#dtdm

Well, firstly, I am personally of the belief that you can’t have too much of a good thing. I am a particular fan of the “two cakes” metaphor (pictured below) for the precise reason that there is almost certainly a nerd out there who, like me, will look at yet another Dracula audio drama out there and think “Two cakes!” If you are that person, then congratulations: you are my target audience!

(Image credit to Tumblr user @stuffman)

Secondly, most of the settings for Dracula adaptations appear to fit into one of two settings: original time period, or thereabouts (thinking of Danse Macabre here) or modern day (such as Murray Mysteries). To be absolutely clear, I adore these shows and am not in any way criticising them! But when I was rereading Dracula back in 2022, it occurred to me that there was an untapped market: 2000s nostalgia.

Ah, the smell of hair that has been aggressively hairsprayed and backcombed within an inch of its life! The sheer impracticality of wearing a dress over jeans, and doing it anyway just because it looked cool! The technological gleam of the Blackberry phone’s 5000 different keys, ready to incomprehensibly speed-text at a moment’s notice!

Most people are either old enough to remember this, or young enough to want to. The Noughties were an absolutely fascinating time period, one that many people look back on with a certain degree of fondness (especially considering the current state of the world). It also happens to bear a striking resemblance to the late 19th century, for reasons I am about to explain.

Bram Stoker first published his horror novel Dracula in 1897. At this point in history, Britain was a global powerhouse, having colonised half the world and with the British Empire at its height (and, many would argue, at its worst). Stoker explores one of the contemporary anxieties of the British public in great detail: the fear of the Other. While this is a common theme in most Gothic fiction, Stoker characterises the Other through the villainous Count Dracula, a man from the “uncivilised” Eastern Europe who (literally) drains dry the "honourable" people of Britain, taking advantage of their kindness and generosity. He even goes so far as to “invade” the very island, proceeding to torment and prey upon innocent women, and must be driven back and killed by the "noble" British (and Dutch/American) protagonists. Count Dracula could be said to represent the contemporary British fear that the people they had colonised and exploited would turn on them and thus invade their country.

In 2004, Britain was at war with both Afghanistan and Iraq. This involvement in global politics – particularly so soon after 9/11, in 2001 – resulted in public backlash from multiple directions. Immigration was a topical issue: many Brits rejected the notion of refugees seeking asylum in the UK after escaping these war zones, viewing it as an “invasion” (sadly, not much seems to have changed here). This same disconnect between cause and effect is present in both the public of 1897 and 2004, particularly in the treatment of Roma people (although we have taken a detour away from Stoker's more unpalatable views on this topic).

But British politics are not the only connections we can draw between these two time periods. One of the key Gothic themes is science and technology versus religion and belief, and this theme is very heavily explored throughout Dracula, particularly through the character of Van Helsing. Bram Stoker would have been alive to experience ground-breaking inventions such as the traffic light, the telephone, the lightbulb, the steam turbine and fingerprint classification, all before Dracula was even written. With scientists and engineers learning how to play God at every turn, was it any wonder that authors of Gothic literature were inspired to explore this contrast, in other works like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, or Frankenstein?

Similarly, 2004 was a time of exciting innovation, particularly relating to communication (a major motif in Dracula!). Not only was it in the thick of the early digital age, where internet access was fast-becoming universal and most people could now afford to carry a mobile phone, but it also signified the beginning of the social media era: Facebook was in development that year, and Myspace was gaining more users by the day. If you could go back in time and explain to your younger self the sheer scope of impact that social media would one day have on the world, would they believe you?

The sheer, terrifying enormity of change that occurred in both of these eras simply cannot be understated. In my opinion, there’s a reason that Buffy was so popular in the 90s and why Twilight burst into life only a few years later: change brings fear of modernity, fear of modernity brings a craving for tradition, and a craving for tradition needs monsters to feed it. I have altered some of the religions of the core cast in order to better reflect a more diverse modern society (there’s a whole different essay to be written on that choice alone) but the principle stays the same: with light comes shadows.

But wait, there’s more! One key reason why I selected 2004, of all the years, as a setting relates sharply to the social issues of Stoker’s time that I felt could not be adequately explored in a more modern Britain. In 1895, Stoker’s contemporary and acquaintance Oscar Wilde was imprisoned for gross indecency (relating to homosexuality), and one month later, Stoker began to write Dracula. Stoker – possibly to protect his own public image – condemned Wilde and ceased contact with him, but it’s plausible that Wilde’s influence remains within the character of Count Dracula.

Certainly, despite Stoker portraying the Count as a villain, who takes advantage of poor Jonathan Harker, he also writes the strangely possessive line “This man belongs to me!” when the three female vampires attempt to seduce Jonathan (and drain him). Count Dracula is both a man to be feared and repelled by… but also attracted to, a conundrum that Stoker (who many theorise to have been a closeted queer man) would have been intimately familiar with.

This brings us back to 2004, the year after Section 28 was repealed. For those of you who don’t know, Section 28 was first implemented by the UK’s Conservative government in 1988, and prohibited the promotion of homosexuality by local authorities. This meant, for example, that teachers weren’t allowed to teach children that being gay was normal and acceptable – they could acknowledge that queer people existed, but were not allowed to frame it positively. While it wasn’t illegal to be gay – and after 2003, it was even legal to promote it – it was still highly stigmatised in the UK, and many people were forced to remain closeted, similar to Wilde and his friends. Sexual repression is a substantial theme of Gothic literature and one that I very much wanted to explore in this adaptation, so I chose this era to reflect the concentrated and systemic efforts to suppress the presence of queer and trans people in the UK.

TLDR: To summarise, I chose the year 2004 as the setting for Dracula: 2004 because I felt that this era poetically reflected Stoker’s own – especially in the areas of global politics, technological innovation and societal repression of homosexuality – and felt that this would be the perfect era to explore some of Gothic literature’s most exciting themes: fear of the Other, science vs religion, and sexual repression. Additionally, 90s/00s music is FIRE and I also really wanted to get a Buffy reference in there. So sue me.

Dracula: 2004 will begin crowdfunding in April 2025! Keep your eyes on our social media for updates.