A Friendly PSA: Ichabod Crane and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"

Let's play a game. It's called "One of These Things is Not Like the Others: Ichabod Crane Edition." 

Ready? BEGIN!

I'll give you a minute. It's rather difficult. (But not quite so difficult as getting that Sesame Street song out of your head. I made the mistake of looking it up on YouTube, in the hopes of embedding a video for you. I decided against it. You can thank me later.)

All three of these are pictures of different on-screen portrayals of Ichabod Crane. Ichabod Crane being the subject of Washington Irving's 1820 short story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow."

The first picture is, of course, of Johnny Depp, in Tim Burton's 1999 rendition of the story, called "Sleepy Hollow." The third picture is from the 1949 Disney rendition, where the story was coupled with The Wind in the Willows to make "The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad." 

And the second one. The second one is the reason for this post. It's from Fox's new TV show, coming out this fall, called... yes, "Sleepy Hollow."

 

Basically, from what I've gathered, Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman have both been resurrected and set loose on the twenty-first century. Ichabod teams up with a sassy lady cop to fight supernatural creatures, particularly the Headless Horseman, whom Ichabod shot and then beheaded during the Revolutionary War. There are witches. Oh, and the Headless Horseman is actually the fourth horseman of the apocalypse, Death.

Firstly, Supernatural did it better. Secondly, ugh. Another cop show? Seriously? Although I'm amused by how America is moving toward creating action heroes out of historical and literary figures. (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, I'm looking at you. And as a side note, watching BBC's "Sherlock" and CBS's "Elementary" will basically define the difference between British and American television. But I'm getting off topic.)

Let's get back to the Ichabods. 

The rest of this post contains spoilers, but you are probably familiar enough with the basic story that you don't care. This warning is for those who do.

I read "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" earlier today for the first time ever, because I stumbled across the trailer I embedded above, and wanted to see how wrong Fox would get everything.

I'm not sure how I escaped reading this story. Apparently, it and Irving's other notable piece, "Rip Van Winkle" (which I have read), are some of the earliest examples of American literature. Of American fiction, that is. There was a whole lot of writing going on before 1820, but much of it was nonfiction – if memory serves, often political, religious, or historical. Even slave narratives had begun before this time – Olaudah Equiano first had his published the year before "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" takes place (1789). But those also fall under the realm of the political, really.

Anyway, it's pretty odd that I hadn't read it until now. And it's actually pretty enjoyable. If you are so inclined, you can read it online here, or track down whatever particular version makes it easiest on your eyes. On my Nook, it was roughly thirty pages, and took over an hour to read. 

What I found most surprising, though, was the portrayal of Ichabod. Or rather, how accurate Disney had been in their portrayal of him. 

Yes, you heard me correctly. Disney actually did right by the source material for once – for half the film; let's not talk about Mr. Toad. Shhh.

Scroll back up, and look at Disney's Ichabod. Then come back down, and listen to this:

The cognomen [surname] of Crane was not inapplicable to his person. He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame mostly hung together. His head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weather-cock perched upon his spindle neck to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield.

...I know, right? The resemblance to Johnny Depp is uncanny. Though I must say, the one thing about this that makes my nerd senses tingle in favor of Fox's "Sleepy Hollow" is the part that says "one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth." This line means that one could have mistaken him for the embodiment or manifestation of famine. Or, gosh, the third horseman of the apocalypse, Famine, "descending upon the earth." The horseman that precedes Death, into which Fox has made the Headless Horseman. 

Ahem! But never mind that. Irving portrays Ichabod as looking like a complete and utter dork. He looks like a ridiculous crane. He's also the local schoolteacher, and survives by bumming food and board (and friendship) off of his students and their families – though he does help out on their farms when the mood strikes. He's even the director of the church choir, his voice having a lovely nasally quality to it. And of course, we can't forget that Ichabod. Loves. Food. He stops to admire food before the ladies at parties. He can eat and eat and eat, and still remain as whip-thin as the embodiment of Famine. Here's just a sample of what he sees when looking at a farm:

In his devouring mind's eye, he pictured himself every roasting-pig running about with a pudding in its belly, and an apple in his mouth; the pigeons were snugly put to bed in a comfortable pie, and tucked in with a coverlet of crust; the geese were swimming in their own gravy; and the ducks pairing cosily in dishes, like snug married couples, with a decent competency of onion sauce.

Let's not forget that all of this is on the family farm of Katrina Van Tassel, the girl Ichabod wants to marry. A farm he would conveniently inherit.

So look at the Disney picture again. Period dress? Check. Big hands, nose, ears, and tiny forehead? Check. Emblem of the pedagogy? Check. Tasty snack? Check.

Basically, everything you ever needed to know about Ichabod Crane is in that single screencap. Everything, okay, except his superstition and overactive imagination which, rather than a suspect pigeon pie, prove to be his undoing.

Here's the point of this long-winded PSA: Ichabod Crane is not a romantic hero. He is in no way an American hero. He ultimately ends up pretty much being the butt of a joke, since it's heavily implied that Abraham "Brom Bones" Van Brunt, hunky village hero, impersonates the Headless Horseman to scare Ichabod away, thus leaving Brom's suit of Katrina unrivaled. (No matter that most people believe he was carried off by a ghost. As readers, we know that Ichabod's fears were hilariously misguided.) He even manages to disprove the value of education to one man (in a tongue-in-cheek way, sure), who determines, after seeing Ichabod's books and scribblings, to "send his children to no more school, observing that he never knew any good come of this same reading and writing." And let me repeat: he doesn't get the girl! Ichabod never meets any ghosts! He's a chicken with a broken heart, poor lamb.

So while perhaps I can understand the desire to make our beloved Abraham Lincoln into Buffy's predecessor, I have a little bit more trouble wrapping my head around the romanticization of Dumbo-eared Ichabod Crane. It makes about as much sense to me as turning Victor Hugo's novels into musicals, but there you go. It's still done, and frequently.

P.S. If you are still too lazy to read the story, but are curious – perhaps for comparative purposes – about how Irving describes the Horseman, look no further:

The dominant spirit, however, that haunts this enchanted region, and seems to be commander-in-chief of all that powers of the air, is the apparition of a figure on horseback, without a head. It is said by some to be the ghost of a Hessian trooper, whose head had been carried away by a cannon-ball, in some nameless battle during the Revolutionary War, and who is ever and anon seen by the country folk hurrying along in the gloom of night, as if on the wings of the wind. His haunts are not confined to the valley, but extend at times to the adjacent roads, and especially to the vicinity of a church at no great distance. Indeed, certain of the most authentic historians of those parts, who have been careful in collecting and collating the floating facts concerning this spectre, allege that the body of the trooper having been buried in the churchyard, the ghost rides forth to the scene of the battle in nightly quest of his head, and that the rushing speed with which he sometimes passes along the Hollow, like a midnight blast, is owing to his being belated, and in a hurry to get back to the churchyard before daybreak.

 Wait. Hang on a minute... This sounds familiar, too...

Oh. Right.

Late again? Off with his head!