Blood and Plague
The Nosferatu/Dracula story is the most philosophically rich of all the gothic horror tales passed from generation to generation. I was first introduced to this story by Professor Daniel Bowles (a fantastic educator and translator) in a class on German modernism. We watched F.W. Murnau’s 1922 German Expressionist film Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror and I was simultaneously transfixed and terrified by Max Schreck’s performance. Next, I watched Werner Herzog’s 1979 Nosferatu the Vampyre where Klaus Kinski imbues the titular character with more melancholia and pathos than any other version. Most recently, I went to the Coolidge Corner Theater to see Robert Eggers’s 2024 Nosferatu and was enthralled by Bill Skarsgard’s visceral performance.
Much ink has been spilled attempting to pinpoint the meaning of the Nosferatu/Dracula story. Some scholars (most notably Siegfried Kracaeur) have ventured a historical interpretation of the 1922 film, seeing Nosferatu as evidence of the German people’s subconscious desire for a strongman later realized as Hitler. Meanwhile, other scholars have ventured a philosophical interpretation whereby Nosferatu epitomizes the irrational, premodern Other in juxtaposition to the rational, modern Self. Most speculative, in my opinion, are the Marxist critics who see Ellen Hutter as oppressed by not only Nosferatu but also patriarchal, bourgeois society. All this being said, the best interpretation I have found is the temporal one espoused by Josh Foley.
Foley argues that Nosferatu represents an agrarian-aristocratic temporality that is threatening to bourgeois temporality. Simply put, premodern societies organized time according to natural processes: for example, seasonal harvests, day and night, and moon cycles. Meanwhile, modern societies organize time according to industrial processes: for example, the work year and 40-hour work week. Because of his penchant for sleeping during the day and staying awake at night, the vampire disrupts and threatens our normative conceptions of time. Moreover, Nosferatu’s attire in the recent film suggests he is a Transylvanian nobleman plucked right from earlier agrarian-aristocratic society. Overall, Nosferatu is the mirror through which we see ourselves as modern, post-Enlightenment, and rational against the premodern, pre-Enlightenment, and irrational societies to which Nosferatu belongs.
I’d like to venture one last speculation specifically about Eggers’s recent adaptation. Could this film be gesturing towards our collective fear of the populist strongman who emerges from the unruly masses to infect courteous bourgeois society? I’m not sure where to take this thread of analysis, but it seems like a compelling way to contemporarily read the film. In any case, Eggers’s film is a much-needed return to form for the horror genre which I’d argue hasn’t seen a film as philosophically sophisticated since Get Out. Only time will tell whether this iteration of the Nosferatu story stands the test of time.
