sexuality.

‘For centuries (and sadly still all too regularly today), young women are taught to hide
sexual feelings or encouraged to fit narrow gender stereotypes of the acceptable ways
that female sexuality can be expressed in society,’ Michael tells Metro. ‘As a result sex
and sexual feelings are often accompanied by anxiety, guilt or shame. One theory is
that rape fantasies allow women to reduce distress associated with sex, as they are not
responsible for what occurs, therefore have less need to feel guilt or shame about
acting upon their own sexual desires or feelings.’

Essentially, lingering feelings of shame around taking agency over our own sexual
desires can make us want to transfer them on to another body, thus giving us
permission to fantasize about sexual acts. In our minds, it’s not us doing it, it’s all the
other person, meaning we don’t have to feel guilty or dirty. This explains why most rape
fantasies don’t tend to be extremely violent, and why the women I asked reported
resisting at first before having an enjoyable experience (which real-life rape is definitely
not).

…[So] if you’ve established that your fantasies are just that – sexual fantasies well
within your control, that you find arousing, not distressing – you should feel free to enjoy
them.”4

I realize this might be a controversial opinion, but I think there’s a part of the traditional
vampire narrative that is, at least partially, a rape fantasy… or at least in the territory of
one. I’m also sympathetic that the term might be triggering for some, because it is the

4 Scott, Ellen

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 most aggressive expression of the spectrum… a spectrum that I think could include
milder iterations, like anytime an on screen woman is pushed up against a wall and
forcefully kissed, or yanked into a courtyard and passionately made out with, or how
many times in old black and white lms, the climactic nal kiss looks like it’s breaking
the woman’s neck. You know, like a real, proper, tooth-clanker of a smooch. I don’t have
the data to prove it (because I tried looking for it and I don’t think exists yet), but I would
wager that there’s a substantial overlap between people with some expression of this
fantasy and people who like vampire stories. Because if you think about it, most
romantic vampire stories are kind of watered down, maybe “more socially acceptable” or
palatable versions of the rape fantasy, but without all the baggage that comes with the
term. At least speci cally in Dracula, so much of the sexual tension is built on the
premise that these women are ghting between their head and their heart and ghting
against the “temptation of the darkness,” and then are more or less forced to give in -
and, like that article suggests, both Mina and Lucy very much ended up enjoying the
after effects.

Even though in the story the female characters are still upheld to impossible Victorian
standards of “femininity,” they weren’t blamed for giving in to Dracula. If anything, letting
him “win” ironically made them “more feminine.” So if you were just living your life in
Victorian England and found yourself wanting sex but not wanting to bear the burden of
prejudice against people who wanted sex, then it’s not hard to understand how Dracula
- and the narrative of that fantasy - could be oddly… relieving. For the people who got to
read this when it rst came out, it probably felt like the rst socially acceptable erotica,
with the added bonus of alleviating all the moral responsibility and religious shame that
was (and sadly, still is) so prevalent because, you know, Dracula made you do it.

MOVING RIGHT ALONG…

Just some nal thoughts on the history medicine and how it was so inherently
misogynistic and problematic in so many ways… I had a little thought that occurred to
me, in my research, about blood. Since the dawn of civilization, we have recognized

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 that there is - forgive me, I’m about to quote an old Christian hymn here - there is power
in the blood. Before we understood anything about our circulatory system or transfusion
or blood types, we have always recognized that there is something powerful about
blood. Which made me think, like… No wonder men have always been terri ed of
menstruation! As far as they were concerned, blood was a nite resource - if you lost
too much of it, you died. And here were women, just casually bleeding 2-3 tablespoons
a month and not dying! (That’s all it is, by the way - I know, it feels like a LOT more.)
Like… no WONDER they all thought people who menstruate were witches! We kind of
are!

So it should come as no surprise that depending on how a culture felt about witches, or
more to the point, how they felt about women having power, really dictated how they
treated menstruating humans. “Historically, the opposite of purity was often viewed and
represented as evil. This was especially true if you happened to be a woman. Even the
most chaste and abiding women in society could still be considered impure and able to
contaminate or even poison others. While this stigma was not apparent in childhood, it
would be attached upon [menstruation.] …Women may no longer be banished to
secluded huts during their period, but there is still a dissonance when it comes to
society’s comfort level with menstruation.” Ultimately, “the inherent “power” of menstrual
blood was at the mercy of religion; with beliefs ranging from evil and polluting to holy
and healing. In societies where the outside world was viewed as dangerous, the more
dangerous menstrual blood was deemed to be. These ideas projected onto women’s
bodies allowed men to simultaneously control and remain dissociated from the
reproductive cycles and functions of women.”5

All this to say, the more I research and learn about history, the more I am just baf ed at
how deeply misogynistic and racist humans have always been. It’s such a bummer. But
to keep myself from getting too depressed, I am reminded that in the context of how
bitterly unjust history has been to so many, we have always managed to spin that shit

5 Dalechek, Danielle.

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 into gold. Yes, obviously Dracula was written by a man, but whether or not it was his
intention, it continues to serve as part of a narrative that many people nd very
liberating.

Now this next little part I want to explore is something that makes me SO EXCITED I
CAN BARELY CONTAIN IT. This might actually be the single most delicious thing I have
learned since doing this podcast, and that’s saying a lot, because I have learned so
many cool things.

Okay, so it all started with The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. It is one of my very
favorite current shows - it’s so campy, it’s badass, it might actually be credited with
inspiring my love of production design, and most importantly, it’s the closest fucking
thing we have to Buffy right now. And in case you missed it, the fourth season just came
out on December 31st, and since it might be THE LAST ONE I am doing my best to
savor every possible moment of it, which meant re-watching season 3 to get myself just
like properly in the mood and prepare my heart, body, and soul for the truly delightful
television that is Sabrina.

Without spoiling anything, there is a part in season 3 where she is looking for Judas
Iscariot’s 30 pieces of silver, so she goes to the 8th circle of Hell to nd him and ask him
where it is. Judas is like bound in this giant rock thing, not unlike Han Solo at the end of
Empire Strikes Back, and he tells her that the silver was buried in a place called “The
Field of Blood” with the rst vampire. And Sabrina’s like, “Oh my god, am I about to
meet Dracula?” and Judas is like, “No, you idiot, my silver is buried with a guy named…
Vlad the Impaler!” You remember him! So Sabrina goes on over to the Field of Blood,
nds the crypt of Vlad the Impaler, and takes the silver from him… which of course
wakes him up, and he says, “Did my father send you?” And Sabrina says, “No, Judas
did.” And VLAD THE IMPALER SAYS, “JUDAS IS MY FATHER. HE IS THE FATHER
OF VAMPIRES.”

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 So I thought that was something that the writers of Sabrina just invented for fun, like a
cute little surprise twist, combining these two infamously notorious characters in history.
But since I was already doing all this research on Dracula and Vlad the Impaler I
decided to give it a little Google, to see if maybe this was part of some other old folktale
that I’d somehow never heard before

AND OH MY GOD, IT FUCKING IS! THIS IS APPARENTLY VERY MUCH A THING

“There is a legend amongst the Hebrew people that tags Judas, betrayer of Christ, as
the original vampire. We know from ancient texts that Vampires were present on the
Earth prior to Jesus’ cruci xion, yet the legend is still quite intriguing

The story can be found within the book of Matthew. Judas was an apostle of Christ that
betrayed Jesus with a kiss for thirty pieces of silver. When Christ was cruci ed, Judas
attempted to repent for his sin [by returning] the silver to the priests who had paid
him. When the priests would not accept the return, Judas threw the silver upon the
temple oor and exited, intent on hanging himself (in a place called The Field of Blood,
by the way)

The book of Agulah, written in the 843 A.D. by a catholic monk named Aed states that
God punished Judas by restoring his life after he had hanged himself. Aed writes that
God in his fury condemned Judas to walk the earth until the nal days. 

The legend of Judas established many iconic vampire traits which have been branded
into the history of the vampire up to this day:

- Judas would never again know the comfort of death.

- Judas would fear the sun and be cursed to roam the land in darkness. 

- The intolerance of silver – A physically painful reminder of his betrayal.

- The fear of a cruci x – Another physically painful reminder of his betrayal

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 - And lastly – The thirst for blood as God placed the insatiable craving upon Judas to
feed only from the living.”

I AM OBSESSED WITH THIS!!! I absolutely love the idea that this is where we get the
lore of vampires being intolerant of silver (and therefore mirrors, remember) and it gives
a WAY DEEPER MEANING to why vampires avoid Churches and crosses. I am just
fascinated.

And since this led me down the Bible rabbit hole of the internet, I did a little more
digging on our boy Judas, and learned about the very recently unearthed Gospel of
Judas. Didn’t know he had his own Gospel? Yeah, me either! And this is where my real
nerdy inner Indiana Jones comes out, because the re-discovery of the text in 2006
resulted in some massive controversies about the subsequent translation. A year after
its release, renowned author and tenured Christian Studies professor Dr. April D.
Deconick published an article in the New York Times disputing the original translation,
and you better believe I’m gonna read a little excerpt from it for you

“Amid much publicity last year, the National Geographic Society announced that a lost
3rd-century religious text had been found, the Gospel of Judas Iscariot. The shocker:
Judas didn't betray Jesus

Instead, Jesus asked Judas, his most trusted and beloved disciple, to hand him over to
be killed. Judas' reward? Ascent to heaven and exaltation above the other disciples. It
was a great story. Unfortunately, after re-translating the society's transcription of the
Coptic text, I have found that the actual meaning is vastly different. While National
Geographic's translation supported the provocative interpretation of Judas as a hero, a
more careful reading makes clear that Judas is not only no hero, he is a demon.

…So what does the Gospel of Judas really say? It says that Judas is a speci c demon
called the "Thirteenth." In certain Gnostic traditions, this is the given name of the king of
demons - an entity known as Ialdabaoth who lives in the 13th realm above the earth.
Judas is his human alter ego, his undercover agent in the world.

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 Whoever wrote the Gospel of Judas was a harsh critic of mainstream Christianity and its
rituals. Because Judas is a demon working for Ialdabaoth, the author believed, when
Judas sacri ces Jesus he does so to the demons, not to the supreme God. This mocks
mainstream Christians' belief in the atoning value of Jesus' death and in the
effectiveness of the Eucharist.“6

Like… Can I just say that whomever came up with that interpretation was so clearly
fucking American? Making Judas the secret hero? Seriously? That’s such American
vigilante Marvel Universe Jack Bauer Batman bullshit. I’m not saying I think he was an
actual demon either - I mean, what the fuck am I saying, I don’t actually believe in the
Bible at all - but like, for the sake of argument… I think Judas was just a human, who
was faced with terrible decision, and he went with what his head was telling him to do
instead of his heart. Until, you know, he hung himself.

Also, this is a MAJOR Harry Potter spoiler, so if you have somehow managed to avoid
the series up until now, skip ahead a few minutes if you don't want, like, the biggest plot
point ruined for you…. Okay, so the Gospel of Judas was re-discovered and National
Geographic published their (allegedly incorrect) translation back in 2006. The whole
notion of Judas being Jesus’ secret ally and only killing him because Jesus told him to,
and that it was all for the greater good, and everyone would hate Judas but it was okay
because Jesus was asking him especially to do it, and he would be rewarded for it
someday… Does that sound familiar to anyone else? Is that not EXACTLY what we
discover Dumbledore has told Snape to do?? I did some cross-checking, and Harry
Potter and the Half Blood Prince was published in 2005. Call me crazy, but I low key
think that some National Geographic intern had just read the book and then had to
summarize a translation of the Gospel of Judas and was like, “You know what would be
hilarious…” Just my hot take

Deconick, April D.

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 ANYWAY it may seem like I’ve gone off topic a bit here, but I promise I haven’t, because
this article also brings up another little facet of the beautiful Dracula gem: the Eucharist.
What the heck is that, you may ask? Well, for those of you without decades of Religious
Trauma, let me tell you all about it!

The Eucharist is the fancy Catholic name for the bread and wine that are eaten during
Communion, which was every kid’s favorite part of church, because it meant free
snacks! I was not raised Catholic, I was actually technically raised “non-denominational”
which might literally be the most frustrating name you could give a denomination, but I
de nitely spent the bulk of my formative years in very Evangelical and charismatic
religious spaces - I don’t have time today to go into all of that, but the point is, Christians
take Communion too, but Catholics and Christians have pretty famously disputed over
the subject for centuries.

Wow, I never realized how weird this is to try and explain as if you’re telling someone
who literally knows nothing about it… How fortunate you all are… Okay, so you’ve all
heard of The Last Supper, right? Famous painting, depicts Jesus and his 12 disciples
the night before Judas betrayed him. In that painting, they are having a meal, the
traditional Jewish Passover - spoiler alert! Jesus was a Jew - but during that meal, he
said this - and this is an actual quote from the Gospel of Luke, chapter 22 verses 19 and
20

“And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my
body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, after the supper
he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out
for you.”7

That’s what Communion is, eating bread and drinking wine, because at the Last Supper,
that’s what Jesus told his disciples to do, and to remember him when they did it. Fast
forward a few hundred years, and we have Christians saying it was a poetic metaphor,

7 https://www.biblestudytools.com/luke/passage/?q=luke+22:19-20

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 and Catholics arguing that Jesus meant it literally - that the bread and wine would
literally become his esh and his blood. Frankly, all due respect, but I don’t really give a
fuck, because what I’m stuck on is how VERY GOTH THE WHOLE THING IS. Whether
he meant it literally or guratively, we have fairly substantial historic proof that Jesus told
his disciples to eat his esh and drink his blood! That’s metal as fuck!

So it’s actually become part of the Dracula canon that vampires are a perversion of the
Eucharist, because that’s what vampires do when they kill - they eat esh and drink
blood - they are partaking in a very literal Communion. To take it even further, vampires
make a mockery of Christ’s resurrection, since technically, they rose from the dead too;
they also make a perversion of the promise of eternal life, since they are able to achieve
immortality even without a soul. And when you think of all this within the context of
Judas being associated as the “Father of Vampires,” it kind of makes perfect sense.
Judas was, in a sense, the opposite of Christ; so it makes sense that his “descendants,”
if we are to believe that vampires are his mythological offspring, would walk the earth as
direct oppositions to all things Christian. Whether or not Judas was Jesus’ favorite or an
actual demon, this all kinda adds up for me. I mean, they don’t call them creatures of
darkness for nothing…

Sidebar, does anyone else automatically get Lady Gaga’s song Judas stuck in their
head every time I say his name? No? Just me? - Well anyway, there is a longstanding
tradition to depict Judas Iscariot as a redhead, and there are multiple theories for why
this is. The most obvious explanation is that artists needed a way to make him stand out
in paintings. Short of painting a big fat arrow towards him with the words “THAT’S THE
TRAITOR” underneath, making him the one red-headed disciple amongst a sea of
swarthy, dark-haired disciples seemed like a simple enough solution. The only problem
with all this is that it low key started a trend that turned into a widely accepted prejudice
that was NOT very fair to actual redheads.

And here is where we get into the sort of chicken-and-egg territory that really fascinates
me… A lot of scholars believe that part of the Judas-was-a-redhead myth stemmed from
good old fashioned anti-Semitism. Since many people of Jewish descent have red hair,

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 it made sense to give Judas, who was Jewish, red hair - but it was also a way to
perpetuate this myth that people with red hair were villains - namely, that Jews couldn’t
be trusted. Which was unfortunately already a very popular opinion.

What I nd really curious is that there’s only other one famous Biblical character who
has consistently been portrayed with red hair throughout art history… Do you know who
it is? Eve. Like yeah, there are others; John the Baptist sometimes has kinda reddish
hair, and even some iterations of White Jesus give him owing chestnut locks. But Eve
is the only other character who is consistently depicted with red, reddish, or strawberry
blonde hair. Just Eve… and Judas. It’s almost as if all of art history is trying to tell us
something… WHAT COULD IT BE? I don’t know about you, but my money is on:
“Women are evil! As evil as Judas!”

I mean yeah, traditionally, the color red is associated with danger, lust, temptation, etc,
but it still kind of seems like an aggressive over-generalization, don’t you think? No
offense to Judas, I obviously think he’s a complicated character, but he’s pretty much
the most hated guy in the Bible. And Eve - and subsequently ALL women after her - gets
lumped in with him? How is that fair? I guess I shouldn't be surprised, Eve always gets
the sharp end of the stick anyway - somehow Adam is never really blamed for the Fall of
Man, is he? Even though he appears to be RIGHT FUCKING NEXT TO HER. But all
these portrayals, “perhaps more than any other - have in uenced the perception of
redheads as villains around the world.”8

And at it’s root, we know the whole thing is really fucked up, because these super cial-
based assumptions about the correlation between someone’s appearance and their
morality is the literal foundation of racism. Like Dr. Deconick wrote, “Judas is a
frightening character. For Christians, he is the one who had it all and yet betrayed God
to his death for a few coins. For Jews, he is the man whose story was used by
Christians to persecute them for centuries.”9

8 Jensen, K. Thor.
9 Deconick, April D.

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 Okay, but like, the deeply problematic history of anti-Semitism aside, I low key don’t
hate that Eve and Judas have kind of been connected in this way. I always thought I
was more Team Lilith, but for whatever reason, knowing her and Judas are like the
literal red-headed step-children of the Bible totally makes me love her in a whole new
light. In many ways, Judas was the anti-Christ - not like THE anti-Christ, but you know,
the opposite of Christ - and Eve, being the rst to (ALLEGEDLY) cause the Fall of
Humankind, is essentially made into the anti-woman. And here we are, just talking about
vampires - who are the epitome of the anti-religious - and I feel like I just walked right up
to the cool kids table. Like yeah, this is why vampire stories endure. They are
primordial, they are ancient, and they are vital to the bloodline of folklore because they
nourish each new generation of the unwanted, of the unclean, of the freaks. And that’s
my tribe!

Vampires give us so much to think about, but almost more than anything else, they give
us permission. This is just my little speculation, but let’s say for a moment that all the
vampire lore connects back to details about Judas’ life… I wonder if the whole idea of
vampires needing to be invited before coming into someone’s home came from the last
interaction between Jesus and Judas. Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane, praying
to God (who is his dad but also him? It’s very confusing) but Judas had brought the
guards with him and they were all hiding and waiting to pounce on Jesus, and they’d
come up with this little code: Judas would identify who Jesus was by greeting him with a
kiss. The Gospel of Matthew, chapter 26, verses 48-50

“Now the betrayer had arranged a signal with them: “The one I kiss is the man; arrest
him.” Going at once to Jesus, Judas said, “Greetings, Rabbi!” and kissed him. Jesus
replied, “Do what you came for, friend.”10

“The Judas Kiss” is an enduring term, and we still use it today to reference the ultimate
betrayal. So like… What if that’s why vampires have to be given permission? Judas
didn’t ask permission before entering the Garden, before entering Jesus’ presence,

10 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2026%3A47-50&version=NIV

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 before kissing him. And it sealed his fate. So maybe the punishment was extended to all
his vampire children, who would forever need to ask permission before approaching
humans again. And the kiss - oh the kiss! - I wonder if it was on the neck.

IN CONCLUSION, just some last little musings about this deep, dark, devastating
story…

So the lm ends with Winona Ryder carrying Dracula back into his castle, to the
fountain where he cursed God and started it all, and begs for his beloved to nally
release him. She stabs him in the chest, and then she decapitates him. …But this is not
actually how it was written in the book or the original draft of the lm. In the book,
Jonathan Harker and Van Helsing do all the murdering for her, while Mina stands back
and watches in xated horror. And just a little movie production fun fact, it was actually
George Lucas’ idea to change the ending after watching a sneak preview - he saw it
and was like “Oh yeah, you should de nitely have her do the decapitating” - so Coppola
re-shot it only 3 weeks before the lm’s release.

And WHAT A DIFFERENCE IT MAKES. Like, let’s contextualize this based on

everything we just went over:

- Blood is magic and powerfu

- Judas Iscariot was the rst vampire

- Vampires are the (sexy) perversion of a religious sacrament

- Vampire stories were a euphemism for repressed sexualit

- Being bitten by a vampire was an act of consummatio

- Staking a vampire was an act of consummation

So then what is decapitating a vampire an act of? Can you guess? That’s right, it’s more
consummation! No but seriously, it’s actually one of my favorite interpretations of

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 Romeo & Juliet that suggests the ending is an act of spiritual consummation: Juliet
stabs herself with the knife - a very phallic gesture - and Romeo drinks poison from a
cup - traditionally, cups were symbolic of wombs. This makes the death scene like the
dark, B-sides version of their wedding night; even in death, they were inextricably
connected forever.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that there are some de nite Romeo & Juliet vibes going
on between Mina and Dracula, and I think that’s exactly what the (in my opinion, new
and improved) ending is all about - Mina gets her power back. She becomes the
initiator, the one quite literally thrusting, the dominant; and Dracula is the one receiving,
the one begging, the submissive. So much of Coppola’s take on the character of
Dracula was about balance - seriously, if you haven’t already, really go check out my
Instagram account where I dive deeper into all the symbolism in the details of the
costumes and the production design because they were SO intentional and layered -
but in a nutshell, he wanted Dracula to be human and animal, old and young, Western
and Eastern, male and female. And I think the ending is the perfect culmination of all
those reversals, all that balance, all that power. I mean besides the fact that
decapitation is a very dramatic commitment, it’s also the nal separation of the
BIGGEST dichotomy and the most SEVERE parallel in the whole story: the battle
between the head, and the heart.

WELL FOLKS that’s the show! I have crossed oceans of time to nd you, and I am so
grateful that you found me too. As ever, I am your host, Sarah Ruthless, and you can
catch me on social media on Instagram @screentimewithsarahruthless, on Twitter
@ruthlessscreen, or check out the transcripts to this and all my podcast episodes on
www.sarahruthless.com. That, of course, is Sarah with an H, spelled correctly. Thank
you for joining me, and I will see you next time.

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 Sources / Works Cite

Miller, Laura. “The Fall of Man.” salon.com. May 21, 2007

Link: https://www.salon.com/2007/05/21/impotence_2/
#:~:text=Perhaps%20the%20most%20persistent%20is,he%20will%20eventually%20run
%20out.

Pektas, Nilifer. “The Importance of Blood during the Victorian Era: Blood as a Sexual
Signi er in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.” 2005.
Link: https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:16204/FULLTEXT01.pdf

Moore, Allison. “Every Generation Gets the Vampire It Needs?” Edge Hill. Sept. 28,
2016.

G.M. Young, Victorian England: Portrait of an Age (1936, 2nd ed, 1953), pp 1–6.

Dalechek, Danielle. “A history of blood: hysteria, taboos, and evil.” hekint.org

Link: https://hekint.org/2020/01/30/a-history-of-blood-hysteria-taboos-and-evil/

Deconick, April D. “What the Gospel of Judas Really Says.” NYTimes.com. Dec. 2,
2007. 

Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/opinion/02iht-edeconick.1.8558749.html

Jensen, K. Thor. “The Violent History of Red Hair.” Medium.com. Aug. 30, 2017.
Link: https://medium.com/omgfacts/the-violent-history-of-red-hair-2c609aa485ac

Scott, Ellen. “Why do half of women have fantasies about being raped?” metro.co.uk.
Nov. 29, 2017.
Link: https://metro.co.uk/2017/11/29/why-do-half-of-women-have-fantasies-about-being-
raped-7099630/

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