Van Helsing and Gender Roles

The movie starts out in Transylvania, in 1887. It shows the villagers storming up to the Frankenstein castle. Then inside the castle, Dr. Frankenstein is frightened by the arrival of someone, and then he calms down once he has realized it is Dracula. They begin to have a conversation, and as the viewer you become aware of the fact that in all previous conversations Dracula has been quite charming because Frankenstein is quite comfortable talking to him. Frankenstein's creation has been succesful, and the Count has arrived at the castle because he wants to take him for his own purposes. However, the Dr. isn't aware of what Dracula's purpose is, and so he explains it to him. While he is explaining it to him, the movie goes back to the villagers and so the viewer is as yet unure of what the purpose of the creation is. Once back inside the castle with the Dr. and the Count, the Dr. looks extremely upset and says that he could never allow his creation to be used for such a purpose, so even though the viewer doesn't know what the purpose actually is, there is some foreshadowing about it being not so good. Becuase he doesn't want to allow Dracula to have him, Dracula decides that he has to kill the Dr. When he has, Frankenstein's creation has freed himself from the table where he was strapped down and throws Dracula into the fire and takes Frankenstein(now dead) and escapes the castle.


He carries Frankenstein up to the windmill, where the villagers follow them. Once inside the windmill, he goes up to the top. At this point, you see him asking "Why?" of no one in particular, and he appears to be asking about the necessity of Frankenstein's death. He also refers to Frankenstein as Father at one point. The villagers, upon arrival, throw torches at the building and set it on fire.


Flashes inside the windmill show all sorts of bottles, mainly absinthe, and also a Holy Bible, which appears ironic at this point but I feel it does serve a purpose for being shown. The windmill ends up sort of exploding, and Frankenstein and his creation fall from the roof inside the collapsed building, for all appearances both dead. The reason I find this scene important, at least looking at things as we were supposed to from a gender perspecitve, it is unique because Frankenstein's creation refers to him as father. He has given the creation life, however, there is clearly no female involved in said creation. Typically, when people think of the concept of "giving life" to someone, it is often thought of as when a mother gives birth to a child. Somehow, the father, while still necessary for the creation of that child, is never really implicated in the "giving life" to the child.


With the scene at the beginning between Frankenstein and Dracula, I was reminded of the beginning of the book(Dracula), when Jonathon first meets Dracula. Dracula is charming and Jonathon seems to find him quite well spoken. He doesn't connect everything that the villagers were afraid of with Dracula. Which is similar to how Frankenstein reacts to Dracula in the movie. The Count appears to have charmed Frankenstein and not shown him his "true colors" so to speak. Even though I have seen this movie before, I had never read Dracula, and so when I found myself feeling like someone needed to warn the Dr. before he had even gotten involved with the Count, I realized that was the same way I felt when I read Jonathon's first meeting with Dracula.


The movie then skips to Paris, one year later. You see Van Helsing(although you don't technically know it is him it's still kind of implied), and hear a scream, and laughter. Van Helsing goes to where he heard the scream, and finds a dead female child. He looks up and sees something crawling up the side of a church. He crosses himself at the death of the child, and then goes to the church. Because he crossed himself, the viewer is left with the impression that he is a Holy Man, which I feel is sort of at odds with how he is in the book, because in the book he, and pretty much everyone else, is all about science, and not religion.


Once in the church, it is revealed that the creature Van Helsing was following was Dr. Jekyl(A.K.A. Mr. Hyde), and he is "wanted" for several murders, and Van Helsing has been asked to bring him in alive. There is a drawn out fight scene between the two, and it ends with the death of Dr. Jekyl, and Van Helsing being called a murderer by the men who find the body, who appear to be police officers of the city of Paris.


The next scene brings us to Vatican City, in Rome, which in time appears to be the headquarters of what the priest refers to as "the Order." I find this entire "chapter" to be quite important, because the viewers learn that Van Helsing doesn't remember his past, and also because it shows the importance of religion in the movie, which as I mentioned earlier is quite different from the book which focuses more on the scientific aspect.


Fast forward to our first introduction of the family in Transylvania that Van Helsing is supposed to be resucuing. The brother, Valcan, is playing "bait" to some unknown enemy. His sister, Anna, is the one that ends up rushing forward with her sword to rescue him when it becomes necessary. Looking at this from a gender role perspective, it is strange that the male is the one playing the bait because in most scenarios, it always seems to be the female who is the bait, and the male is the one that comes to the rescue of the "damsel in distress." However, once the werewolf, who was the unknown enemy, has escaped the cage it was captured in, it reverses the roles. It is Anna that it chases, and Valcan is the one that follows to come to her rescue, bringing a change in the gender roles back to what is considered more traditional.

In this scene, we see the brides of Dracula close up for the first time. They are attacking during the day, which is highly unusual for vampires, however they do have to hide when the sun breaks free of the clouds, and are able to come back out when the sun hides behind the clouds again. But the importance of this scene is based on the traditional gender role. When Anna lands on Van Helsing and knocks him down, he rolls over in essence pinning her down and says to "stay here." This clearly shows that he is what is often portrayed as a "typical male." The character who believes that he needs to protect the female and that the female needs to stay out of the way which also keeps her out of danger. However, Anna reverses the roles a few moments later, and tells Van Helsing to "stay here." This shows that clearly she is not what is considered to be the "typical woman" who does stay out of the way and wait for the male to rescue her.


At this point we can skip ahead to the end, because for the next several scenes we simply follow the characters as they eventually work their way to finding Dracula and his castle. A few important sections that do stand out is that they find Frankenstein's creation, and take him with them on their journey to find the Count, as well as Van Helsing being bitten by the werewolf, which will in essence turn him into a werewolf and they discover that only a werewolf can kill Dracula.


The scene where Van Helsing confronts Dracula is in the laboratory after they have brought life to Dracula's children, which was the Count's purpose for Frankenstein's creation(which at the beginning he called the "key") and his one desire in the movie. The only way to destroy all of the children that have been created is to kill Dracula, which only Van Helsing can do once the clock strikes midnight and he is transformed into a werewolf. In this scene, the Count refers to Van Helsing as Gabriel. Based on the religious aspect of the movie and everything that has been used so far to explain the importance of religion, especially to Van Helsing, is that by calling him Gabriel the Count is referring to the arcangel Gabriel. In the Bible, Gabriel is a messenger who brings the word of God to people on earth, giving them messages from the Lord. It is ironic to me that he refers to him thusly, because he also says that they have history. Thinking about this, and having some ideas about religion, I remembered that Dracula is sometimes called the Angel of Darkness. The Angel of Darkness is another name for the devil, and another name for the devil is Lucifer. Lucifer was created by God to be the perfect angel, but he became proud and was cast out of heaven to Hell, where he in turn became the devil, and was in charge of Hell. So in essence this scene is one angel killing another angel, when looking at it with that mindset.


This may be a stretch, but because we're supposed to be watching this movie in reference to similarities to Dracula, I think of Anna in relation to Mina. In the book, Mina is the character that all of the men end up trying to protect. In the movie, Anna is the female that is being protected, first by her brother and then by Van Helsing. And in the book Dracula feeds off of Mina, and in the movie he kidnaps Anna. Like I said, it may be a stretch, but to me it makes sense.


As I previously stated, I've seen this movie before, but I've never looked at it in this way before. There was so much that I saw this time, in just little details, that I had never noticed before. And not just with gender roles. But also with the all of the references to religion, and I never thought about how ironic they were in terms of Van Helsing because I had never read Dracula, and therefore never knew him in the scence of being a scientific man, and not a Holy Man. So I learned a good deal about this movie, and I'm glad I was able to watch this again in terms of looking at it in this way.