Martinez- Sleepy Hollow

Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow and Washington Irving’s short story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow are two very different stories shared by the same title. There is nothing wrong with this, Burton, just like Irving, has creative license to make the movie in the way he wanted. Both the story and the movie are creative and interesting in their own way. In my personal opinion, I believe that Burton is using the title and the characters to enhance this horror story and turn it into something creepier that Irving’s. One of the few similarities is the Headless Horseman- in both cases he is a German Hessian. Irving’s story has a dread that hangs throughout the tale, but it is nowhere as creepy as Burton’s movie. Burton’s depiction is much more eerie and horrific, especially through his use of dark colors and contrasts with pale coloring. In my opinion, he took Irving’s eerie-ness and turned it up a notch to fit his artistic style. The depiction of Irving’s characters is very different in the movie that in the story. In the short story, Ichabod Crane is a schoolteacher and in the movie he is a detective from New York. What Burton did take away from the original Ichabod was how Ichabod was easily scared and spooked. Both the story and the movie he jumps at anything and gets scared easily. I think Burton did this because it is comedic that a detective would be scared and spooked so easily. One would think that someone assigned to a murder investigation would not be so easily scared of blood. In both the short story and the movie there is the element of magic and supernatural practices. However they are both used differently in both accounts. In Irving’s story, Ichabod is a master of witchcraft. This is totally different from the movie where Ichabod does not believe in magic or the supernatural. The rest of the community of Sleepy Hollow had told Ichabod several times upon his arrival that the murderer was the Headless Horseman but he never believed it until he finally saw him for himself. Burton takes the character of Ichabod Crane and witchcraft from Irving’s story and dramatically changes them in his interpretation because he believed he could make a creepier and scarier depiction of the story of Sleepy Hollow. Katrina van Tassel is another main character from Irving’s story that Burton takes away and “tweaks” in his own way. In the original story Brom did not bewitch her, nor was she attracted to Ichabod. I believe Burton made Katrina have an attraction to Ichabod because he knows that an audience loves a little romance or something of a love story between two people. He used this romance to keep his audience interested in his movie. I do not think it is a bad thing that Burton strayed away so far from the original story; rather it gives more attention to both the story and the movie. Audiences are fascinated by both accounts of the legend of Sleepy Hollow because of how differently each is portrayed.