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Faerie Tale Theatre Reviews: Little Red Riding Hood

06 Sunday Mar 2022

Posted by UpOnTheShelf in 1980's, Faerie Tale Theatre, Fantasy, TV Reviews

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

aunt tiger, Big Bad Wolf, brothers grimm, cape, charles perrault, darrell larson, diane ladd, Faerie Tale Theatre, faerie tale theatre reviews, fairy tale, fairy tale adaptation, fairy tale history, fairy tales, fairytale, fecunda ratis, forest, frances bay, german fairy tale, giambattista basile, graeme clifford, Grandma, grandmother, grandmother's house, grimm, grimms fairy tale, hood, huntsman, i know things now, into the woods, jacob grimm, jennie harbour, john vernon, la finta nonna, little red riding hood, malcolm mcdowell, mary steenburgen, predator, red cape, red hood, red riding hood, shelley duvall, television review, the brothers grimm, the richly laden ship, tv review, werewolf, wilhelm grimm, wolf, wolfman, womanhood, woodsman

pg14-riding-hood1

“Now there’s a tasty little dish…”
– Reggie V. Lupin as he first lays eye on on our heroine

CONTENT WARNING: This review contains several allusions to rape throughout.

You know her the moment you see her, the girl in the red cape and hood walking through the woods. Maybe she’s an innocent child, maybe she’s a bit older and looking for some excitement, but there is always a wolf watching her just out of sight, drooling at the the thought of making her his next meal. When you’re a kid it’s easy to understand this story on the surface level, but as an adult, you begin to notice certain dark undertones – ones which were deliberately planted there from the very start.

Little Red Riding Hood is another fable that was born from oral tradition, but for once, it wasn’t the Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault, or even Giambatta Basile who got to her first. That distinction belongs to Egbert of Liège, who recorded the earliest known version of her tale around 1023 AD in Fecunda Ratis (The Richly Laden Ship). The scarlet-clad lass in that story receives a red dress from her godfather as a baptism gift. The dress attracts the attention of a mother wolf and she kidnaps her. The other wolves start licking her face, but the girl demands they don’t besmirch her dress because it was a present from her godfather. The poem emphasizes the heavily Christian theme of God holding dominion over animals and protecting those baptized in his name, thus the wolves don’t harm her.

While variations such as Italy’s La finta nonna and Taiwan’s Aunt Tiger existed as early as the fourteenth century, scholars believe it was this poem that would inspire the version Perrault wrote almost seven-hundred years later. It’s similar to the one we all know, but with one cruel twist – the story ends with Red being devoured by the Wolf. No last-minute huntsman to the rescue here, it’s explicitly stated that she is dead (I still remember how shook I was when I discovered a book that kept that ending). German author Ludwig Tüg translated Perrault’s retelling and added the character of the huntsman, but kept the grim conclusion: he kills the wolf but is too late to save Red from her grisly fate. Ironically, it was the Brothers Grimm who gave the story a happy ending, as well as a denouement where Red and her grandmother work together to stymie a second wolf, and more context in the beginning for the underlying moral. The story starts with Red’s mother insisting she stay on the path and beware of strangers, stressing the importance of listening to the wise, experienced mother figure; I’d hail it for being a Grimm fairytale that finally gives some women a bit of respect, but one could argue that the main character needing to be rescued by a strong man in the end renders it moot.

And what of this moral, you may ask? Well, remaining wary of flattering strangers is the obvious one, but strip the tale of all fantasy elements and you have an aggressive male figure stalking and charming an attractive young woman, then taking advantage of her when she’s at her most vulnerable (in a bedroom, no less). The lesson posted at the end of Perrault’s story leaves no doubt that it’s a warning for women to be on their guard around men, lest they consume their bodies in more ways than one. Thankfully, unlike Sun, Moon and Talia, this is clearly portrayed as a bad thing.

There’s plenty of symbolic resonance that backs up this reading of the story. Think of the color red and what it represents: passion, fury, blood. Once the Wolf has youthful, vivacious Red in that pretty cloak within his sights, he marks her as his next victim. Then there’s the wolf himself. Folks growing up in Europe before the Industrial Revolution had good cause to beware of wolves. They would kill their livestock if prey was scarce, and you as well if you strayed too far into the forest. As wolves were also revered animals at the height of paganism, the rise of Christianity saw them marked as creatures of the Devil. Anti-wolf hunts – which Perrault happened to take part in – became the means to drive wolves to near-extinction, as well as demonize and destroy all traces of the old gods. In fact, some early versions dating before Perrault feature our heroine outwitting not an anthropomorphic wolf, but a werewolf. Witches were often accused of shapeshifting into wolves among other animals in order to commit evil deeds such as, oh, tricking a girl into getting eaten.

With that in mind, it’s not shocking that later retellings sanitized Red’s misadventure for fear of scaring kids, even though that was the point of the story in the first place. My introduction to it was a pretty safe version, one where the Wolf merely locked Granny in the closet and the Huntsman chased him away before he could eat anybody. It wasn’t until I was a little older that I was given a book that was truer to the Grimms’ text, vore and all. While I’ll always find the story nostalgic, I find Faerie Tale Theatre’s truer-to-text depiction…interesting.

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September Review: Zootopia (2016)

09 Friday Sep 2016

Posted by UpOnTheShelf in 2010's, Action-Adventure, Comedy, Disney, Movie Reviews

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

alan tudyk, animated movie review, anthropomorphic, anthropomorphic animal, anthropomorphic animals, bellweather, bogo, buffalo, bunny, chief bogo, child-friendly, classism, clawhauser, cop movie, Disney, disney animated, disney animated feature, disney animated movie, disney animation, disney review, finnick, flash, fox, furries, furry, gazelle, gideon grey, ginnifer goodwin, idris elba, jason bateman, jenny slate, jk simmons, judy hopps, mayor lionheart, movie review, mr. big, nick wilde, nighthowlers, octavia spencer, police, predator, prey, rabbit, racism, raymond persi, sexism, shakira, sloth, subvert ropes, themes, zootopia

(DISCLAIMER: This blog is not for profit. All images and footage used below are property of their respective companies unless stated otherwise. I do not claim ownership of this material.)

zootopia-poster

“Tell me if this sounds familiar – naive little kid with good grades and big ideals says ‘Hey look at me, I’m gonna move to Zootopia where predators and prey live in harmony and sing Kumbaya!’…Only to find, whoopsie! We don’t all get along.”

-Nick Wilde, stating the film’s premise in a nutshell

Sigh…

Have you ever had an idea for something, something you knew was right up your alley, that you could pull off spectacularly without having to rely on anyone else’s words or opinions or worry about stealing someone else’s punchlines, only to have someone with more experience and followers not only beat you to it but do it in such a way that YOU look like the copycat?

Because I did.

When I announced that I’d be going on hiatus until September and returning with a surprise movie of my own choosing, I already had a movie in mind – Disney’s latest animated hit Zootopia.

Then a short time later, Unshaved Mouse announced he would be going on hiatus and returning with Zootopia (or Zootropolis as it’s called in some countries). I’ve mentioned before he’s one of my influences, but it’s especially hard to review Disney movies because I’ve noticed we have similar tastes and opinions when it comes to them (Beauty and the Beast, Peter Pan and Chicken Little notwithstanding), and, I have to admit, Zootopia is just another one he wrote long before I could, and even better than me at that.

Yeah I’m a bit miffed that someone beat me to the punch, but there’s plenty of things to talk about when it comes to Zootopia that can’t be covered in one review, and that’s a GOOD thing! This movie should be talked about, not just by fans or Disney lovers or even furries, but people in general. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Disney openly address issues that are alarmingly relevant today in any of their films (Hunchback came close, but it wasn’t the central focus). In a climate where racism, homophobia, and misogyny is out in the open, even in my country which prides itself on being the land of the free and home of the brave, Zootopia is a film that needed to be made. It’d be easy to write it off as a cute talking animal movie (hell, the first few trailers made it look like something shipped out of Dreamworks), but because it uses the animal society as an allegory, it works wonders. This was a movie a long time in the making and it shows; not only is the storytelling tight but Disney’s long climb to make good CGI-animated films pays off in spades. The animation’s elastic and cartoony when it needs to be while staying true to each animal’s anatomy, and the designs combine the big-eyed softness of the 90’s with the aesthetics of movies like The Jungle Book and Robin Hood.

But don’t take my word for it…even though I’m the one writing the review so it is my word. How good is Zootopia?

The movie opens on a surprisingly dark note with scary music and a darkened jungle. A cute little rabbit hops through the undergrowth, unaware that it is being stalked by a savage predator just out of sight. The predator attacks in a frenzy of blood and gore!

Zoo001

Damn, this movie EARNS its PG rating!

No, it’s just a school play put on by a group of young animals, one that exposits the story of the world we’re in, Zootopia – over time, animals evolved from savage predator and meek prey to overcome their biological urges and live in harmony. As someone who’s watched and been in a lot of these kinds of pageants, they get the awkward acting and scene changes down perfectly. Also, providing the background music, we have the unsung hero of the movie.

Zoo002

Behold, the humble beginnings of Keyboard Cat.

The rabbit, Judy Hopps, tells the audience that in Zootopia, animals are free to be what they want to, and reveals that she wants to be the first bunny cop. After the show her parents (Bonnie Hunt and Don Lake) try to discourage her dreams in a way that’s both heartbreakingly honest and yet comically brutal. While they prattle on about the joys of complacency, Judy notices some of her friends’ fair tickets being stolen by local bully Gideon Gray, a Southern-accented fox with a big ego and violent streak who…

Hang on a second!

Gideon

We’ll get to YOU later, you demented little munchkin.

Judy tries to stand up to Gideon but he mocks her because he’s a predator and the urge to kill is still in his DNA, while she’s just a dumb cowardly bunny. It gets surprisingly intense as he knocks her to the ground and scratches her face. He snarls at her to remember this moment when she thinks she can be anything other than what she is. Now when I heard that the first few minutes of the film would be scary for younger kids, I thought that there would be some kind of horrific accident or traumatizing death along the lines of, you know, the usual parental loss that spurs a number of Disney animated movies. I did not expect this one bit. I may have mentioned once or twice that I was bullied as a kid –

gollum3

“I’ll go put Dr. Angela on standby.”

Will you get out of here?!

Anyway, though my experiences were more psychological and verbal than physical, they still run pretty deep when invoked, and this scene captures the intensity and fear of when you’re humiliated and put down at the hands of someone stronger than you.

Judy’s determination does not go unrewarded, however. She swiped the tickets from Gideon while he was monologuing and tells her friends that he was right about one thing  – she doesn’t know when to quit.

Zoo003

“Just ask my third grade teacher!”

quit

“She never knew when to quit.”

Cut to an adult Judy (Ginnifer Goodwin) attending police academy and having more than a hard time working with a regimen fit for larger and more brutal animals. Through sheer willpower, the use of her own size and agility against her bigger opponents and one Mulan-worthy training montage, she graduates the top of her class. At the ceremony overseen by Mayor Lionheart (JK Simmons), we learn that Judy’s induction was part of a “mammal inclusion initiative”, not unlike Affirmative-Action programs we have in the states. Assistant Mayor Bellweather (Jenny Slate) gives her her badge and comments on how “it’s a great day for us little guys” before Lionheart pushes her away for a photo op.

gollum5

“Bad guy! Bad guy! She’s the bad guy!”

Oh come on Cynicism, just because Disney did the whole third-act bad guy switcheroo for its past three movies doesn’t mean they’ll do it a fourth time. In a movie that’s as progressive as Zootopia,they wouldn’t be that repetitive, right?

gollum5

“I don’t know, you’re the one who’s practicing screenwriting in between five-hour periods of Sort the Court. You should know how these things work by now.”

Anyway, Judy bids her family a fond farewell at the train where they act as all concerned parents do when their kids go off to the city and…give her a taser to keep foxes at bay. They remind her of the incident with Gideon when she was a kid, but Judy tells them that Gideon was a jerk who happened to be a fox, and she knows plenty of bunnies that are jerks (sound familiar?). Judy mollifies them by taking some fox pepper spray (seriously, I know there’s racism against other species – specism? – but who the hell gives the right to make products intended to cause harm to one particular animal in this kind of world?!) and she hops on the train that takes her out of the Bunny Boroughs to the heart of Zootopia. And what follows…my God.

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