Vampires and the settler colonies: Jerod Ra’Del Hollyfield, ‘Hybrid empires: Hollywood convention and the settler colony in Guy Maddin’s Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2016 | settler colonial studies blog

Vampires and the settler colonies: Jerod Ra’Del Hollyfield, ‘Hybrid empires: Hollywood convention and the settler colony in Guy Maddin’s Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2016

22Mar16

Abstract: Focusing on Guy Maddin’s 2002 film Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary, this essay argues that by rejecting Hollywood’s iconic images of Dracula in favor of a silent, montage-heavy ballet performance film, Maddin calls attention to the exclusion of Dracula’s own perspective from Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel. As a result, Maddin makes parallels between Dracula’s otherness and a multicultural Canada attempting to navigate American media influence. In addition, Maddin’s casting of a member of Canada’s largest minority group as Dracula allows the film to investigate identity constructions of Asian-Canadians, founded on the nation’s relationship to its indigenous populations and molded by American categorizations such as ‘yellow peril’. Through the film’s embrace of silent film esthetics, Maddin denies not only Dracula but also the entire Canadian cast a voice, probing the definition of settler colonials who must contend with the lingering ramifications of British colonialism, their complicity in indigenous erasure and minority representation, and the encroachment of contemporary global imperial presences such as Hollywood.

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