What’s in a name?

I just finished listening to an audio presentation of Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”, read by an actor currently starring in a TV series called “Sleepy Hollow”, supposedly based on the story. I decided to go find out a bit more about it. Just how much of the original story did they retain? The answer? Not much.

They borrowed some of the names, and that’s about it. Ichabod Crane, instead of being a lanky schoolteacher, is a (no doubt good-looking) soldier and spy for General Washington. Brom Bones was Ichabod’s friend, betrothed to Katrina Van Tassel, who seeks revenge on Crane when Katrina breaks her betrothal to marry Crane. He becomes the Headless Horseman after Ichabod decapitates him in a fight, but nearly kills Crane in the process. Their blood mixes (I assume they’re compatible blood types?), and when Katrina, who is a witch, casts a spell to save Crane’s life she ends up inadvertently saving them both, who get resurrected in modern-day Sleepy Hollow. Crane is still himself, but Brom Bones is now one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

I’m not saying this is a bad premise for a series. And this is a common trope in literature these days, too. But when most writers set out to re-tell a familiar story they tend to keep the skeleton of the story and put new names and faces on it, not the other way around. From the preview available on YouTube the story seems to bear more resemblance to “National Treasure” than “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”. The only common element that goes beyond mere name is a headless horseman. What they’ve really done is take a lot of disparate elements of American history and folklore, mixed in some Biblical references and a heavy supernatural element, and slapped a bunch of familiar names on it. “Sleepy Hollow” could take place pretty much anywhere. It could just as easily–and accurately–been called “The Last of the Mohicans”. You could just as easily replace Ichabod Crane with Natty Bumppo/Hawkeye–and more realistically, too, since Ichabod Crane was about as far from being a heroic action figure as you can get.

Certainly the series trailer looks interesting, but it really doesn’t deserve to be called “Sleepy Hollow”, any more than putting a Porsche name plate on my Toyota makes it a Boxster. If you were to change all the names in the new series you would be hard pressed to identify to identify the supposed source material. It’s more influenced by “Terminator” than by “Sleepy Hollow” from what I can tell.

But I’m being nit-picky, I suppose. I have no intention of watching this, or any other, series out right now. I don’t have time for television, and barely have time for the occasional movie. My complaint hardly matters.