#1920s Scarecrow

[vintagecandy]

Now for the 1920s reimagining of Jonathan Crane ! sorry this explanation is even longer lmao

As everyone's been saying, I should do the rest of the Dork Squad to match 1920s Jervis, and so here is my Jonathan! Easily the hardest to draw out of the three-- but I must say! Despite being outside my expertise, I'm a little surprised how much it looks exactly like I was imagining! Even if it took me ages but that's just procrastination lmao.

Anyways! What is his deal? Well, for one, design wise I did go a more drastically different direction from his usual look by doing a literal scareCROW. He's much more bird like, with a plague doctor mask being common imagery in steampunk, but he's still very southern themed with his messy broken overall strap and patchwork coat. Even his wings are rustic. ( he can't fly just glide btw lol ) Also! I leaned hard into the color orange instead of his usual green gas because it..... bugs me that both Crane and Nygma have a bright green in their color palette. I just want them to have distinct colors if they're going to be a trio. And look how vintage halloweeny he looks !!

So why is he so well dressed out of costume? Well! This Jonathan Crane is not a psychologist at all, here he is the very successful grandfather of horror movies in the silent film era. ( An illustrious origin, i hope canon Crane would be proud lmao ). This is referenced in how his face looks, he's wearing white powder and black makeup that's usually meant to emphasize key features on blurry film like his upper lip and around his eyes. And yes, he just keeps his makeup on during most events, and people just accept he's a little on the... eccentric side.

To me, the archetype of the mad artist fits Jonathan's vibe perfectly. When it comes to striking fear, he's a perfectionist, a trait that drove him to learn every single skill necessary himself, from costume design to props to making his own cameras to mechanical engineering, to.... a "fear gas" that was supposed to gently encourage immersion in the audience but ended up becoming a dangerous chemical weapon.

For his origin crime I am thinking !! Full blown Scooby Doo style monster mystery!! With some nuance! Crane, as a first impression, gives off an immediate air of pompous, aggressively impatient, pretentious director type. His presence is big and dramatic, but its distinctly not southern-- in fact, he seems to play up something between a hollywood accent and a thespian one. But this is all to cover for his farm hick background that he was once very ashamed of.

As a child of a failing farmhand during an infamously dry and dusty era, Jonathan developed an extreme resentment for his country existence from both the bullying of other children for all his strange quirks and the severe verbal and physical abuse of his father, driven to alcoholism by the stress of poverty and the loss of his wife. Originally offering his artistic ideas as a means to help them, he grows sick of their closed mindedness and berating and runs away to learn about the emerging potential of film in Gotham City.

Its been many years, Jonathan now in his early 30s, he finds himself surrounded by the shallow, champagne aristocrats that reflect his childhood bullies. Feeling wrong in his own skin, he develops a sightly unhealthy obsession with the escapism he finds in performing as the monsters in his movies.

But upon discovering that the corrupt rich of Gotham plan to push legislation that would negatively effect farmers like his own history, and that they expected him to be amongst those who support it, his irritation with the shallowness of society reaches its limits. In day, he would feign support for their behavior to cover his tracks, but at night he would don the mask of the Scarecrow, rumored to be the vengeful spirit of a farmer who was hanged, and who he believes to be a more freeing expression of himself than his true face, targeting not just the rich but striking fear in their laborers to scare them off land. And it works. So, he tries bending the will of society more.

Is he doing this out of any moral conviction or just spite and a love for the role? It's... hard to say.

As the Scarecrow, his methods are so effective he's near uncatchable, even by Batman. Its only by solving the mystery of who is under the mask are they able to catch him. They surprise him during one of his screenings, jump him in the dark, and prove his subtle use of fear gas in the theater to the police once he's cornered. Instead of being angry, he goes to the mad house applauding Batman's performance.

What an interesting character they play. He's very inspired.

[atomic-chronoscaph]

The Scarecrow and the A-B-Sea Serpent - The Royal Book of Oz, art by John R. Neill (1921)

[friendlessghoul]

Buster Keaton The Scarecrow - 1920

[justbusterkeaton]

The Scarecrow 1920

[kinkykeaton]

🍆

[chaptertwo-thepacnw]

the scarecrow |1920|

[naimu420]

funny little guy

[busterkeatonsociety]

This Day in Buster…July 6, 1867 

Joseph Hallie Keaton, father of Joseph Frank “Buster” Keaton, was born in Dog Walk, Prairie Creek Township, Terre Haute, Vigo County, Indiana.  Here’s to Buster’s Pop, master of the high kick!

[exdeputysonso]

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[classickatze]

I was about to make a post apologizing for all the Buster Keaton posts, but I’m actually not sorry at all and intend to post more. This is your only warning!

[pacingmusings]

Seen in 2022:

The Scarecrow (Buster Keaton & Edward F. Cline), 1920

[vintagecandy]

What's fun about the way I rewrote Scarecrow is that I can also easily see him being the twist return villain, like every other time he's always come back as Scarecrow but they unmask a completely different villain and woops its Jonathan Crane, he was just playing a different monster this time !

I knew not making him a psychologist would be a weird choice, but I am absolutely making these reimaginings purely to see how far I can stretch the characters and still keep their general vibe lol

[kaasknot]

(ID in ALT: buster keaton in the blacksmith, the frozen north, the gold ghost, the scarecrow, the haunted house, the love nest, the navigator, and the cameraman)

tbh i kind of think the whole Thing about buster keaton's "stoneface" is that he figured out acting for the camera before a lot of other ppl did. i can't say before anyone else did, because we've lost so much early film that it's impossible to know, but like. audiences and critics in the 1920s grew up with stage acting, which is very large and expressive, and early film actors usually came from/were influenced by the stage, so that was what ppl expected. but then buster keaton toddles onscreen, with his instinctive Understanding Of Film, and his acting is incredibly subtle—not at all like the stage. and ppl didn't know wtf to do with it. especially when you factor in how wildly expressive he nevertheless is—here's some guy who's a freaking forerunner in modern acting, but his contemporaries were still like "his face never moves! witchcraft stoneface!"

but of course when king vidor does it with 1928's "the crowd," suddenly naturalistic acting is all the rage. meanwhile poor buster's stuck with his reputation for being unmoved at all times.

[friendlessghoul]

Sybil Seely The Scarecrow - 1920

[justbusterkeaton]

The Goat (1921)

The Scarecrow (1920)

[chaptertwo-thepacnw]

the scarecrow |1920|