The Philosophy of Tim Burton

“Pinioned by a Chainof Re asoning”?

111 “pinioned By a Chain of reasoning”? Anti-intellectualism and Models of Rationality in Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow Steve Benton In his classic study Love and Death in the American Novel (1960), literary critic Leslie Fiedler famously describes Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle” (1819) as the foundational text of American literature because the civilization-shunning character it celebrates is the “typical male protagonist of our fiction.” That protagonist, Fiedler claims, is typically “a man on the run, harried into the forest and out to sea, down the river or into combat— anywhere to avoid ‘civilization.’”1 As Fiedler points out, civilization-scorners like Irving’s Rip have long evoked sympathy in American readers because we are suspicious of intellectuals and other fancy-pants civilizers. In Washington Irving’s other prominent contribution to the traditional American literary canon, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (1820), it is not the scorner of civilization but its advertiser, schoolteacher Ichabod Crane, who gets harried into the forest. Yet despite this role reversal, the same antiintellectual prejudices are at play in both stories. For though Ichabod, the agent of civilization, is the protagonist of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” he is also cast as a vain, selfish social climber the community can do very well without. The role of the “hero of the country round,” by contrast, is reserved for the teacher’s nemesis and tormenter, Brom Bones, who is eager to see Ichabod and his school removed from the Sleepy Hollow landscape—a result that he happily succeeds in bringing about.2 If your only encounter with Sleepy Hollow comes via Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow, you may be surprised by the way Irving’s original short story aligns 112 Steve Benton reader sympathies, for in Burton’s 1999 adaptation of Irving’s tale, it is the brainy Ichabod (Johnny Depp) who prevails, while brawny Brom (Casper VanDien)getshisheadchoppedoff.Yetjustasthereissomethingmisleading in the apparent distinction between “Rip Van Winkle” (in which civilization runs the hero out of town) and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (in which the hero runs “civilization” out of town), since Irving encourages readers of both stories to sympathize with those who scorn civilization, the apparent distinction between Irving’s original and Burton’s adaptation is not as profound as it at first appears, either. For both the film and Irving’s original story suggest that science and rationality are overrated. In this sense, the film joins a long tradition of popular American fiction and film that encourages suspicion of experts, academic training, and intellectual perspectives. Thus Burton’s celebration of the alienated outsider who learns to temper his faith in his intellect and to trust more in his “heart” does not challenge familiar Hollywood constructs; it ratifies them. On the other hand, while Burton’s Ichabod learns a valuable lesson about the limits of reason, he never entirely abandons it. Burton’s Ichabod remains the hero of the film, his intellectual powers are ultimately affirmed, and viewers are encouraged to conclude that the nation would be better off if rational, principled people like Constable Crane were running things. Seen in this light, Burton’s Sleepy Hollow does not encourage suspicion of all intellectuals, just those who overrate themselves. As such, Burton’s Sleepy Hollow makes a more subtle point than Irving’s “Legend,” offering redemption to the arrogant intellectual who benefits from collaboration and learns to incorporate emotional intelligence into his deliberations. The traditional philosophical concerns alluded to above—the relationship between rationality and emotion, spirituality and collaborative thought—and the treatment these relationships get in Burton’s Sleepy Hollow are the focus of this essay. Throughout, discerning what does and does not count as anti-intellectual will be tricky business. Traditionally, antiintellectual forces have attacked intellectuals’ disregard for feeling and defended the validity of emotions and spirituality, and they have defended the wisdom of crowds when attacking intellectuals’ elitism. Yet, as we will see, many prominent philosophers have also defended the intellectual value of both emotion and a model of rationality that is both collaborative and democratic. Plotting the models of rationality presented in Sleepy Hollow on a pro- or anti-intellectual continuum requires consideration of the differing philosophical positions on these questions, as well as the treatment “Pinioned by a Chain of Reasoning”? 113 these issues have been given both in mainstream Hollywood and in the canonical short story that provides the source material for Burton...