Lord Dracula...

Today's film was very interesting as a first time viewer. In the context of parasites the most obvious relationship with Dracula is how he tends to represent a parasite. Lord Dracula in this movie feeds off of other people during the night by biting peoples necks, mostly women, and sucking their blood. Although we never actually see this feeding taking place it is implied in many scenes and then the scene fades away, only to see the vampires with blood on their chin later. This all to me comes off as a perfect parisitic relationship with dracula being the parasite and humans being the host. The host,humans, are the food for Dracula just as in many parasite symbiosis.

This movie is a big conundrum for me, he turns some of his hosts into parasites themselves to live alongside of him, others we assume he randomly feeds off of during the night. What was the point of Dracula fighting off his first mistress to save Harker? I think that is his name. Is it because he wanted to feed off of Harker himself? The film made it difficult to understand what Dracula was doing with his victims. It appears as though whenever Dracula would bite another woman their emotions would be very scattered, they seemed as if they were looking forward to being fed off of yet scared at the same time. The anticipation and hesitation mixed together are hard to interpret. The relationship between Dracula and his victims is also very mixed and confusing.

Van Helsing who is essentially the backup or reserve for Harker introduces a twist into the relationships of Dracula with everyone else in the film. Van Helsing seems to have one focus in life and that is killing Lord Dracula. He is a doctor by profession but his obsession/life seems to be with the destruction of Dracula and saving the world from him. In a certain context Van Helsing can be seen as the parasite getting his thrill or food from killing vampires. He realizes that once Dracula has turned them they need to be killed with a steak. Van Helsing kills his best friend, Harker, once he has found him laying in the crypt along with Dracula's initial mistress that Harker managed to kill. Van Helsing's hosts' are the vampires he manages to kill. The more I ponder upon this thought it becomes more obvious that this relationship seems to exist within the movie. Many different relationships exist within this movie...

We as humans want to just point the finger at Dracula and accuse him as being the parasite because he feeds off of us. Yet some of the characters in the movie tend to feed off of Dracula and his power himself. Others feed off of him to destroy him. Who is the host and who is the parasite? This parasitism isn't a one way road as some would suggest such as Michael.