Popular Culture Review Vol. 5, No. 1, February 1994 | Page 16

14 Popular Culture Review In "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," Irving gives us another pop art standard, the deliciously ironic expulsion of the Englishteacher/pop-culturalist, the "singing master" and stereotypical "pedagogue," Ichalx)d Crane. This almost cartoonish character, like a "scarecrow" or "famine descending upon the land" (1:255), will never be allowed to win the hand of the buxom and flirtations Katrina Van Tassel-the richly endowed and fertile Miss America herself“ but must fall prey to the popular superstition of that very mercenary Hessian soldier who had previously and unsuccessfully attempted to install the "King's English" by foreign force. In this popular scenario, only the handsome "darling of the Hudson River Valley," Brom Bones, possesses the physique and wit worthy of Katrina; and the ugly and foolishly avaricious Crane is rightfully expelled by the horrific "headless horseman" who hurls at his victim no mere specter or verbal taunts and wails but, truly, the grossly visual, the "shattered pumpkin" found by the "visionary inhabitants" of Tarry Town. In this same but darker vein, Edgar Allan Poe of course gives us numerous examples of the use of "ghost stories" as both the standard and material of some of our most popular and intriguing American literature. "Ligeia," for example, with its overtones of cunning derangement and ghastly disfigurement, of marital cruelty and murder, offers a powerful mix of "psychological occultism" informing many a pulp best-seller, a la Stephen King’s Carrie or Pet Cemetery. In accepting and manipulating this popular standard, however, Poe is careful to stress the ocular adoration informing the whole of his art. He admits the New-World obsession: What was it--that something more profound than the well of Democritus—which lay far within the pupils of my beloved? What was it! Those eyes! those large, those shining, those divine orbs! (1:413). Significantly, in this popularization of the Christian resurrection motif, the beloved arises only through the power of Super-Ocularity or Prooidence: