Character Profiling - Van Helsing

When we first meet Van Helsing we see him in his long coat (with fur inside) his long gloves and his hat. Van Helsing, just by looking at his clothing has already been summed up by the audience by a man of good wealth. The audience wouldn’t say that it is strength that they see within this character but in fact the audience see a man that is smart and sophisticated and has clearly been through good education. The way Van Helsing speaks is light but yet sounds cunning and mysterious at the same time when we first meet him. The audience can establish by Van Helsing’s body shape and frailness that he is not your typical male gender who will be the strong hero and save the day for everyone. Instead the audience sum this man up as someone who is cunning and will take Dracula down with other ways apart from strength but with knowledge.

From then on in this film Van Helsing is shown in nearly every scene which shows as the antagonist their priority over the rest of the females of the film as the male characters are the only threats to Dracula where as the females just fall at his feet.  Van Helsing’s gender is communicated in a more fragile way to the audience compared to Count Draculas gender as Van Helsing is a more of a formal man who doesn’t let things distract him when doing his job and carries on looking for Harker without any distractions. This communicates to the audience about Van Helsing’s gender that he is a man who likes to get the job done.

This film is all about the male characters, to be more specific the antagonist being Dracula and the protagonist being Van Helsing, are the key characters that drive the narrative forward and the cause and effect of their actions help to move the story on, this already priorities the importance of men over women in the film.

The representations of gender is The Horror of Dracula is vast when looking at Van Helsing as he can be contrasted a lot compared to other characters gender within the film as he is not sexualised in any way compared to Dracula and isn’t like your typical hero who saves the day with all the muscles and the girls that he would get. Van Helsing the sort of hero that would use his knowledge collected from Harker’s diary and his initiative to defeat the enemy that is Dracula.