The Scarecrow (1920)

• Breakfast sequence:
• Iris effect on Roberts looking in mirror and flipping it to reveal photo of woman - mirror/photo gag

  Draws audience attention to specific moments, controlling their interpretations --> visual storytelling – silent cinema feature, expressionistic
• ‘I don’t care how she votes; I’m going to marry her!’ intertitle


  Joke about women's rights movement of 1920s, realist –rooted in current societal issues
• Dual function of gramophone and oven

  Technological advancements of 20s jazz age that came with the mass consumption and capitalism of modernism
• Joe Roberts: ‘Hurry up my stomach is as empty as a saloon!’ intertitle 


  Prohibition joke
• LS long take at dinner table (realist) as they use condiments invention (expressionist) that Keaton made himself

  Visual gag
• What does the house reference?

  Rube Goldberg comics that focused on the devices that complicate and confuse our lives in the interest of being modern/efficient 
• Roberts/ car:
• Roberts is a larger man


  Reinforces Buster Keaton’s ‘little man’ persona, Keaton trope
• Roberts knocked over by car

  Shock of the modern 
• Surreal visual gag as Roberts sits in car and it tips exaggeratedly to the side

  Expressionistic, shock of the modern (Ford model T invention), slapstick humour of silent film comedy