Dracula

Matthew: Hello and welcome to this episode of Superhero Ethics. Friends, you know we love to talk about villains and one of the all-time granddaddy of them all is Count Dracula. He has been a villain and a part of the horror genre and a lot of the vampire genre and things like that since the late 1800s when Bram Stoker wrote his famous novel.

And if you were of my generation, then Bram Stoker’s, then the Francis Ford Coppola version of his movie, Bram Stoker’s Dracula was probably a big part of your childhood. He may have appeared as a special guest star on Buffy where he was a celebrity to the kids of Sunnydale. And now there’s a new movie out and I am here with a couple of my favorite people to talk about it and to talk about who this character is, why he’s seen in different ways and why that matters to us ethically. And I’m here with AKA Hab who is a, I just kind of, I think of you just an expert in kind of 19th century literature and things like this.

You’ve certainly been great talking to a movie dick and other things like that. And so I know when I talk to you about Dracula, your eyes kind of lit up. So talk a little bit about your background with the book, with the story and things like that.

AK: Yeah, so I’ve read the book a while ago. And honestly, my remembrance of all the details gets muddied because there’s so many iterations of the story of Dracula and they all kind of bleed together in my brain. But as someone who spent a lot of time in the horror genre broadly and doing rhetorical analysis of horror tropes and philosophical analysis of horror tropes, I mean, it’s hard to escape Dracula as kind of one of the big images of horror in a lot of ways.

And I’m a big fan of kind of evaluating and looking at the different ways that Dracula is used as a horror character and depicted and kind of the different narrative and moral themes that come out of different retellings of the story of Dracula. Awesome.

Matthew: Awesome. Yeah. And that’s, I think, going to be a big part of what we talk about today is, especially in terms of how he’s perceived as a villain or an antihero, the role of romantic versus erotic versus seduction versus force and all of that and how all these things play out. I’d also joining me for the first time is Lane. Lane is someone who is a friend of mine who I’ve had a number of great conversations with about Dracula and vampires and things like that. And who also know does podcasting in the professional part of their lives in health field. And so, just seem like a natural fit. Lane, what’s your kind of background with these topics?

Marlena: Well, I always love vampires from as far back as I can remember. So, I think the first deep dive of Dracula was in high school. And when this new movie came out, I was so excited to go see it.

We’ll get to the review mixed, but then I brought up the 92 because it was clearly an homage to or inspired by. And then I had to reread the book for this conversation because, you know, it’s a great book to begin with and it’s been so long. So, I’m just very excited to have this conversation.

Matthew: Me too. Me too. And I will say that when I originally started this idea for a podcast, it was because, you know, I was exactly the right age. I was 15 years old when that movie came out. It deeply inspired me.

It deeply inspired a lot of the girls who I thought were cute and therefore even more inspired me. So, a new movie, I was like really excited about it. Since asking you both to be a part of it, I have found out a lot of pretty horrible things about Luke Besen, the writer and director of this movie.

I’m sure he’s a writer, but certainly director and had a lot to do with it. And I’m just kind of glad therefore that I really didn’t like the new movie. And I think we’re going to want to talk a lot more about the character and why a lot of the choices in this new one are maybe ones that we weren’t so thrilled with.

So, maybe that we may have had good things about. But I think this is so, to be clear, this is definitely not a review of the new movie. It’s not a, oh, hey, go see this new movie because frankly, I’m a little sad that I put money into the pocket of this pretty horrible person. There’s a lot of issues around me too kind of stuff and sexuality, even going back to some of the earlier movies like the professional. And frankly, those things are probably important to know in talking about the way Dracula has always been a character who is about temptation of people, particularly women in very repressed societies into explorations of the erotic that they might not necessarily be comfortable with. And all of his stories raise issues of consent. And so knowing he is a person who’s for whom that has been a real questionable issue, I think is only going to get further deep in this conversation, but want to make sure that I put that out there.

And this is not a, hey, everyone go watch this new movie. So, okay, tell me more about kind of your thoughts of the Dracula. You talked about how he’s so important and stuff like that. Talk a little bit more about why and kind of what you see is the tropes that the Dracula story, both in the original novel, to what I said you remember, but also just, you know, as you said, he’s one of the most iterated characters out there in everything from the kind of seminal, some of the most sort of not just the Bram Stoker one, but, you know, movies from the 30s, Bella Lagosie playing him to him being a character on Buffy, to him being a character who shows up, I think he’s in Supernatural at some point, to having the Count Dracula serial, you know, I mean, like he’s just an incredibly ubiquitous character. Talk a little bit about him and kind of the tropes that you see him falling.

AK: Yeah, I mean, I think as a character of evil, you know, Dracula falls into this like mythic category that coming into kind of the modern era, we lost some of the sense of. So, when you have a kind of a people, a nation, a culture that’s deeply religious, you have the kind of images of devils or demons or evil that kind of hold this place as like, oh, these are the personifications of a certain kind of evil. And Dracula comes about kind of as we’re passing by that where the world is moving much towards more towards a secular way of viewing things, much more towards a kind of like, you know, like the Enlightenment period and stuff had kind of altered and shifted our relationship to the the concepts of good and evil. And then we get Dracula and Dracula kind of gets pulled forward through this progression and played with as a character that is personifying evil in some ways, but also then becomes this site, the question of whether or not there is like nuance or complication in the relation to evil, kind of whether or not like the nature of humanity is something that can be played with through the image of the vampire and then the image of the vampire most famously appears in relation to Dracula or in contextualization to Dracula, because it was Dracula that kind of set the standard for a lot of the way that vampire stories shake out. I think for me, it’s kind of hard to separate Dracula from Carmilla. Carmilla came out before Dracula and kind of set the stage a little bit for some of these vampiric expectations. But in both Dracula and Carmilla, one of the central themes is kind of like sexual exploitation, sexual promiscuity, and kind of questions of consent and coercion. And I think that the image of Dracula has been used both as a kind of positive element of sexual liberation, like the vampire stands as this kind of like escape for a lot of people who were living in conditions of sexual repression, and simultaneously Dracula stands as this kind of perpetrator, this violent figure in his relationship to evil and coercion, and all of those themes I get seen played with a lot. I think the other thing that I’ve seen a lot with Dracula is this kind of question of him as a father figure or as a husband. And I think both of those things allow or kind of broaden the playground for playing with him in the relation to these narrative themes. I think that some of my favorite depictions of Dracula are him as a father or as a husband, which is something this movie played with in kind of interesting ways. But I think that like the question of masculinity is also very tied up in Dracula and the question of the role of men in society is very tied up with the character and figure of Dracula.

Marlena: Yeah, 100% if I may, because there is no story without, you know, Mina and Lucy’s protectors who are kind of there to step in and put her on the path to, even though ultimately she is the one in the book who comes up with the timetables to help them defeat Dracula. You know, in the 92, she spoiler alert gets the final blow in.

And I think what made me sad about this most recent movie is it took what little freedom Mina had and like nuance and really just sidestep that and said, you’re just this tragic character, you have no agency, which, you know, even even looking at a book from Victorian times where women are still repressed, it was a step ahead in terms of Mina being smart and useful.

Matthew: Yeah. Yeah. And where’s like in the new movie, she’s literally on the other side of the door while Dracula is making his decision, whereas in the book, she’s much more involved. And as you said, in the, in the movie, she’s, she’s literally part of the driving the sword into him, although to some extent, it’s an act of loving mercy and get into that.

But she has agency in a way that the new movie takes away. And I want to, there’s a lot of stuff in how you frame that I want to get into, starting just with what you said about kind of how there’s a lot in this story that’s about, you know, enlightenment and scientific revolution and starting to see like, well, we’re putting aside those superstitions of the past. And that particularly when the novel is written, and when the, even when the 1992 movie comes out, a lot of that is framed in this very East, First West kind of way, with a lot of, I think we can see now is kind of Orientalism. And even though it’s set in Europe, it’s set like in the very Eastern parts of Eastern Europe lands that had been conquered by the Ottomans at some point, and where a key, a key part of the story is the defeat of the Ottomans and seen certainly by the people of 1890s London, when Stoker is writing, where the book is originally set, as very much exotified and other and things like that. And so it is very much this idea of these scientific, you know, people wrestling with the superstitious nature of the Dracula story.

AK: Yeah, I think as, you know, I’m Christian, but I follow kind of an Eastern Christian religion and tradition coming out of, you know, like, what is modern day Turkey and Palestine. So I think that there’s a really interesting divide that happens in the kind of spiritual questions happening, coming into enlightenment, because you have the entire Western world falling kind of a Western Christian tradition that sets aside the question of evil in like a personified way.

And then you have the East, which even in its Christian tradition hangs on very tightly to the notion that like, no, like the devil could show up at your door. That’s a possibility. That’s a real tangible possibility. And I think, you know, Dracula posits that question to the Western world, whether scientists or Christians alike of like, what do you do if evil is standing in front of you? How do you recognize it?

How do you engage with it? Which, you know, whether or not you want to believe that that’s some supernatural thing or just a really bad person standing in front of you, I think the question stands and Dracula really becomes the figure that embodies that. Right.

Matthew: No, I think it’s really true. And I’m reaching back to church history courses that it took more than 22 years ago in grad school. But you know, even going back to the original split between the Eastern and the Western Roman churches that with Eastern one being a Byzantium and Greece and Turkey was now Greece and Turkey and the like. And a part of that split was over iconography.

And, you know, and then later, of course, with Catholic and Protestant splitting again, where a lot of it again is about the superstitious, though, like, you know, the, what I in the very Protestant tradition I was brought up in, referred to as the smells and bells, you know, of like those those weird kind of almost pagan-y Catholics or or Eastern, you know, Orthodox and stuff like that. And so you’re right. And having that because it feels like such an essential part of this story. And I also like how you talk about it in terms of evil, because I think this is where for me, the story really gets very interesting is this question of what is the role that Dracula plays? And we’re kind of looking at these three different versions for the most part with a lot of others scattered in. Here’s my off the cuff understanding of it.

And tell me if you two agree with it. First of all, and we’ll get into this a bit later, the story is set in a time of incredible cultural repression and particularly of, you know, this is when like, you know, a glimpse of an ankle was sometimes seen as shocking. You know, you literally had to cover the piano, the legs of pianos, because you weren’t supposed to look at, you know, piano legs, Victorian England, late Victorian England. And so in the story, we was modernized to read it as a critique of that repression and our critique of the sexual repression, especially of women, but it’s not in a what we think of today as a very modern context of like, a women’s sexual liberation would be great. It’s more, well, if you oppress it so much, then it’s going to explode and and be uncontrolled.

So it should be like, a little bit repressed, but not quite as much as it is today. Fast forward to the 90s and and Francis Ford Coppola doing Graham Stoker’s. And now Dracula is this very sexy, very tempting. Yes, we should probably not actually be tempted into eating babies and abandoning your husband evil, but it’s really kind of hot and we can enjoy it. And wouldn’t it be great if women were able to fully sexually explore and be and be open in a way that would have been horrified Graham Stoker. Then fast forward to this movie, where it feels like the erotic first of all, it’s shifted to France instead of England. So there’s none of the kind of repression that you get and granted, the director is himself French, but that that also really changes the story. And now it’s much more about this romantic anti hero who is chasing his bride who died tragically and we’ll get to that.

And so it feels like it’s free. We’ve gone from that character who was evil to that character of he’s evil, but he’s really hot. And so it’s kind of okay to just know he’s just romantic and willing to do anything, including some terrible things, because he’s so in love with you. Is that kind of a fan? And that’s what I mean by the kind of shift from villain to anti hero. Does that feel a fair description of the three?

AK: Yeah, I would say that I think that’s a pretty fair description of the three. I think upon watching the movie, that is not the analysis I would have given of the most recent one. I think my read of the most recent one was like, wow, this is a really interesting depiction of how evil justifies itself and how like evil people convince themselves that they’re justified in their acts of evil because they have feeling of love because they have a human desire. Whether or not that’s the intent of the movie to convey is a different question. But that my takeaway from this movie was like, no, like this remains evil, regardless of whatever kind of human motivations or loving motivations might actually be present within the individual acting. But I don’t know, what are your thoughts?

Marlena: Yeah, the shift to romantic hero or anti hero has always been interesting because in all of the adaptations, they don’t remove Dracula’s consent issues. And for me personally, if you’re so invested in this person, especially in these these two movie adaptations. So in the book, you don’t have that like love interest.

He is truly a soulless walking monster. In the love stories, it’s a little like, oh, you missed me so much. You went and made some other vampire ladies and also in this newest movie created a perfume, a roofie, if you will. And while it led to some unfortunately fun scenes, you know, he uses it liberally throughout the film. And so in every adaptation, they don’t remove this. And it’s interesting to me that we like, as an audience can look at this character and still root for him, even though we’re seeing these things. And what is that? What does that say that each adaptation keeps this aspect of Dracula, even when they’re trying to make him of an interest or an anti hero?

AK: Yeah, and I can definitely think of some adaptations to my favorite kind of Dracula adaptations stray quite broadly from the source material. But one of my favorite adaptations of Dracula is the Dracula from the Netflix show Castlevania.

And in that show, there isn’t a consent issue, right? His wife comes to him, they’re fully engaged as equals, they learn and teach with one another, it’s only after her death that he kind of descends into madness. And the other articulation or like retelling of Dracula that I really enjoy is also the Netflix mini series Dracula. And in that one, I think there is a tension intentionally posited about the consent of the female lead Van Helsing, that ultimately resolves in explicit consent. And that explicit consent is kind of the redemption and the end of the story. Whereas this narrative doesn’t do that. And so for me, I like, I just can’t read this as an anti, like I cannot read, I won’t, I won’t ever read a rapist as an anti hero.

It’s just not going to happen. I can read a rapist is incredibly sympathetic. Because I think that part of the way that rape culture perpetuates itself is by claiming that rapists are only ever these evil monsters who lurk in corners and not sympathetic humans. But I think that the fact that he’s so willing and able and ready to enact violence against women’s autonomy, particularly when we see this version of Dracula like the incredibly remorseful and skeptical about committing violence to get other men, but none of that hesitation in regards to committing violence against women. You know, I see someone who’s deeply confused and who’s acting with a lot of violence, even if it’s not being explicitly kind of like recognized.

Matthew: I love that analysis. And I think that really gets like, because for me, when I say that I, I do, I definitely think that everything you’re saying is true. And that it would be giving this director, even before we knew anything about him, way too much credit to think that’s intentional, unfortunately, because my point is, I think that Basan sees him as an anti hero, and they try to present him.

And honestly, those are things I most didn’t like about the movies. It felt like, no, he’s not. And, and as you said, the perfume that he uses, that is quite literally a mind control drug, that we almost never see the effects of it on men, but we see the effects of it on women throwing themselves at him sexually, which is quite literally a non consensual section, you know, it’s quite literally rape. And, and then as you said, the violence that comes out of that, and it feels like it completely misses the point of the story, you know, that we’ve, we’ve even like in the Bram Stoker, in the, I mean, they’re all Bram Stoker, but in the Coppola movie, and in some of the other things we’ve talked about, it’s still that kind of like, we remember that he’s a villain, we remember he’s evil, he’s very tempting. And that’s part of the point. And yes, maybe if oppression wasn’t so bad, temptation wouldn’t be so, so tempting.

And that’s a good reason to stop being so damn repressed. But you’re right, I think the way he is framed there, it just, it’s why it’s so wrong, because I think you’re right, we can still see it as there’s no lack of consent here. And that to me feels very tied into Lane, what you were saying about how in the new version, she like the female lead, Mina gets less and less agency till we get in here that she just has none. Because again, that’s part that’s, you know, at least in the book, she is expressing her consent, she is tempted, but she’s respond, she has some agency in how she responds to the temptation. I also think here’s a really good time to talk about the character of Lucy, who’s her best in the book and in the movie, she is Mina’s best friend, a very flirty, very kind of like having fun, having a lot of suitors. There’s a whole great thing though that like the three suitors of hers are all best friends. And I’m sure there’s a lot of fanfiction about how those three suitors all kiss to make themselves feel better about things. But like, there’s no toxic masculinity among the three of them in either the movie, the book, which is just great.

Well, not towards each other about being suitors, some of it in other ways. But in the book, there’s this Lucy character who becomes a vampire and becomes very sexualized and becomes, you know, evil. But we see first that she is much more innocent, and then she is seduced and in some versions tempted in some versions quite literally coerced by this wolf monster.

Although, you know, monster fuckers have their own fun with that. But I think the question of her consent in it is pretty clear that it’s not there. Compare that though to what is the name of the character of the redheaded vampire in the new one is it? It’s not it’s like Lucy, it’s like is it not Lucy? I thought it was something similar. Maybe it is to Lucy.

Marlena: It might not be it, but in my head, it’s always going to be Lucy. It’s the yeah.

Matthew: Well, the point of this though is that we should we meet her first as a vampire as a character who is very sexual and trying to use her sexual power over the men around her. And only later find out that she was non consensually turned into this.

For me, that feels really specific. That feels very problematic in that kind of like at least the Lucy figure we know that everything she becomes is because she was forced into this. It felt wrong to me that this one, going more to this whole thing about how little consent matters in in this new version that she is like we only see her as this and then later realize, oh wait, no, this is not who she is necessarily naturally. This is what she was forced into being.

Marlena: My read of Lucy in the book specifically was, you know, while while she is fun, she technically was more, I don’t know, tight or religious in general, except with her with her gal pal. So there was a little bit more of, you know, the white knights coming in. She is a pure soul and turning into that monster. And I don’t know if I read the book as her making that choice, because there is a lot of her being quite upset that these things are happening.

And the new one, yeah, just completely removes any of that. She’s quite snide when we meet her. And then very quickly, really enjoys it seems like being a vampire. And I do think it’s interesting that she comes from, I would assume, the Versailles palace, which in and of itself is just an interesting dichotomy of being really repressed, but also incredibly Libertine. Yes, exactly.

Matthew: I don’t think she’s making any of that choices. I think she’s kind of like, she’s a little bit more, you know, she’s willing to giggle with her girlfriend about sexuality. Okay, yeah. But she’s never going to like do anything before marriage. I mean, she’s still very chaste. Whereas in this new version, she’s basically a wingman for Dracula.

AK: Yeah, I think I’m maybe I’m maybe going to push back about the reading of the new one. And again, I don’t think this was the director’s intent based on what we know about him. But I think he’s kind of striking at something that for me was really, really actually, I think revolutionary in the depiction of the way that.

Okay, so let me back up. So in the scene where we see her, he turned into a vampire. We see a number of different women kind of transformed into vampires, and their facial expressions reflect some of the kind of most contemporarily understood psychological responses to rape. We see some people fight, we see some people freeze, we say some people kind of you know, like start to struggle, but then stop, we see a broad range of responses. And this particular character’s response is to kind of like lean into it, which is not an uncommon response to assault, because bodies react and also because sometimes you just want to get something over with. My read of this character, particularly in relation to Mina and with Dracula is as a little bit of a pimp. And I think there are a lot of contexts in the real world where women who are the victims of violence, who are the perpetual victims of abuse become collaborators with their abusers to deflect that abuse onto another subject. And so when this vampire brings Mina into the apartment with Dracula, and it’s like, it’s improper for us to be alone with the man, she’s like, don’t worry, I won’t leave your side.

She then immediately leaves the room, not less than a half a second later, which vampire or not, I think that’s like a decision, like the outward loyalty to the woman is overridden by kind of this desire to appease the man to escape his control or clutches. And I think, and maybe, you know, it’s entirely possible that I’m reading it this way because of my own personal experiences. But for me, I think that that was actually very valuable in the way of saying that victims of violence are not excused from their responsibility to prevent further violence from happening to others. And that this character in this instance plays a very interesting role of being both a victim and a perpetrator simultaneously that I don’t think is often explored in rape narratives. Yes.

Marlena: Okay. And this could be colored by knowing the director is that I think it is easier maybe for an audience to swallow that this guy isn’t as bad if the woman character is the one. And it’s similar in how women can, you know, be abused and become abusers, it’s learning people in narratives.

AK: So learning retrospectively about the director and his history of violence against women, I was mostly shocked. Like, why would you tell on yourself so aggressively? Like, so much of the movie to me felt like a very real depiction of how this violence happens in the real world. And knowing the director has a history with this violence is like, what? Like, I feel like something very true is coming through. Yeah, whether or not the director intends it to come through as true as it’s coming through, because I think he intends it to serve a narrative.

Yeah. And what I’m reading overwhelmingly in a lot of these scenes is not the narrative the director is intending to give but the very real depiction of how the violence plays out, if that makes sense.

Matthew: And I think this is why I’m so glad you’re on the spot, though I both you’re on the podcast, because I was definitely seeing it as the narrative that the author, that the creator was trying to give me, which I really didn’t like. And I wanted to come on here and talk about why it doesn’t why it’s bad. But I think that you’re right that there’s a lot of stuff there that you were seeing that I wasn’t that is coming through without intent. And I think the point here is so brilliant because it’s so meta, because in the same way that which can call Lucy Lucy is like pretending that it’s okay. Don’t worry.

Dracula is not that bad. Is the exact same way that like in the movie, she’s kind of doing that. And in the exact same way that happens in the real world, you know, we talked about Maxine Gilana, I think the only person of the Epstein Empire so far who’s on to jail, who I think plays the kind of a role. I’m terrible at names, I apologize, but the actress who was on Smallville, who wound up becoming part of kind of a sex cult and being a very big, I think was one of its first victims and also helped to recruit a lot of the said people.

You’re right, I hadn’t even thought about because because again, I was thinking again, I’ve thinking of her very much in terms of the Lucy character that I know so well, and being like, well, this is kind of fun, because she does have very much the kind of like sexual bad girl energy. That’s a lot of fun to watch on screen.

Marlena: Oh, she that actress nailed the character for sure. Great performance.

Matthew: Fantastic. But I was thinking in terms of like, we didn’t see what she was before the way we do with Lucy. This is so interesting. But you’re right, there’s just that whole other dynamic there of, you know, her beat because like I think in the original and in the 90s movie, I think she still has a very innocent approach to sexuality. But she like she owns a copy of the Kama Sutra in the movie and is like blushing with Mina and showing it to her. And I think that’s kind of like the implication is that she is helping to push Mina along towards maybe being a little bit more turned on and excited about her wedding night in a way that Dracula was able to then take advantage of. But that’s not Lucy’s goal in any way, the way it very much is here in this one.

AK: Right, right. Yeah.

Matthew: Which is because it means it takes more it makes Dracula not so bad because now other people are doing some of his dirty work for him. Yeah.

AK: And I like I think that that is very much the intent. But again, as someone who like is capable of connecting real world scenarios to what’s being depicted, that makes Dracula worse. Like you’ve you’ve now just added layers to your degrees of deception. You are weaponizing women who are victims against other women to perpetuate additional victimhood. Like you’re you’re literally feeding off of the victims you have to create new victims.

And that’s like even more abysmal, like just show up at a month as a monster at the door. Like that would be frankly, more, you know, it’s it’s the complicated discussion that happens a lot with assault, which is like the oftentimes there’s the emotional complication of like people who are assaulted, particularly by loved ones or people that they trust or people they know are like I would have rather been jumped in the alleyway, because like at least then there’s not the emotional deception. And this Dracula is playing so heavily into like all the emotional manipulation he can possibly get at to strip autonomy at every single level that it’s like, in some ways to me even like more horrific, because he’s doing it all while internally justified, thinking he’s doing it out of an act of love. And the conclusion of the movie is like, if you love this person, you have to stop and you have to like stop in a way that demands accountability even to the point of death. And that’s what I really can’t get about the director. It’s like, you ended this film with the accountability ending in death. And you can’t look in the mirror and see that maybe like you see some accountability is demanded of you.

Marlena: I’m gonna push back a tiny bit on that. Okay. Because I felt in seeing that that Dracula still gets the one up. He made the decision and it was selfish. And in the end, like he dooms Mina or Elizabeth to the same exact, you know, what started his own monstrous journey. And for me, you know, he’s blindly following this priest in the beginning who’s saying, go forth and do all of this horrific violence, even Elizabeth’s like, I think God just kind of wants us all to love each other and like that shut up, get over there. And you know, and in the end, it’s she is left with this hatred. She’s is going to carry him. He gets to go out being like, I’m the good guy.

And then later we see a bunch of the gargoyles transformed into children and stumbling out of the castle. And it’s like there is, there is a framing to trying to make him be like this wasn’t active redemption for myself, where I personally think it was him wanting to get out of of the complicated mess he made in the easiest way possible to make him feel like the good guy.

Matthew: That feels so vital because, and I want to get into the backstory of it in a bit, but like one of the key ideas that that transferred Coppola’s version first created, but has now become a very common part of the Dracula story, as well as this is just the evolution of villains in general, is we like villains to have a sympathetic backstory that no one cared about when Ram Stoker was writing. And so there’s this idea that he lost his love tragically and he’s angry at God because of it. I want to get more into those details in a bit, but that, and that in his mind, Mina is the reborn version of that.

And in both movies, there’s some extent to which there’s some truth to it. But I feel like in the Coppola version, as you said, Elisabeta is the version that is the reincarnation. Mina gets to choose. Is she Elisabeta or is she Mina? And in the end, she chooses I am Mina and therefore is part of killing Dracula, even if she does it in a like I’m setting you freeway.

Whereas I think you’re right that in this version, she’s stuck now is a little bit. She’s on the other side of that door. She doesn’t even get to see his redemption. And the part of her that love Jonathan and all that is just gone.

Marlena: She’s just left, which honestly is a very apt metaphor, which again, I don’t think it’s intentional, but she’s left in this crumbling ruin alone. Yeah. And I wish there was a shot after of her rebuilding or having learned a lesson or something. Yeah, just wishful thinking.

AK: I think that for me, a lot of the way I’m reading the morality of the end is in relation to this like priest character who’s following Dracula, right? Because he starts off by saying like, this is a scientific process. This is something that needs to be scientifically understood. But what he comes down to in the end is like, you’re responsible for your actions.

You have to take accountability for your actions. And so I see Dracula not I can understand the read that he gets the one up. And I would argue even that the intention is the read that he gets the one up.

But when I was watching the movie, my perception was not that he got the one up. My perception was in a very maybe even radical restorative justice sense, the onus of a perpetrator, the responsibility for reconciliation is on the perpetrator, is only the perpetrator who can make the decision to stop being a perpetrator and to hold themselves accountable. We know based on the history of punitive justice that it does not work.

We know that there is no world in which reconciliation happens. Absent, the perpetrator choosing for themselves to acknowledge the harm that they have done. And so I I almost found like his participation in his death to be an interesting subversion in the sense of there’s no way he can undo the harm he did to Mina, to Elizabeth. There’s no way he can undo the harm he did to these children, the gargoyles. The ruin stands after he’s done.

People’s lives have been destroyed. There is no redempt. Like there’s no happy ending. There’s no redemption. There’s just a cessation of the violence. Right. And the cessation of the violence is all that can happen.

Like that is the only option. It’s not going to be some grand reveal. And that I liked. And I and I again, I’m in this tough spot where like I think the move like I actually enjoyed the movie and then like learning more about the director.

I was like, holy shit, like how did this happen? Because so much of what I thought the movie was saying with the context of who the director is and how he’s written other films just seems completely incompatible. But I don’t know what to do because I don’t feel like it undoes the reality of what I watched on screen and like my capacity to read what was happening there and take real fundamental truth from it. Because the the priest ultimately comes down to the not a scientific position of like this is how you methodologically resolve harm, but a spiritual position of like you need to worry about the salvation of your soul. You need to stop perpetuating harm. You need to stop committing violence or you are damning everybody around you.

And the only hope for them is for you to leave. And that was really powerful. Like, right.

That was really moving. But I don’t, you know, like I think your guys’s readings are also correct that there are like a hundred different ways in which this could be intended very problematically. Yeah.

Marlena: I think everyone’s religious background also definitely plays a part to this. So I went from Methodist to having to go to be in Catholic. And there is some of that.

Witchcrafty to, you know, get a lot of there. But. I always grapple and within this context of Christianity of being able to just say, I’m sorry, which is almost like his quick I’m I’m dead. I’m sorry. And you’re absolved. And now he gets to go to heaven. Yeah. And so that’s, I guess, where where my. Yeah. Yeah. But I do agree with your read as well.

AK: Yeah. And I think, you know, part of the skirting of the responsibility after the I’m sorry with Dracula does get to come from the fact that he’s like an immortal, non-human being.

Right. Like when a human says, I’m sorry, they have to act in accordance to that apology and they have to actually work to hold themselves accountable to reconcile to create conditions of peace. Dracula kind of gets the out because he’s in a war vampire. And so the option is to just stop doing what he’s doing and die.

Matthew: So I think for me, part of where I struggle with this, and I think we’re just segwaying the backstory, but I want to talk about is Dracula’s use of violence in in this new one, especially because it’s part of where and this is a problem I have a lot of times with anti heroes. And a lot of ways I kind of see this version of Dracula, the way I see some of the more problematic versions of the Punisher in that it feels like because I do think that Luke Bason wants him to be an anti hero.

And one of the things that anti heroes get to do is have really bad ass violent scenes because, well, someone’s not supposed to like take have someone’s quite so much fun decapitating the villains, but their villains, they’re bad, you know. And so when we get these soldiers who come and attack his house, and by the way, I think they’re French soldiers attacking the home of Romanian noble. It’s just a quick war. It is an act of war that causes belly. But we’re not even going to get into that.

AK: With cannons, too. That’s that’s crazy.

Marlena: With cannons, while their soldiers are in the building, but like, and this is kind of more the superhero efficacy ideas. I love the Netflix Daredevil. And one of the best scenes of that show was the hallway scene where, you know, Matt Murdock goes down a hallway fighting villains and doing incredible things. And it’s all one shot. And now it’s become a bit of a trope. And Darth Vader got to have his hallway scene in Rogue One. And a lot of heroes and anti heroes and villains have gotten a hallway scene. And you know who didn’t eat a hallway scene?

Count Dracula. But he gets one. There’s a hallway and there’s like 15 soldiers and he just fights them all with knives. And I was like, you don’t understand this character at all. And I think part of it is what they’re trying to do is show that, like, yes, he’s fighting for the wrong reasons.

So he’s hurting Nina and he’s hurting maybe Lucy. But we’re not supposed to care about the soldiers he’s killing. We’re not supposed to care about all those women, all the nuns who he did terrible things to and all the other people because, well, it’s all for romance. So it’s all OK. And and I really hated all of that. And and this is where I think I want to get into the question of the back story that he gets because I feel like there’s a real middle ground that I love villain characters and I want the middle ground.

But because both extremes are bad. And what I mean by this is like, you know, you have your mustache trolling villains who are just like, I want ultimate power. Mwah, ha, ha, ha. And that can be done well when it is kind of what I think it’s in the book. And what you were talking about, a.k. of this is a malevolent force of evil. This is the devil. This is a demon. This is something beyond our scientific understanding.

Or it can be just a badly written. He wants power because he wants power. And therefore I love back stories. I love things that say this is why he does what he does.

The problem is, if you’re too good at writing a back story, all of a sudden it becomes a complete justification. And so the Francis Ford Coppola version, which I think I’m falling a little bit too much into Francis Ford Coppola, good, the son, bad. I don’t want to do that because there’s a lot of problems in the 90s movie version. And frankly, if Coppola is on the Epstein list, I’m not going to all be surprised.

So I don’t want to make it that way either. But in the 90s version, they gave him a back story that was so powerful, especially to my generation, which was really starting to be like this religious stuff is kind of ridiculous and fighting sexual as it is still today, fighting sexual repression and fighting religious oppression are very much hand in glove. And so in that version, the story is that he goes off, he fights this war for the church. The church asks him to fight the horrible Muslim hordes, the Turkish hordes. And he is justified in doing any terrible thing because he’s fighting in the name of the church.

And that’s based somewhat on truth. The actual person, Vlad the Impaler, was Vlad Dracula. He was the son of the dragon. And so this this idea that that’s who Dracula is. This person is famous for being one of the greatest torturers in history, but was blessed by the church in doing it.

In the Coppola version, the Turks do this dirty, underhanded thing. And they tell his wife, who loves him so dearly, Elizabeth that he died in battle before he can get back to show her this in true. And so she kills herself. She commits suicide. And then when he gets back and says to the church, OK, I just did this wonderful thing for you. The church says because she committed suicide, not only is your wife dead, but she can’t go to heaven. She is forever damned. And he is just like, well, fuck it.

You know, the whole church thing is nonsense. And it is incredibly over the top, very 1990s scene that I think somewhat of a younger generation told me was too over the top. And no, this this is perfect cinema. It’s not. It’s ridiculous.

Whatever. He drives hit somehow a sword penetrates a stone cross and blood comes from the cross and he shouts that I damn God forever. And that’s the out. That’s that’s where he is. And to me, that’s a really good version of a you’re doing terrible things because you’re man at the church. But dear God, your anger at the church is justified.

I’m with you here. Fast forward to this version. He says to the priest, not the you were talking about the German priest, but the Romanian priest who’s with him, who says you have to go fight this army for God. He says, fine, but just keep my wife safe. Now, a key thing that the movie never addresses is the wife winds up getting kidnapped by the Turks. He goes after her and as a part of trying to fight the Turks, while one of them is like standing directly in front of his wife, he hurls a sword at her.

And guess what? The sword kills both of them. So now not only did he like did his wife die in the war, his wife died because of his military skill. And I think this set me off just to like not like the movie from the beginning because it felt like, A, it’s just my dead wife isn’t resurrected for me instead of the whole like damning God because she’s an hell thing. But also I have to imagine there’s supposed to be some idea that he feels personally guilty for the death of his wife. Doesn’t want to accept that blames the church instead. And that’s never addressed. So I’m going to curious, how do you all feel about like, does Dracula need a back story? And if so, which of these do you prefer?

Marlena: So I was, I actually had to go back after the movie was like, wait, was that his own sword or was it the guy that he stabbed her and he and like, you know, fall down? I do think it was his own sword and it is a shame that it wasn’t addressed. I also just want to quickly address the fact that she very easily having two hands could have reached down undone the trap and maybe also continued to move.

It wouldn’t be great, but it certainly would have been a possibility. So again, just waiting to be rescued and how ironic that he kills her. I, if we’re personally, I think that I like the idea that Dracula doesn’t have the solid backstory that he is evil personally. But that again plays into how lives are viewed through the Dracula versus soul, how you can be corrupted while making the right decisions. And I don’t know if any of that was on purpose in this recent film.

AK: Yeah, I again have the question of like, what was it? Tensual and what am I just picking up on? Because I think when I saw that he killed her with his own sword, I was like, ah, so, so like, ah, he’s the hypocrite. Like we’re setting that up from the beginning. We’re showing everybody that all this violence he’s doing, not at all justified because the violence was at his own hands to begin with, which I, which I actually kind of liked because I didn’t feel that the conclusion narrative of being like, God never commanded you to kill like you chose to kill. Like that’s on you, regardless of who told you to do what you decided to kill. Um, is like a pretty profound statement. Like actually, regardless of what anybody tells you to do, regardless of what any institution tells you to do, like your acts of violence are on your hands until you die.

Um, and after you die, right, you’ll be like held accountable for them. But I do wish there’d been more explicit kind of conversation around the fact that he killed Elizabeth in the first place. I think where I’m reading maybe some resolution of that narrative is at the end with the fact that he’s also jammed Nina now.

Like he repeats this mistake and then leaves the wake of the wreckage to be dealt with by other people. And I, I don’t think the director has the forethought to like highlight that, but I do see it there, like lurking in the narrative, um, as a kind of essential part of how evil justifies itself under its own conditions and justifications of evil that are nonsensical. And one of the things that I was reminded about a lot watching this was like the banality of evil, which is a concept talked about by Hannah Brent, that like people think they’re reacting and in their assumption that they’re just reacting to certain causes or in their assumption that they’re just, you know, helping life chug along. Their actions are morally neutral when it is really those small actions that compound over time to generate an evil that feels deeply, deeply personally justified. Um, watching this movie also with the knowledge of the director, I’m like, Oh, this is an attempt to like make sympathetic or make justified or make obvious like the conditions under which these things happen.

But I feel like it turns itself back on itself and says like, actually at the end of the day, no, like you are just responsible for this violence you commit. It cannot be justified. There is no justification. It doesn’t matter what cause you think you’re fighting for. What you’re doing is only leading to the death and the victimization of other people. Yeah.

Matthew: No, I think that’s really fair. And I, I, I’m wrestling with this because I wanted to fend the, the, the Coppola version. I don’t know how much that’s because I have a legit defense of it and how much it’s cause I am printed on it like a baby duck when I was 15. And therefore I just see it as like the grand high thing. I think I’ll say is first of all, to push back on the idea of the violence always being on your hands, because I think there’s an element to which that’s very true. But I also think that like, you know, when I look at like, you know, the horrible things that happen in war, I ask myself, is it the 18 year old who’s told that he’s going to be shot unless he goes and does these things? Or is it the, the captain is ordering him or is it general or is it the dictator who’s ordering the general, you know, and Dracula is in a weird position because he’s not a foot soldier. He is a count.

He’s a military political leader of this part of the world of Pennsylvania or whatever it is, but he’s also completely at the control of the church and very much within the Yivite of the church. And I think for me, the line that I like to see is I feel like too often we act like blame is zero sum. And I think the word you kept using justification is so important. Right.

I think a tragic backstory, if it’s used to explain, becomes important, because then we can say, how do we prevent someone else from being perhaps pushed, perhaps guided into a path where they make terrible choices, but it does, it can never be used to justify the terrible choice. Right. You know, and I think that’s the, for me, it feels like the stoker, the Coppola version kind of gets this point of this can help you understand that the horrible hypocrisy of the church and its involvement in this war can allow someone like Dracula to turn his back on all of that. But that also doesn’t make it okay. You know, right. Right. In the way that I think Basan is definitely trying to say, he just loves so much. Doesn’t that make it okay?

Marlena: And in the Coppola film, there is actual depictions of him looking truly monstrous still. Um, and you know, there are parts in the new one where he’s not like looking his best, but like he’s certainly not like the Wolfman, very hairy, very obviously bat-like.

AK: So like there, Oh, that, that, that old version of him looked like Darth Sidious to me. Yeah.

Matthew: And like it, it was a pale comparison of like the Gary Oldman who has like a heart. His hair is shaped into a heart and he’s just, it’s just ridiculous and so over the top and so good.

Marlena: And if we’re mentioning that this Dracula, his shadow doing his own little thing in the background versus the book where he has no shadow and how certain choices can be made that are very different and still be fun and narratively interesting. I found that to be a really cool, um, you know, addition, especially with lights. Yeah. And the fact that the world is now so much brighter. And how in Sidious that something in the dark can kind of travel in this way.

AK: I felt similarly about the addition of the gargoyles that then are revealed to be children at the end. Cause I was watching the whole movie like, what are these CGI gargoyles here for? Like, is it, is it comedic relief? Like what’s the deal?

And then at the end when they walk out as children, I’m like, Oh, like there’s that little connection to the fact that like, yeah, actually when you’re talking about narratives of sexual assault and rape, like the, the other victim involved is often children who now have no place in the world. Yeah.

Matthew: Yeah. Right. They just walk out. Yep. Like all of our heroes who came there and all the soldiers, none of them seem at all interested in them. And that’s also a, like one of the things I think about this movie is that I think there are people who make the accusation that movies today are a lot more afraid of the erotic than, than that used to be. And I should say afraid of the, I should just say are a lot less horny or less erotic than maybe used to be the case. And afraid of the erotic is putting a value stretcher on it. I think there’s good arguments made both ways.

I definitely think though, if you want to compare the two, comparing these two versions of Dracula, because the gargoyles are the stand ins for what in the book and then very like almost soft core pointy depicted in the movie in a way that again at 15, woohoo. Today I’m like, maybe we didn’t need this, but also still woohoo. But you know what I mean? It’s like very highly sexualized. It’s these three sort of like vampire children of Dracula, the father figure who are kind of the epitome of like sex demons, you know, in this like incredibly seductive and incredibly erotic, they’re making out with each other. They’re making out with poor Jonathan. Oh, but by the way, they’re literally eating a baby.

Like in the most like, if you think about like, what’s the most evil thing a woman can do in a world that values women for motherhood? Oh, like Francis Ford Coppola was not subtle in any way shape or form in this movie. But yeah, so to me, the gargoyles was such an interesting choice of removing that element entirely and giving us these literally androgynous, desexualized, dehumanified servants for him that that I think could have been interesting if they made the gargoyles scary. And then they felt almost like Disney. Like I felt like they were getting ready to sell me a stuffed gargoyle. Yeah. Yeah.

AK: Yeah. There were a lot of choices in the movie where I was like, I feel like this could have been something and the execution was interesting. You know, like I think so those dance scenes, like some of the scenes with the perfume, really interesting, awesome choreography, the costuming gorgeous. Where does it sit in the narrative? Who to say?

Marlena: The pacing and the use of montage to tell the story was certainly and it’s interesting and maybe why there’s so many ability to interpret it different ways because it’s really is so montage. Yeah. Yeah. With the most like important scenes. Yeah.

AK: And in some ways, I think like reading it, like I was reading it very abstractly. And when you remove it from that kind of abstract context, a lot more problems appear because like you’re not given the safety of the abstractness that I think I was initially observing the film in.

Matthew: I think also like, OK, this character can literally mind control others and force them to do his will. That sounds horribly evil. This character forces other people to do his will, which means enacting silly dances. That’s not a villain. That’s a scamp.

That’s a harmless little guy, except that we know in between all that he’s also taking horrible advantage of them as food, as sexual creatures, as as non consent, you know, as all that.

Marlena: And so yeah, I believe he literally says to Jonathan like, ah, you know, those were the good times, you know, you get it, bro. Like what’s the guy to do? Yeah. Yeah.

AK: I think I think that for me, that was refreshing, but I think that for I definitely see the concern that an average audience would read that as no one threatened me. Right. For me, as someone who studies sexual violence and rape culture, I was like, yep, yep, because often it is the people who are just seen as harmless little guys that are like seriously messing people’s lives up. That’s great.

Thanks for showing us that. And then, you know, talking with you guys and learning more about director and thinking about the context of the film beyond my own experience. It’s like, oh, yeah. What degree does, uh, like to what kind of responsibility do films have to be explicit about whether something is just silly, haha, or evil? And like, I don’t know that this movie is taking that responsibility particularly seriously. Yeah.

Matthew: Cause I at first I like, I feel like if you want to make him a heroic character, you have to lean into that. If he really does, like, cause one of the things is that in, in, in the book and in the movie, he’s not ever thinking about that he’s going to find Elizabeth again until he sees Mina, whereas in this new version, literally, that’s all he cares about is he’s looking for her the whole time. And, um, and so I feel like that really makes a huge difference. And I feel like you could have made an interesting movie here.

That’s really about like stripping away a lot of the evil that maybe like he’s not doing evil, but he’s looked on that way and he’s misunderstood. And, and then I want to actually go back to the erotic point one more time because I do think the more I think about it, like I heard myself say, like, oh, movies, they are afraid of the erotic. I think that’s way too judgmental. And I do think that like, like I said, the book is written at a time of horrific sexual repression.

Yeah. The movie in the nineties is made at a time of where HIV AIDS is that like it’s worst one of its worst points and there is like horrific sexual fear, if not repression. And while I don’t necessarily agree with this, I think there’s certainly a lot of people who would look at today and go, well, maybe a little more sexual repression wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. And, and I could kind of see like if this, I think there’s something powerful about taking a story and asking how does it look at a different time?

And so to take a story and say, how does this story look against the background of not Victorian England repression, but French Libertine debauchery, kind of because we’re now in an age of like being a little bit more debauched than the nineties or 1890s, that could be a really interesting story. But we don’t actually get that in any way. Yeah.

AK: And I think one of the things I was thinking about was like the relationship with consent between the dynamics of, you know, the Victorian era where if you can’t say yes, you can’t say no.

Right. Like that’s one of the things talked about in consent culture a lot. And I was kind of wondering if where the movie was going to go was with the narrative of if the culture is so predisposed to saying yes, how do people learn or become capable of saying no. And like that’s a conversation that I know happens sometimes in regard to like particularly sex positive cultures where it’s not necessarily that more sexual repression is required, but rather that in cultures that are overtly sex positive, the warning or the kind of deliberation about when and how and why to say no gets missed. And I was like wondering if that was the direction the movie was going to go. And then it just didn’t. Yeah. Yeah.

Matthew: No, you’re right. Especially because I think, I think a theme of the book is kind of all this idea. And so in the movie of part of why Mina is taken in, is she literally doesn’t understand why she feels the way that Dracula makes her feel. Because no one’s ever told her what being horny feels like. No one’s ever talked to her about the idea that she’s a sexual creature and she’s going to get turned on and that you can make conscious decisions about what to do with that feeling. And I think both the book and the original movie, not the original, but the nineties movie are really about, they show that idea of her being out of control because she’s never had to rep. She’d never been told what to eat.

She’s never even knows what the question that you can say yes to is. Right. Right.

Yeah. Um, we’ve gone about an hour. I think there’s a lot more we could talk about, but there’s no other kind of one or more topics or points that you want to bring up.

Marlena: I think my last point is in rereading the book that was written so long ago, there are unfortunately a lot of similarities that I am seeing today, which is why in part I love reading older literature.

The sphere of the outside, the violence you enact in trying to protect yourself without understanding. It’s just, it’s a great, you know, story and if anyone else out there hasn’t reread it since high school, definitely would recommend picking it up again. Read old books. Yeah.

Matthew: And I’ll say just as a plug, I think reading, literally reading them was great, but if you’re the person like me who a lot of times is doing chores and an audio book is great, there is a pretty much free or very cheap version where because the book is a series of letters back and forth, they have different narrators. Alan Cummings, one of the main narrators. Um, the, and, and some of the other were great. And my personal favorite, not non-health thing is narrated by Tim Curry. And so it’s just a phenomenal voice cast and a very well produced audio book.

Marlena: I’m almost positive it’s on Libby, your, your library out. I did. And when I say read, I also listen to that, that audio book.

AK: I’ll also add that, like my favorite hack, because sometimes reading, like physically reading is so much work, but I also have auditory problems. It’s like, I’ll read while listening. Oh, yeah, I do.

But I will also listen to it while I read it so like I can mark things or like double check things, like, because it’s like reading with subtitles. You know?

Matthew: Yeah, I was gonna say it’s exactly that. It really is. Yeah. Yeah. I think a last point I want to make an AK ask for you, um, that Elaine, actually you had pointed out to me as we were, uh, we were both kind of reading at the same time and talking about this is that one thing I’ll say that the newer movie avoids that I appreciate is that this is set in Romania. And, um, that is the area that a lot of the Romani people come from, or at least we’re from for a significant portion of time. And in the book and in the movie, that is not treated very well. Uh, the G word slurs, what’s used, which, which I do think if you wanted to include like that, those people, like you get into, like, of course, English people would use that word at that time. But like, it’s not just the word is problematic.

We also know the word to be today. It’s they’re literally treated as kind of like, Oh, of course, they would just be the mindless servants of Count Dracula, not because he controls them, but that’s just the kind of people they are. And while the Coppola version is a lot less of an action movie, there is a big like horses chasing a carriage movie where Romani people are just killed by almost a dozen with no moral compunction of them being anything but a Dracula servant. So, uh, I don’t think Bassan was trying to make a big moral statement by not including that as much as just recognized. It’s just one of those things. You can get you in trouble if you do it today, but it is nice that at least it wasn’t there. Yeah.

Marlena: Which I think was the point that I was in a roundabout way making in, uh, the fear of the outsiders and how we view them in today.

Matthew: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very much so. The whole thing about the, the mysterious East and all that. Hey, Kay, any last things you wanted to bring up? No, I think that’s yeah. Cool. All right. Well, uh, thank you both so much. I know both of you are active in terms of writing or podcasting. Laying, let’s start with you. Tell people about kind of, I know it’s, it’s a more professional than a personal interest, but you do, you do have a weekly podcast. Where can people find that or any other places you want to highlight for people to find your, your thoughts and stuff like that? Okay.

Marlena: Then my real, if we’re going to talk about, uh, my work podcast, my real final statement is, did you know that your kidneys filter about 50 gallons of blood a day?

So they truly are the heroes of the story. Um, but I post hot topics and kidney health. You can find us wherever you listen to your podcast. We talk about, um, a lot of the cool new things coming in, hitting technology and the different stories that people go through on their journeys.

Matthew: I, I’m just going to say, I think that is a great title for a podcast, but at a time where we’re talking especially to people who were big lovers of Dracula and goth in the nineties and 2000s, using the words hot topics in like those two words are going to set something off. But anyway, yes.

I’m sorry. You can’t go to the podcast and find Banty shirts and silver chains and stuff like that, but hot topics in kidney health, great podcast. Uh, if that is something you’re interested in. Okay. What about yourself? Yeah.

AK: Um, I’m on, uh, let’s see. I’m on TikTok at Iron Kingdom adventures and on Instagram at Iron Kingdom adventures. And then I’m also on Twitter at AK made in. Yeah.

Matthew: And, uh, AK is someone who I, I love being on TikTok in part because probably like a third of the guests I’ve gotten have been people where I like their TikToks, they liked mine. And eventually I was like, Hey, you have great thoughts. Let me get you on the podcast. So, uh, AK, I think this is like your fifth or sixth. You’re becoming one of our most popular guests.

AK: So I love it. It’s great every time.

Matthew: Awesome. Well, thank you both so much. Um, I’m not myself, two of you, everyone else. Um, thank you for listening. Let us know what you thought. Think all the ways that send us your, uh, questions, thoughts and all that are in the show notes. I’m gonna have myself and all three of us. And the force.