Example of a Scene Analysis

The Spider and the Phonograph:

Subduing the Demonic in Dracula’s Renfield & Seward Scene

Brent Strang

In the history of Dracula films, the representation of Renfield is of key importance because he occupies a liminal space between sanity and insanity, between good and evil, which is the very space that provides for the horror genre’s viewing pleasure. In Coppola’s 1992 Dracula, which Vera Dika argues abandons representational realism in favor of abstraction, the scene between R.M. Renfield (Tom Waits) and Dr. Seward (Richard E. Grant) is appropriately over-the-top. That is to say, its staging, costumes, set design, and sound all contribute to a heightened theatricality, a comic absurdity, in which viewers can revel being at turns seduced and fascinated by the pleasures of lunacy. Comedy has a long-standing tradition in horror, fusing into what Conger and Welsch have termed the comic grotesque in such films as Bride of Frankenstein. As the purpose of Coppola’s abstractionism, according to Dika, is to draw attention to the history of the horror genre as a system of representation, Tom Waites's grotesque performance recalls a long line of Renfields from Dwight Frye to Klaus Kinsky.

Dwight Frye as Renfield in Dracula  (Todd Browning, 1931).

Klaus Kinsky as Renfield in Count Dracula (Jesús Franco, 1970)

The scene begins with a spider crawling over a phonograph, while Seward records his case notes on Renfield. The image is a metaphor for the struggle of the 19^th century scientific mind to master nature through its media-machinic technologies and rationalist discourse — an ardent task daily being carried out in the crucible of the mental institution. As Seward exits from his steel-gated office through the ward to Renfield’s cell, we see a gaggle of idling patients, some moaning, some screaming, some being drenched with buckets of water. Seward takes his handkerchief out and inhales into it. It's a subtle cue that makes the viewer wonder, if it isn’t the stench Seward is bothered by, perhaps he’s getting a quick fix of something before he engages Renfield.

Our suspicions are probably confirmed by the subsequent glint in Seward’s eye and his over-eager fascination with the details of Renfield’s eccentric practices. Renfield kneels in the corner collecting a selection of insect canapés, which he avers are ‘perfectly nutritious’. He’s right, of course. And here we see the link between lunacy and fascination in the transgression of civilized comportment that, whether willful or not, discloses hidden and profane truths of nature. Seward embodies this willing fascination to transgress. His baggy unbuttoned shirt matches Renfield’s outlandish frock-coat and union-suit attire: both bare chests that glisten in the heat of their rapid-fire exchange. Fascination is further emphasized in the extreme close-up of Renfield’s Coke-bottled scrutiny of his dish of insects. The organicity of the bugs starkly contrast the clunky personal protection contraptions designed for Renfield’s hands — crude measures to subdue the demonic forces of nature. Renfield symbolizes this nature, and Seward is so taken with him that he declares the need to invent ‘a new class of lunatic'. As one tantalizes the other with the promise of a kitten — no, ‘a cat, a big cat!’ — the two theatrically kneel and rise by turns in an escalating back-and-forth that ends with Seward getting bitten — a moment that finally exposes an overzealous scientific obsession as much as it explains the guards' preposterous head cages.

Works Cited

Conger, Syndy M. & Janice R. Welsch “The Comic and the Grotesque in James Whale’s Frankenstein Films.” Planks of Reason. Barry Keith Grant & Christopher Sharrett, eds. Scarecrow Press, 2004. 240-254.

Dika, Vera. “From Dracula – with Love” The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film. Barry Keith Grant, Ed. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996. 388-400.