Maybe Dracula was the phone calls we had to make along the way.
Or, the overlap of language in Bram Stoker's 'Dracula' and contemporary online culture.
“It is all so horrid to me, for I remember nothing but I am full of a vague fear, and I feel so weak and worn out.”
P.102, Dracula.
As I cracked the spine of my tattered second-hand copy of Dracula and began my very first journey through the Carpathians, I was immediately struck by how close the feeling of dread felt. Jonathan Harker’s description of being trapped in a literal monster’s lair felt a lot like people’s descriptions of sitting in their bedroom preparing to call the doctor’s office for an appointment. Genuinely.
This got me thinking about how much of the phraseology of social media is incredibly dramatic (and very camp) - just like much of classic Gothic literature. “The horrors persist, but so do I”; you could easily be fooled into thinking this was uttered from the lips of Mina Harker in her struggle against a Vampire and paternalist/patriarchal attitudes in the novel. Yet:
Is casual language more extreme, or dramatic, in its emotive expression than it once was? In decades gone by, would an alternative version of myself read the words:
“I feel the dread of this horrible place overpowering me; I am in fear - in awful fear… I am encompassed about terrors I dare not think of.” P.38.
and be moved by the terrified vulnerability, instead of thinking ‘haha like a trip to Primark when it’s busy’. It is a sensory nightmare, to be fair. Am I just terminally online? Is one the symptom of the other? I don’t know, I’m not a linguist, but I do have some thoughts.
What does this reflect?
“I could almost hear the beating of my own heart; and the blood surging through my temples sounded like blows from a hammer… There was a nervous suspense over us all, as though some dread bell would peal out powerfully when we should least expect it.” P.247.
Why is this such an eerily familiar sentiment? Does this not describe precisely the modern condition of Gen Z and young millennials? A permanent, looming sense of dread in the everyday.
According to one survey, 91% of 18 to 24-year-olds report being stressed – compared to 84% on average.1 I doubt many people are particularly surprised by those numbers. There is a huge deal of worry and stress that comes from living through an increasing amount of ‘once-in-a-lifetime events’ and pending climate catastrophe. Opening up your phone and not knowing if the next video on your feed will be about Kendrick vs Drake or footage of a child in a bombsite. Really, is it any surprise Gen Z and millennials are plagued by a ‘sleep crisis’? We’re the generation who go to bed the earliest, yet have still earned the title ‘the Tired Generations’.
“No man knows ‘till he has suffered from the night how sweet and how dear to his heart and eye the morning can be.” P.47.
In the homepage of the browser on my work computer, I’m seeing a jarring amount of content along the lines of ‘silly childish Gen Z struggle with phone calls’ ‘Gen Z snowflakes call in sick more than any other generation’.
I think horror analogies are perfect here. Let’s stop looking at seemingly minor instances in isolation and start zooming out to look at the broader process: how an increasing number of pressure zones can create a response to something small that is qualitatively far from where you’d expect if you fail to take a step back. A straw that broke the camel’s back situation. Our character, Lucy Westenra, going on random nighttime walks in her sleep is nerve-wracking, yes (don’t fall off the cliff girl)! Does it denote dread and terror? Not unless you’ve been following the trail of clues in the preceding chapters that point to what’s really going on.
In the most general sense, horror stories rely upon the build-up of tension, a prolonged sense of threat, a question over whether the future is one with you in it. Heart palpitations could be summoned by a simple creaking of a door, a scream released by the crack of old floorboards taking the main character by surprise. Again, in isolation, these incidents could be laughable. What do you mean you’re scared of a floorboard?! Except, it’s not really about the floorboard, is it?
The positives?
“It is really wonderful how much resilience there is in human nature.” P.286.
Within the pages of Dracula and in the online space today, there is much room made for emotional vulnerability. In particular, there’s a trend towards using found community to overcome shared struggles and trauma. In reading the letters between and diary extracts of the characters - all of which are collated and read by everyone - I just know these people would love crying on main. Rightfully so. It’s freeing to step away from an individualist and macho precedent to one of sharing hurt and emotion. We often have so much more in common than we think.
I don’t know why it has taken me all these years to read Dracula, but I’m glad I did. And I’m glad I did when I did. There’s something about that shared camp dramaticism in the language that makes this novel and its characters, their ups and downs, feel much closer, 127 years down the line.
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20230215-are-gen-z-the-most-stressed-generation-in-the-workplace