このレッスンの実行方法

レッスン11は7本のビデオレクチャー（レクチャーのテキストがビデオレクチャーの下に記載されています）と7本の動画で構成されています。最初に、ビデオレクチャーPart 1を見てください。その後、ページをスクロールダウンしながら順番に動画を見たりテキストを読んでください。

Part 1 – Let me start today with a story. For many years, I have been asking the question about whether students would want to become vampires or die. Several years ago, on the day the students were supposed to answer this question, I got into the elevator to go up to class and I noticed one of the boys in my class was the only other person in the elevator. This boy was very shy and almost never spoke in class, but he spoke to me on the elevator.

He said, “Sensei, I decide to become vampire”.
“Oh, really”, I said. “Why?”
“Because vampire is cool!”, he said.
“So, it’s okay with you if a vampire bites you?”
“Yes, I want to be vampire!”
“Okay”, I said.
He just giggled at me and said, “Sensei can’t be vampire!”
“Oh, yeah?” “Why not?”
“Because daytime”, he said.
“Clever boy!”, I said and so…I did not bite him.

But did he make the right choice? Some of you chose to become vampires rather than die because you thought vampires are cool or perhaps you just didn’t want to die. Others chose death. Those of you choosing death may have realized that the “Vampire Choice” is similar to the trick Satan used to deceive Eve into eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. Satan promised that Eve would “become like God” if she ate the fruit and this was not a lie, it was a deception. She did become like God, but in only one way. She gained the knowledge of good and evil. However, Eve did not gain God’s power or wisdom. Similarly, the vampire tells you that you will gain many things by becoming a vampire; you will become stronger and faster than any human being, you will hear, see and smell better, you will have the power to transform yourself into certain animals or even into a mist, you will have the power to control weak minds, you will never be sick but most especially you will never die…not really. 

This is the bargain you make with the vampire. It seems at first that it is a remarkably good deal because the alternative is death. Nobody wants to die. Yet, we all do die because that is the fate of everything that lives…. except for human beings who become vampires. They don’t die…or, to be more precise, they become “nosferatu”, the undead. So, is it better to be dead or undead? What did Dracula himself think about this? Why don’t we find out by returning to the original film Dracula (1931) and letting him tell us?

Part 2 – You heard it from Dracula himself, the original prince of vampires, the bargain he made to become a vampire doesn’t seem to have been such a good deal since he himself longs for death saying, “To be really dead! That must be glorious”. He adds to that, “There are far worse things awaiting man than death”. What is worse than death? Well, it would seem that being a vampire is worse…being “un-dead” or nosferatu. Why should this be worse than death?

Recall that when God expelled Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden, they became mortal and subject to death, but God also promised them that only their bodies would die, their souls would continue to exist (remain immortal). The promise God made to humankind was that if we obey his laws, if we are good, our souls will return to God in Heaven when we die. If, however, we disobey God by doing evil, our souls will be sent to Hell and given to Satan (who tortures the souls that come to him because he hates humankind). If this is true, why would anyone ever disobey God and risk going to Hell?

Part 3 – Mina is the reincarnation of Elizabeta! It is an absolutely fascinating and bizarre premise for the film because neither Judaism or Christianity have any tradition of belief in reincarnation. Reincarnation is a Hindu-Buddhist belief. But it’s Coppola’s movie and he can do what he wants.

Once Dracula is in London, he finds Elizabeta and tries to introduce himself…but recall that she is already married to Jonathan Harker, (he real-estate agent played by Keanu Reeves).

Part 4 – His charm is…inescapable? The part of the scene I find most chilling is he speaks to her in Old Romanian and she understands him, saying, “I know you!” At this point, we understand this is not just Dracula’s imagination or that she coincidently looks like his wife. She really is the reincarnation of Elizabeta. Dracula cannot bring himself to attack her even though he knows the only way he can have her back is by turning her into a vampire. Something stops him or, to be more accurate, he stops himself. Why?

But he is a vampire! Later, he kills Mina’s best friend, Lucy, and turns her into a vampire. By this time Lucy’s husband Jonathan has escaped from Dracula’s castle and returned to London where he has joined a small group of vampire hunters led by Dr. Van Helsing. In the next scene you see that they have found Dracula’s hiding place and are destroying his coffin and the soil he has brought from his homeland. While they are distracted doing this, Dracula comes to Mina in the night. Compare this scene to the one you saw of Dracula entering a beautiful woman’s room in the original Dracula (1931). This is…a bit more intense.

Part 5 – She asks him, “What are you?” and his answer to this question is the reason why Dracula in the original film said “to be really dead…that must be glorious” because what he says is “I am …nothing”. That is a rather terrifying word, “nothing”. He is a body without a soul, a dead body that still moves even though it has no heartbeat.

He believed he would never be with Elizabeta again and he became a vampire in order take his revenge on God for having taken her away from him. But after four hundred years he is suddenly reunited with her. Yet, he cannot bring himself to change her into a vampire because he loves her too much to have her share his terrible fate. However, she loves him so much that she insists on joining him.

This is probably the most romantic scene ever filmed in a horror movie. These two are just incredibly in love with each other… even after four hundred years of being apart! However, I am afraid they are about to be disturbed.

Part 6 – Well, as you saw, Gary Oldman (who plays Dracula) and Francis Ford Coppola certainly did use make-up to make their Dracula scary for the audience. This is an immensely powerful monster. Bela Lugosi’s Dracula could not even look at the cross, but this Dracula makes the cross burst into flames by just stamping his foot.

But he has been weakened by their attack on his resting place and he has no choice but to return to his homeland and his own castle in order to regain his strength. Is he abandoning Elizabeta? Not at all. She has drunk his blood and is slowly turning into a vampire like him. All he has to do is wait for her to change and she will once again be his “bride”.

As much as she is Elizabeta, she is also Mina Harker and as Mina she knows Dracula is an evil monster. She helps the vampire hunters follow him back to his castle. The hunt is on! Here is the final excerpt from the film. The living men who are helping Dracula are a tribe of Gypsies whom he has paid to get him safely back to his castle. Once he is back in his own castle and the sun goes down completely, he will regain his strength which is why they must get him before sunset.

Part 7 – Coppola has borrowed a very old idea, the idea that love can conquer evil and that love has the power of healing and transformation. You are wondering about the ending, aren’t you? You are asking yourself, “But now that he is truly dead won’t his soul be in Hell forever because of all the evil things he has done?”. Well, according to the Catholic Church there is one way to escape from hell even if you have been evil. You must truly ask God’s forgiveness. There is even a ritual for this called “confession” in which you tell a priest what sins you have committed and ask for forgiveness. Although there is no priest to give Dracula “absolution”, I suspect that Coppola means for us to believe God Himself is there listening very carefully to what Dracula says. It is no accident that Dracula’s last words are exactly the same as those spoken by Jesus on the cross as he was dying. Jesus in his moment of greatest suffering asked God, “Why have you forsaken me?” One interpretation of those words is that Jesus was asking God to have mercy on him and let him die. Isn’t that exactly what Dracula wants: To be really dead?

And God was merciful and allowed death to come to Jesus who spoke his last words: “It is finished”. Dracula also speaks these words. 

But what finally releases Dracula from his curse is the kiss! You remember that Erich begged Christine to love him so he could stop being evil? In the film version of Phantom of the Opera she doesn’t kiss him, but in the book, she does kiss him and he chooses to stop being evil.

I believe this is what Coppola is doing in his film. When she kisses him, he finally chooses to renounce evil. Obviously, God knows he is doing this because he is immediately restored to human form (and we can assume he also regains his soul just before Mina kills him). Now, his soul can find peace in heaven.

Coppola has done something very, very difficult to do in a film. He has given us a perfect ending.