By Joe Gibson
The following essay is an excerpt from a cross-disciplinary research paper comparing the redemption of Renfield from the trajectory of the original book Dracula to the 1931 film to Renfield’s own 2023 film with the history and efficacy of blood transfusion itself. The scientific and historical connections to blood transfusion were ill thought out and obligatory, so here are the cult film analysis sections that should stand up to scrutiny a little more. We here at Plan9Crunch have analyzed Dracula 1931 a fair bit already (links at the bottom of this post) and will likely find new things to talk about in the future, but I hope you enjoy these research paper excerpts.
On page 72 of the Barnes
and Noble edition of Dracula by Bram Stoker, it reads, pertaining to
Renfield’s fly indulgence, “...he argued quietly that it was very good and very
wholesome; that it was life, strong life, and gave life to him.”
At several points of Renfield
2023 but notably the denouement, Dracula’s whole blood is administered to heal
substantive damage and even death with no negative side effects. Indeed, “the
blood is the life” in Renfield, as he stated it was in Dracula
1897. In most adaptations and the original story itself, Renfield was deluded;
Dracula’s blood would only corrupt the user into something unrecognizable (see
the personality changes of Mina, Renfield, and Olgaren in Dracula, Dracula
1931 and The Last Voyage of the Demeter 2023 respectively). This
redemption of Dracula’s blood necessarily translates to redemption of Renfield
(and his psychology) and not Dracula (because Renfield highlights
Dracula’s abusive tendencies).
The history of R.M. Renfield (via bullet
points since the admittedly profuse publications featuring this character
either do little to change him or are too obscure to be relevant to Renfield
2023’s character study). Broadly, the loose inspiration for [Renfield] starts
in antiquity regarded positively, then the concept itself [Renfield] emerges
regarded less positively as the modern era approaches and each gets refined to
such a degree to show efficacy.
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Renfield’s development is grounded in the
context of warping and stretching Christian symbolism and scenarios; quite
clearly in the original novel, the way that Bram Stoker intended Renfield was
an allusion to John the Baptist. On page 106, Renfield speaks in bride-maid and
bride parables similar to Jesus, compounding the idea that Renfield and John
the Baptizer both espoused similar philosophies to their lords and then
deferred to them (Renfield commits himself to Dracula on page 107). Renfield’s
famous line on page 148, “...the blood is the life” works as a direct quotation
of Deuteronomy 12:23 (Renfield being the vehicle for most of the novel’s
religious imagery). Most tantalizing, John the Baptist is understood to have
eaten locusts. (He may not have, but the symbolism and imagery need not
correspond to reality in literary use. Similarly, some scholars doubt that
Jesus sweating blood was originally part of the Gospel of Luke, but that is
obviously a strong image still on the table to use in literature.) Renfield dies
from trauma to the head and neck, just like John, but this is warped because
the Herod figure (if anyone fits Herod’s role in Renfield’s life, it would be
Dr. Jack Seward for his notable observation of Renfield and hasty
woman-motivated decision making) does not cause the death; Dracula, the dark
Lord, does (Stoker, 1897, 2011). There is stark reversal more so than
similarity with the Baptizer.
The audience of Bram Stoker’s Dracula
understands Renfield not as a person but as an enigmatic mystical contradiction.
Dr. Seward observes Renfield scientifically, where one could read neurosyphilis
greatly into the latter’s behavior, but the hints of great strength (for a 59
year old man), prophetic forewarning and religious allegory communicate
Renfield as a mystical character. Renfield never gets his own point of view
sections to explain himself (and the audience never learns who he was before
Dracula), locking his character behind two different veils of interpretation.
By the time of Tod Browning’s Dracula,
Renfield had changed somewhat, consolidating Harker’s castle scenes into his
own tragic subplot. Harker loses much of his development, Mina’s moments of
reflection at her infection reduce, and the suitors of Lucy are all but
eliminated to make room for Renfield, a sane man, falling victim to Dracula at
the castle, Renfield, an insane man, onboard the Demeter, Renfield interacting
with the comic relief orderly and nurse at Seward’s sanitorium, and Renfield
surviving until the final confrontation with Dracula where he leads Harker and
Van Helsing to Dracula’s resting place (Browning, 1931). The novel is an
ensemble, and so is the film, but, whereas Harker, Mina, Seward, and Van
Helsing are the major players by amount of journal entries, it is Renfield,
Dracula and Van Helsing that enjoy increased relevance and focus for the movie
adaptation. That is important for the horror and terror since, in all versions,
Renfield is the most clear picture of what Dracula can do to a person, but,
now, Renfield was a sane person before, which means Dracula can turn anyone
into Renfield, a far scarier thought than one Renfield existing somewhere in
isolation. There is still a layer of separation between the viewer and
Renfield: the tragic delusion. Renfield is wrong and insane, and the audience,
like Seward before them, observes Renfield live and die in delusion.
Seemingly, the biggest
reframing Renfield 2023 does is posit “What if Renfield is not only the
point of view character but also undeniably correct in his delusion?” That is
why Dracula’s Whole Blood carries infallible life giving properties: because
Renfield has always believed it does. (Likewise, rather than ambiguous mad
strength, eating bugs genuinely gives Renfield and any of Dracula’s other
familiars super strength and reflexes.) However, if Renfield is now correct and
has the opportunity for growth and change as an audience insert character, the
pendulum has swung to necessitate a vehicle or mechanism to explore how the
average audience member can become Renfield through Dracula’s interference (and
how Renfield’s foil Teddy Lobo can become a Dracula familiar). The answer to
that problem is very simply an abusive codependent relationship. This is pretty
blatantly the point of the film, especially since Renfield sums himself up as a
codependent during the climax, but there are more specific examples as well.
The
opening, midpoint and denouement of the 2023 film take place in character
Mark’s Dependent Relationship Anonymous Addiction Group (DRAAG) within the gym
sector of a church, where Renfield explicitly (and the film implicitly though
Dracula’s dialogue during pinch point confrontations with Renfield) identifies
the relationship between servant and master as similar to the codependent
relationship of Caitlyn and her narcissist boyfriend. Beyond the obvious,
Caitlyn also, despite herself, finds herself defending ska music as one of her
partner’s interests, just as this film indicates Renfield’s life obsession was
given to him by Dracula as Renfield is capable of letting go of his bugs after
he makes a breakthrough. Most interestingly, a use of double entendre occurs
when Teddy Lobo replaces Renfield as Dracula’s familiar; because Dracula is
aiming for world domination and Lobo’s gang, led by his mother, has lofty
ambitions, the pact between them comes with the romantic image said by Teddy
that Dracua should meet his mother (McKay, 2023).
Much
of the audience distance from Renfield in the earlier referenced works came
from comparison to more sane characters (or a saner Renfield in a cold open),
so much of the audience sympathy for Renfield in this film comes from
comparison to other characters. Nicholas Hoult’s Renfield only does the Dwight
Frye laugh when preparing to kill abusers and drug dealers, and Teddy Lobo
serves as a shadow to Renfield (being the weaker element to a criminal
enterprise) especially after supplanting him as Dracula’s familiar because of
the contrast of “Drug Use and Bug Use.” While Renfield abandons the bugs as
part of his new life early into the story and treats “bug use” as part of the
curse that puts someone under Dracula’s spell, he consumes the largest amount
possible in the climax and puts up the most credible attack against Dracula
possible (meaning no correlation between the bugs consumed and being under
Dracula’s thrall). Renfield consumes the bugs for strength, and he is
ultimately correct, so he can consume that for strength independent of Dracula,
but Teddy Lobo, established to be in the cocaine trade, also uses cocaine and
takes his bugs via snorting, making him more vulnerable to Dracula’s influence
because he is treating it as a hit not the disgusting source of strength it is
(McKay, 2023).
As
the last vestiges of syphilitic imagery in the 2023 film, the seductive Dracula
also takes form as a decaying corpse clinging to Renfield when the title
henchman tries to escape Dracula’s destructive influence. There is some
symbolism in Renfield that a fair analysis must ignore, because if Dracula’s
Whole Blood were syphilitic in this film, it would not have those life-giving
qualities (the syphilis subtext is only here because this is a Dracula story).
Along those same lines, the narrative of Renfield’s backstory only hazily
corresponds to the 1931 film; Renfield was not present to attend high society with
Dracula or assist him in procuring any of his successful victims after the
boat. The name of the DRAAG leader, Mark, is most likely unimportant on a
larger scale, while being a notable Christian name.
The
recent data that Whole Blood can efficiently combat preventable deaths raises
an interesting implication in that the preventable deaths and collateral damage
of the story (Renfield himself, the gang’s foot soldiers, Rebecca’s sister, and
the other DRAAG participants) are the ones healed by Dracula’s blood. Dracula’s
blood does not save the leaders of any given faction (Dracula himself, Teddy’s
mother, the police captain and Rebecca are figureheads whose deaths would
necessarily be conclusive, but the film never uses the blood to heal any of
them, just the unnecessary preventable ones).
The final image of Renfield is that pitcher of Dracula’s blood on a table in the church next to a bowl of some bread product (likely muffins), and the caricatured nature of that imagery masks it somewhat, but that is a holy sacrament, perhaps a picnic version but a holy sacrament nonetheless. Does this entail some commentary on or against organized religion? Perhaps; if someone at a later date can delve into that interpretation, it may be helpful for overall analysis on the film; but there is another simple implication. Because the film is dealing directly in the redemption of Renfield and his ideology, and Renfield has always been a symbol of warped religious devotion, this sacrament is most simply the ritual necessary to redeem R. M. Renfield in this movie. In that sense, Renfield finally gets to rise above John the Baptist. Renfield first partakes of the bread of DRAAG by attending and opening up to it, then dies opposing Dracula, but gets to live again from the miraculous blood of Dracula, becoming an admittedly haphazard Christ figure. Both were necessary for the redemption of Renfield (but the purpose of this essay is obviously to focus on the blood).
https://planninecrunch.blogspot.com/2016/09/dracula-85-years-later-vampire-is-still.html
https://planninecrunch.blogspot.com/2015/02/tod-brownings-dracula-defense-of-often.html
https://planninecrunch.blogspot.com/2021/06/dracula-was-count-resigned-to-his.html
