In examining Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” alongside Tim Burton’s filmic adaption of the story, titled “Sleepy Hollow,” a number of fascinating similarities and differences emerge. Though elements of the characters and settings of Burton’s film borrow heavily from Irving’s text, the overall structuring of the film is significantly different, and representations of various elements are crucially re-imagined. Tim Burton’s “Sleepy Hollow” was released on November 19, 1999, a few months before the new millennium. Set in 1799, Burton’s film modifies the 1790 date that Irving’s text is set in, showing an acute concern with living out anxieties surrounding millennial change in the ‘safe’ formats of film and of established folk legend. Irving’s tale, written in 1820, also works with antiquity, but in a different manner: it lives out colonial cultural anxieties of Irving’s present, as he seems to be concerned with constructing archetypes of folk and with placing folk culture in the new American literary landscape. Examining the two versions of the tale, then, provides a fascinating peek into the transformation of concerns and values in America from Irving’s nineteenth century landscape to Burton’s twentieth (on the verge of twenty-first) century. Burton makes several significant moves that modify the basics of Irving’s tale, frequently at the cost of the folk elements of Irving’s version. The frame narrative of Irving’s story—the tale, part of a series titled “The Sketch Book,” begins with the preface “Found among the papers of the Late Diedrich Knickerbocker—is completely done away with (Irving 41). What is more, the second narrator of the story, who is narrating to Knickerbocker “at the corporation meeting of the ancient city of the Manhattoes,” is also disposed of (Irving 61). There is no narrator at all in Burton’s film, and the action that the characters experience is firsthand, not retrospective or omniscient. Such a move takes away from the “folk legend” element of the story, transforming it into a supernatural spectacle for on the screen instead of a possibly-supernatural tale for around the fireplace. The ways in which Irving and Burton code the city and the country in their respective productions is similarly impacted by the periods in which each man was working. Irving’s “Sleepy Hollow” emphasizes local culture and the power of myth making within these cultures. In Irving’s town of Sleepy Hollow, the tale of the headless horseman reigns, but does not extend outside of the local realm, and does not necessarily physically manifest: when Ichabod leaves for the city at the end of the narrative, the horseman does not follow him. However, in Burton’s adaption, the tale of the headless horseman is not merely local folklore, but becomes elevated to the level of metropolitan ‘news’ through the literal act of murder instead of the mere legend of murder. Crime, then, elevates the cultural status of the horseman from local legend to state-wide murder suspect. Irving’s story, noted by scholars such as Daniel Hoffmann for its powerful interpretation of local myth and mythic tropes, is transported into the realm of the metropolitan through the re-characterization of New York as Ichabod’s ‘home,’ Sleepy Hollow as a creepy and underdeveloped relic, and the myth of the horseman as reality. With this transportation comes a number of cultural alterations that present the town of Sleepy Hollow in a distinctly different way than Irving, and the strange if not idealized town that is ripe for colonial conquest by the northerner Ichabod becomes essentially undesirable. The different ways in which Irving and Burton construct an “other” in each of their cultural productions of “Sleepy Hollow” is telling in regards to how society had changed since Irving first published the novel. If Irving’s “Sleepy Hollow” converts Ichabod into the “other” via his status as an outsider to the town (he is described as a “native of Connecticut,” which is not Sleepy Hollow (Irving 43)), Burton’s adaption seems to “other” the town itself by aligning the contemporary viewer with Ichabod, a relatable city-dweller, before entering Sleepy Hollow. The opening shots of the film support the idea that the country is the “other”: while Ichabod’s home of New York is full of people and displays science, bureaucracy, and progress, Sleepy Hollow is conspicuously empty and absorbed in supernatural beliefs, sensuous parties, and tradition. Such a contrast permits the landscape to be rendered strange by its abandon and its anachronistic feel. The city, filled with technology and bodies, a world well-known to a movie-goer in 1999, stands in stark contrast to the traditional and body-less terrain of Sleepy Hollow. Such a shift in alignment from Irving’s nostalgic rusticism to Burton’s forward-geared metropolitan seems a distinctly pre-millennial interpretation of the “Sleepy Hollow” tale: what society fears losing is not the culture of quaint ancestry, but is instead a fear of losing the technology of the city. If Irving describes Sleepy Hollow as a place where “populations, manners, and customs remained fixed,” and labels this place as haunted by superstition, Burton presents Sleepy Hollow as simply lacking in scientific knowledge, and thus plagued by literal murder. Writes Orr, "As the film's title implies, Sleepy Hollow itself is the most important dimension of Burton/Walker's revision, because it suggests not only an unleashing of the story's latent gothic energy... but also an increased scrutiny of Irving's utopian colony" (Orr 46). Sleepy Hollow no longer takes on undertones of idyllic, American pastorals; instead, it is a place of terror, where guards must constantly control to prevent a traditional mythological character from manifesting and killing. Tying in with a variety of other elements in the film’s, Burton’s heavy reliance on the supernatural in comparison to Irving’s avoidance of the supernatural is pertinent for many reasons. Irving’s story leaves it very unclear as to whether or not the horseman is supernatural: Brom and his friends “always burst into a hearty laugh” when people bring up Ichabod’s disappearance, which offers a rational explanation for the “horseman’s” attack on Ichabod by presenting it as a prank (Irving 61). Burton’s film, however, quickly discredits the possibility that the horseman is merely a prank by Brom by showing Brom fooling with a conscious Ichabod, and by killing Brom off completely soon after: because the trickster is dead, he cannot be the horseman. Burton’s Ichabod confesses that rationality has been invalidated for him forty minutes into the film: “It’s all true!” he declares, in reference to the horseman’s existence. The supernatural then proceeds to appear before the viewer’s very eyes, as witches channel undead spirits, and a “gateway between two worlds” manifests that yields murder (Burton 50:31). Thus, there is no questioning the presence of the supernatural: one is made to see it themselves. Irving’s “myth” elements of his story, then, are again greatly stripped from the film in favor of capitalizing on the supernatural and all the filmic special effects that come with it. The mechanisms through which Ichabod is represented as a simultaneous scientific and spiritual believer in both Irving’s and Burton’s versions of the tale also prove of interest. Writes Stanley Orr, referencing Irving’s tale, “In chatting with the Dutch housewives, Ichabod appears to have 'digested' two disparate traditions: the 'supernatural' world of Mather's Puritanism and the 'wonders' of the Enlightenment's natural world, whereby Ichabod turns astronomy into hair-raising tales in order to insinuate himself into the community" (Orr 45). In Burton's imagining, Ichabod also incorporates these “disparate traditions”; however, his belief in the supernatural is obtained through personal experience (empirical philosophy) rather than through reading about the supernatural in Mather’s book and talking to housewives about his readings. Burton's Ichabod does not use his knowledge of the supernatural to befriend the women of the town; alternately, the women of the town and their penchant for witchcraft force Ichabod to believe in the supernatural. Burton’s modifications to the characters of Irving’s text heavily tie in to the greater, overarching reinterpretations the film makes, and says much about the contemporary cultural moments in which the story and the film were produced. In his essay on “Irving’s Use of American Folklore in ‘Sleepy Hollow,’” Daniel Hoffman points to the mythological characterizations of Ichabod and Brom as mythic tropes, namely that of the “Connecticut yankee,” and the “swaggering frontier braggart” (429; 430). Burton’s film heavily modifies these archetypes, showing that the new millennium would need a different sort of hero than early America needed. In the film, Ichabod is introduced as a constable, not a teacher; he lives in New York, and does not travel to Sleepy Hollow by his own free will, but instead at the command of the government. Ichabod is introduced in the film as the ‘Enlightenment male’ who trusts in science, rationality, and empirical knowledge: he challenges the court systems to update their procedures, and invents his own medical tools. Burton’s rendering of the character is significantly different from Irving’s Ichabod, who openly admits in his belief in witchcraft (see Irving 45), who publically wars with Brom for the love of Katrina Van Tassell, and who clearly wants Katrina for the material wealth she will provide him. Instead of Ichabod being a hungry colonizer ready to devour Sleepy Hollow (as Orr suggests), he emerges as a still-metropolitan, but far more forward-thinking man of science, not of words. What Burton’s Ichabod seeks is knowledge and answers, and a return to the city; not the Van Tassell farm and its riches, nor westward expansion, as Irving’s Ichabod seeks. Ichabod is not the only primary male character to be heavily modified in Burton’s adaption; Brom, too, undergoes a thorough transformation. In Irving’s figuration of Brom, the reader can see a “comic mythology” that establishes him as the ‘American hero’ archetype: he is strong, burly, and raucous, and wins Katrina in the end because his superstition does not overpower his will to be with her. However, if bravado and boldness win Katrina for Brom in the book, these same traits prove to be his downfall in the film, and Brom dies fairly early on in the filmic narrative. Brom is rendered an insufficient hero for the 1999 movie-going audience. The new American hero, then, is no longer the Brom of Irving’s age who knows how to pull of a hearty prank using mythology, and who knows how to truly love Katrina. Instead, it is the city-dwelling Ichabod, whose Enlightenment-style exploration of the crimes in Sleepy Hollow lets him resolve local mythology, and who wins the love of Katrina through his intellectual prowess. Burton’s adaption of Irving’s tale interestingly incorporates multiple facets of American history that exist less prominently (or do not exist at all) in the original text. Instead of Irving’s emphasis on the power of local myths, Burton’s tale incorporates a greater national mythology of American history, incorporating fragments of the ideology of slavery and of the Salem witch trials into the film. In Burton’s adaption of “Sleepy Hollow,” an interesting historical commentary surfaces surrounding the topic of ideological control and slavery. Instead of examining figurative mental control, however, Burton translates ideology into something corporeal. Much as ideology functions by controlling the mind, whoever owns the head of the horseman has control of his body. Enslavement and control depends upon possession of the head, a physical representation that can easily be read as a metaphor for the mind. The fact that a woman—namely, Katrina’s step-mother Lady Van Tassell—is controlling the male body of the headless horseman interestingly ties gender into the theme of enslavement. Slavery and cruelty of the mistress, tropes also seen in slave narratives such as Harriet Jacobs’ and Frederick Douglass’, becomes a prevalent theme. The extreme physicality of Burton’s characterization is significant: once the horseman has his physical skull returned to him by Ichabod, he morphs back into his ‘human’ form, and with this transformation regains his agency: slavery is abolished when the mind is returned to the body, when ideological control is broken. The horseman steals Katrina’s stepmother and takes her through the portal into the depths of hell, and she no longer exercises any control over him now that his mind, and thus his humanity, have been restored. The presence of the Salem witch trials in Burton’s film is overwhelming, and does much work to redefine Irving’s initial tale. Significantly, all of the female characters in Burton’s film are witches, corpses, or both of the two. Ichabod’s mother is murdered by his father after she is shown drawing an incantation in the dirt; Katrina’s mother passes on a book of Spells to her daughter, who is also shown drawing incantations on the floor; Lady Van Tassell and her sister are also witches, one seeking revenge for being publically shunned when her mother was outed as a witch, the other taking refuge in the forest. Burton’s “Sleepy Hollow,” then, is as much a witch hunt as it is a tale about the supernatural forces of the headless horseman (supernatural forces which ultimately prove to be caused by a witch, Lady Van Tassell). Whereas the supernatural is an interest of Ichabod’s in Irving’s tale—he carries Cotton Mather’s “History of New England Witchcraft” with him, and “most firmly and potently believed” in it (Irving 45)—it is a literal lifestyle for the women occupying the town of Sleepy Hollow in Burton’s film. The supernatural is converted from a masculine interest into a feminine practice, curiously gendering witchcraft and increasing the connection between Burton’s emphasis on myth and the Salem witch trials’ tendency to vilify women. Witchcraft is further gendered in the film through its manifestations and the sense of legacy surrounding it: Katrina’s mother is a witch, and she passes on her book of spells to her daughter, who is also a witch; Katrina’s stepmother is a witch, and so is her sister, because her mother was a witch. A distinctly matriarchal lineage of witchcraft emerges, and Ichabod confirms the gendering of this descent: although Icabod’s mother is a witch, because he is a man, he is not a witch or warlock himself. It is also important to note that although witches are gendered as exclusively being women, not all of these witch-women are characterized as “bad.” Instead, a paradigm of “good” and “bad” female witches surface in the film. Katrina’s step-mother is vengeful and murderous, conjuring the headless horseman as her mechanism for revenge; thus, she is bad. Katrina herself, however, is described by Nasbath as “a strange sort of witch with a kind and loving heart,” and is shown using her powers to protect those she loves (Burton 1:20:28). Thus, while the tale does not demonize all witches, it does still gender them, complicating the representation of women in the film. The representation of Katrina Van Tassel’s witch-centric spirituality exists in particular contrast to Ichabod’s skepticism, further gendering ideas of rationality and irrationality. In a scene where Katrina gives Ichabod her mother’s spell book, she tells Ichabod it will “protect” him. Here, women are characterized as superstitious and spiritual. Ichabod’s skepticism exists as a polarity to this feminine characterization: the male is a rational antithesis to the spiritual woman, and though he will take the book, it is out of social nicety moreso than actual belief. Interestingly, Katrina’s gift does ultimately save Ichabod; however, the book saves him for a rational reason instead of a supernatural one: the book becomes a physical barrier that prevents a bullet from going into Ichabod’s chest. Katrina, however, uses the book to save people in a spiritual, intellectual sense: a spell from its pages delays the headless horseman from hurting her father, and also protects Ichabod. The spell book, then, reaffirms a gendered understanding of spirituality and rationality: Ichabod, the man, is saved by its rational existence as a solid object, while Katrina, the woman, saves others using its spiritual qualities. Even beyond the presence of witches and representations of rationality, gender dynamics of Irving’s narrative are significantly altered in Burton’s adaption; whereas Irving’s Ichabod exists as a popular figure amongst the housewives of Sleepy Hollow, Burton’s Ichabod is surrounded by the town’s men. Women in the film are condemned to be murder victims or witches exclusively, and do not exist as prevalent participants in the film otherwise. However, it is important to note that women—though often demonized as a consequence—are given significantly more agency and power in the film than in the book. Whereas Katrina exists as a passive, beautiful prize in Irving’s tale, she emerges as a strong-willed, intelligent woman in Burton’s film who actively engages with Ichabod as an equal. When Ichabod goes into the woods to find the grave of the Hessian, Katrina encounters him at the scene: not only is she intelligent enough to know where Ichabod is going, she has enough agency to decide that she wants to participate in helping him, and nobody stops her. Additionally, we see a great deal of agency when Katrina burns the papers that incriminate her father: this act goes against the wishes of her male lover Ichabod, so although she operates under masculine influence in the sense that she is subservient to her father, it is still her own defiant decision to perform this act. In watching Burton’s “Sleepy Hollow,” and observing the various other cultural products that use Irving’s tale as its base influence, the question inevitably rises, Why does Irving’s tale, written in 1820, remain culturally relevant today? The retell-ability of the narrative undeniably plays a role: short, modifiable, and frightening, it offers a lot of great material for story telling. Additionally, the anxieties of the story have remained relevant: social rejection, supernatural intervention, and love exist in both the Irving and Burton versions of the narrative, highlighting them as universal themes that always remain appealing. The end of the film is particularly interesting, and particularly telling of the story’s utility: instead of being shunned to the city after anxieties of the supernatural and rejection by Katrina drive him away from Sleepy Hollow, Burton’s Ichabod triumphantly returns to the city with Katrina, and with the orphaned child Nasbath. A conventional family unit of a mother, a father, and a son, then, comes to the city, thankful for the new century’s arrival; declares Ichabod, they have returned “Just in time for the new century” (Burton 01:45:00). The ending clearly points towards American progress, and offers an optimistic transfer into the new century: witchcraft, ominous woods, and the supernatural are left behind in favor of science, cityscape, and rationality. Through the medium of the family unit, progress is possible. Considering the film’s release in 1999, the metaphoric power of this ending cannot be overlooked. Contemporary society’s anxieties about the future are quelled along with the character’s anxieties: a new century means a new beginning, and an abandonment of the previous era’s “witchcraft.” “Home is this way,” says Ichabod (Burton 01:45:00). And so the city becomes home for the new family, and the future, completely abandoning the past, becomes their destiny.