Little Red Riding Hood
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Little Red Riding Hood (German: Rotkäppchen; French: Le petit chaperon rouge, lit. translation: 'little red cap') is a famous folktale about a young girl's encounter with a wolf. The story has changed much in its history, and been subject to numerous modern adaptations and readings.
The Tale and its History
The most widely known Brothers Grimm version [link] is about a girl nicknamed Little Red Riding Hood, after the red hood she always wears. The girl walks through the woods to deliver food to her grandmother. A wolf wants to eat the girl but is afraid to do that in public. He approaches the girl, and she naively tells him where she is going. He suggests the girl to pick some flowers, which she does. In the meantime he goes to the grandmother's house and gains entrance by pretending to be the girl. He eats her, and waits for the girl, disguised as the grandmother. When the girl arrives he eats her too. A woodcutter, however, comes to the rescue and cuts the wolf open. Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother emerge unharmed. They fill the wolf's body with heavy stones, which kills him.
The tale makes the clearest contrast between the safe world of the village and the dangers of the forest, conventional antitheses that are essentially medieval, though no versions are as old as that.
The origins of the Little Red Riding Hood story can be traced to oral versions from various European countries and more than likely preceding the 17th century, of which several exist, some significantly different from the currently-known version. It was told by French peasants in the 14th century. For example in La finta nonna (The False Grandmother), an early Italian version, the young girl uses her own cunning to beat the wolf in the end. It has been noted that she does so with no help from any male or older female figure. The later added woodcutter would limit the girl to a relatively passive role. This has led to criticisms that the story was changed to keep women "in their place", needing the help of a physically superior man such as the woodcutter to save them.
The earliest known printed version was known as Le Petit Chaperon Rouge and had its origins in 17th century French folklore. It was included in the collection Tales and Stories of the Past with Morals. Tales of Mother Goose (Histoires et contes du temps passé, avec des moralités. Contes de ma mère l'Oie), in 1697, by Charles Perrault. As the title implies, this [version] is both more sinister and more overtly moralized than the later ones. The story had as its subject an "attractive, well-bred young lady", a village girl of the country being deceived into giving a wolf she encountered the information he needed to successfully find her grandmother's house and eat the old woman while at the same time avoiding being noticed by woodcutters working in the nearby forest. Then he proceeded to lay a trap for the Red Riding Hood. The latter ends up eaten by the wolf and there the story ends. The wolf emerges the victor of the encounter and there is no happy ending.
Charles Perrault explained the 'moral' at the end so that no doubt is left to his intended meaning:
- From this story one learns that children, especially young lasses, pretty, courteous and well-bred, do very wrong to listen to strangers, And it is not an unheard thing if the Wolf is thereby provided with his dinner. I say Wolf, for all wolves are not of the same sort; there is one kind with an amenable disposition — neither noisy, nor hateful, nor angry, but tame, obliging and gentle, following the young maids in the streets, even into their homes. Alas! Who does not know that these gentle wolves are of all such creatures the most dangerous!
The Brothers further revised the story in later editions and it reached the abovementioned final and better known [version] in the 1857 edition of their work. It is notably tamer than the older ones which contained darker themes. Modern scholars and audiences have often dismissed it as a mere watered-down version of the older story.
Andrew Lang retold the story as "The True History of Little Goldenhood" [link] in The Red Fairy Book, explicitly saying that the story had been mistold. The girl was saved, but not by the huntsman; when the wolf tried to eat her, its mouth was burned by the golden hood she wore, which was enchanted.
Bruno Bettelheim, in The Uses of Enchantment, recast the Little Red Riding Hood motif in terms of classic Freudian analysis, perhaps with unintentionally hilarious effect to a post-Freudian reader.
The theme of the ravening wolf and of the creature released unharmed from its belly is reflected in the Russian tale 'Peter and the Wolf,' and the other Grimm tale The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids, but its general theme of restoration is at least as old as the Book of Jonah.
Modern uses
There have been many modern uses and adaptations of Little Red Riding Hood, generally with a mock-serious reversal of Red Riding Hood's naïveté or some twist of social satire; they range across a number of different media and styles. Multiple variations have been written in the past century, which adapt the Grimm’s tale to their own interests. Most either empower Little Red or give the wolf victim status under the term ‘misunderstood’. Many notable examples are cited below, but this is not an exhaustive list.
Literature and Drama
- An especially notable adaptation is Angela Carter's Company of Wolves from her collection The Bloody Chamber, which focuses on the sexual aspect of the Red/Wolf relationship. This was also adapted into a film by Neil Jordan.
- Roald Dahl’s poem Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf features a comical and violent twist in which Red turns the wolf into a wolf-skin coat.
- Little Red Riding Wolf, in which a game warden arrives at the last moment to save the wolf from poachers.
- Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's musical Into the Woods plays with the typical devices of a number of different fairytales, including Little Red Riding Hood.
- Radio humorist Stan Freberg performed a radio play spoofing both Little Red Riding Hood and Dragnet called "Little Blue Riding Hood".
- In 1940, Howard L. Chace, a professor of French, wrote Ladle Rat Rotten Hut, where the story is told using incorrect homonyms of the correct English words.
- James Thurber's short story "The Little Girl and the Wolf," features the heroine turning tables on the Wolf. The Moral says it all: "It is not so easy to fool little girls nowadays as it used to be."
- Politically Correct Red Riding Hood satirises politically-correct speech by applying it to the fairytale.[link]
Film
- Filmmaker Neil Jordan's horror fiction/fantasy fiction The Company of Wolves, based on the short story by Angela Carter, told an interweaving series of folkloric tales loosely based on Red Riding Hood that fully exploited its subtexts of lycanthropy, violence and sexual awakening.
- Freeway, a feature film adaptation, starring Kiefer Sutherland and Reese Witherspoon adapts it into a modern setting in which the major characters become a psychotic but charming serial killer and a sexually abused teenaged girl.
- Christina Ricci stars in a 1997 short film based on the subject matter. See Little Red Riding Hood.
- The 2004 Kevin Bacon film The Woodsman takes its title from the woodsman of the fable. In a speech given by Mos Def's policeman character, he compares pedophiles to the wolf and observes that there seems to be no "woodsman" to save victimized children.
- In the 2005 film, The Brothers Grimm, one minor character is a young girl who is clearly designed to resemble the classic Red Riding Hood figure, even paraphrasing some of her most famous lines when talking to a (predatory) horse she discovers in the woods ("What big eyes you have, what big ears you have, and such a pretty, pretty mouth.").
- Singapore cult director Tzang Merwyn Tong directed a 45 minute short film in 2005 titled A Wicked Tale. Tzang's postmodern re-imagination of the fable is presented in a chilling style that combines the silent-era revivalism of Guy Maddin with the shock/sadistic horror of Audition-era Takashi Miike. Little Red is depicted as a lolita-type character (spoilers ahead) who cuts off the wolf's legs (a metaphor for castration) and rapes him in the final act.
Animation and Anime
- Early Bugs Bunny cartoons such as Little Red Riding Rabbit utilise the characters from fairytales such as Little Red Riding Hood.
- A very famous variation is the short animated cartoon, Red Hot Riding Hood by Tex Avery where the story is recast in an adult-oriented urban setting, with the suave, suited wolf howling after the stripper Red. Tex Avery also utilised the same cast and themes in a number of other cartoons in this series.
- The Japanese animated film Jin-Roh (aka 'Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade'), about a secret society within an anti-terrorist unit of an alternative post-World War II Japan, makes several literary and visual references to the Grimm story (most notably a book purchased by one of the characters and the young female bomb couriers, called "red riding hoods"), but follows the Perrault version of the tale, with an anti-terrorist commando as the wolf (the title is literally "Man-wolf" in Japanese, or, better still, could be translated as "a Wolf as a Man"), and a mysterious woman as the young lady.
- The Japanese children's anime TV series Akazukin Chacha features the eponymous heroine Chacha who is visually reminiscent of Little Red Riding Hood ('akazukin' relates to her red hood and cape). One of the major themes of the series is a sort of pre-adolescent love triangle between Chacha and her two male friends, one of whom is a werewolf, the other a boy-witch.
- A 2006 computer-animated children's film, Hoodwinked, uses the anachronistic parody approach to the tale typified by the Shrek films, envisioning the story as a Rashomon-like mystery in which the anthropomorphised animal police of the forest question the four participants of the story (Red, the Wolf, Granny and the Woodsman) after they arrive at Granny's house, with each participant telling their own version of how they arrived there and why.
Comics, videogames and other assorted media
- Neil Gaiman worked a darker, more erotic, pre-Perrault version of the Red Riding Hood tale in arc of the Sandman comics. In this version, the wolf kills the old lady, tricks the girl into eating her grandmother's meat and drinking her blood, order the girl to undress and lay in bed with him and finally devours her. According to Gaiman, his portrayal of the tale was based on the one reported in the book The Great Cat Massacre: and other episodes in French cultural history by Robert Darnton[link].
- Both the Wolf- ‘Bigby’ (a play on 'Big Bad'), and Little Red Riding Hood- ‘Ride’, have become pivotal chacters in the Fables comic book universe. Bigby is the sheriff of Fabletown while Red Riding Hood's magical double is a spy for the series’ enemy, ‘The Adversary’. The real Ride has recently been introduced to the series and had no knowledge of what the double had been doing when disguised as her.
- The webcomic No Rest for the Wicked has a character called "Red". She lives alone in the woods and always carries an axe with her. After being attacked by a wolf (presumably killed and eaten) she has gone and systematically killed many of the wolves in the forest.
- The fighting game series Darkstalkers has a twisted take on the story: A girl named B.B. Hood (called Bulletta in Japan), a young girl who is actually a bounty hunter and a serial killer of wolves. She carries an Uzi, hides land mines underneath her dress, and her basket conceals a variety of weapons, from knives to a built-in rocket launcher and a flamethrower disguised as a wine bottle.
- Fable (video game) also features a reference to the story, in the form of Scarlet Robe, "slayer of Balverines (werewolf-like creatures featured in the game)." A flashback in the game shows a young Scarlet engaged in battle with a group of Balverines, dressed in the familiar red hood and cloak.
- A flash animation by Dirty Doll Creations also shows a much darker version of the tale [here].
- Adult sexuality is a theme of Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs 1966 hit song "Lil' Red Riding Hood."
Interpretations
There are many interpretations of the classic fairy tale, many of them sexual. Four are listed below.
- ;Prostitution:One of the more common interpretations refers to a classic warning against becoming a "working girl." This builds off the fundamental "young girl in the woods" stereotype. The red cloak was also a classic signal of a prostitute in 17th century France. A Colombian charity recently used this theme in a poster campaign that showed various fairy tale characters reduced to child labour, including Red Riding Hood as a child prostitute [link]
- ;Sexual awakening:Red Riding Hood has also been seen as a parable of sexual maturity. In this interpretation, the red cloak symbolizes the menstrual cycle and the entry into puberty, braving the "dark forest" of womanhood. Or the cloak could symbolize the hymen (earlier versions of the tale generally don't state that the cloak is red--the word "red" in the title may refer to the girl's hair color or a nickname). In this case, the wolf threatens the girl's virginity. The anthropomorphic wolf symbolizes a man, who could be a lover, seducer or sexual predator.
- ;Into The Woods: In Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's musical Into the Woods, the wolf's attempt to eat Little Red Riding Hood is seductive. In the original Broadway and in many other productions, the wolf costume features an obvious penis. When Little Red matures, she gives up her cloak, deciding she doesn't need it anymore. This can be viewed as deciding to no longer hide from the wolf (representing her own sexuality), or as the literal giving up of the cloak of the hymen, i.e. her virginity.
- ;Transactional Analysis: In Eric Berne's version in [What Do You Say After You Say Hello?], the story also deals with sexuality, and is seen as part of parental programming. In Berne's version, the grandfather of Little Red Riding Hood fondled her under her dress, awakening her latent sexuality. It also tells of an intimate relationship between the wolf and the grandmother. The tale can be viewed as a parental warning against adult sexuality, one which ironically thwarts Little Red's healthy sexual development.
External links
- [SurLaLune Fairy Tale Pages: The Annotated Little Red Riding Hood]
- [Grimm's version of Little Red Riding Hood]
- [Different versions of Little Red Riding Hood]
- [Essay on the history of LRRH] - Catherine Orenstein in Ms. magazine.
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