1. Representations of gender in Dracula (1958)
1. Read the article on Dracula highlight and makes notes on it – it may help with some
of the questions (if you don’t have the paper version please find it here
http://sensesofcinema.com/2005/cteq/horror_of_dracula/ )
2. What is the male gaze?
3. Read this review of the film http://realmofryan.blogspot.co.uk/2010/10/movie-
review-dracula-1958-aka-horror-of.htmlWhat do learn about Hammer Studios and
the film?
4. How are we first introduced to Lucy Holmwood and what does this signify about her
role in the film?
5. When we next see Lucy she is lying in bed, unwell and weak due to the fact that she
has become one of Dracula’s victims. How does the mise-en-scene and her
performance construct her as weak and childlike?
6. What iconic prop does Lucy remove from her neck? And how does this signal deviant
behaviour?
7. ‘In Dracula, both heroines enjoy the vampire’s unconventional style of coitus 1. They
are transformed by his unratified2 penetration, which destroys them as moral
beings’3
a) What does this sentence mean?
b) How is represented when Dracula visits Lucy?
8. How are the audience encouraged to view Mina through the eyes of a male
spectator?
9. How are the cinematography, mise-en-scene and performance used to encourage
the male gaze when Harker first sees the Vampire Bride? (apply Mulvey’s theory)
10. To what extent can the Vampire Bride be seen as a strong female character?
11. Dracula is characterised as a sexual predator that preys on women and will kill any
man who gets in his way. How is this represented in the film? (reference the micro
features)
12.
1
Coitus - Sexual union between a male and a female involving insertion of the penis into the vagina.
2
Unratified - lacking legal authority
3
Womenin British cinema: mad, bad, and dangerous to know (Sue Harper, International Publishing Group,
2000)