The Scarecrow: Sybil + BK chase

• This sequence reflects both realism and expressionism: and the cultural contexts of America portrayed through the technologies of modernism.

  Keaton uses camera to manipulate audience expectations.
• Beginning with a LS, Keaton assists Sybil onto the horse that exits the frame before him, the modern 1920s woman leaving the emasculated male behind.

  The camera pans right to centre frame Keaton in his inability to move, and panning down (modernism in camera abilities) revealing the hooves on wooden block, both mocking Keaton + emasculating him with his 'stone face'
• The emasculation of Keaton is realist in its reflection of 1920s men, a period of struggling masculinity as women gained new freedoms.
• LS continues as he inspects the horse, his costuming combining realism and expressionism.

  It strongly resembles the clothing worn by WC Americans in the 1920s, but its oversized fitting emphasises BK 'little man' persona
• Match on action cuts to ELS, Keaton attempts to jump onto Sybil's horse (active woman helping the men) performing his own stunt as once again the horse leaves without him: men felt they were falling behind.
• In an ELS ('LS are for comedy'), exaggerated film elements emphasise the comedy.

  Roberts sits on the back of a Ford car causing it to expressionistically tip backwards against his weight.

  This visual gag utilizes and critiques modernism through expressionism and showing the shock of the modern.
• The chase between Keaton on the horse and Big Joe in the Ford car uses binary oppositions in their choice of travel, a reflection of the conflict between modernism (ford + motorcycle) and traditionalism (horse)
• Keaton liked satirizing modernism.
• Modernism reduced the use of horses to travel, which is reflected in Keaton and Sybil's failures in escaping using the horse.
• Sybil stared in four of Keaton's shorts.
• Genre = melodrama

  It adheres to the genre conventions in its speed up of modern events, the proposal, the chase and the marriage.
• In a trucking MLS, Keaton and Sybil begin to marry on a motorcycle in the middle of the road, showing her independence in eloping against her fathers wishes, representative of gender roles in the 1920s, if a woman wishes to marry a man her father doesn't approve of, she must elope.
• Iris in on the screwdriver used as a ring: again expressionistically critiquing modernism technologies + industrialisation taking over
• Modernity succeeds in their marriage, the escape with the motorcycle.

  But the film ends with a merger of old fashioned life and modernism: MLS as they have a river-baptism as wedding, which they ended up in due to the motorcycle.

  The soaked minister anoints the newlyweds: and there is a happy romantic ending.