In this column, we look at two pop-cultural interpretations of ubiquitous Weird legends as portrayed by two narrative television programs… like how Battlestar Galactica’s Colonel Tigh and Pushing Daisies’ Aunt Lily both use an eye patch to eliminate the burden of depth perception from their delirium tremens. But with monsters. Enjoy.

This week:
“Don’t be silly, Toto. Scarecrows don’t talk.”

Friday the 13th: The Series, Episode 1×11, “Scarecrow”

And

Supernatural, Episode 1×11, “Scarecrow”

On the most basic level, the scarecrow is a symbol of protection – an untiring sentry standing watch over a working family’s livelihood. The idea of creating something in the image of man, of manipulating raw Earth or plant matter into human form, of shaping around that form a mission or purpose to be carried out in the creator’s stead, is the stuff of golems (And if pop culture has taught us anything about golems, it’s that the only thing worse than a wild golem loosed recklessly by a careless hand is a controlled golem conducted maliciously by a steely one).

The transition of the scarecrow from the symbol of protection that it represented to our European ancestors to the glowering potential death omen it has since become has everything to do with the cultural shifts that occur when a communally centered agricultural ideology is overpowered by a system of industrial capitalism, and the fear that fading agricultural segments of that industrialized society will employ drastic measures to force an unpredictable, uncontrollable entity (the Earth) to function with the same consistency as wholly programmed and regulated entity (a machine). Drastic measures like, say, golems…

In “Scarecrow,” a sinister innkeeper is using an enchanted scarecrow that offers a prosperous harvest from all its owner’s landholdings in exchange for three human sacrifices, selected by the owner using photographs pinned to the scarecrow’s lapel. The innkeeper’s scheme is to buy up local farms, offering the sellers a continued cut of the profits from her perpetually plentiful harvests, and then use those who refuse to sell their land as sacrifices. The farmers still ultimately gross more than they would have owning their land and braving yearly blights, frosts and aphid infestations, and the disappearances are chalked up to failed, debt-drowned farmers skipping out on bill collectors. Thankfully, Micki and Ryan get wind of the haunted scarecrow and arrive in town to put it out to pasture.

In…ahem… “Scarecrow,” Sam and Dean trace a rash of annual road-tripper disappearances to a small farming town with an overly friendly welcoming committee and a sinister-looking scarecrow. It turns out that the scarecrow is the avatar of an ancient pagan deity that the town turned to years earlier in the wake of crop troubles. In exchange for two sacrifices a year (one male, one female), the creature ensures the entire town a lush, bountiful crop. As it is pagan, the deity’s power rests in a sacred tree, which the Winchester’s destroy. End of scarecrow.

While both of these first season, 11th episodes entitled “Scarecrow” accomplish their goal by painting suitably terrifying portraits of farming gone mystically awry, it’s Friday the 13th that seems to construct a more, for lack of a better word, “realistic” narrative. Supernatural really just espouses a deep-set xenophobia via blatant stereotyping. And I’m referring to the agrarian cult thing here… not all of the homophobic, yo’ mamma-caliber gay jokes that Dean makes. Like all golem stories, while the golem reflects the tale’s mileu, it’s the human puppeteer(s) that give the most insight into the true message of the story.

(Though the references to paganism and ancient magic would seem to suggest at least some sense of overriding socio-religious fear [such as in Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man], these episodes are simply employing them as a part-and-parcel shorthand to give viewers some immediate (if stereotypical) insight into the baddies’ motivations without having to, say, invent an entirely unique nature-based theology.)

Supernatural shows that, with crops failing, a small farming community will band together and do whatever it takes for their town to survive in the harsh conditions created by the requirements of the free market. The problem with this is that it suggests a clichéd and artificial communalism that simply doesn’t exist (in practice, at least) when a free market exchange is the dominant trait of an economy. These farmers aren’t living on a self-sufficient compound where all the crops are used to feed the members of the community; they’re selling the majority of what they grow and then using the money to purchase things like equipment, insurance and pre-packaged foodstuffs. Even the most magnanimous farmer in town is still, by virtue of the most basic architecture of capitalism, in competition with every other local farmer. The idea of the town banding together to commit murders in the name of an equally shared prosperity simply represents an unrealistic combined fear of socialism and supposedly shifty country folk who rely on consulting natural, and more importantly, unquantifiable, indices in making their business decisions.

Admittedly, Friday the 13th still perpetrates general country bumpkin stereotyping, portraying all the farmers as competitive, but friendly and not at all actively competitive, but, admittedly, the show does need to quickly establish a segment of the economy that’s the perfect target for a free market suckerpunch in order for the episode to play out. The story it tells, with the single greedy woman manipulating a homicidal scarecrow, shows the viewer that if someone is going to employ ancient pagan magic (the aforementioned drastic measures) for economic gain, they’re going to do it within the parameters of the prevailing economic ideology, namely capitalism. The town as a communal entity is only a participant to the extent that farmers have sold their land to a single real estate maven who’s able to artificially increase the annual output of the land using morally questionable (scarecrow murders) means in order to benefit all parties involved, while her personal profits skyrocket and those unwilling to participate are eliminated. In a way, the entire episode draws a basic (if heavy-handedly pessimistic) picture of applied capitalism.

Supernatural proposes that a desperate community forced to compete beyond their abilities will use untoward methods to create a new, competing system. Friday the 13th underlines the real fear – that, in any system, desperate or greedy individuals will go outside the artificial moral boundaries of that system, while still adhering to its essential economic tenets, in order to financially succeed above the level permitted by the constructed ethical ceiling that others obey, thereby, exploiting the systems’ true participants.

Every free market walks a perilous line between competitive and unfairly competitive. Supernatural denies that something can be both competitive and fair. Friday the 13th forces us over the line and onto the dark side.

Matt Finley is the Weird Things Culture Researcher and is currently based in Cleveland. His blog can be found here and you can follow him on Twitter at @Finfizzler.