“Blood is lives”: Identity Consumption and the Post-Brexit Vampire in Netflix and BBC’s Dracula (2020)

This article examines BBC’s Dracula (2020) as a cultural text that reflects and interrogates the shifting dynamics of national identity in post-Brexit Britain. By revisiting Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) through a contemporary lens, the mini-series engages with foundational myths of Englishness – namely Victorianism and Empire – to explore how identity is constructed in a multicultural, post-imperial context. The article argues that the 2020 adaptation of Stoker’s novel reconfigures the figure of the vampire as a European outsider who threatens British identity not through racial difference, but through cultural and linguistic assimilation. The analysis identifies three distinct identity positions embodied by the series’ characters: the majoritarian English-as-British subject, the minoritarian becoming-British subject, and the foreign European other. Through these varied articulations of identity, the series stages a negotiation between nostalgic imperial ideals and contemporary multicultural realities. While the show appears to embrace progressive representation through gender and ethnic diversity, it ultimately falls short. Despite its inclusive casting, the narrative roles assigned to these characters reveal a persistent anxiety surrounding cultural dilution and national belonging. The vampire’s mastery of English and appropriation of British cultural markers appear to become a metaphor for the perceived threat of European encroachment in the post-Brexit imaginary. In this way, Dracula (2020) not only reanimates the gothic figure of the vampire but also the spectres of empire, reverse colonisation, and an endangered national identity that continue to haunt Britain’s cultural and political landscape. 1