Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This paper examines the cultural and ideological reworking of Bram Stoker’s Dracula through a cinematic adaptation as Blacula, which was released in 1972. This study is taking place within the frame of Julie Sanders’ theory of adaptation and appropriation, in which the adaptation is not considered a mere process of simple repetition, but a deliberate act of cultural and temporal recontextualization that uses the vampire myth to address different racial, political, and historical realities of America in the 1970s. At the same time, Dracula speculates on late Victorian anxieties surrounding the British Imperial decline, such as a foreign invasion or racial contamination. Blacula, on the other hand, and in a different context, reframes the classical vampire figure as a tragic and racialized subject shaped by slavery, colonial violence, and systemic oppression. Through a comparative analysis of narrative structure, origins of vampirism, gender dynamics, characterization, and spatial settings, the article demonstrates how shared motifs such as immortality, victim transformation, and tragic romance are preserved throughout the adaptation process. Such original human motifs keep erupting and appearing within different ideological frameworks, as well as across different places and cultures. The shift from Gothic horror in Victorian England to American Blaxploitation cinema allows Blacula to act as a proper simultaneous example of the adaptation and appropriation theory suggested by Sander. By pointing up adaptation as an active process, this study contributes to broader debates on intertextuality and the capacity of the myth to be reshaped across media, genres, and different historical contexts.
Author: Yahya Kemal Yıldırım
Institution: Beykent University
Language: English
Subfield: Cultural Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W7204631364