Here's another Buffy vs. Dracula post

This was my first time ever watching a Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode, however I was still really impressed with how well the adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel turned out being that it was condensed into a 45 minute long episode. They pulled a lot of important events and symbols from the book and fit it into the show really well. 

The first thing I noticed was the relation between the novel's characters and the ones in the show. Buffy was clearly a representation of Mina, Xander as Renfield, and Giles as Johnathan. 
Buffy is depicted as a very strong fighter in the beginning of the episode, physically as well as mentally, however once Dracula comes into the picture, he uses a sort of hypnotism and Buffy is quickly under his spell, as he did with Mina. Another very direct event pulled from Stoker's novel is the scene where Mina feeds from Dracula, however in the show, Buffy drinks from the Count's wrist rather than his breast. Xander becomes Dracula's pawn very quickly from the same form of "thrall" that Buffy had been effected by, often referring to him as "Master," and doing whatever Dracula says almost immediately. Xander also takes on Renfield's strange behaviors such as eating spiders, and also directly quoting the book in saying that "blood is life." Finally, I saw Johnathan in Giles during the scene where he becomes trapped in the room with three beautiful women who end up being vampires. He becomes seduced by them, and only tries to protest in an extremely half-assed way, giggling and succumbing to the seduction much like Johnathan did in the novel. 

Besides the allusion to the three women/vampires in the Stoker novel, another piece that was adapted into the show was the boxes of dirt that Dracula needed to travel. A large box of dirt is shown being lifted off of a moving truck, which is then revealed to contain Dracula. He is also shown being able to travel in smoke and transform into a bat. Dracula still has his strangely handsome features, polite yet sinister nature, and hypnotic tendencies as he does in the book we read. The TV show did a really great job of capturing the Dracula that was depicted in Bram Stoker's novel. 

I noticed that the show (possibly unintentionally) threw in a slight homosexual subtext that was most definitely in the novel, in the scene where Dracula encounters Xander and enslaves him with his mind powers. It seems as though Xander is slightly seduced by Dracula, who is depicted androgynously, I might add. So within that, there is a slight disregard on Dracula's part for typical heteronormative roles.

On the feminism front, I noticed that though Buffy Summers is this strong and fierce hero of the show, she is always dressed quite femininely, sometimes even in a fashion in which it would be extremely difficult and uncomfortable fight in. (I mean, who can kick that high in jeans??? Seriously?) Even after an intense fight or a long night, her hair and makeup stays perfectly intact. The show seems to always keep Buffy's appearance in mind, as if they're trying really hard to drive the point home that she is an attractive woman, and always looking so is important, even when you're violently kicking vampire butt.