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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name

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Speaker 2: is Robert Lamb.

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Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick. And we're back with the

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Speaker 3: third and final part in our Halloween season exploration of

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Speaker 3: The Scarecrow. So here on the show every October, we

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Speaker 3: spend the whole month in Halloween mode, talking about all

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Speaker 3: things haunted, monstrous, bewitched. On Weird House Cinema episodes for

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Speaker 3: this month, we're all going to be doing horror movies.

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Speaker 3: So in the spirit of the season, we started off

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Speaker 3: this month looking at uncanny aspects of the agricultural bird-scaring mannequin,

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Speaker 3: the scarecrow.

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Speaker 2: You put it like that, it doesn't sound as scary,

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Speaker 2: does it?

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Speaker 3: I was trying to think like what it would be

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Speaker 3: called on the Acme box. Uh, but anyway, in the,

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Speaker 3: in the last two episodes, we covered a bunch of stuff. Uh,

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Speaker 3: in part one, we kicked things off by retelling a

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Speaker 3: classic short story of scarecrows and witchcraft in new England

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Speaker 3: called feather top. This was a story by Nathaniel Hawthorne, uh,

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Speaker 3: gets into a lot of scarecrow themes that will recur

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Speaker 3: throughout the years. We went through a brief and non-exhaustive

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Speaker 3: taxonomy of horror scarecrows. We talked about the different types,

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Speaker 3: like the illusion or the false man, the straw zombie,

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Speaker 3: the pagan god, and so forth. We talked about the

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Speaker 3: scarecrow principle in biology, addressing the question of whether there

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Speaker 3: are any non-human animals that build an inanimate copy of

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Speaker 3: themselves to frighten or otherwise manipulate other animals. And we

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Speaker 3: talked about references to scarecrows and human effigies in the

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Speaker 3: Hebrew Bible. Then in part two, we talked about the

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Speaker 3: empirical question, do scarecrows actually work? Like, do they keep

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Speaker 3: the birds away? The answer really is it depends. They

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Speaker 3: can work for a time, but effectiveness varies by situation,

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Speaker 3: by scarecrow characteristics, target bird, protected object, and other things also.

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Speaker 3: So and so the general principle is unless the scarecrow

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Speaker 3: is moved or somehow remains unpredictable, birds will over time

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Speaker 3: acclimate to it and become unafraid. So you have to

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Speaker 3: add new tactics or change things up somehow to keep

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Speaker 3: the scarecrow scary. We also talked about, you know, it's funny.

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Speaker 3: That's how it is for birds. That's not really how

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Speaker 3: it is for humans. We like our scarecrows to stay

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Speaker 3: the same. That's that's how they're scary to us. But

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Speaker 3: we also talked about scarecrows in the ancient Greco-Roman context,

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Speaker 3: where there are lots of literary references to statues of

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Speaker 3: the eternally tumescent god Priapus as a scarecrow and garden protector,

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Speaker 3: you know, painted red and armed with a billhook. And

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Speaker 3: we got into Japanese traditions about scarecrows, including the Shinto

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Speaker 3: scarecrow god Kuwabiko. who, in contrast to the idea of

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Speaker 3: a scarecrow as like an empty-headed being or a thing

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Speaker 3: without substance, is actually an embodiment of wisdom and knowledge.

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Speaker 3: And there's some interesting logic underlying that and some historical

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Speaker 3: factors as well.

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Speaker 2: We didn't really touch on this, as I recall, but

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Speaker 2: Turnip Head in Howl's Moving Castle reminds me a lot

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Speaker 2: of some of these Japanese traditions that we discussed. I

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Speaker 2: couldn't find much that really connected the two. You know,

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Speaker 2: I think everything that Miyazaki creates, it does have a

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Speaker 2: lot of like rich connections to especially, you know, rural

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Speaker 2: Japanese contemplations. But I will at least highlight Turnip Head

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Speaker 2: as being one of my favorite cinematic Scarecrow.

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Speaker 3: Well, in that spirit, do you want to start things

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Speaker 3: off today with your segment about Scarecrows in cinema history?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. This is an area that I was really

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Speaker 2: excited to dig into. because scarecrows have been there pretty

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Speaker 2: much all along throughout the life of motion pictures. And

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Speaker 2: much of the early scarecrow action is going to revolve

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Speaker 2: around L. Frank Baum's Oz book series, which ends up

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Speaker 2: playing a major role here. And to set us up

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Speaker 2: for this, I want to just go ahead and read

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Speaker 2: a little bit, an example. This is from when we

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Speaker 2: first encountered the scarecrow in the 1900 book, The Wonderful

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Speaker 2: Wizard of Oz. Dorothy leaned her chin upon her hand

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Speaker 2: and gazed thoughtfully at the scarecrow. Its head was a

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Speaker 2: small sack stuffed with straw with eyes, nose, and mouth

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Speaker 2: painted on it to represent a face. An old pointed

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Speaker 2: blue hat that had belonged to some munchkin was perched

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Speaker 2: on his head, and the rest of the figure was

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Speaker 2: a blue suit of clothes, worn and faded, which had

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Speaker 2: also been stuffed with straw. On the feet were some

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Speaker 2: old boots with blue tops such as every man wore

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Speaker 2: in this country. and the figure was raised above the

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Speaker 2: stalks of corn by means of the pole stuck up

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Speaker 2: its back. While Dorothy was looking earnestly into the queer

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Speaker 2: painted face of the scarecrow, she was surprised to see

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Speaker 2: one of the eyes slowly wink at her. She thought

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Speaker 2: she must have been mistaken at first for none of

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Speaker 2: the scarecrows in Kansas ever wink, but presently the figure

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Speaker 2: nodded its head to her in a friendly way. Then

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Speaker 2: she climbed down from the fence and walked up to it,

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Speaker 2: and Toto ran around the pole and barked. Now, while.

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Speaker 3: There are some scary things in The Wizard of Oz.

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Speaker 3: I think this is not meant to be scary at all,

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Speaker 3: even though in a different context, you could interpret a

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Speaker 3: scarecrow suddenly winking as quite freaky.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. And one of the really interesting things I was

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Speaker 2: reading about is that apparently Baum got the inspiration for

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Speaker 2: the scarecrow from a recurring childhood nightmare that he had

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Speaker 2: about a scarecrow chasing after him and kind of like

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Speaker 2: falling apart. So if that is indeed accurate, then perhaps

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Speaker 2: the origins of this idea had some place in Nightmare,

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Speaker 2: even if the Scarecrow as it's broadly presented in Oz

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Speaker 2: media and certainly in the original books is not like

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Speaker 2: horror themed at all. Right.

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Speaker 3: I mean, the Scarecrow in Oz, most people probably already

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Speaker 3: know this, but is a very friendly, positive, helpful figure

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Speaker 3: and comical in some ways. Right.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: He doesn't have a brain. That's if he only had one.

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Speaker 2: but he doesn't have one. So this book, again, came

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Speaker 2: out in 1900. So it comes out in the midst

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Speaker 2: of silent cinema's worldwide bloom, like, you know, just perfect timing.

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Speaker 2: And so the first attempt to adapt it occurred in

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Speaker 2: 1908 with the Fairy Logue and Radio Plays. This is

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Speaker 2: now lost. There's, I think, just some stills of this.

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Speaker 2: And then there was a second adaptation in 1910 called

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Speaker 2: And it's only 13 minutes long. You know, a lot

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Speaker 2: of these old silent pictures were very short. It had

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Speaker 2: two sequels, both of which were lost. But this 1910

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Speaker 2: film does survive and you can look it up on

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Speaker 2: the Internet. And in both of these, like the scarecrow

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Speaker 2: is presented like you imagine and very much like described

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Speaker 2: in the original book. You know, you just kind of

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Speaker 2: stuff someone out like a scarecrow, pat them out with

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Speaker 2: some straw. You have the painted face on sort of

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Speaker 2: on canvas appearance. And, you know, you could you could

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Speaker 2: certainly decide that it looks creepy. Certainly, that's a fair

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Speaker 2: read on some of these stills, especially from these old

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Speaker 2: silent movies. But, you know, it's the scarecrow. He's a friend.

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Speaker 3: There is a photographer who comes up in an essay

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Speaker 3: that I'm going to mention later in this episode, a

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Speaker 3: photographer named Colin Garrett, who mostly focuses on taking pictures

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Speaker 3: of trains, but put out a book in the 1990s

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Speaker 3: about scarecrows, which is photography of scarecrows. I shared earlier, Rob,

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Speaker 3: a linked to a gallery hosted on the guardians website.

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Speaker 3: It just has a lot of these pictures of scarecrows

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Speaker 3: and there's some really freaky ones.

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Speaker 2: Uh, but these are British scarecrows, right?

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Speaker 3: British. Yeah. Scarecrows around Britain. And, um, Garrett talks about the, uh,

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Speaker 3: the experience of going around looking at and photographing scarecrows of, uh,

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Speaker 3: approaching a scarecrow, not knowing when you're far away, whether

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Speaker 3: it's going to have a face or not. And I

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Speaker 3: really liked that idea. So you get close wondering, will

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Speaker 3: it have a face? What will the face be like?

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Speaker 3: Is it, Is it a scary face? Is it a

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Speaker 3: happy face? You know, can the birds tell a difference?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. The ones with faces can be a bit

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Speaker 2: more unsettling. That's just how we operate. But anyway, so

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Speaker 2: many different Oz pictures come out during this time period. Again,

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Speaker 2: it's just the perfect timing, right? We get the patchwork

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Speaker 2: girl of Oz in 1914. That one doesn't have a scarecrow.

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Speaker 2: The same year we get His Majesty the Scarecrow of Oz,

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Speaker 2: which comes before the book The Scarecrow of Oz. So

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Speaker 2: this is this is crazy. We think of this as

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Speaker 2: being like a modern thing, right, where there's an adaptation

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Speaker 2: of something before the author actually finishes or writes the book.

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Speaker 2: But it's happening at this point in the history of

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Speaker 2: cinema and literature as well.

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Speaker 3: Now, I think I remember a story detail from when

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Speaker 3: we did our Weird House Cinema episode on Return to Oz.

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Speaker 3: And it's that in the book, does it say that

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Speaker 3: when Dorothy leaves Oz, she they like make the scarecrow

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Speaker 3: king or leave the scarecrow in charge?

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Speaker 2: I believe that is the case. Yeah, I think that

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Speaker 2: is what is explored to some extent in this movie

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Speaker 2: and in the book that came right after the movie. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: but I'll certainly put the call out to our Oz

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Speaker 2: fans out there because I don't think I've ever read

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Speaker 2: one of these books in its entirety. And I know that,

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Speaker 2: you know, they are much beloved and there are folks

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Speaker 2: out there who have. So, you know, write in with

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Speaker 2: details if you've got them.

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Speaker 3: By the way, if you've never seen Return to Oz,

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Speaker 3: the movie, it's super weird. Pretty awesome. Worth checking out. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Amazing.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: And we have an older Weird House Cinema episode you

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Speaker 2: can look up about that. Now, moving on through the

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Speaker 2: years here. In 1920, we get a rare non-Oz scarecrow

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Speaker 2: in the form of the 20-minute silent comedy The Scarecrow

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Speaker 2: starring Buster Keaton. This is a comedic role. We have

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Speaker 2: the comedic actor of legend here playing a man forced

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Speaker 2: to disguise himself as a scarecrow. move like a scarecrow,

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Speaker 2: you know, suddenly go still, that sort of thing. A

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Speaker 2: lot of physical comedy, as you might imagine. This one,

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Speaker 2: I think, is worth looking up, either in its entirety

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Speaker 2: or just for stills. On one hand, because it's a

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Speaker 2: reminder of Buster Keaton's handsome androgyny from the day, and

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Speaker 2: I couldn't help but notice his resemblance to an actor

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Speaker 2: who would play another scarecrow 88 years later. More on

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Speaker 2: that in a bit. All right, so more Oz films

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Speaker 2: come after this, though. 1925, we get another straight-up Wizard

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Speaker 2: of Oz adaptation, and I include some images here for you, Joe,

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Speaker 2: in our outline, but even the ones that are lost,

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Speaker 2: there tend to be some stills that you can find

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Speaker 2: on IMDb for these different titles.

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Speaker 3: In this image you shared, the scarecrow has these concentric

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Speaker 3: circles for eyes that, at least in this image, almost

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Speaker 3: suggest spirals. I don't know, it makes me think of

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Speaker 3: a One of these villain types in science fiction that's

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Speaker 3: like a hypnotist type villain, you know, you look into

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Speaker 3: his eyes and they're swirling.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it reminds one of a little jigsaw puppet from

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Speaker 2: the Saw movies or something. And I think maybe it's

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Speaker 2: supposed to be stitches, too. Like there's a patchwork aspect

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Speaker 2: to the scarecrow here. And then meanwhile, Dorothy, just fully

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Speaker 2: a grown woman. And then the Tin Man looks like

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Speaker 2: a cheese grater. Look up that still if you have

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Speaker 2: the ability to do so.

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Speaker 3: Hide your knuckles from this tent man. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: In 1933, we get our first animated Oz with Scarecrow

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Speaker 2: in The Wizard of Oz. This is the same animation studio,

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Speaker 2: Ted Eshbaugh Studios, that had done Goofy Goat in 1931.

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Speaker 2: So folks who are into the history of animation may

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Speaker 2: know this name. Goofy Goat, you know, kind of looks

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Speaker 2: like what if Mickey Mouse was a goat? And it

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Speaker 2: invites us to imagine an alternate reality. in which Goofy

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Speaker 2: Goat has the place that Mickey Mouse does in today's,

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Speaker 2: you know, entertainment and entertainment business world stature, you know.

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Speaker 3: The Goofy Goat Club. Yeah. The Goat Cateers.

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Speaker 2: The Goat Cateers. I like it. I mean, it would

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Speaker 2: change everything. The ripple effects of this alteration would just,

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Speaker 2: who knows what the world would be like. Yeah. And then,

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Speaker 2: of course, in 1939, we finally get the most iconic

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Speaker 2: adaptation of The Wizard of Oz in Victor Fleming's masterpiece

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Speaker 2: for MGM with Ray Bolger playing the Scarecrow. This, as

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Speaker 2: we discussed in our episode on Return to Oz, not

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Speaker 2: a runaway hit at the time and really only achieved

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Speaker 2: its long lasting status. When it came to TV later on,

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Speaker 2: it became like a regular staple of special event television.

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Speaker 2: And now, of course, we hold it up as the

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Speaker 2: Wizard of Oz film. And certainly its success made possible

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Speaker 2: things like Wicked today. So all of these incarnations involve

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Speaker 2: the Scarecrow as not a nightmare, not a villain. But

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Speaker 2: we do have a very notable... Scarecrow villain that pops

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Speaker 2: up in 1941. That is when we get the debut

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Speaker 2: of the DC Comics Batman villain, the Scarecrow.

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Speaker 3: Oh, I would not have expected the Scarecrow appeared in

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Speaker 3: the Batman rogues gallery this early. I would have thought

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Speaker 3: this is like a later thing from the 70s or something.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, same here. Apparently, you know, he wasn't used a lot.

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Speaker 2: He officially debuted in 41, I think was only used

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Speaker 2: a handful of times if I'm understanding things correctly. And

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Speaker 2: then it's in 67 that he's brought back and he's

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Speaker 2: given some of the attributes that we associate with the character,

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Speaker 2: like his fear toxin. But this Ichabod Crane-like villain, you know,

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Speaker 2: was initially rolled out in 41. But since he didn't

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Speaker 2: get revived again until 67, he ends up missing the

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Speaker 2: Adam West Batman era and doesn't come to TV or

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Speaker 2: film until 1968 on the animated Adventures of Batman.

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Speaker 3: Hmm.

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Speaker 2: Of course, he went on to become a very popular

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Speaker 2: Batman villain, of course, serving as a major antagonist in

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Speaker 2: Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy, especially the first film. But

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Speaker 2: I believe he appears in some form or another in

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Speaker 2: all three. And of course, in this, he's played by

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Speaker 2: Cillian Murphy, whose casting does not seem to have anything

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Speaker 2: to do with his resemblance to Buster Keaton. But I

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Speaker 2: was like putting the two next to each other here.

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Speaker 2: And I'm like, oh, man, he does remind me a

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Speaker 2: lot of Buster Keaton, especially Buster Keaton as we see

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Speaker 2: him in The Scarecrow. I guess part of that is

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Speaker 2: like you just have like a thin actor with piercing

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Speaker 2: eyes and you call them the Scarecrow. It's kind of

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Speaker 2: like these ideas are just going to latch on.

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Speaker 3: Do I remember right that Murphy was originally reading to

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Speaker 3: play Bruce Wayne or Batman?

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Speaker 2: I've read that as well, yeah.

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Speaker 3: Didn't get the part, but then was like, hey, what

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Speaker 3: about me as Scarecrow?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's perfect casting. He made a great Scarecrow.

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Speaker 2: Let's see, I was looking around a little bit for

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Speaker 2: precursors in literature. And I found there is a story

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Speaker 2: from 42 that's sometimes singled out as perhaps the first

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Speaker 2: non-comic book, Evil Scarecrow, or the first horror scarecrow, depending

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Speaker 2: on how you want to judge it. It's called Crew, C-R-E-W-E,

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Speaker 2: from 1942 by Walter de la Mare, or de la Mare,

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Speaker 2: that's M-A-R-E. And I read it. You can find the

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Speaker 2: full thing online on Gutenberg. It's It's kind of an

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Speaker 2: old-fashioned ghost story concerning a train and a scarecrow resembling

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Speaker 2: a dead man that creeps closer and closer. I would

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Speaker 2: say for hardcore fans only, or if you really like

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Speaker 2: ghost stories from this time period, it's a little bit

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Speaker 2: more of a slow burn, I guess. Let's see. Now, film-wise,

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Speaker 2: this is one that we've mentioned on the show before.

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Speaker 2: In 1963, we get a movie. This was like a

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Speaker 2: Disney film, actually. It's come up on Weird Al Cinema before.

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Speaker 2: It's called Dr. Sin, alias The Scarecrow, in which Patrick

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Speaker 2: McGowan plays a scarecrow-disguised smuggler hero who's, I believe, actually

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Speaker 2: a vicar. It's not horror. It's a Disney adventure based

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Speaker 2: on Russell Thorndyke's novels, the first of which published in 1915.

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Speaker 2: He's just a vicar who dresses up as a scarecrow

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Speaker 2: to engage in these kind of rebellious, good-guy-smuggler-type activities.

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Speaker 3: Is he smuggling rum or something?

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Speaker 2: I think that's the case. I've not read these books

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Speaker 2: and I've not seen the film. It just, when it

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Speaker 2: comes up in connections on weird house, I'm always like, just, whoa,

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Speaker 2: that looks really weird. It looks, you see stills from it.

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Speaker 2: He looks creepy. It's this creepy scarecrow mask. And especially

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Speaker 2: I think to modern, the thing is you look back

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Speaker 2: at these old scarecrows and we have things like Batman

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Speaker 2: scarecrow on the brain and scarecrow related horror films. And so,

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Speaker 2: that is often the reading we go to when we

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Speaker 2: see an image like this.

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Speaker 3: It was counterintuitive to me and I think probably to

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Speaker 3: a lot of modern people who explore the history of this.

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Speaker 3: You just assume scarecrows have always been scary to people

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Speaker 3: and have always featured in, you know, scary stories going

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Speaker 3: back as far as you could think, but not really.

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Speaker 3: I mean, like you can argue that there are, going

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Speaker 3: back into the 19th century as we talked about, you

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Speaker 3: can argue there are creepy things about the story Feathertop,

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Speaker 3: like it has witchcraft in it, but it's not really

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Speaker 3: a horror story. It's more of like a moral tale. Um,

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Speaker 3: and so, yeah, you, you just assume this is a

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Speaker 3: really old tradition, but it's kind of surprising how late

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Speaker 3: the scarecrow becomes frightening to us or becomes a monster

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Speaker 3: in the popular consciousness.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Like modern, I think the modern individual going into Feathertop,

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Speaker 2: you expect Feathertop to start, to start lopping off heads

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Speaker 2: or something. It doesn't happen.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, as far as I can tell, proper horror scarecrows,

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Speaker 2: as we kind of think about them today, don't emerge

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Speaker 2: on screen until 1981's Dark Night of the Scarecrow. This

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Speaker 2: is a TV movie, and it's possible I've missed something

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Speaker 2: that occurs earlier. If so, write in, and we'll talk

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Speaker 2: this out on a listener mail episode in the future.

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Speaker 2: But yeah, this is a made-for-TV film about the spirit

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Speaker 2: of a murdered innocent who ends up possessing the body

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Speaker 2: of the scarecrow and uses it for slasher-style vengeance. It

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Speaker 2: stars Charles Durning and it features Larry Drake playing the

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Speaker 2: neurodivergent individual who is like viciously killed by by by bullies.

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Speaker 2: And then like his spirit takes over the body of

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Speaker 2: the scarecrow and does murders.

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Speaker 3: A lot of people really like this movie. I remember

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Speaker 3: trying to watch it years ago and finding like the

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Speaker 3: early parts just hit me in a really mean way.

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Speaker 3: Like they left a nasty taste. I don't know. Maybe

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Speaker 3: I'll give it another try, but.

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Speaker 2: I've had the same experience. I caught part of this

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Speaker 2: on TV at some point as a kid, and it

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Speaker 2: just really made me feel bad. I didn't want to

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Speaker 2: finish watching it. And again, it's just kind of crazy.

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Speaker 2: Like this is made for TV and it's, uh, I

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Speaker 2: don't know. Maybe I should give it a second look.

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Speaker 2: I do love Larry Drake. I just didn't want to

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Speaker 2: watch the bad things happen to this character. By the way,

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Speaker 2: this is where we get into a really interesting area here.

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Speaker 2: 81 is also the same year that Alvin Schwartz's Herald

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Speaker 2: the Scarecrow debuts in the pages of the very first

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Speaker 2: scary stories to tell in the dark. There were multiple. editions,

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Speaker 2: like different volumes of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Joe,

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Speaker 2: I never had these books. Did you have any of

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Speaker 2: these growing up?

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Speaker 3: I didn't own them, but they were somewhat inexplicably in

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Speaker 3: my otherwise fairly conservative school library. And they were some

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Speaker 3: of the most popular books in the school library. We

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Speaker 3: were like, I got to get that, you know, looking

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Speaker 3: at it constantly. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't know how I missed out on these.

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Speaker 2: Cause I was, you know, I was always a horror kid. My, my,

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Speaker 2: my bet is that perhaps these were popular at the

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Speaker 2: same time I'd started reading like nothing but Stephen King

364
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Speaker 2: and reading it, I think way too early. I should

365
00:20:28,820 --> 00:20:30,760
Speaker 2: have been, I should have been reading scary stories to

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Speaker 2: tell in the dark in part because it would have

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Speaker 2: been arguably more age appropriate, but also, And I say

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Speaker 2: that as a parent now. But I also think Scary

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Speaker 2: Stories to Tell in the Dark seems like they have

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Speaker 2: a lot of great tales that are retold and repackaged

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Speaker 2: for younger readers, but also still delivers a lot of

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Speaker 2: really creepy content, as we're about to discuss.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: And some funny stuff, like the viper, you know, can't

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Speaker 3: go wrong. That's a good joke.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: So basically what happened here is Schwartz compiled and retold

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Speaker 2: various spooky tales and bits of folklore, which is pretty

379
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Speaker 2: awesome because that's what a lot of these thinking back

380
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Speaker 2: to things like Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio and

381
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Speaker 2: just so many different folklore volumes. This is like what

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Speaker 2: people have done for ages. They've asked around, they've collected

383
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Speaker 2: scary stories, and maybe they've tweaked them a bit and

384
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Speaker 2: they've given them a slightly different form and then reintroduced

385
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Speaker 2: them to a new audience. So let's talk about Harold,

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Speaker 2: because I think Harold is, again, Harold the Scarecrow is

387
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Speaker 2: a character that really creeped out a lot of younger folks,

388
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Speaker 2: really resonated with them, stuck around in their head. Again,

389
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Speaker 2: originally in this 1981 debut collection, Scary Stories to Tell

390
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Speaker 2: in the Dark. And then in 2019, the Guillermo del

391
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Speaker 2: Toro produced and written film adaptation actually used this character

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Speaker 2: as well. I haven't seen this one yet, but I

393
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Speaker 2: pulled up a still of it here for you, Joe.

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Speaker 2: And then, folks, if you just even look at the poster,

395
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Speaker 2: I think Harold is on the poster. Very creepy-looking scarecrow

396
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Speaker 2: entity here.

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Speaker 3: Looks like a combination of a human, a pig, and

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Speaker 3: a catcher's mitt.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. And the original illustrations were also really weird

400
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Speaker 2: and disturbing in the original book. So I'm going to

401
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Speaker 2: briefly tell the story here of Harold the Scarecrow. Not

402
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Speaker 2: as well as in the pages of the book. Obviously

403
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Speaker 2: pick that up if you're so interested. But it concerns

404
00:22:24,980 --> 00:22:28,080
Speaker 2: two bumpkin cowherds, one named Alfred and one named Thomas.

405
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Speaker 2: And they decide, hey, let's make a straw man and

406
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Speaker 2: let's name it after a farmer that we both hate.

407
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Speaker 2: Some guy named Harold. So they do. They stuff it

408
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Speaker 2: with straw. And since they've essentially made a scarecrow at

409
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Speaker 2: this point, they start using it as one. They bring

410
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Speaker 2: it out to the field. And then each night they

411
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Speaker 2: bring it right back into their home. They apparently don't

412
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Speaker 2: want it rained on or ruined. And then also they

413
00:22:49,869 --> 00:22:51,790
Speaker 2: have plans for it when they bring it back into

414
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Speaker 2: the house. If they're in a good mood, we're told

415
00:22:54,880 --> 00:22:57,920
Speaker 2: they have a playful relationship with Harold. But when they're

416
00:22:58,400 --> 00:22:59,860
Speaker 2: not in a good mood, and it seems like they're

417
00:22:59,900 --> 00:23:03,180
Speaker 2: frequently not in a good mood, they mistreat Harold. They

418
00:23:03,240 --> 00:23:05,889
Speaker 2: smear food on his face and they say nasty things

419
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Speaker 2: to him.

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Speaker 3: Well, as we will learn later in today's episode, not

421
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Speaker 3: the worst a scarecrow has ever been treated.

422
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Speaker 2: But still, they're not nice to this guy. And then

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Speaker 2: one night, they're smearing food on Harold's face and being

424
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Speaker 2: general cusses to him. And Harold seems to grunt. And

425
00:23:24,130 --> 00:23:26,040
Speaker 2: they're really not sure what to make of this. They're spooked.

426
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Speaker 2: they also try to explain, like, maybe there's a mouse

427
00:23:28,440 --> 00:23:30,420
Speaker 2: inside him or something. I don't know, but they're like,

428
00:23:30,580 --> 00:23:33,260
Speaker 2: we shouldn't be grunting. And they discuss, well, should we

429
00:23:33,280 --> 00:23:34,840
Speaker 2: just go ahead and burn him and just, you know,

430
00:23:34,900 --> 00:23:37,379
Speaker 2: remove any possibility that this is going to backfire on us?

431
00:23:37,720 --> 00:23:39,210
Speaker 2: But they decide, no, you know, we got a good

432
00:23:39,230 --> 00:23:42,369
Speaker 2: thing going with Harold. Let's keep him, let's keep mistreating

433
00:23:42,430 --> 00:23:44,510
Speaker 2: him and let's keep putting him up in the, in the,

434
00:23:44,750 --> 00:23:47,510
Speaker 2: in the fields to protect our crops.

435
00:23:47,530 --> 00:23:48,570
Speaker 3: Yeah.

436
00:23:48,910 --> 00:23:51,229
Speaker 2: And, you know, I guess if they, if they do

437
00:23:51,290 --> 00:23:53,600
Speaker 2: take him inside and put him, maybe that actually improves

438
00:23:53,619 --> 00:23:57,390
Speaker 2: the effectiveness of Harold as a scarecrow. Hmm. Okay. So

439
00:23:57,510 --> 00:24:00,169
Speaker 2: as you imagine, this is going nowhere pleasant. I'm going

440
00:24:00,190 --> 00:24:03,210
Speaker 2: to read from the book here for the last little

441
00:24:03,230 --> 00:24:06,270
Speaker 2: bit here because I think this delivers it nicely. Quote,

442
00:24:06,369 --> 00:24:08,619
Speaker 2: the next morning while they were eating, Harold stood up

443
00:24:08,660 --> 00:24:10,899
Speaker 2: and walked out of the hut. He climbed up on

444
00:24:10,920 --> 00:24:13,260
Speaker 2: the roof and trotted back and forth like a horse

445
00:24:13,340 --> 00:24:15,500
Speaker 2: on its hind legs all day and all night. He

446
00:24:15,580 --> 00:24:18,780
Speaker 2: trotted like that. In the morning, Harold climbed down and

447
00:24:18,820 --> 00:24:21,290
Speaker 2: stood at a far corner of the pasture. The men

448
00:24:21,310 --> 00:24:23,909
Speaker 2: had no idea what he would do next. They were afraid.

449
00:24:24,540 --> 00:24:26,700
Speaker 2: They decided to take the cows down into the valley

450
00:24:26,740 --> 00:24:29,560
Speaker 2: the same day. When they left, Harold was nowhere in sight.

451
00:24:29,700 --> 00:24:32,270
Speaker 2: They felt as if they had escaped a great danger

452
00:24:32,290 --> 00:24:34,770
Speaker 2: and began joking and singing. But when they had gone

453
00:24:34,830 --> 00:24:37,270
Speaker 2: only a mile or two, they realized they had forgotten

454
00:24:37,330 --> 00:24:40,910
Speaker 2: to bring the milking stools. Uh-oh. Yeah, neither one wanted

455
00:24:40,930 --> 00:24:43,149
Speaker 2: to go back for them, but the stools would cost

456
00:24:43,190 --> 00:24:46,750
Speaker 2: a lot to replace. There's really nothing to be afraid of,

457
00:24:46,890 --> 00:24:50,250
Speaker 2: they told one another. After all, what could a doll do?

458
00:24:50,970 --> 00:24:52,710
Speaker 2: Referring to Harold the Scarecrow.

459
00:24:53,070 --> 00:24:53,189
Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.

460
00:24:53,690 --> 00:24:55,790
Speaker 2: They drew straws to see which one would go back.

461
00:24:55,950 --> 00:24:58,109
Speaker 2: It was Thomas. I'll catch up with you, he said,

462
00:24:58,470 --> 00:25:02,510
Speaker 2: and Alfred walked toward the valley. When Alfred came to

463
00:25:02,530 --> 00:25:04,760
Speaker 2: a rise in the path, he looked back for Thomas.

464
00:25:05,180 --> 00:25:08,060
Speaker 2: He did not see him anywhere, but he did see Harold.

465
00:25:08,420 --> 00:25:10,220
Speaker 2: The doll was on the roof of the hut again.

466
00:25:10,780 --> 00:25:14,419
Speaker 2: As Alfred watched, Harold kneeled and stretched out a bloody

467
00:25:14,500 --> 00:25:16,119
Speaker 2: skin to dry in the sun.

468
00:25:16,780 --> 00:25:19,139
Speaker 3: Whoa, that escalated.

469
00:25:19,790 --> 00:25:26,280
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Harold the Scarecrow has flayed a man, perhaps alive,

470
00:25:26,600 --> 00:25:30,540
Speaker 2: and then tacked his bloody hide to the roof of

471
00:25:30,580 --> 00:25:31,940
Speaker 2: the building here. Nice.

472
00:25:31,960 --> 00:25:36,379
Speaker 3: I think I remember reading this from when I was

473
00:25:36,420 --> 00:25:36,720
Speaker 3: a kid.

474
00:25:38,340 --> 00:25:42,619
Speaker 2: Yeah, really rough finish on this one. Very creepy. I

475
00:25:42,640 --> 00:25:44,900
Speaker 2: can see why this one resonated. Mm-hmm.

476
00:25:45,820 --> 00:25:47,859
Speaker 3: This is the awesomest thing you're going to find in

477
00:25:47,880 --> 00:25:48,740
Speaker 3: the school library.

478
00:25:51,140 --> 00:25:53,630
Speaker 2: So I was looking around about this. I ran across

479
00:25:53,930 --> 00:25:57,970
Speaker 2: a website called scarystudies.com with some writing on there by

480
00:25:58,090 --> 00:26:05,170
Speaker 2: one Cody Myrick. And I understand this particular guy has

481
00:26:05,210 --> 00:26:09,130
Speaker 2: done some documentary work about these books and has done

482
00:26:09,170 --> 00:26:12,100
Speaker 2: some real research into how they were written, how they

483
00:26:12,119 --> 00:26:17,090
Speaker 2: came together. that Schwartz's work here is a retelling of

484
00:26:17,119 --> 00:26:20,750
Speaker 2: an older Austrian Swiss tale that had been collected in

485
00:26:21,130 --> 00:26:24,690
Speaker 2: Max Luthi's Once Upon a Time on the Nature of

486
00:26:24,750 --> 00:26:29,370
Speaker 2: Fairy Tales in 1976. And the original title of the

487
00:26:29,390 --> 00:26:34,989
Speaker 2: story is The Tunch Baptized by the Cowherds of Goshenen.

488
00:26:36,430 --> 00:26:38,030
Speaker 2: So it doesn't roll off the tongue as well as

489
00:26:38,150 --> 00:26:38,730
Speaker 2: just Harold.

490
00:26:38,950 --> 00:26:39,130
Speaker 1: Right.

491
00:26:39,150 --> 00:26:39,340
Speaker 3: Yeah.

492
00:26:40,160 --> 00:26:43,040
Speaker 2: So Myrick here hunted down not only the tale that

493
00:26:43,080 --> 00:26:46,359
Speaker 2: Schwartz used, but the very book that he would have

494
00:26:46,440 --> 00:26:50,040
Speaker 2: read it in at the Firestone Library at Princeton. And

495
00:26:50,080 --> 00:26:54,160
Speaker 2: on his website, he has like a photograph of those pages.

496
00:26:55,040 --> 00:26:59,240
Speaker 2: And the original story is interesting because some of the

497
00:26:59,660 --> 00:27:02,050
Speaker 2: major beats are the same, but the details are a

498
00:27:02,070 --> 00:27:04,109
Speaker 2: bit different. So the original story takes place in an

499
00:27:04,230 --> 00:27:07,310
Speaker 2: alpine setting. It ends in exactly the same way with

500
00:27:07,350 --> 00:27:09,750
Speaker 2: a character flayed and his hide tacked on the roof

501
00:27:09,810 --> 00:27:14,080
Speaker 2: by a creepy human decoy somehow brought to life. And

502
00:27:14,240 --> 00:27:19,550
Speaker 2: in the version that Luthi shares in this 76 collection,

503
00:27:20,070 --> 00:27:23,170
Speaker 2: the sacrilegious baptism of the doll seems to have done

504
00:27:23,190 --> 00:27:26,030
Speaker 2: the trick. I think there was some other mistreatment, but

505
00:27:26,090 --> 00:27:29,330
Speaker 2: when you pretend to baptize a doll, it may come

506
00:27:29,369 --> 00:27:32,470
Speaker 2: to life and flay you. And then there are other tellings,

507
00:27:32,510 --> 00:27:35,780
Speaker 2: I think, that focus more on just general mistreatment and cruelty.

508
00:27:36,190 --> 00:27:38,680
Speaker 2: You know, like you create something or you have something

509
00:27:38,700 --> 00:27:41,160
Speaker 2: in the likeness of a human You mistreat it enough

510
00:27:41,720 --> 00:27:44,660
Speaker 2: and it will come to life. There's like the karmic

511
00:27:44,760 --> 00:27:48,640
Speaker 2: magic of the thing will make it your own punisher.

512
00:27:49,940 --> 00:27:50,440
Speaker 3: Interesting.

513
00:27:51,160 --> 00:27:54,070
Speaker 2: However, it is not in these tellings a scarecrow. It

514
00:27:54,170 --> 00:27:58,830
Speaker 2: is a tunch or a tungle or a dittentunch or

515
00:27:58,990 --> 00:28:01,690
Speaker 2: a tushung. There are all these different words that are shared.

516
00:28:01,730 --> 00:28:03,689
Speaker 2: And some of these I could not find really any

517
00:28:03,750 --> 00:28:07,290
Speaker 2: discussion of outside of, at least not in English, outside

518
00:28:07,330 --> 00:28:11,430
Speaker 2: of this particular discussion. But apparently it's some sort of

519
00:28:11,470 --> 00:28:16,640
Speaker 2: like traditional Alpine doll. It's so it's not about bird scare.

520
00:28:16,740 --> 00:28:20,560
Speaker 2: It's just about it's more about its human likeness. And

521
00:28:20,820 --> 00:28:24,000
Speaker 2: it's it's more like they just make a straw man.

522
00:28:24,200 --> 00:28:27,700
Speaker 2: They make some sort of an artificial representative of a

523
00:28:27,740 --> 00:28:31,370
Speaker 2: person and they mistreat it. And then it comes to life. Hmm.

524
00:28:31,850 --> 00:28:32,090
Speaker 3: Okay.

525
00:28:33,150 --> 00:28:36,430
Speaker 2: But it's deeply interesting because this idea that we create

526
00:28:36,490 --> 00:28:38,209
Speaker 2: something in the likeness of a human, and if we

527
00:28:38,260 --> 00:28:41,340
Speaker 2: mistreat it, we are inviting some sort of doom on ourselves. This,

528
00:28:41,380 --> 00:28:44,300
Speaker 2: of course, is key to so many different stories. The Golem,

529
00:28:44,380 --> 00:28:49,560
Speaker 2: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. And it exposes our compulsion for anthropomorphism

530
00:28:50,200 --> 00:28:52,540
Speaker 2: and certainly resonates, too, in our age of, say, like

531
00:28:52,600 --> 00:28:58,310
Speaker 2: chatbots and voice-controlled devices. It's certainly not in the forefront

532
00:28:58,330 --> 00:29:01,430
Speaker 2: of discussion of chatbots and AI right now, but Over

533
00:29:01,470 --> 00:29:03,230
Speaker 2: the past few years, that has been something that's come up,

534
00:29:03,250 --> 00:29:04,930
Speaker 2: you know, like, you know, should you be nice? Should

535
00:29:04,970 --> 00:29:08,700
Speaker 2: you be mean? What sort of voice should you use

536
00:29:09,060 --> 00:29:10,020
Speaker 2: in talking to them?

537
00:29:10,820 --> 00:29:13,220
Speaker 3: We've talked about this before. I mean, as I've said,

538
00:29:13,280 --> 00:29:15,660
Speaker 3: I'm very much of the opinion that you should not

539
00:29:15,800 --> 00:29:20,440
Speaker 3: be cruel to or mistreat inanimate objects that resemble humans,

540
00:29:20,520 --> 00:29:23,920
Speaker 3: not because their feelings matter, but because it harms you

541
00:29:24,180 --> 00:29:24,780
Speaker 3: to do that.

542
00:29:25,320 --> 00:29:28,020
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think I also read some stuff where people

543
00:29:28,040 --> 00:29:29,580
Speaker 2: were like, actually don't go out of your way to

544
00:29:29,620 --> 00:29:31,480
Speaker 2: be nice though, because then you're just adding to the,

545
00:29:32,290 --> 00:29:34,450
Speaker 2: energy usage of these different.

546
00:29:35,890 --> 00:29:36,360
Speaker 3: Systems.

547
00:29:36,960 --> 00:29:39,500
Speaker 2: Okay, I get that too. But I'm thinking to myself,

548
00:29:39,560 --> 00:29:41,200
Speaker 2: it's like, okay, but there's still no need to be mean.

549
00:29:41,400 --> 00:29:43,580
Speaker 2: You can maybe keep it brief if you have to

550
00:29:43,680 --> 00:29:46,660
Speaker 2: use these things, but there's no need to be mean

551
00:29:46,720 --> 00:29:47,020
Speaker 2: about it.

552
00:29:47,720 --> 00:29:50,660
Speaker 3: We're creatures of habit, and I don't think it is

553
00:29:50,740 --> 00:29:55,250
Speaker 3: good to create habits of practicing cruelty even towards inanimate

554
00:29:55,350 --> 00:29:57,830
Speaker 3: objects because that can manifest in other ways.

555
00:29:58,330 --> 00:30:00,650
Speaker 2: Yeah, this seems like there would be even more stories

556
00:30:00,670 --> 00:30:02,400
Speaker 2: we could tell with this. Like I'm thinking of like,

557
00:30:02,420 --> 00:30:05,540
Speaker 2: what are some, what are some heralds out there that

558
00:30:05,600 --> 00:30:08,080
Speaker 2: we have in the world that we create just for misuse?

559
00:30:08,480 --> 00:30:10,960
Speaker 2: And I think of that pink plastic punching guy that

560
00:30:10,980 --> 00:30:14,400
Speaker 2: you see in like boxers and martial artists, you know,

561
00:30:14,640 --> 00:30:17,150
Speaker 2: practicing on where it's the same like square jawed dude

562
00:30:17,210 --> 00:30:18,970
Speaker 2: with the like 60s haircut.

563
00:30:19,930 --> 00:30:20,990
Speaker 3: I don't know what you're talking about.

564
00:30:21,110 --> 00:30:23,250
Speaker 2: Oh, you would recognize him. You know, he's like some

565
00:30:23,270 --> 00:30:26,250
Speaker 2: sort of like a punching mannequin. I wonder if anyone's

566
00:30:26,650 --> 00:30:29,350
Speaker 2: made or thought to make a work of horror where

567
00:30:29,470 --> 00:30:31,850
Speaker 2: that dude comes to life and starts, I don't know,

568
00:30:32,030 --> 00:30:33,750
Speaker 2: slashing people with karate moves.

569
00:30:34,030 --> 00:30:34,770
Speaker 3: I'm sick of this.

570
00:30:36,850 --> 00:30:38,520
Speaker 2: Maybe enters a tournament. I don't know. I think he

571
00:30:38,560 --> 00:30:41,560
Speaker 2: writes itself. Somebody do it. I give you, I release

572
00:30:41,600 --> 00:30:45,200
Speaker 2: it to the world. All right, but getting back to horror.

573
00:30:45,560 --> 00:30:50,140
Speaker 2: So in 1995, we get another, I think, pivotal example

574
00:30:50,240 --> 00:30:52,940
Speaker 2: of scarecrow horror, Night of the Scarecrow, in which a

575
00:30:53,020 --> 00:30:56,000
Speaker 2: scarecrow is possessed by a dead warlock And I think

576
00:30:56,020 --> 00:30:59,120
Speaker 2: the Scarecrow, by this point, is pretty firmly established as

577
00:30:59,160 --> 00:31:03,479
Speaker 2: a creepy motif of rural Americana. This particular film has

578
00:31:03,530 --> 00:31:06,709
Speaker 2: Steven Root in it, as well as Gary Lockwood and

579
00:31:06,750 --> 00:31:11,610
Speaker 2: John Lazar. And I haven't seen this one either, but

580
00:31:11,630 --> 00:31:14,950
Speaker 2: it certainly seems to stand out. And then after this,

581
00:31:15,390 --> 00:31:18,930
Speaker 2: you get a lot of less notable Scarecrow films. Certainly

582
00:31:18,970 --> 00:31:23,310
Speaker 2: when you get into even more like direct-to-video and digital filmmaking.

583
00:31:23,900 --> 00:31:26,620
Speaker 2: But nothing that I'm aware of really stands out here

584
00:31:26,680 --> 00:31:32,610
Speaker 2: as an important step in the clear subgenre of scarecrow horror,

585
00:31:32,910 --> 00:31:35,090
Speaker 2: with the possible exception of Harold, of course, and that

586
00:31:35,170 --> 00:31:38,400
Speaker 2: more recent cinematic adaptation that featured him.

587
00:31:38,790 --> 00:31:41,410
Speaker 3: There's one I was looking at before we started recording,

588
00:31:41,430 --> 00:31:45,360
Speaker 3: though I haven't seen. It's from, I think, the late 80s.

589
00:31:45,460 --> 00:31:49,210
Speaker 3: It's like a low budget horror film. called Scarecrows were

590
00:31:49,340 --> 00:31:52,260
Speaker 3: a team of mercenaries who were, you know, wearing body

591
00:31:52,360 --> 00:31:55,800
Speaker 3: armor and with machine guns. I think they're, I don't

592
00:31:55,820 --> 00:31:57,740
Speaker 3: know if they're doing a drug run or something, but

593
00:31:57,760 --> 00:32:00,760
Speaker 3: they like, they crash land a plane in a field

594
00:32:00,800 --> 00:32:02,440
Speaker 3: in the middle of the night and then there are

595
00:32:02,660 --> 00:32:04,990
Speaker 3: haunted Scarecrows in the field. I think they're just stuck

596
00:32:05,030 --> 00:32:06,090
Speaker 3: in the field the whole movie.

597
00:32:06,370 --> 00:32:08,230
Speaker 2: So it's like Predator except Scarecrows?

598
00:32:08,690 --> 00:32:09,969
Speaker 3: It seems like that's what it is.

599
00:32:10,490 --> 00:32:12,570
Speaker 2: Again, I haven't seen the whole thing. Except Scarecrows.

600
00:32:12,810 --> 00:32:13,050
Speaker 3: Yeah.

601
00:32:13,270 --> 00:32:16,200
Speaker 2: Yeah. All right. Well, Yeah, so if there are others

602
00:32:16,240 --> 00:32:18,660
Speaker 2: like that that we should know about, you know, notable entries,

603
00:32:18,680 --> 00:32:21,060
Speaker 2: certainly let us know. Because there are, of course, other

604
00:32:21,120 --> 00:32:23,480
Speaker 2: things that are not quite scarecrows, but are at least

605
00:32:23,550 --> 00:32:28,210
Speaker 2: scarecrow adjacent, like the monster, the Creeper, in the Jeepers

606
00:32:28,250 --> 00:32:31,510
Speaker 2: Creepers films. I think of these, I've only seen the

607
00:32:31,570 --> 00:32:35,150
Speaker 2: first one, which, you know, problematic aspects aside, I remember

608
00:32:35,190 --> 00:32:38,240
Speaker 2: enjoying back in the day. But in the second film,

609
00:32:38,280 --> 00:32:40,880
Speaker 2: which I have not seen, there is apparently a part

610
00:32:40,940 --> 00:32:44,070
Speaker 2: right near the beginning where the Creeper disguises itself as

611
00:32:44,130 --> 00:32:47,690
Speaker 2: a scarecrow in order to hide in plain sight. And

612
00:32:47,730 --> 00:32:49,610
Speaker 2: I included a still from you here, Joe. It does

613
00:32:49,630 --> 00:32:53,040
Speaker 2: look pretty, pretty perfect. It's like there he is up

614
00:32:53,060 --> 00:32:56,340
Speaker 2: on the poles looking like a scarecrow and even has

615
00:32:56,360 --> 00:32:58,560
Speaker 2: a crow on his arm.

616
00:32:59,520 --> 00:33:02,560
Speaker 3: Yeah. Invoking that idea that the crows are not afraid.

617
00:33:02,920 --> 00:33:04,300
Speaker 2: Yeah.

618
00:33:04,660 --> 00:33:06,360
Speaker 3: And in the crucifixion pose also.

619
00:33:06,420 --> 00:33:11,450
Speaker 2: Yes. Yeah. Which brings me to another example that is

620
00:33:11,510 --> 00:33:14,690
Speaker 2: at least Scarecrow adjacent, and that's the expansive Children of

621
00:33:14,730 --> 00:33:19,080
Speaker 2: the Corn film series. At the very least, these will

622
00:33:19,160 --> 00:33:24,180
Speaker 2: invoke some ideas of the Scarecrow. I haven't seen most

623
00:33:24,220 --> 00:33:25,780
Speaker 2: of these movies, but I'm a big fan of the

624
00:33:25,840 --> 00:33:31,080
Speaker 2: original 1977 Stephen King short story. It also doesn't explicitly

625
00:33:31,140 --> 00:33:35,700
Speaker 2: involve Scarecrows, but it has sacrificial victims that are hoisted

626
00:33:35,830 --> 00:33:40,390
Speaker 2: up or crucified amid the rows of corn. This one

627
00:33:40,410 --> 00:33:43,710
Speaker 2: was originally published, by the way, 1977 in the March

628
00:33:43,770 --> 00:33:47,489
Speaker 2: issue of Penthouse. And I pulled up an image from

629
00:33:47,570 --> 00:33:49,970
Speaker 2: inside it here for you, Joe. Folks can look this up.

630
00:33:49,990 --> 00:33:51,870
Speaker 2: If you just go to the Wikipedia entry for the

631
00:33:51,890 --> 00:33:54,930
Speaker 2: Stephen King short story, you'll see it. But there's this

632
00:33:55,030 --> 00:33:59,410
Speaker 2: illustration of like a human hand that has been like

633
00:33:59,470 --> 00:34:03,930
Speaker 2: sliced off. There's blood on the concrete. And the hand

634
00:34:03,970 --> 00:34:06,330
Speaker 2: is also made to look like a cob of corn.

635
00:34:06,450 --> 00:34:09,270
Speaker 3: Yeah, the forearm is corn and there are kernels all

636
00:34:09,330 --> 00:34:14,410
Speaker 3: over it. It has the leaves or the husk peeling off.

637
00:34:14,930 --> 00:34:19,219
Speaker 2: And this is an illustration by Don Ivan Punschatz, a

638
00:34:19,260 --> 00:34:21,960
Speaker 2: sci-fi and fantasy illustrator who, among many other things, did

639
00:34:21,980 --> 00:34:25,219
Speaker 2: the original cover art for the 1993 Doom video game.

640
00:34:26,040 --> 00:34:31,770
Speaker 3: Oh, weirdly enough, that image also is very... forearm centric,

641
00:34:31,969 --> 00:34:34,410
Speaker 3: you know, it's got, it's got the doomslayer like standing

642
00:34:34,469 --> 00:34:36,509
Speaker 3: on this mountain with all these demons clawing at him.

643
00:34:36,550 --> 00:34:39,009
Speaker 3: They're grabbing his forearm. My eye is always drawn to

644
00:34:39,050 --> 00:34:39,890
Speaker 3: the forearm there.

645
00:34:39,930 --> 00:34:40,069
Speaker 1: Yeah.

646
00:34:40,160 --> 00:34:42,140
Speaker 2: If you can draw forearms and hands more power to

647
00:34:42,160 --> 00:34:44,820
Speaker 2: power to you, I can't do it. Um, but anyway,

648
00:34:44,840 --> 00:34:47,259
Speaker 2: children of the corn, I, I'm to understand that by

649
00:34:47,380 --> 00:34:51,660
Speaker 2: children of the corn three colon urban harvest in 95,

650
00:34:51,660 --> 00:34:53,840
Speaker 2: we do get a scene where he who walks behind

651
00:34:53,890 --> 00:34:57,049
Speaker 2: the rose, the sort of nameless entity, uh, that the

652
00:34:57,090 --> 00:35:00,790
Speaker 2: children worship, he turned somebody into a scarecrow. Um, and

653
00:35:00,850 --> 00:35:04,750
Speaker 2: as the title implied, this, this, this movie, uh, makes the,

654
00:35:04,810 --> 00:35:08,130
Speaker 2: the classic horror franchise decision to move the action to

655
00:35:08,150 --> 00:35:10,720
Speaker 2: the big city because the idea here is a, a,

656
00:35:11,110 --> 00:35:15,860
Speaker 2: a Chicago couple adopt a couple of the corn cult kids, uh,

657
00:35:16,660 --> 00:35:19,820
Speaker 2: and I imagine it plays out in exactly the expected form.

658
00:35:20,200 --> 00:35:24,020
Speaker 3: Sounds really tasteful. Yeah. But, uh, but it's, yeah, go

659
00:35:24,040 --> 00:35:27,120
Speaker 3: into the big city. So it's like, um, it's like

660
00:35:27,160 --> 00:35:29,859
Speaker 3: beast master through the portal of time. Yeah. Yeah.

661
00:35:30,950 --> 00:35:33,569
Speaker 2: So I don't know. That's my overview of the Scarecrow film.

662
00:35:33,590 --> 00:35:35,810
Speaker 2: Certainly write in if you have other examples you want

663
00:35:35,830 --> 00:35:38,530
Speaker 2: to bring to mind or other examples from comic books

664
00:35:39,150 --> 00:35:43,180
Speaker 2: and other written media. But I think it's interesting that,

665
00:35:43,410 --> 00:35:46,219
Speaker 2: you know, certainly there's the long shadow cast by the

666
00:35:46,239 --> 00:35:48,900
Speaker 2: Wizard of Oz. And then outside of that, the recurring

667
00:35:48,940 --> 00:35:51,700
Speaker 2: theme with the Scarecrow seems to be one of oops,

668
00:35:51,739 --> 00:35:55,960
Speaker 2: Frankenstein or oops, Gollum, you know, where we have inadvertently

669
00:35:56,000 --> 00:35:58,990
Speaker 2: brought something to life or created a form that something

670
00:35:59,010 --> 00:36:00,560
Speaker 2: could occupy. Right.

671
00:36:00,620 --> 00:36:04,080
Speaker 3: So in Feathertop, which again is not explicitly horror, the

672
00:36:04,219 --> 00:36:07,180
Speaker 3: witch brings the scarecrow to life on purpose. But a

673
00:36:07,200 --> 00:36:11,790
Speaker 3: lot of these other stories are an inanimate object resembling

674
00:36:11,850 --> 00:36:15,930
Speaker 3: a human that is accidentally brought to life in some

675
00:36:16,830 --> 00:36:18,450
Speaker 3: catastrophic way. Yeah. Yeah.

676
00:36:29,630 --> 00:36:29,950
Speaker 2: All right.

677
00:36:30,070 --> 00:36:33,410
Speaker 3: So next, I just wanted to get into a somewhat

678
00:36:33,550 --> 00:36:37,630
Speaker 3: randomly ordered collection of ideas that came up because of

679
00:36:37,710 --> 00:36:41,230
Speaker 3: an article I read on the subject of scarecrows. This

680
00:36:41,290 --> 00:36:46,230
Speaker 3: article is called Scaring Crows, published in the journal Geographical

681
00:36:46,370 --> 00:36:50,640
Speaker 3: Review in the year, I believe, 2013 by an author

682
00:36:50,680 --> 00:36:55,160
Speaker 3: named Hayden Lorimer. Hayden Lorimer is a scholar affiliated with

683
00:36:55,200 --> 00:36:59,900
Speaker 3: the University of Edinburgh now. This is not a traditional

684
00:37:00,160 --> 00:37:04,480
Speaker 3: academic article, but sort of a mix of researched portions

685
00:37:04,800 --> 00:37:08,790
Speaker 3: and personal essay where the author talks about traveling around

686
00:37:08,830 --> 00:37:13,830
Speaker 3: the countryside looking for scarecrows and other alternative bird scaring methods.

687
00:37:14,370 --> 00:37:17,810
Speaker 3: Just to illustrate the personal essay qualities of this, it

688
00:37:17,850 --> 00:37:20,610
Speaker 3: starts off with a scene of the author on a train.

689
00:37:21,170 --> 00:37:24,330
Speaker 3: traveling through the countryside after wheat planting season. And he

690
00:37:24,430 --> 00:37:27,610
Speaker 3: notices that he doesn't see any scarecrows in the crop fields.

691
00:37:27,660 --> 00:37:30,420
Speaker 3: He believes they used to be more common. And he's like, well,

692
00:37:30,440 --> 00:37:32,360
Speaker 3: where'd they go? You know, can I find them somewhere

693
00:37:32,380 --> 00:37:34,420
Speaker 3: if I walk around in the country and look at

694
00:37:34,460 --> 00:37:39,219
Speaker 3: these farms that are farther afield, maybe to say. And

695
00:37:39,380 --> 00:37:41,740
Speaker 3: it's funny because this reminds me, you know, there's some

696
00:37:41,860 --> 00:37:44,830
Speaker 3: observations in this essay similar to things we talked about

697
00:37:46,210 --> 00:37:48,590
Speaker 3: Was it last year when we did our spooky trains

698
00:37:48,660 --> 00:37:51,980
Speaker 3: episodes where we talked about the creepiness of being on

699
00:37:52,020 --> 00:37:54,919
Speaker 3: a train and looking out into these, you know, quick

700
00:37:55,100 --> 00:37:58,299
Speaker 3: glimpses into other parts of the world, other settlements and

701
00:37:58,320 --> 00:38:01,010
Speaker 3: kind of wondering what goes on there and why that

702
00:38:01,070 --> 00:38:05,489
Speaker 3: often leads to think thoughts about horrors and, you know,

703
00:38:05,530 --> 00:38:06,250
Speaker 3: hidden things.

704
00:38:07,310 --> 00:38:09,469
Speaker 2: Yeah, always makes me think of that line from one

705
00:38:09,489 --> 00:38:11,710
Speaker 2: of the Sherlock Holmes stories where Sherlock is having the

706
00:38:11,730 --> 00:38:15,940
Speaker 2: exact same thought. Watson and Sherlock are discussing like, You know,

707
00:38:15,980 --> 00:38:17,799
Speaker 2: is it comforting to look out at the countryside from

708
00:38:17,840 --> 00:38:20,219
Speaker 2: the train or is it disturbing? Because who knows what

709
00:38:20,239 --> 00:38:21,399
Speaker 2: they're getting away with out here?

710
00:38:21,700 --> 00:38:25,580
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. But in this case, it's not so much

711
00:38:25,620 --> 00:38:28,000
Speaker 3: thinking about the people, but thinking about the scarecrows. Like

712
00:38:28,239 --> 00:38:30,700
Speaker 3: who knows what kind of effigies are hidden out there?

713
00:38:32,090 --> 00:38:36,510
Speaker 3: So the author, Lorimer, has some interesting observations and ideas

714
00:38:36,790 --> 00:38:40,870
Speaker 3: about how the physical form and implementation of the scarecrow

715
00:38:40,969 --> 00:38:45,890
Speaker 3: can contribute to the associations we attach to it. like

716
00:38:45,910 --> 00:38:49,230
Speaker 3: he talks about how the scarecrow's common posture with the

717
00:38:49,430 --> 00:38:53,930
Speaker 3: arms raised in an act of, quote, forever shooing things away,

718
00:38:54,650 --> 00:38:59,450
Speaker 3: gives the scarecrow the appearance of protectiveness and ownership, as

719
00:38:59,510 --> 00:39:02,109
Speaker 3: if to say, this field is mine and I will

720
00:39:02,150 --> 00:39:06,470
Speaker 3: defend it. I never really thought about the crucified posture

721
00:39:06,510 --> 00:39:08,770
Speaker 3: that way, but I think that's right. It does suggest

722
00:39:08,810 --> 00:39:12,230
Speaker 3: something of like, this expanse of the arms is like,

723
00:39:12,270 --> 00:39:15,400
Speaker 3: this is my domain and also has the arms raised

724
00:39:15,460 --> 00:39:18,580
Speaker 3: as if to strike. Yeah, yeah.

725
00:39:18,660 --> 00:39:21,160
Speaker 2: I think that's a good point because you're raising this

726
00:39:21,320 --> 00:39:24,689
Speaker 2: effigy in the same way that one might rise up some,

727
00:39:24,950 --> 00:39:28,110
Speaker 2: raise up some sort of a, you know, divine icon,

728
00:39:29,010 --> 00:39:30,279
Speaker 2: you know, and certainly in the same way you might

729
00:39:30,719 --> 00:39:34,600
Speaker 2: raise up a condemned criminal's body. But also, yeah, it's like,

730
00:39:34,800 --> 00:39:36,819
Speaker 2: this is the God of this field. I mean, we,

731
00:39:36,860 --> 00:39:37,840
Speaker 2: we can't help but read.

732
00:39:37,700 --> 00:39:40,739
Speaker 3: It that way. Yeah. It's, it's a claim of ownership.

733
00:39:40,760 --> 00:39:44,660
Speaker 3: And there's some interesting implications that flow from that. Like,

734
00:39:45,140 --> 00:39:48,840
Speaker 3: Because the scarecrow is not in reality the owner of

735
00:39:48,900 --> 00:39:52,319
Speaker 3: the field, but a false being that is built by

736
00:39:52,360 --> 00:39:55,550
Speaker 3: the owner or built on the owner's behalf. And yet

737
00:39:55,640 --> 00:39:59,569
Speaker 3: it has this appearance of like jealously protecting its own domain.

738
00:40:01,110 --> 00:40:04,810
Speaker 3: And so Lorimer notes that it is a common understanding

739
00:40:05,250 --> 00:40:08,549
Speaker 3: going back in tradition that the clothes of the scarecrow

740
00:40:09,130 --> 00:40:13,090
Speaker 3: are taken from, quote, a dead man's wardrobe. This is

741
00:40:13,310 --> 00:40:16,330
Speaker 3: actually present in that Hawthorne story. In Feathertop, it says

742
00:40:16,370 --> 00:40:19,390
Speaker 3: that the witch dresses the scarecrow in clothes that used

743
00:40:19,410 --> 00:40:22,610
Speaker 3: to belong to her dead husband. This does make some

744
00:40:22,730 --> 00:40:25,590
Speaker 3: practical sense, though when you really think about it, I

745
00:40:25,610 --> 00:40:28,290
Speaker 3: would guess that a lot of times the clothes people

746
00:40:28,330 --> 00:40:31,890
Speaker 3: put on a scarecrow end up there because the clothes

747
00:40:31,930 --> 00:40:34,450
Speaker 3: have reached their end, not because the person who used

748
00:40:34,489 --> 00:40:36,109
Speaker 3: to wear them has reached their end.

749
00:40:36,130 --> 00:40:40,009
Speaker 2: Yeah, you think of busted old overalls, things that don't

750
00:40:40,090 --> 00:40:42,250
Speaker 2: fit anymore, hand-me-downs.

751
00:40:43,430 --> 00:40:46,770
Speaker 3: But anyway, the idea that the scarecrow is dressed in

752
00:40:46,810 --> 00:40:49,230
Speaker 3: the garments of the dead is a pretty obvious reason

753
00:40:49,350 --> 00:40:53,290
Speaker 3: that you would associate a scarecrow with ghostly or frightening forces.

754
00:40:54,250 --> 00:40:58,339
Speaker 3: But then finally, Lorimer observes, quote, It is also his

755
00:40:58,520 --> 00:41:03,200
Speaker 3: sentinel position, stationed apart from and yet so clearly apart

756
00:41:03,219 --> 00:41:05,980
Speaker 3: of the rhythm of country life, that gives shape to

757
00:41:06,140 --> 00:41:11,880
Speaker 3: uncanny stories of possession and concealment, shifty movements and slow transformations.

758
00:41:12,370 --> 00:41:16,009
Speaker 3: When spotted, he is always alone, keeping no company, set

759
00:41:16,170 --> 00:41:19,270
Speaker 3: up to stand out over yonder, right in the heart

760
00:41:19,290 --> 00:41:21,740
Speaker 3: of the field or on the brow of a long ridge.

761
00:41:22,200 --> 00:41:27,200
Speaker 3: Gaunt and solitary, he is a watcher and a keeper. So, yeah,

762
00:41:27,460 --> 00:41:32,049
Speaker 3: interesting idea. Like human in shape, but always alone, made

763
00:41:32,160 --> 00:41:35,489
Speaker 3: for the service of human life, but standing apart from it.

764
00:41:36,250 --> 00:41:39,270
Speaker 3: We make a thing that's shaped like us. But then

765
00:41:39,290 --> 00:41:42,290
Speaker 3: we leave it out there. And that's kind of it.

766
00:41:42,310 --> 00:41:46,549
Speaker 3: There's something creepy about that, too. Yeah. Like it doesn't

767
00:41:46,570 --> 00:41:48,830
Speaker 3: get to come inside. I guess Harold gets to come inside.

768
00:41:48,850 --> 00:41:51,790
Speaker 2: Harold. Yeah. For some reason. Yeah. They want to they

769
00:41:51,830 --> 00:41:53,489
Speaker 2: want to protect them and or they just want to

770
00:41:53,530 --> 00:41:56,359
Speaker 2: mistreat him more than just simply leaving him outside.

771
00:41:58,010 --> 00:42:00,770
Speaker 3: So the author talks about his personal experiences, like riding

772
00:42:00,790 --> 00:42:03,890
Speaker 3: the trains, looking out for scarecrows, not really seeing any,

773
00:42:03,930 --> 00:42:07,129
Speaker 3: and then going out wandering and looking in fields, trying

774
00:42:07,170 --> 00:42:09,150
Speaker 3: to find them. He really doesn't find many at all.

775
00:42:09,190 --> 00:42:12,730
Speaker 3: He finds in one field, a red Ford Fiesta parked

776
00:42:12,770 --> 00:42:14,819
Speaker 3: in the middle of the field and wonders if this

777
00:42:14,890 --> 00:42:17,930
Speaker 3: is supposed to be some kind of scarecrow functional object.

778
00:42:18,950 --> 00:42:21,680
Speaker 3: He also mentions a plastic chemical jug on top of

779
00:42:21,739 --> 00:42:24,219
Speaker 3: a pole. And he's like, is that a scarecrow or,

780
00:42:24,880 --> 00:42:29,259
Speaker 3: you know, unclear. But another thing this essay gets into

781
00:42:29,360 --> 00:42:32,850
Speaker 3: is how the scarecrow is just so heavily loaded with

782
00:42:32,930 --> 00:42:36,690
Speaker 3: symbolic potential. Like it signifies lots of things that are

783
00:42:36,750 --> 00:42:41,549
Speaker 3: very almost mythically salient to us. Like it is a

784
00:42:41,969 --> 00:42:46,370
Speaker 3: labor saving device and thus it signifies craftiness and ingenuity.

785
00:42:46,390 --> 00:42:50,029
Speaker 3: It is a sort of a work of art in

786
00:42:50,050 --> 00:42:53,000
Speaker 3: the labor of human hands. It means something about work

787
00:42:53,100 --> 00:42:57,410
Speaker 3: and design and, It has this suite of agricultural symbols

788
00:42:57,469 --> 00:43:01,070
Speaker 3: like the harvest, of course, food and the lack thereof,

789
00:43:01,230 --> 00:43:04,799
Speaker 3: feast and famine, the return of the seasons, which is

790
00:43:04,840 --> 00:43:09,140
Speaker 3: heavily bound up in religious practices and beliefs, claims of

791
00:43:09,300 --> 00:43:14,000
Speaker 3: property ownership, the concept of the human form, of course,

792
00:43:14,080 --> 00:43:17,529
Speaker 3: and thus like an effigy for religious purposes or a

793
00:43:17,590 --> 00:43:20,450
Speaker 3: surrogate for human sacrifice, as it often is in these

794
00:43:20,510 --> 00:43:25,430
Speaker 3: later folk horror themed Scarecrow stories. But it's also made

795
00:43:25,530 --> 00:43:29,390
Speaker 3: of trash or items that have outlived their usefulness and

796
00:43:29,410 --> 00:43:35,620
Speaker 3: thus ideas about obsolescence and death. And Lorimer talks about

797
00:43:35,700 --> 00:43:38,320
Speaker 3: something that we touched on before, but the idea of

798
00:43:38,380 --> 00:43:41,640
Speaker 3: how before the 20th century, it was common in Britain

799
00:43:41,700 --> 00:43:44,799
Speaker 3: to use human bird scarers who would patrol the edges

800
00:43:44,860 --> 00:43:48,120
Speaker 3: of fields with like a rattle or a clapperboard. and

801
00:43:48,160 --> 00:43:50,160
Speaker 3: would chase the birds away, and that this was a

802
00:43:50,200 --> 00:43:53,120
Speaker 3: common job for children or for the elderly, people who

803
00:43:53,140 --> 00:43:55,250
Speaker 3: couldn't necessarily do other types of work.

804
00:43:56,010 --> 00:43:57,870
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I understand this was also a role in

805
00:43:57,910 --> 00:44:01,609
Speaker 2: different indigenous cultures as well. And really, if you have

806
00:44:01,650 --> 00:44:04,890
Speaker 2: the manpower or the child power to do it, this

807
00:44:05,050 --> 00:44:09,560
Speaker 2: is better than a stationary scarecrow, as long as the

808
00:44:09,600 --> 00:44:11,930
Speaker 2: children are staying busy with it.

809
00:44:12,239 --> 00:44:14,100
Speaker 3: He also.

810
00:44:15,980 --> 00:44:18,980
Speaker 3: Talks a good bit about this photographer, Colin Garrett, that

811
00:44:19,020 --> 00:44:21,840
Speaker 3: I mentioned earlier, who put out this book of photographs

812
00:44:21,880 --> 00:44:25,890
Speaker 3: of scarecrows. One thing Garrett claims is that scarecrows are

813
00:44:26,070 --> 00:44:31,470
Speaker 3: often the victims of violence and abuse. Talking about passersby,

814
00:44:32,390 --> 00:44:35,330
Speaker 3: Garrett says, quote, it is not uncommon for passersby to

815
00:44:35,430 --> 00:44:41,040
Speaker 3: attack a scarecrow, stabbing and mutilations being the most common.

816
00:44:41,060 --> 00:44:45,270
Speaker 3: And he also mentions people stealing scarecrows. something I haven't

817
00:44:45,290 --> 00:44:48,570
Speaker 3: really read about much in other sources, but that, I

818
00:44:48,610 --> 00:44:50,930
Speaker 3: don't know, I guess I can imagine that's true. Like

819
00:44:50,989 --> 00:44:52,410
Speaker 3: if there are a lot of people coming by, there's

820
00:44:52,430 --> 00:44:56,670
Speaker 3: just a temptation to attack or abuse a human shaped thing.

821
00:44:56,710 --> 00:44:58,810
Speaker 3: That's not really human and can't fight back.

822
00:44:59,210 --> 00:45:02,489
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, there are things like scarecrows that are

823
00:45:02,700 --> 00:45:06,200
Speaker 2: up all over our communities, especially this month. Uh, like

824
00:45:06,280 --> 00:45:09,239
Speaker 2: so many things that are not definitely scarecrows, they're still

825
00:45:09,260 --> 00:45:12,280
Speaker 2: like Halloween decorations that are in the form of a body.

826
00:45:12,870 --> 00:45:15,290
Speaker 2: And those things get carried off. They get stolen. They

827
00:45:15,310 --> 00:45:19,029
Speaker 2: get vandalized. And certainly you imagine a rural setting as well.

828
00:45:19,070 --> 00:45:21,700
Speaker 2: I mean, you get out into rural America and sometimes

829
00:45:21,739 --> 00:45:24,219
Speaker 2: it seems like you can barely find a road sign

830
00:45:24,260 --> 00:45:26,940
Speaker 2: that hasn't been shot with a shotgun or a rifle.

831
00:45:27,500 --> 00:45:32,370
Speaker 2: So it's not surprising that scarecrows would have an even

832
00:45:32,430 --> 00:45:35,450
Speaker 2: worse time if just a stop sign is getting this

833
00:45:35,489 --> 00:45:36,070
Speaker 2: kind of treatment.

834
00:45:36,750 --> 00:45:39,009
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely. And in fact, this will come up again

835
00:45:39,050 --> 00:45:40,850
Speaker 3: in just a minute when I want to get into

836
00:45:40,950 --> 00:45:44,410
Speaker 3: one of the namesakes of a scarecrow in British terminology

837
00:45:45,550 --> 00:45:50,989
Speaker 3: that was also an inanimate subject of abuse. Anyway, in

838
00:45:51,030 --> 00:45:54,940
Speaker 3: this essay, Lorimer briefly just mentions a collection of different

839
00:45:55,080 --> 00:45:58,140
Speaker 3: words in dialects of the British Isles that have been

840
00:45:58,260 --> 00:46:02,200
Speaker 3: used to refer to scarecrows. And I independently went down

841
00:46:02,239 --> 00:46:05,400
Speaker 3: a few rabbit holes looking at the etymology of these words,

842
00:46:05,420 --> 00:46:08,260
Speaker 3: like where they come from. And in almost every case,

843
00:46:08,700 --> 00:46:12,560
Speaker 3: there was something pretty interesting about them. So, for example,

844
00:46:12,800 --> 00:46:16,460
Speaker 3: in some historical dialects of Great Britain, a scarecrow was

845
00:46:16,540 --> 00:46:22,340
Speaker 3: called a mawkin. Interestingly, a word that was also a

846
00:46:22,440 --> 00:46:27,430
Speaker 3: derogatory or contemptuous term that would be used for an

847
00:46:28,200 --> 00:46:32,660
Speaker 3: unkempt lower-class woman, often a servant, or used for a

848
00:46:32,700 --> 00:46:38,620
Speaker 3: woman perceived as sexually promiscuous. The word Malkin traces back

849
00:46:38,760 --> 00:46:44,160
Speaker 3: to a name, Malkin, which was probably a diminutive form

850
00:46:44,320 --> 00:46:47,799
Speaker 3: of the personal name Maud. So I think the way

851
00:46:47,840 --> 00:46:50,620
Speaker 3: this works is a person in the Middle Ages might

852
00:46:50,660 --> 00:46:54,250
Speaker 3: have thought of Malkin the scullery maid Like we think

853
00:46:54,330 --> 00:46:59,400
Speaker 3: of Joe Sixpack or in the British context, Tommy the soldier.

854
00:46:59,420 --> 00:47:03,700
Speaker 3: So cases where like a personal name just comes to

855
00:47:03,739 --> 00:47:07,900
Speaker 3: be associated generically with a social class or with a

856
00:47:07,920 --> 00:47:08,600
Speaker 3: type of work.

857
00:47:09,780 --> 00:47:09,970
Speaker 2: Okay.

858
00:47:10,610 --> 00:47:13,730
Speaker 3: Anyway, it was weird to me that the same term

859
00:47:14,230 --> 00:47:17,710
Speaker 3: would be used for this derogatory way of speaking about

860
00:47:17,730 --> 00:47:20,950
Speaker 3: a woman of the lower social classes or a servant woman.

861
00:47:22,040 --> 00:47:24,219
Speaker 3: and also used for a scarecrow. And I was trying

862
00:47:24,260 --> 00:47:27,859
Speaker 3: to figure out more like what's the link there. There's

863
00:47:28,020 --> 00:47:30,360
Speaker 3: one possibility that really intrigued me. I want to be

864
00:47:30,420 --> 00:47:34,750
Speaker 3: clear that this is speculative. But in looking at these

865
00:47:34,810 --> 00:47:37,930
Speaker 3: word histories, I started to wonder if the connection between

866
00:47:37,950 --> 00:47:42,050
Speaker 3: the working class servant woman and a scarecrow might lie

867
00:47:42,090 --> 00:47:46,109
Speaker 3: in the object of a mop, which at the time

868
00:47:46,170 --> 00:47:48,509
Speaker 3: in question in the Middle Ages was would be a

869
00:47:48,510 --> 00:47:51,500
Speaker 3: bunch of rags on a stick, I think usually used

870
00:47:51,560 --> 00:47:55,060
Speaker 3: to clean difficult spaces like the inside of a baker's oven.

871
00:47:56,080 --> 00:48:00,050
Speaker 3: So according to the online etymology dictionary, this crude type

872
00:48:00,090 --> 00:48:04,330
Speaker 3: of mop was also called a mawkin in sources from

873
00:48:04,350 --> 00:48:08,050
Speaker 3: around the year 1400. So it could be that a

874
00:48:08,170 --> 00:48:13,040
Speaker 3: mawkin is this contemptuous term for an unkempt servant woman.

875
00:48:14,200 --> 00:48:18,600
Speaker 3: And it's also a servant woman's tool, though it's not

876
00:48:18,660 --> 00:48:22,020
Speaker 3: clear to me whether the mop gets this name because

877
00:48:22,120 --> 00:48:25,140
Speaker 3: the servant woman uses it or because it was thought

878
00:48:25,180 --> 00:48:27,339
Speaker 3: to look like her. Like a mop, I guess you

879
00:48:27,360 --> 00:48:30,850
Speaker 3: could think of as looking like a rough or untidy woman.

880
00:48:30,870 --> 00:48:35,509
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can easily anthropomorphize a mop by standing it

881
00:48:35,550 --> 00:48:39,150
Speaker 2: on end and then imagining the moppy bits being the hair.

882
00:48:39,170 --> 00:48:40,410
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.

883
00:48:40,790 --> 00:48:42,029
Speaker 2: Put some eyes on it and you're there.

884
00:48:42,450 --> 00:48:44,910
Speaker 3: So that's a possible association. It could be that or

885
00:48:44,930 --> 00:48:47,370
Speaker 3: it could be that the servant woman is using it.

886
00:48:47,910 --> 00:48:53,190
Speaker 3: And then finally, it could refer to a possible final

887
00:48:53,590 --> 00:48:57,430
Speaker 3: fate of the servant woman's tool as this false human

888
00:48:57,550 --> 00:49:00,270
Speaker 3: put out in the fields to guard the harvest from

889
00:49:00,290 --> 00:49:03,740
Speaker 3: the starlings and the wood pigeons. But there also could

890
00:49:03,780 --> 00:49:06,940
Speaker 3: be simpler routes of association. It could be that the

891
00:49:07,040 --> 00:49:10,200
Speaker 3: link between the scarecrow and the untidy woman is that

892
00:49:10,219 --> 00:49:11,580
Speaker 3: they both look like a mess.

893
00:49:12,770 --> 00:49:13,030
Speaker 2: Okay.

894
00:49:14,050 --> 00:49:15,920
Speaker 3: A theme that seems to recur in some of these

895
00:49:15,980 --> 00:49:19,009
Speaker 3: terms for scarecrows is a kind of meanness. Like they're

896
00:49:19,090 --> 00:49:24,660
Speaker 3: often linked to a word that has some, uh, derogatory

897
00:49:24,800 --> 00:49:28,299
Speaker 3: or mean implications in other usage. And I think that's

898
00:49:28,320 --> 00:49:32,200
Speaker 3: kind of interesting. Maybe it's just that a scarecrow is

899
00:49:32,260 --> 00:49:35,540
Speaker 3: a thing that is treated contemptuously, as we said it earlier.

900
00:49:36,040 --> 00:49:38,880
Speaker 3: It's like a human, but it doesn't get to come inside.

901
00:49:38,920 --> 00:49:41,160
Speaker 3: You leave it out there, and it just gets abused

902
00:49:41,219 --> 00:49:41,740
Speaker 3: by the weather.

903
00:49:41,760 --> 00:49:46,020
Speaker 2: Yeah, made of old things, left to just decay out

904
00:49:46,040 --> 00:49:47,259
Speaker 2: in the field.

905
00:49:48,320 --> 00:49:52,210
Speaker 3: And that theme will continue. So in some English dialects,

906
00:49:52,469 --> 00:49:57,589
Speaker 3: scarecrows were also apparently called jackalents. Now, I looked this

907
00:49:57,730 --> 00:50:01,270
Speaker 3: up in the Oxford reference entry on the term, and

908
00:50:01,670 --> 00:50:05,150
Speaker 3: I want to be clear that jack-o'-lent is not a

909
00:50:05,210 --> 00:50:11,279
Speaker 3: variation on jack-o'-lantern, a different thing. So apparently from the

910
00:50:11,540 --> 00:50:17,080
Speaker 3: late 15th to the 17th century, the jack-o'-lent was, quote,

911
00:50:17,340 --> 00:50:22,350
Speaker 3: the name for gaunt puppets made of straw, rags, and

912
00:50:22,489 --> 00:50:28,440
Speaker 3: herring skins personifying the Lenten Fast, which boys set up

913
00:50:28,580 --> 00:50:32,950
Speaker 3: on Ash Wednesday and pelted with heavy sticks and finally

914
00:50:33,150 --> 00:50:37,830
Speaker 3: burnt before Easter. Yeah. So that's from the Oxford reference entry.

915
00:50:38,430 --> 00:50:42,009
Speaker 3: So the context here is that, you know, on Ash Wednesday,

916
00:50:42,030 --> 00:50:45,140
Speaker 3: you begin your fast for the 40 days of Lent

917
00:50:45,219 --> 00:50:48,969
Speaker 3: in the Christian liturgical calendar. I think more often in

918
00:50:48,989 --> 00:50:52,290
Speaker 3: the Western churches, this fast would mean abstaining from meat,

919
00:50:52,450 --> 00:50:55,370
Speaker 3: though I think there could be other ways it manifested.

920
00:50:55,510 --> 00:50:57,270
Speaker 3: Most often, I think it means you don't eat meat.

921
00:50:58,450 --> 00:51:02,900
Speaker 3: And Lent is a time for penitence and sacrifice corresponding

922
00:51:02,940 --> 00:51:05,640
Speaker 3: to the 40 days that Christ spent fasting in the

923
00:51:05,680 --> 00:51:08,940
Speaker 3: desert in the gospel stories. And then it finishes with

924
00:51:09,020 --> 00:51:12,759
Speaker 3: Holy Week, which leads up to Easter Sunday. So in

925
00:51:12,780 --> 00:51:16,280
Speaker 3: this English tradition, at the beginning of Lent, It's saying

926
00:51:16,420 --> 00:51:20,640
Speaker 3: boys would make these weird skinny puppets out of rags

927
00:51:20,739 --> 00:51:24,890
Speaker 3: and straw and trash to symbolize the fasting season. And

928
00:51:25,390 --> 00:51:28,109
Speaker 3: then they would physically abuse the puppets. So you might

929
00:51:28,190 --> 00:51:30,569
Speaker 3: put them up in a public place and mistreat them.

930
00:51:30,590 --> 00:51:33,670
Speaker 3: And then finally, at the end of Lent, they would

931
00:51:33,750 --> 00:51:35,930
Speaker 3: burn these puppets. Wow.

932
00:51:36,690 --> 00:51:41,480
Speaker 2: So instead of just like silently suffering through Lent, you're

933
00:51:41,500 --> 00:51:44,219
Speaker 2: taking all that anger you're feeling at not getting to

934
00:51:44,300 --> 00:51:46,880
Speaker 2: eat meat. And you're taking it out on this effigy

935
00:51:46,900 --> 00:51:49,020
Speaker 2: that you've created. Like, way to go, Lynn. I wanted

936
00:51:49,040 --> 00:51:51,660
Speaker 2: to have bacon this morning. And you're just like pummeling

937
00:51:51,680 --> 00:51:52,980
Speaker 2: it with rocks and sticks.

938
00:51:53,760 --> 00:51:58,430
Speaker 3: I was wondering, like, yeah, why the violence directed toward

939
00:51:58,469 --> 00:52:00,930
Speaker 3: the puppets? Like, is it that they're hangry? Is that

940
00:52:00,969 --> 00:52:03,350
Speaker 3: literally it? I'm hangry and I need to take it

941
00:52:03,430 --> 00:52:05,450
Speaker 3: out on somebody, so I'm going to mistreat this puppet.

942
00:52:05,930 --> 00:52:08,049
Speaker 2: Yeah. I also love the detail about them being made

943
00:52:08,090 --> 00:52:10,540
Speaker 2: with herring skins as well, which makes me think these

944
00:52:10,680 --> 00:52:14,200
Speaker 2: things must have stank as well, reminding me of the

945
00:52:14,870 --> 00:52:19,090
Speaker 2: The role odor plays in the Japanese tradition of bird

946
00:52:19,170 --> 00:52:23,239
Speaker 2: scaring slash ghost scaring decoys.

947
00:52:23,640 --> 00:52:27,440
Speaker 3: Oh, I forgot about that. That is interesting. Interesting confluence. Yeah.

948
00:52:28,020 --> 00:52:30,839
Speaker 3: And there are other things that happen. I was looking

949
00:52:30,880 --> 00:52:33,930
Speaker 3: at other sources. Some sources mentioned that these puppets would

950
00:52:33,950 --> 00:52:37,350
Speaker 3: be shot at. I found a blog post that said

951
00:52:37,390 --> 00:52:40,969
Speaker 3: sometimes they get dumped down a chimney. People really just

952
00:52:41,010 --> 00:52:44,050
Speaker 3: being mean, parading it around like a Roman prisoner of war.

953
00:52:45,910 --> 00:52:48,870
Speaker 3: But whatever the reason, it might not have just been hanger.

954
00:52:48,890 --> 00:52:52,290
Speaker 3: It did make more sense to me when I read

955
00:52:52,350 --> 00:52:56,730
Speaker 3: that there are some sources that equate the Jackalent with

956
00:52:56,950 --> 00:53:01,090
Speaker 3: the biblical figure of Judas Iscariot, the disciple who betrays Christ.

957
00:53:02,370 --> 00:53:06,779
Speaker 3: But Jack does not always definitively seem to be Judas.

958
00:53:06,820 --> 00:53:10,000
Speaker 3: That seems, you know, some people are making this connection

959
00:53:10,100 --> 00:53:13,609
Speaker 3: some of the time. Ultimately, I think it is just

960
00:53:13,710 --> 00:53:16,629
Speaker 3: not known where this tradition comes from or exactly what

961
00:53:16,670 --> 00:53:19,930
Speaker 3: it means. One of the questions is, is it possible

962
00:53:19,989 --> 00:53:26,300
Speaker 3: the Jacqueline tradition preserves cultural memory of pagan traditions where

963
00:53:26,360 --> 00:53:29,859
Speaker 3: an effigy of some kind is sacrificed or abused?

964
00:53:30,840 --> 00:53:31,420
Speaker 2: Unclear.

965
00:53:31,580 --> 00:53:33,799
Speaker 3: It's a tempting idea, and it seems like a lot

966
00:53:33,820 --> 00:53:36,060
Speaker 3: of people want to go there, but I don't think

967
00:53:36,100 --> 00:53:39,280
Speaker 3: there's any direct evidence of this at all in Celtic

968
00:53:39,300 --> 00:53:42,419
Speaker 3: traditions of springtime, despite what we see in the Wicker Man.

969
00:53:43,180 --> 00:53:46,940
Speaker 3: This is more like a connection that modern people are

970
00:53:46,980 --> 00:53:49,759
Speaker 3: very tempted to make, but there's really no evidence for

971
00:53:49,800 --> 00:53:56,250
Speaker 3: it in the historical record. So the Oxford reference mentions

972
00:53:56,370 --> 00:54:01,290
Speaker 3: that the Jacqueline was sometimes a character played by living humans.

973
00:54:01,410 --> 00:54:05,430
Speaker 3: That sounds like no fun. It's in their references to

974
00:54:05,469 --> 00:54:08,830
Speaker 3: this in Shakespeare, actually, of people being like, well, you know,

975
00:54:09,070 --> 00:54:11,330
Speaker 3: I'm so hated, I might as well play the Jacqueline.

976
00:54:12,600 --> 00:54:17,000
Speaker 3: But it cites an Easter pageant or a Lenten pageant

977
00:54:17,040 --> 00:54:19,620
Speaker 3: or an Easter pageant, some religious play put on in

978
00:54:20,300 --> 00:54:25,940
Speaker 3: London in 1553, where Jacqueline was portrayed on his deathbed

979
00:54:26,020 --> 00:54:28,900
Speaker 3: giving confession to a priest. So, you know, like the

980
00:54:28,940 --> 00:54:30,989
Speaker 3: week leading up to Easter is the end of Lent.

981
00:54:31,010 --> 00:54:33,610
Speaker 3: So I guess it is literally like the death of

982
00:54:33,690 --> 00:54:37,379
Speaker 3: the Lenten season when you get toward Easter. The entry

983
00:54:37,420 --> 00:54:42,739
Speaker 3: also mentions a 17th century Oxfordshire tradition around Easter of

984
00:54:42,800 --> 00:54:47,989
Speaker 3: children singing the following rhyme. So they'd run around singing,' Herrings, herrings,

985
00:54:48,150 --> 00:54:52,750
Speaker 3: white and red, ten a penny, lint's dead. Rise, dame,

986
00:54:52,950 --> 00:54:55,430
Speaker 3: and give an egg, or else a piece of bacon.

987
00:54:55,989 --> 00:55:01,430
Speaker 3: One for Peter, two for Paul, three for jack-a-lint's all, away, lint, away.

988
00:55:02,080 --> 00:55:05,879
Speaker 3: So it's like trick-or-treating for meat and eggs. Give me meat.

989
00:55:05,980 --> 00:55:08,740
Speaker 3: Give me something good to eat. But it's trick-or-treating around

990
00:55:08,890 --> 00:55:13,009
Speaker 3: Easter for meat. And the entry mentions a text which

991
00:55:13,090 --> 00:55:16,790
Speaker 3: says that if the people in their houses didn't come

992
00:55:16,910 --> 00:55:19,830
Speaker 3: out and answer the trick-or-treaters, didn't give the kids some

993
00:55:19,870 --> 00:55:23,130
Speaker 3: bacon or whatever they wanted, the kids might cut the

994
00:55:23,190 --> 00:55:27,450
Speaker 3: latch of the house's door or stuff the keyhole with dirt, quote,

995
00:55:27,590 --> 00:55:31,230
Speaker 3: or leave some more nasty token of displeasure. What would

996
00:55:31,270 --> 00:55:31,569
Speaker 3: that be?

997
00:55:32,270 --> 00:55:37,660
Speaker 2: I think my fellow vegetarians and also vegans would probably observe, like, man,

998
00:55:37,700 --> 00:55:40,580
Speaker 2: you even suggest that meat eaters not eat meat and

999
00:55:40,620 --> 00:55:42,080
Speaker 2: they just lose their mind.

1000
00:55:44,600 --> 00:55:48,650
Speaker 3: So anyway, it is not hard to see how the

1001
00:55:48,690 --> 00:55:51,190
Speaker 3: same word would come to be used for a scarecrow.

1002
00:55:51,230 --> 00:55:54,790
Speaker 3: You know, two different kinds of rough or ragged human effigies.

1003
00:55:54,810 --> 00:55:55,150
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.

1004
00:55:56,850 --> 00:55:59,890
Speaker 3: Uh, I didn't find any evidence that like the jackalent

1005
00:55:59,989 --> 00:56:02,920
Speaker 3: was literally a scarecrow. So I think it's probably just this,

1006
00:56:03,200 --> 00:56:05,700
Speaker 3: you know, the fact that, you know, two different kinds

1007
00:56:05,719 --> 00:56:08,760
Speaker 3: of straw effigies, uh, we'll just start calling a scarecrow

1008
00:56:08,800 --> 00:56:14,790
Speaker 3: a jackalent. Yeah. A few other dialectical terms. One is hodmodod.

1009
00:56:14,969 --> 00:56:17,690
Speaker 3: So that's a scarecrow, but also in some usage, it

1010
00:56:17,750 --> 00:56:20,880
Speaker 3: means a snail or sometimes a hedgehog.

1011
00:56:22,090 --> 00:56:24,799
Speaker 2: Well, you know, you have those bits of straw poking out.

1012
00:56:24,980 --> 00:56:27,600
Speaker 2: It kind of reminds one of a hedgehog, I guess. Yeah. Yeah.

1013
00:56:28,219 --> 00:56:30,920
Speaker 3: I don't know if that's the connection. I didn't look

1014
00:56:30,960 --> 00:56:33,080
Speaker 3: as deeply into this one or didn't find good sources

1015
00:56:33,180 --> 00:56:37,500
Speaker 3: on it. Now, this one is really weird. In some

1016
00:56:37,620 --> 00:56:43,020
Speaker 3: English dialects, a scarecrow was a moment, a generic word

1017
00:56:43,140 --> 00:56:46,420
Speaker 3: for a lifeless human replica that can also be used

1018
00:56:46,480 --> 00:56:49,480
Speaker 3: to describe a doll or a puppet. So thing shaped

1019
00:56:49,540 --> 00:56:52,310
Speaker 3: like a human, but not a real human. could be doll,

1020
00:56:52,350 --> 00:56:55,670
Speaker 3: could be puppet, could be scarecrow. And the really bizarre

1021
00:56:55,710 --> 00:56:58,890
Speaker 3: thing about this one is the etymology. As documented in

1022
00:56:58,930 --> 00:57:03,950
Speaker 3: the Merriam-Webster entry, it is derived from a Middle English

1023
00:57:04,050 --> 00:57:09,620
Speaker 3: version of the name Muhammad, referring to the prophet Muhammad,

1024
00:57:10,060 --> 00:57:14,640
Speaker 3: based on the very incorrect belief that was apparently widely

1025
00:57:14,700 --> 00:57:20,600
Speaker 3: held among European Christians, medieval European Christians, that Muslims worshipped

1026
00:57:21,030 --> 00:57:25,480
Speaker 3: idols of the prophet Muhammad. This seems like a, if

1027
00:57:25,520 --> 00:57:28,040
Speaker 3: you have modern knowledge of religions, this seems like a

1028
00:57:28,100 --> 00:57:31,280
Speaker 3: particularly weird thing to get wrong since the Quran is

1029
00:57:31,360 --> 00:57:35,930
Speaker 3: like very strongly worded and it's condemnation of idol worship.

1030
00:57:36,750 --> 00:57:40,530
Speaker 3: But medieval Christians had a lot of misunderstandings about other

1031
00:57:40,550 --> 00:57:43,880
Speaker 3: religions and And another one is just there's literature at

1032
00:57:43,920 --> 00:57:49,140
Speaker 3: the time reflecting the common European belief that Islam was polytheistic, which, again,

1033
00:57:49,200 --> 00:57:50,940
Speaker 3: it is very decidedly not.

1034
00:57:51,120 --> 00:57:54,320
Speaker 2: Couldn't be more incorrect on both of these counts. It

1035
00:57:54,340 --> 00:57:56,220
Speaker 2: does remind me a little bit. We've discussed this. I

1036
00:57:56,220 --> 00:57:57,880
Speaker 2: don't know if we discussed this in core stuff to

1037
00:57:57,900 --> 00:58:01,060
Speaker 2: blow your mind. We may have discussed this primarily in

1038
00:58:01,180 --> 00:58:04,360
Speaker 2: our Weird House Cinema episode about one of the blind

1039
00:58:04,380 --> 00:58:06,160
Speaker 2: dead films about undead Templars.

1040
00:58:06,740 --> 00:58:06,880
Speaker 3: But.

1041
00:58:07,450 --> 00:58:10,410
Speaker 2: There was one of the charges against the, the poor

1042
00:58:10,450 --> 00:58:13,590
Speaker 2: Knights of the temple of Solomon was that they worshiped

1043
00:58:13,630 --> 00:58:15,690
Speaker 2: like a head. And there was, you know, some, there

1044
00:58:15,710 --> 00:58:18,450
Speaker 2: were often all these like at times kind of, you know,

1045
00:58:18,590 --> 00:58:24,200
Speaker 2: convoluted ideas about the, the Knights in question, like having

1046
00:58:24,360 --> 00:58:28,720
Speaker 2: like taken up some imagined form of Islam as their

1047
00:58:28,780 --> 00:58:32,380
Speaker 2: own personal faith. But again, a highly incorrect and, and

1048
00:58:32,440 --> 00:58:36,450
Speaker 2: misinformed idea of what Islam actually was and is.

1049
00:58:36,890 --> 00:58:41,740
Speaker 3: Well, Interestingly, this brings us back to our conversation from

1050
00:58:41,780 --> 00:58:44,930
Speaker 3: the first scarecrow episode about that passage in Jeremiah where,

1051
00:58:45,450 --> 00:58:48,170
Speaker 3: you know, in some translations of the Bible, the prophet

1052
00:58:48,230 --> 00:58:52,190
Speaker 3: compares the idols of other religions to scarecrows because he's

1053
00:58:52,290 --> 00:58:55,650
Speaker 3: talking about them as like his view is they're manufactured

1054
00:58:55,730 --> 00:58:58,530
Speaker 3: things that have no real power. They only work as

1055
00:58:58,590 --> 00:59:03,640
Speaker 3: a deception, much like a scarecrow. But yeah, I think

1056
00:59:03,860 --> 00:59:09,920
Speaker 3: that connection maybe explains it because for medieval European Christians

1057
00:59:10,280 --> 00:59:15,250
Speaker 3: who don't really know anything about other religions, if you're

1058
00:59:15,490 --> 00:59:19,470
Speaker 3: faced with the concept of another religion... Maybe your only

1059
00:59:19,530 --> 00:59:22,430
Speaker 3: real reference points are the other religions talked about in

1060
00:59:22,450 --> 00:59:26,030
Speaker 3: the Bible, which are described as polytheistic idolatry.

1061
00:59:26,070 --> 00:59:28,270
Speaker 2: They're like, what are we doing? We're trashing other religions? Good,

1062
00:59:28,310 --> 00:59:29,710
Speaker 2: I know all the jokes. And they're like, no, those

1063
00:59:29,730 --> 00:59:32,670
Speaker 2: jokes don't actually apply. Those are written for different circumstances.

1064
00:59:32,710 --> 00:59:35,680
Speaker 2: And we're also ill-conceived to begin with.

1065
00:59:36,070 --> 00:59:39,720
Speaker 3: Yeah. So anyway, there is another cluster of terms. I

1066
00:59:39,760 --> 00:59:43,040
Speaker 3: think these are particularly in Scotland. You've got like the

1067
00:59:43,140 --> 00:59:48,650
Speaker 3: tatty bogle, also related idea of the tatty dooley. The

1068
00:59:48,670 --> 00:59:50,770
Speaker 3: way I understand this is it's sort of like saying

1069
00:59:50,930 --> 00:59:57,210
Speaker 3: potato goblin. So Taddy meant potato, and Dooley and Bogle

1070
00:59:57,310 --> 01:00:00,930
Speaker 3: were different words that could refer to types of beings

1071
01:00:00,970 --> 01:00:05,070
Speaker 3: like hobgoblins or ghosts or specters. So the monster that

1072
01:00:05,090 --> 01:00:07,350
Speaker 3: you put up in the potato field to scare birds

1073
01:00:07,410 --> 01:00:11,540
Speaker 3: away would be the Taddy Bogle. And another variation on

1074
01:00:11,580 --> 01:00:25,290
Speaker 3: this is the Craw Bogle, the crow goblin. So that's

1075
01:00:25,310 --> 01:00:28,890
Speaker 3: what I've got on etymology. But there's another question that

1076
01:00:29,070 --> 01:00:34,010
Speaker 3: comes up briefly in Lorimer's essay that I kind of

1077
01:00:35,050 --> 01:00:39,740
Speaker 3: really started thinking about is the question of, are scarecrows

1078
01:00:40,040 --> 01:00:43,300
Speaker 3: an art form? I think this is interesting because it

1079
01:00:43,420 --> 01:00:48,200
Speaker 3: draws attention to the outer boundaries of the category. For example,

1080
01:00:48,280 --> 01:00:52,530
Speaker 3: I think it's totally obvious and uncontroversial that a scarecrow

1081
01:00:52,830 --> 01:00:55,950
Speaker 3: could be considered a work of art. Like if it

1082
01:00:56,050 --> 01:00:59,820
Speaker 3: were made with some kind of deliberate care and treated

1083
01:00:59,890 --> 01:01:02,800
Speaker 3: like a sculpture shown to people, like the person who

1084
01:01:02,880 --> 01:01:05,700
Speaker 3: made it thought of it as art and meant for

1085
01:01:05,740 --> 01:01:07,820
Speaker 3: other people to see it, then we would think, yeah,

1086
01:01:07,860 --> 01:01:08,720
Speaker 3: that's art. Yeah.

1087
01:01:08,740 --> 01:01:11,880
Speaker 2: It's a prime area for outsider art to emerge where someone,

1088
01:01:12,200 --> 01:01:15,959
Speaker 2: if someone approaches the construction of a scarecrow with any

1089
01:01:16,300 --> 01:01:21,400
Speaker 2: level of artistic event, They're trying to make something aesthetically

1090
01:01:21,460 --> 01:01:25,020
Speaker 2: pleasing or entail some sort of idea that they have. Right.

1091
01:01:25,160 --> 01:01:28,690
Speaker 3: But then you think about, like, take some of the

1092
01:01:28,730 --> 01:01:32,630
Speaker 3: characteristics of that scenario away. Would a scarecrow that was

1093
01:01:32,970 --> 01:01:37,250
Speaker 3: made with some care, but not intended to be displayed

1094
01:01:37,290 --> 01:01:40,240
Speaker 3: in front of people, but only meant for the function

1095
01:01:40,260 --> 01:01:44,460
Speaker 3: of scaring birds, still potentially be a work of art?

1096
01:01:44,600 --> 01:01:46,660
Speaker 3: Like a work of art perhaps seen only by the

1097
01:01:46,800 --> 01:01:50,860
Speaker 3: artist and by the bird? You know, you can think

1098
01:01:50,900 --> 01:01:53,040
Speaker 3: about these examples. You know, we looked at some pictures

1099
01:01:53,120 --> 01:01:58,380
Speaker 3: of them in that Guardian article of scarecrows that don't

1100
01:01:58,460 --> 01:02:00,700
Speaker 3: seem to have been made for people to look at,

1101
01:02:00,740 --> 01:02:04,100
Speaker 3: and yet there is something somewhat evocative about them. Yeah.

1102
01:02:04,220 --> 01:02:07,500
Speaker 2: Of course, once something is photographed, it can and does

1103
01:02:07,540 --> 01:02:10,320
Speaker 2: become art. So there is that aspect to it as well.

1104
01:02:10,360 --> 01:02:12,430
Speaker 2: It becomes a little complicated when you get into the medium.

1105
01:02:12,450 --> 01:02:15,590
Speaker 2: But yeah, and then sort of a larger discussion is

1106
01:02:15,610 --> 01:02:18,550
Speaker 2: the thing that is not art, if perceived, as art is,

1107
01:02:18,650 --> 01:02:22,090
Speaker 2: is it now art? Um, I say, sure. I'm not,

1108
01:02:22,150 --> 01:02:24,430
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna, I'm gonna die on the hill of

1109
01:02:24,470 --> 01:02:27,630
Speaker 2: telling people not to call things art as long as nobody's,

1110
01:02:27,670 --> 01:02:31,820
Speaker 2: you know, hurt or deeply offended in the process, you know? Well, yeah.

1111
01:02:32,070 --> 01:02:34,020
Speaker 3: I mean, so I think you and I have liberal

1112
01:02:34,060 --> 01:02:37,280
Speaker 3: sensibilities about art where we tend to want to say,

1113
01:02:37,320 --> 01:02:39,840
Speaker 3: you know, basically anything that you want to think about

1114
01:02:39,940 --> 01:02:42,020
Speaker 3: as art could be art, you know, we have pretty

1115
01:02:42,100 --> 01:02:45,640
Speaker 3: expansive boundaries there. So the other side of it, I

1116
01:02:45,700 --> 01:02:50,440
Speaker 3: think is, um, Most people would probably not say that

1117
01:02:50,640 --> 01:02:54,860
Speaker 3: like a device that emits lasers or sonic booms over

1118
01:02:54,900 --> 01:02:58,010
Speaker 3: a field to scatter birds is art, right? That just

1119
01:02:58,030 --> 01:03:02,610
Speaker 3: seems more like a functional machine. And a scarecrow is

1120
01:03:02,650 --> 01:03:05,290
Speaker 3: often meant to do the same thing that is. It's

1121
01:03:05,310 --> 01:03:08,390
Speaker 3: supposed to be a functional machine. And so like, what

1122
01:03:08,470 --> 01:03:10,050
Speaker 3: is it about the scarecrow? Is it the fact that

1123
01:03:10,090 --> 01:03:14,400
Speaker 3: it's made by a single person with lower tech? means

1124
01:03:14,460 --> 01:03:17,220
Speaker 3: that it's not mass produced is maybe is that what

1125
01:03:17,240 --> 01:03:19,680
Speaker 3: makes that art versus the bird scaring machine?

1126
01:03:19,700 --> 01:03:22,850
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's bespoke. And then I guess that with the

1127
01:03:22,890 --> 01:03:25,790
Speaker 2: bird scaring machine, it's also worth noting that we're assuming

1128
01:03:25,830 --> 01:03:30,370
Speaker 2: that there is no element of design that that would

1129
01:03:30,450 --> 01:03:32,790
Speaker 2: lend itself to being considered art, because there are things

1130
01:03:32,810 --> 01:03:36,490
Speaker 2: that were mass produced that were designed by by artists. And,

1131
01:03:36,510 --> 01:03:39,210
Speaker 2: you know, I'm thinking of recently went to the Noguchi

1132
01:03:39,270 --> 01:03:42,350
Speaker 2: exhibit while it was still running here at Atlanta's High Museum.

1133
01:03:42,880 --> 01:03:45,060
Speaker 2: And like there is an early version of the baby

1134
01:03:45,100 --> 01:03:49,900
Speaker 2: monitor that he designed. And, you know, it's beautiful and

1135
01:03:50,180 --> 01:03:53,980
Speaker 2: it's on display. Like it was an exhibit about design

1136
01:03:54,020 --> 01:03:57,900
Speaker 2: and art and the interface between these two ideas. But

1137
01:03:57,920 --> 01:03:59,720
Speaker 2: I think there's a strong case to be said that's art.

1138
01:04:00,220 --> 01:04:02,750
Speaker 2: So it's possible that there could be some sort of

1139
01:04:02,770 --> 01:04:07,970
Speaker 2: a soulless crop boom device that had some level of

1140
01:04:08,030 --> 01:04:11,130
Speaker 2: design in its carapace that we could say is artistic

1141
01:04:11,170 --> 01:04:11,570
Speaker 2: in nature.

1142
01:04:12,310 --> 01:04:14,790
Speaker 3: I don't know if they're still as widely used or

1143
01:04:14,830 --> 01:04:17,690
Speaker 3: as controversial today as they were when this essay came out,

1144
01:04:17,730 --> 01:04:21,570
Speaker 3: but Lorimer talks extensively. There's a whole section in it

1145
01:04:21,990 --> 01:04:25,390
Speaker 3: about how much a lot of people hate these sonic

1146
01:04:25,470 --> 01:04:29,169
Speaker 3: bird scaring devices, like the propane-powered gas guns that emit

1147
01:04:29,270 --> 01:04:32,730
Speaker 3: bangs and booms over the field to scare birds away.

1148
01:04:32,770 --> 01:04:36,860
Speaker 3: And there are groups organized to be like, outlaw, ban

1149
01:04:36,890 --> 01:04:39,160
Speaker 3: these things. I hate them. They're ruining my life.

1150
01:04:39,570 --> 01:04:42,120
Speaker 2: But if you put one in the Tate Modern... instantly

1151
01:04:42,160 --> 01:04:47,870
Speaker 2: it's art i guess the context is so important here yeah.

1152
01:04:46,610 --> 01:04:51,810
Speaker 3: Uh yeah and there is a weird offbeat beauty to

1153
01:04:52,510 --> 01:04:56,310
Speaker 3: non-human shaped bird scaring devices like one thing that you'll

1154
01:04:56,350 --> 01:05:00,010
Speaker 3: see in some uh gardens or crop fields is people

1155
01:05:00,030 --> 01:05:03,990
Speaker 3: will hang up compact discs from string and apparently the

1156
01:05:04,030 --> 01:05:06,090
Speaker 3: way those kind of turn as they blow in the

1157
01:05:06,130 --> 01:05:09,550
Speaker 3: breeze they catch the light in interesting ways and These

1158
01:05:09,610 --> 01:05:12,800
Speaker 3: chaotic patterns of glint and glare are thought to scare

1159
01:05:12,820 --> 01:05:15,419
Speaker 3: birds away. There is something kind of beautiful about that.

1160
01:05:15,480 --> 01:05:18,780
Speaker 3: Even though this old CD is trash, it's being repurposed.

1161
01:05:18,860 --> 01:05:21,060
Speaker 3: It's not shaped like a human. There seems to be

1162
01:05:21,120 --> 01:05:24,350
Speaker 3: obviously a lot less design in that than like putting

1163
01:05:24,390 --> 01:05:27,490
Speaker 3: together a body shaped thing with a face. But still,

1164
01:05:27,770 --> 01:05:29,169
Speaker 3: it's kind of beautiful in a way.

1165
01:05:29,550 --> 01:05:32,130
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. As long as I don't see that it's

1166
01:05:32,170 --> 01:05:36,660
Speaker 2: just all like Friends DVD discs from the box set

1167
01:05:36,680 --> 01:05:38,850
Speaker 2: or something. I don't know. It's like if I could

1168
01:05:38,870 --> 01:05:40,770
Speaker 2: tell what they were, they might lose some of the appeal.

1169
01:05:41,230 --> 01:05:43,640
Speaker 3: That's what happened to all the DVDs of The Amazing

1170
01:05:43,680 --> 01:05:44,490
Speaker 3: Colossal Man.

1171
01:05:44,510 --> 01:05:46,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, there they are. They're being used to scare birds.

1172
01:05:46,980 --> 01:05:49,020
Speaker 2: And that one maybe should scare birds. Maybe I'm okay

1173
01:05:49,040 --> 01:05:51,380
Speaker 2: with that one, except I would like to have the DVD.

1174
01:05:52,280 --> 01:05:54,930
Speaker 3: One last idea I just wanted to mention from this

1175
01:05:55,010 --> 01:05:59,750
Speaker 3: essay is, so the author, Lorimer, can't really find any

1176
01:05:59,790 --> 01:06:03,180
Speaker 3: classical scarecrows out in the farm fields that he explores. Uh,

1177
01:06:03,230 --> 01:06:06,410
Speaker 3: but he ends up seeing one not far at all

1178
01:06:06,490 --> 01:06:08,930
Speaker 3: from his own house in a garden in his neighborhood.

1179
01:06:09,630 --> 01:06:13,010
Speaker 3: And because of this, he ends up comparing the scarecrow to.

1180
01:06:13,910 --> 01:06:18,750
Speaker 3: Types of wild animals that now thrive in disrupted urban landscapes,

1181
01:06:18,810 --> 01:06:21,750
Speaker 3: like the Fox in Britain and the American context, I

1182
01:06:21,770 --> 01:06:25,830
Speaker 3: think of raccoons and coyotes, things that once lived out

1183
01:06:25,910 --> 01:06:30,530
Speaker 3: there in the country standing apart. And now they have

1184
01:06:30,650 --> 01:06:33,730
Speaker 3: found a niche in the city. And the scarecrow is

1185
01:06:33,850 --> 01:06:39,260
Speaker 3: kind of like that, isn't it? The traditional static scarecrow

1186
01:06:39,340 --> 01:06:41,800
Speaker 3: is not going to be as common in the farm fields.

1187
01:06:42,560 --> 01:06:45,400
Speaker 3: And there are other methods that have replaced it, higher

1188
01:06:45,440 --> 01:06:50,020
Speaker 3: tech methods often. But as a domestic and cultural artifact,

1189
01:06:50,040 --> 01:06:52,380
Speaker 3: we've brought it in. We've brought it into the metropole.

1190
01:06:52,480 --> 01:06:55,830
Speaker 3: And now it serves to remind us of things. Maybe

1191
01:06:56,330 --> 01:06:58,730
Speaker 3: it has seasonal implications or it's fun to be a

1192
01:06:58,970 --> 01:07:00,790
Speaker 3: little bit scary or to be nostalgic.

1193
01:07:01,160 --> 01:07:03,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, because it's like what we've been saying, when you

1194
01:07:03,060 --> 01:07:06,100
Speaker 2: create the scarecrow, you're kind of creating something that's now

1195
01:07:06,180 --> 01:07:08,280
Speaker 2: out of your control. Like the way we think about

1196
01:07:08,320 --> 01:07:10,180
Speaker 2: it and the different associations that it kind of like

1197
01:07:10,510 --> 01:07:15,330
Speaker 2: pulls into its gravitational field, you know. So, yeah, it

1198
01:07:15,370 --> 01:07:17,270
Speaker 2: makes sense that then, you know, we have no reason

1199
01:07:17,290 --> 01:07:20,390
Speaker 2: to make them anymore or even maybe just partial reasons.

1200
01:07:20,430 --> 01:07:21,830
Speaker 2: And we're just going to keep doing it in one

1201
01:07:21,890 --> 01:07:22,510
Speaker 2: form or another.

1202
01:07:23,290 --> 01:07:25,630
Speaker 3: One last thing I wanted to mention quickly is an

1203
01:07:25,830 --> 01:07:29,150
Speaker 3: essay I came across by a professor named Dr. Juliet

1204
01:07:29,290 --> 01:07:33,040
Speaker 3: Wood called The Great Scarecrow in Days Long Ago, Gothic

1205
01:07:33,140 --> 01:07:37,440
Speaker 3: Myths and Family Festivals. This essay, I'm not sure if

1206
01:07:37,480 --> 01:07:39,780
Speaker 3: this was ever published in a journal or presented at

1207
01:07:39,820 --> 01:07:42,640
Speaker 3: a conference. I found it just hosted on the author's website.

1208
01:07:43,260 --> 01:07:45,820
Speaker 3: But the author, Juliet Wood, is a professor at Cardiff

1209
01:07:45,880 --> 01:07:51,250
Speaker 3: University in Wales. She specializes in Celtic folklore. And it

1210
01:07:51,270 --> 01:07:53,210
Speaker 3: gets into a bunch of ideas about the history of

1211
01:07:53,250 --> 01:07:57,110
Speaker 3: the scarecrow, how it has become less functional and more

1212
01:07:57,170 --> 01:08:02,220
Speaker 3: symbolic over time. She also gets into the idea that

1213
01:08:02,260 --> 01:08:05,420
Speaker 3: there really is no clear link between the scarecrow and

1214
01:08:06,520 --> 01:08:13,180
Speaker 3: pre-Christian pagan practices like people sometimes suggest. But she does argue,

1215
01:08:13,200 --> 01:08:15,950
Speaker 3: I thought this was interesting, that a better academic framework

1216
01:08:15,990 --> 01:08:20,940
Speaker 3: for understanding the powerful, modern, symbolic meaning of the scarecrow

1217
01:08:21,450 --> 01:08:24,910
Speaker 3: is not this link to paganism, but is the concept

1218
01:08:25,070 --> 01:08:29,370
Speaker 3: of liminality. We've sort of gotten at this already, but

1219
01:08:29,830 --> 01:08:33,880
Speaker 3: to make it explicit, liminality, as used in academic theory,

1220
01:08:33,939 --> 01:08:37,500
Speaker 3: has to do with the properties of being in-between, whether

1221
01:08:37,540 --> 01:08:41,540
Speaker 3: in a physical, temporal, or conceptual sense. It can refer

1222
01:08:41,560 --> 01:08:44,690
Speaker 3: to things that don't cleanly belong in one place or

1223
01:08:44,740 --> 01:08:49,400
Speaker 3: another or somehow sit in-between. or things that borrow characteristics

1224
01:08:49,470 --> 01:08:53,790
Speaker 3: from opposed categories. And Wood writes, quote, this is a

1225
01:08:53,850 --> 01:08:57,900
Speaker 3: disposable figure made of castoffs set up on cultivated land

1226
01:08:58,270 --> 01:09:02,559
Speaker 3: to prevent the incursion of wild nature. And in this way,

1227
01:09:02,620 --> 01:09:04,840
Speaker 3: she compares it to other liminal figures, like as you

1228
01:09:04,860 --> 01:09:05,800
Speaker 3: brought up earlier, Rob.

1229
01:09:05,820 --> 01:09:06,400
Speaker 2: The golem.

1230
01:09:08,380 --> 01:09:12,259
Speaker 3: But more on the positive end of associations, Wood mentions

1231
01:09:12,320 --> 01:09:15,600
Speaker 3: in one brief passage here that the scarecrow today is

1232
01:09:15,700 --> 01:09:18,830
Speaker 3: often used to invoke nostalgia, you know, the way you

1233
01:09:18,870 --> 01:09:23,330
Speaker 3: see it at craft festivals or Halloween celebrations, you know,

1234
01:09:23,410 --> 01:09:27,570
Speaker 3: fall harvest time things as a symbol of an earlier

1235
01:09:27,790 --> 01:09:31,030
Speaker 3: agricultural way of life where things were made by hand

1236
01:09:31,110 --> 01:09:34,410
Speaker 3: and not mass produced. And so there's something that feels

1237
01:09:34,470 --> 01:09:37,980
Speaker 3: very down home about the scarecrow in opposition to its

1238
01:09:38,060 --> 01:09:42,960
Speaker 3: creepiness factor. And I wonder, is this just a sort

1239
01:09:42,979 --> 01:09:47,420
Speaker 3: of different unconnected aspect of the scarecrow's cultural meaning or

1240
01:09:48,010 --> 01:09:53,170
Speaker 3: Or is the nostalgic down-hominess somehow linked to what makes

1241
01:09:53,229 --> 01:09:57,410
Speaker 3: it a ripe subject for horror? Because a scarecrow is

1242
01:09:57,470 --> 01:10:00,599
Speaker 3: not only liminal, like a thing that looks human but

1243
01:10:00,720 --> 01:10:05,260
Speaker 3: is not, they're also a tool from a time gone by,

1244
01:10:05,280 --> 01:10:08,280
Speaker 3: a tool to do a job that still needs doing,

1245
01:10:08,840 --> 01:10:11,720
Speaker 3: but where this form of tool has sort of become

1246
01:10:11,820 --> 01:10:15,900
Speaker 3: obsolete or has been recognized as not very effective. And

1247
01:10:16,140 --> 01:10:19,729
Speaker 3: because they're shaped like us, does this somehow form unconscious

1248
01:10:19,790 --> 01:10:21,410
Speaker 3: thoughts about human obsolescence?

1249
01:10:22,910 --> 01:10:24,430
Speaker 2: I think that's a good point. I think that's a

1250
01:10:24,450 --> 01:10:25,070
Speaker 2: strong point.

1251
01:10:25,110 --> 01:10:25,370
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1252
01:10:25,950 --> 01:10:28,670
Speaker 2: Like that we, we see ourselves in the scarecrow and

1253
01:10:28,710 --> 01:10:31,150
Speaker 2: it raises all these additional questions and we can't help

1254
01:10:31,170 --> 01:10:33,850
Speaker 2: but imagine ourselves as the scarecrow. Yeah.

1255
01:10:34,090 --> 01:10:36,690
Speaker 3: Like is the, is the human farmer going the way

1256
01:10:36,729 --> 01:10:40,210
Speaker 3: of the scarecrow? Is there, is there a total mechanization

1257
01:10:40,350 --> 01:10:40,890
Speaker 3: ahead of us?

1258
01:10:41,530 --> 01:10:45,960
Speaker 2: Yeah. All right. Well, I think that's it for our

1259
01:10:46,020 --> 01:10:47,640
Speaker 2: look at the scarecrow here. But this one's been a

1260
01:10:47,660 --> 01:10:50,100
Speaker 2: lot of fun. We've covered a lot of ground. And again,

1261
01:10:50,160 --> 01:10:53,060
Speaker 2: if there's stuff you want to bring up related to

1262
01:10:53,120 --> 01:10:57,679
Speaker 2: all of this or just field reports, sometimes literal, literal

1263
01:10:57,740 --> 01:11:00,929
Speaker 2: field reports, outstanding in a field, get a picture of

1264
01:11:00,979 --> 01:11:03,930
Speaker 2: the scarecrow that you've seen and send it in to us.

1265
01:11:04,010 --> 01:11:05,630
Speaker 2: We would love to look at it. We'd just love

1266
01:11:05,650 --> 01:11:06,590
Speaker 2: to hear from you in general.

1267
01:11:07,010 --> 01:11:12,509
Speaker 3: Absolutely. Contact at stufftoblowyourmind.com. Send us your best weird scarecrow pictures, please.

1268
01:11:13,290 --> 01:11:14,930
Speaker 2: All right. We're going to go and close it out here.

1269
01:11:15,750 --> 01:11:18,890
Speaker 2: As always, write in. As always, wherever you follow us,

1270
01:11:19,270 --> 01:11:21,760
Speaker 2: wherever you get your episodes, just rate, review, and subscribe.

1271
01:11:21,770 --> 01:11:23,439
Speaker 2: If you're on Netflix, give us a couple of thumbs

1272
01:11:23,530 --> 01:11:25,500
Speaker 2: up and ask to be reminded about new episodes.

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01:11:25,960 --> 01:11:29,320
Speaker 3: Huge thanks, as always, to our excellent audio producer, J.J. Posway.

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Speaker 3: If you'd like to get in touch with us with

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Speaker 3: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a

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Speaker 3: topic for the future, or just to say hello, you

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Speaker 3: can email us at contact at stufftoblowyourmind.com.

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Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple

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Speaker 1: Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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Speaker 2: Thank you.