This is part one of a three-part series on Netflix/BBC’s Dracula. Spoilers abound.

Intro

I’ve never read Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” but it doesn’t matter ; vampire lore saturates our imagination like a sanguine elixir. I’ve seen several film incarnations of the titular Dracula, from the silent Nosferatu (1922) to Francis Ford Coppola’s fever-dream melodrama.

Everything living must die. Since this is shared knowledge in our species, why does it still engender fear?

The recent BCC/Netflix adaptation, spearheaded by the same mad (or maddening) geniuses who created Sherlock, is a fresh twist on a haggard tale. What I find more intriguing than the stellar acting and production design are the themes of faith, death, and immortality.

Does Immortality Exist?

Whether or not immortality is real depends on your definition of the term, and your philosophical view on of mind and the soul. Issues of destiny and free will come into play as well. If you’re talking about biological immortality, then it’s moot beyond discussion. I highly doubt science can extend human life much further; metaphysical immortality, on the other hand, is another story.

However, since Dracula is a fantasy thriller with a supernatural horror twist, we can discuss both types of immortality.

How delicious!

What Happens After Death?

This question has plagued humanity’s psyche for generations. The now-deceased philosopher Jeff Mason explains the either-or proposition of what happens after a person’s body dies:

All we can say about death is that it is either real or it is not real. If it is real, then the end of one’s life is a simple termination. If it is not real, then the end of one’s embodied life is not true death, but a portal to another life.

However, before continuing on the issue, we must contend herewith the Semantic Problem of death and life after it. This seeming contradiction is based on the fact that “death” means a life is at an end, but immortality could refer to “never dying” or “persisting after biological death.”

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains the Semantic Problem:

Discourse on immortality bears a semantic difficulty concerning the word ‘death’. We usually define it in physiological terms as the cessation of biological functions that make life possible. But, if immortality is the continuation of life even after death, a contradiction appears to come up. It makes no sense to say that someone has died and yet survived death. To be immortal is, precisely, not to suffer death. Thus, whoever dies, stops existing; nobody may exist after death, precisely because death means the end of existence.

For convenience, however, we may agree that ‘death’ simply means the decomposition of the body, but not necessarily the end of a person’s existence, as assumed in most dictionary definitions. In such a manner, a person may ‘die’ in as much as their body no longer [functions], but [the person] may continue to exist, either in an incorporeal state, with an ethereal body, or with some other physical body.

Thus, for the rest of the article, we must make a clarification: by death, I mean the end of person’s bodily functions, but not the annihilation of his or her identity. For example, in another fantasy setting like Lord of the Rings, an elf has an immortal (barring injury) body, but all beings (hobbits, men, and dwarves) have indestructible souls.

Dracula’s Immortality

Does this mean everyone — not just Count Dracula — is technically immortal? Yes and no. We’re certainly not physically immortal like Count Dracula, but everyone (according to this view) has a non-physical identity which persists after physical death. This is the haunting power of a vampire — he kills others to live on…and on.

Dracula’s peculiar brand of physical immortality clashes with metaphysical immortality in Episode 1. Dracula, seeking to gain entrance into the convent, taunts the stalwart nuns:

DRACULA: “I can give them eternal life!”
AGATHA: “They already have it.”

Though he wouldn’t have admitted it, Dracula is actually afraid of death. If he’s immortal, why should he fear what cannot touch him?

Well, we non-vampires can relate. It’s plausible that all fear is rooted in death. The science folks at V-Sauce do an excellent job breaking down this concept:

Everything living must die. Since this is shared knowledge in our species, why does it still engender fear? Scientific naturalism would say it’s because such a reaction is biologically advantageous, but I think it must be deeper than just that.

Spiritual Death

We don’t know with 100% certainty what happens after physical death; this means we have a disturbing lack of knowledge about what happens to our being — and identity — once our heart beat stops and synapses cease firing. Thus, our fear of death could stem from our fear of the unknown afterlife or lack thereof.

Just as I differentiated between physical immortality and metaphysical immortality, I must distinguish biological death from spiritual death. Spiritual death is not an event which happens to a soul — like some sort of “soul murder” — but is a theological term to describe the default metaphysical status of all people as separated from a relationship with God.

Photo by Anudariya Munkhbayar on Unsplash

So, if there is a God (more on this in Part II) and if we have existence beyond physical death, then we are spiritually dead without God, though our being persists. Therefore, Dracula ostensibly fears not just the unknown of physical death — he fears spiritual death.

That’s one of the reasons why death is Dracula’s biggest enemy.

Summary

BBC/Netflix’s Dracula does an excellent job of marrying character, theme, and plot — especially relating to his immortality. I explored the metaphysics of immortality by examining how our identity relates to our fear of death, and by explaining the difference between physical and spiritual death. Dracula revels in centuries of murder to hide his fear of death, but his functional immortality is a curse, not a gift, as we’ll see in the next installment.

Enjoy Part I? To discover the implications of immortality, check out Part II.

Dracula's Biggest Enemy: Part I