Riley Harper 10094236
Film 305
Dr. Leeder
08/06/2014
Pest's and Pestilence in Dracula
Throughout the twentieth century the film industry underwent a revolution in
technological advancements, furthermore, western culture underwent many changes as well that
greatly influenced film, the way it was produced and the content it contained. This paper will
discuss the differing convention, being the presence of rats and degradation, in the three films
Nosferatu (1922), Dracula (1931) and Horror of Dracula (1958) and the social commentary
provided by these conventions. The fact of the matter is throughout the 36 years separating these
films, significant world wide events occurred that would undoubtedly shape a semantic approach
to horror. A new genre, the Horror Genre, was slowly constructed and developed with each film
influencing the trajectory of the genre as a whole, through the semantics and syntax contained
within each film. The presence of these conventions within film illustrate how a "semantic
approach thus stresses the genre's building blocks, while the syntactic view privileges the
structures into which they are arranged." (Altman 10) Therefore with the presence rats and
degradation being the a part of the semantic elements that make up the genre throughout the
three films this provides a social commentary on not only consumer culture, but the culture of
where they were produced as well. Despite the fact that throughout Bram Stokers entire novel
rats are only mentioned thirteen times the presence of rats in Vampire lore and films have large
implications. Rats in particular have two immediate connotations affiliated with them,
antisemitism and the plague. Dracula in the 1890's text is, a clear product of longstading anti-
Semitic stereotypes (hooked nose, treasure-seeker) (Housley 154). Furthermore "Dracula is also
a traditional social polluter who is often accompanied by rats, a longstading symbol of the
plague."(154) Thus rendering...