Speaker 1: School of Humans. My name is Miranda Hawkins. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the Deep dark Woods. Today's story is Atu three point
Speaker 1: thirty three, or Little Red riding Hood.
Speaker 2: Once upon a time there was a sweet little girl.
Speaker 2: Everyone who saw her liked her, but most of all
Speaker 2: her grandmother, who did not know what to give the
Speaker 2: child next. Once she gave her a little cap made
Speaker 2: of red velvet, because it suited her so well, and
Speaker 2: she wanted to wear it all the time. She came
Speaker 2: to be known as a little Red Cap. One day
Speaker 2: her mother said to her, come, little Red Cap, here's
Speaker 2: a piece of cake and a bottle of wine. Take
Speaker 2: them to your grandmother. She's sick and weak, and they
Speaker 2: will do her well. Mind your manners and give her
Speaker 2: my greetings. Behave yourself on the way, and do not
Speaker 2: leave the path, or you might fall down and break
Speaker 2: the glass, and then there will be nothing for your grandmother.
Speaker 2: And when you enter her parlor, don't forget to say
Speaker 2: good morning, and don't peer into all the corners first.
Speaker 2: I'll do everything just right, said Little Red Cap, shaking
Speaker 2: her mother's hand. The grandmother lived out in the woods,
Speaker 2: half an hour from the village. When Little Red Cap
Speaker 2: entered the woods. A wolf came up to her. She
Speaker 2: did not know what a wicked animal he was, and
Speaker 2: was not afraid of him. Good day to you, little
Speaker 2: Red Cap, Thank you wolf. Where are you going so early,
Speaker 2: little Red Cap?
Speaker 1: To grandmother's?
Speaker 2: And what are you carrying under your apron grandmother is
Speaker 2: sick and weak, and I'm taking her some cake and
Speaker 2: wine we baked yesterday, and they should be.
Speaker 1: Good for her and give her strength. Little Red Cap,
Speaker 1: just where does.
Speaker 2: Your grandmother live? Her house is a good quarter hour
Speaker 2: from here, in the woods, under three large oak trees.
Speaker 2: There's a hedge of hazel bushes there. You must know
Speaker 2: the place, said Little Red Cap. The wolf thought to himself,
Speaker 2: Now that sweet young thing is a tasty bite for me.
Speaker 2: She will be even better than the old woman. You
Speaker 2: must be sly and you can catch them both. He
Speaker 2: walked along a little while with Little Red Cap. Then
Speaker 2: he said, little Red Cap, just look at all the
Speaker 2: beautiful flowers that are all around us.
Speaker 1: Why don't you go and take a look.
Speaker 2: And I don't believe you can hear how beautifully the
Speaker 2: birds are singing. You're walking along as though you were
Speaker 2: on your way to school. It's very beautiful in the woods.
Speaker 2: The red Cap opened her eyes, and when she saw
Speaker 2: the sunbeams dancing to and fro through the trees, and
Speaker 2: how the ground was covered with beautiful flowers, she thought,
Speaker 2: if I take a fresh bouquet a grandmother, she will
Speaker 2: be very pleased. Anyway, it's still early and I'll be
Speaker 2: home on time. And she ran off the path into
Speaker 2: the woods, looking for flowers. Each time she picked one,
Speaker 2: she thought she could see an even more beautiful one
Speaker 2: a little way off, and she ran after it, going
Speaker 2: further and further into the woods. But the wolf ran
Speaker 2: straight to the grandmother's house and knocked on the door.
Speaker 2: Who's there, little Red Cap, I'm bringing you some cake
Speaker 2: and wine. Open the door. Just press the latch, called
Speaker 2: out the grandmother.
Speaker 1: I'm too weak to get up.
Speaker 2: The wolf pressed the latch and the door open. He
Speaker 2: stepped inside and went straight to the grandmother's bed and
Speaker 2: ate her up. Then he put on her clothes, put
Speaker 2: her cap on his head, got into her bed, and
Speaker 2: pulled the curtains shut. Little Redcap had run after the flowers.
Speaker 2: After she had gathered so many that she could not
Speaker 2: carry any more. She remembered her grandmother and then continued
Speaker 2: on her way to her house, she found, to her
Speaker 2: surprise that the door was open. She walked into the parlor,
Speaker 2: and everything looked so strange that she thought, oh my god,
Speaker 2: why am.
Speaker 1: I so afraid?
Speaker 2: I usually like it at grandmother's. She called out good morning,
Speaker 2: but received no answer. Then she went to the bed
Speaker 2: and pulled back the curtains. Grandmother was lying there with
Speaker 2: her cap pulled down over her face and looking very strange.
Speaker 2: Oh grandmother, What big ears you have, All the better
Speaker 2: to hear you with, Oh grandmother. What big eyes you have,
Speaker 2: all the better to see you with, Oh grandmother. What
Speaker 2: big hands you have, all the better to grab you with,
Speaker 2: Oh grandmother, What a horribly.
Speaker 1: Big mouth you have, all the better to eat you with.
Speaker 2: The wolf could scarcely finished speaking when he jumped up
Speaker 2: from the bed with a single leap and ate up
Speaker 2: poor little red cat. As soon as the wolf had
Speaker 2: satisfied his desires, he climbed back into bed, fell asleep,
Speaker 2: and began to snore very loudly. A huntsman was just
Speaker 2: passing by. He thought, the old woman is snoring so loudly.
Speaker 2: You had better see if something's wrong with her.
Speaker 1: Stepped into the.
Speaker 2: Parlor and When he approached the bed, he saw the
Speaker 2: wolf lying there. So here I find you, you old sinner,
Speaker 2: he said, I've been hunting you for a long time.
Speaker 2: He was about to aim his rifle when it occurred
Speaker 2: to him that the wolf might have eaten the grandmother
Speaker 2: and that she might still be rescued. So instead of shooting,
Speaker 2: he took a pair of scissors and began to cut
Speaker 2: open the wolf's belly. After a few cuts, he saw
Speaker 2: the Red Cap shining through, and after a few more cuts,
Speaker 2: the girl jumped out, crying, oh.
Speaker 1: I was so frightened. It was so dark inside the
Speaker 1: wolf's body.
Speaker 2: And then the grandmother came out as well, alive but
Speaker 2: hardly able to breathe. Then Little Redcap fetched some large stones.
Speaker 2: She filled the wolf's body with them, and when he
Speaker 2: woke up and tried to run away, the stones were
Speaker 2: so heavy that he immediately fell down dead. The three
Speaker 2: of them were happy. The huntsmen skinned the wolf and
Speaker 2: went home with the pelt. The grandmother ate the cake
Speaker 2: and drank the wine the Little Red Cap had brought.
Speaker 2: And Little Red Cap thought, as long as I live,
Speaker 2: I will never leave the path and run off into
Speaker 2: the woods by myself. If my mother tells me not to.
Speaker 1: Little Red riding Hood is one of my favorite tails
Speaker 1: from The Brother's Groom. It's also the easiest last minute
Speaker 1: costume during Halloween. If you're wearing a red cape and
Speaker 1: a picnic basket, pretty much everyone knows who you're trying
Speaker 1: to be, But the roots of the tail are complicated.
Speaker 1: People have been trying to pinpoint where Little Red riding
Speaker 1: Hood originated for the past two hundred years. That's according
Speaker 1: to doctor Jamie Tarrani's research. Doctor Trani is an anthropology
Speaker 1: professor at Durham University in England. In November of twenty thirteen,
Speaker 1: he released his findings on the origins of Little Red
Speaker 1: riding Hood. He used a process many biologists use called philogenetics.
Speaker 1: Phylogenetics graphically represents the relationships between organisms and a diagram
Speaker 1: known as a tree of life, and the trees can
Speaker 1: look like a variety of things. One variation is bracketing,
Speaker 1: like you would do with a sports event. In doctor
Speaker 1: Trani's case, he built a tree diagram using fifty eight
Speaker 1: variants of the folk tale and then focused on seventy
Speaker 1: two plot variables like who was a protagonist or a villain?
Speaker 1: From there, he compared similarities to show which route the
Speaker 1: story most likely took. For the longest time, scholars thought
Speaker 1: the story originated in China six hundred to eight hundred
Speaker 1: years ago and then traveled to Europe along the Silk Road.
Speaker 1: But doctor Tarani's research showed something else. There is another
Speaker 1: tale worldwide called The Wolf and the Kids. It's about
Speaker 1: a wolf who pretends to be a nantygot to eat
Speaker 1: the kids. Sound familiar, well, Doctor Tarani thinks that the
Speaker 1: Wolf and the Kids and Little Red Riding Hood traveled
Speaker 1: from Europe to China, not the other way around, and
Speaker 1: that China blended these two tales to create its own version.
Speaker 1: He also found elements of the story dating back about
Speaker 1: two thousand years from somewhere between Europe and the Middle East.
Speaker 1: But that's just one theory, because some people think that
Speaker 1: stories like these don't have a single point of origin,
Speaker 1: but rather similar stories pop up all over the world
Speaker 1: because of how universal they are, or because of chance.
Speaker 1: It would seem for now Little Red's true origins or
Speaker 1: lost to history. But there's an even bigger question at
Speaker 1: the center of the debate. What even counts as a
Speaker 1: Little Red writing Hood story? For example, there's a Latin
Speaker 1: manuscript of a poem written in ten twenty two. The
Speaker 1: poem is about a young girl in a red cloak
Speaker 1: who was taken by wolves. They tried to eat her,
Speaker 1: but the cloak protected her from their bite. But even
Speaker 1: with the red cloak and the wolves, some folklorists don't
Speaker 1: think this counts. Like all the stories we've heard about
Speaker 1: so far, pinpointing exactly where Little Red writing Hood was
Speaker 1: born is unanswerable. But with this tale, the brothers Grim
Speaker 1: did something new, something out of the ordinary for them.
Speaker 1: They made the story less gruesome than its predecessors. So
Speaker 1: what exactly would be so gruesome that the brother's Grim
Speaker 1: chose to cut it out? The Brother's Grim wrote two
Speaker 1: versions of the tale they call Little Red Cap. The
Speaker 1: first one ended up being the final version you heard
Speaker 1: at the beginning of this episode. The second one goes
Speaker 1: like this. On a separate occasion, Little Red Cap is
Speaker 1: taking bait goods to her grandmother when she happens upon
Speaker 1: a wolf. The wolf tries to convince her to leave
Speaker 1: the path, but Little Red Cap refuses and goes straight
Speaker 1: to her grandmother's house. When she arrives, she tells her
Speaker 1: grandmother about meeting the wolf. The two of them immediately
Speaker 1: lock the door. Not long after, the wolf comes knocking,
Speaker 1: calling out to Red's grandmother, claiming to be the young
Speaker 1: girl bringing sweets. The two remains silent while the wolf
Speaker 1: walks around the house several times before jumping on the roof.
Speaker 1: His plan is to wait until Little Red leaves to
Speaker 1: go home, and then he will devour her. But the
Speaker 1: grandmother knows what the wolf is up to and makes
Speaker 1: a plan herself. The grandmother has a large stone trough
Speaker 1: in the front of her house, and she tells a
Speaker 1: little Red to fill the trough with water. The young
Speaker 1: girl does as she is told until the trough is full,
Speaker 1: but it is no ordinary water. The grandmother had cooked
Speaker 1: sausage in it the day before. When the smell of
Speaker 1: sausage reaches a wolf, he stretches his neck so far
Speaker 1: trying to look into the trough that he slides off
Speaker 1: the roof and falls into the water, where he drowns.
Speaker 1: And so Little Red goes home safe and sound. The
Speaker 1: two variants of Grimm's Little Red come from two sisters,
Speaker 1: Jeannette and Marie Hassenflug. Jeannette told the brothers the final
Speaker 1: version you heard while Marie told the one with the
Speaker 1: wolf drowning. Jeannette, Marie, and their other sister, Amilie were
Speaker 1: French Huguenots whose family fled France and settled and hanowed Germany.
Speaker 1: The story goes that Jeanette and Marie were known to
Speaker 1: share French tales with the brothers grim and the story
Speaker 1: they were telling the Grims came one hundred years prior,
Speaker 1: which would explain why the story had different versions. But
Speaker 1: the main tale is called Le Petit chaperone rouge. Translated,
Speaker 1: it means Little Red riding hood, and it was written
Speaker 1: by the same man who gave us the Little Glass slipper,
Speaker 1: Charles Perrault. In his version, Little Red gives her some
Speaker 1: food to take to her grandmother because her grandmother is sick.
Speaker 1: As she walks through the forest, a wolf spots a
Speaker 1: young girl. He wants to eat her, but he doesn't
Speaker 1: dare do so because there are woodcutters nearby. Instead, he
Speaker 1: approaches Little Red and asks her where she's headed. Because
Speaker 1: the young girl doesn't know talking to a wolf is dangerous,
Speaker 1: she tells him she is going to visit her sick grandmother.
Speaker 1: The wolf challenges her to a raise to see who
Speaker 1: can get there first. The wolf races down the shortest path,
Speaker 1: while Little Red takes a long path, gathering flowers and
Speaker 1: nuts along the way. When the wolf gets to the
Speaker 1: grandmother's house, he tricks the old woman into thinking he
Speaker 1: is a little Red. Then he eats her and hops
Speaker 1: into bed disguised in her clothes. When the young girl arrives,
Speaker 1: the wolf invites her inside, tells her to take off
Speaker 1: all her clothes and hop into bed with him. After
Speaker 1: the back and forth of my grandmother, what big teeth
Speaker 1: you have, the wolf devours her. Pierrot's story is a
Speaker 1: combination of two other tales that were circulating across Europe,
Speaker 1: the Grandmother's Tail from France and Little Red Hat from
Speaker 1: Italy or Austria, and these tails are even more brutal.
Speaker 1: In the Grandmother's Tail, the little girl's mom gives her
Speaker 1: a loaf of bread and milk to take to the grandmother.
Speaker 1: In the woods, the path splits into two. This is
Speaker 1: where the little girl meets the bazoo or werewolf. He
Speaker 1: asks her which path she is taking, the one of
Speaker 1: needles or of pins. She says needles, and he says
Speaker 1: that's good because he's taking the one of pins along
Speaker 1: the way. The little girl entertains herself by gathering needles,
Speaker 1: but the werewolf straight to the grandmother's house, kills her,
Speaker 1: puts some of her flesh in the pantry and a
Speaker 1: bottle of her blood on the shelf. Then he disguises
Speaker 1: himself and climbs into bed. When the little girl arrives,
Speaker 1: the werewolf tells her to put the milk and bread
Speaker 1: in the pantry and help herself to the meat and
Speaker 1: wine that's in there. The little girl begins to eat,
Speaker 1: and she does so, not knowing she's eating her grandmother's
Speaker 1: flesh and drinking her grandmother's blood. There's a cat who
Speaker 1: shames the girl for doing so, though the story doesn't
Speaker 1: say whether or not the little girl heard the cat.
Speaker 1: Then the werewolf tells a little girl to get undressed
Speaker 1: and come to bed. Every time she asks what should
Speaker 1: she do with a piece of her clothing, the werewolf replies,
Speaker 1: throw it into the fire. It's after the little girl
Speaker 1: climbs into bed that they go through the whole. My,
Speaker 1: what big ears you have, grandmother rigamarole. When the little
Speaker 1: girl mentions, what a big mouth you have, the werewolf responds,
Speaker 1: the better to eat you with my child. But before
Speaker 1: the wolf gets a chance to eat her, Little Red
Speaker 1: says she has to use the bathroom. Oh, grandmother, I
Speaker 1: have to do it outside, and the were wolf responds,
Speaker 1: do it in the bed. Child. There's a little back
Speaker 1: and forth before the were wolf concedes, but he still
Speaker 1: ties a woolf thread around the young girl's ankles. As
Speaker 1: soon as the girl is outside, she ties the string
Speaker 1: to a plum tree. After some time, the werewolf calls out, and,
Speaker 1: not hearing a response, runs outside to see what's going on.
Speaker 1: He sees the young girl has escaped and follows her,
Speaker 1: but just as he catches up, she's closing the door
Speaker 1: to her home, safe and sound. The version from Italy
Speaker 1: or Austria is similar, except the grandmother asks Little Red
Speaker 1: to bring her some soup. Along the way, the young
Speaker 1: girl runs into an ogre, who asks if she's taking
Speaker 1: the path of thorns or the path of stones. Little
Speaker 1: Red says stones and Dilly Dally's picking flowers, while the
Speaker 1: ogre takes a rout of thorns and beats Little Red
Speaker 1: to her grandmother's The ogre then tricks the grandmother into
Speaker 1: letting him in and if you thought the French tale
Speaker 1: was violent, I actually got a little nauseous reading this one.
Speaker 1: Once in the house, the ogre eats the grandmother, ties
Speaker 1: her intestines to the door, replacing the latch string, and
Speaker 1: places her blood, teeth and jaws in the kitchen cupboard.
Speaker 1: Then he disguises himself and jumps into bed. When Little
Speaker 1: Red gets there, she first mentions how the latch string
Speaker 1: is soft. The ogre says it is her grandmother's intestine,
Speaker 1: but when Little Red doesn't hear clearly, just tells her
Speaker 1: to come in. And like the grandmother's tail, the yogre
Speaker 1: has a little Red eat and drink the parts of
Speaker 1: her grandmother that he put in the pantry. And then
Speaker 1: afterward the ogre has a young girl getting into bed
Speaker 1: naked with him before he eats her up. Unlike the
Speaker 1: grim's Little Red, these three tails have strong sexual overtones.
Speaker 1: They all include a naked girl climbing into bed with
Speaker 1: the wolf or ogre. Also, there is no woodcutter to
Speaker 1: save little Red. Different from the Grandmother's tail and Little
Speaker 1: Red hat, Pierrot went a step further. He added a
Speaker 1: moral to the end of his tail that said children
Speaker 1: especially attractive well bred young ladies should never talk to strangers,
Speaker 1: for if they should do so, they may well provide
Speaker 1: dinner for a wolf. I say wolf. But there are
Speaker 1: the various kinds of wolves. There are also those who
Speaker 1: are charming, quiet, polite, unassuming, complacent and sweet who pursue
Speaker 1: young women at home and in the streets. And unfortunately,
Speaker 1: it is these gentle wolves who are the most dangerous
Speaker 1: ones of all. I talked to professor and folklorist doctor
Speaker 1: Lynn McNeil about this story, and she told me that
Speaker 1: this was pretty odd that Pero included this moral at
Speaker 1: the end.
Speaker 3: It's very clearly a warning story. Perau even includes at
Speaker 3: the end like a little rhyme that functions as a moral,
Speaker 3: where he says to his readers, I hope you all
Speaker 3: realize that I'm not talking about wolves here. I'm talking
Speaker 3: about the kind of wolves who walk around in men's clothing.
Speaker 3: And it's just sort of like this, like somber, very
Speaker 3: grim ending. That's like high lighting the metaphor that's going
Speaker 3: on here. Vulnerable young women, predatory men. That's the real risk.
Speaker 1: Those themes of predatory men and vulnerable young women are
Speaker 1: also in little Red hat and the grandmother's tail and
Speaker 1: an interesting thing about the werewolf and the grandmother's tail.
Speaker 1: Some historians believe the story comes from the sixteenth or
Speaker 1: seventeenth century. They think the tale was initially a cautionary
Speaker 1: tale about children being careful when playing in the woods
Speaker 1: because at that time men were going to trial for
Speaker 1: being werewolves and molesting, killing, or eating young kids. These
Speaker 1: stories are already terrible as is, with sexual predators and
Speaker 1: children being eaten, but doctor McNeil says these stories take
Speaker 1: it a step further.
Speaker 3: She's also made to engage in cannibalism. She's told to
Speaker 3: eat and drink a bottle of grandma's blood that the
Speaker 3: wolf is put on the shelf. So it's this strange
Speaker 3: sort of complicit act of cannibalism that she's joining in
Speaker 3: with him on. So it's it's a real interesting level
Speaker 3: of degradation that's being depicted that is erased by the
Speaker 3: time we get to the Grim Brothers version.
Speaker 1: We know by now the brothers Grim did a fair
Speaker 1: amount of editing with all their stories, and for Little
Speaker 1: Red specifically, they're removed any references to sex and cannibalism,
Speaker 1: making it less grotesque, and by adding the woodcutter. They
Speaker 1: also change the story's moral.
Speaker 3: We have this wild, animalistic, predatory male character, and then
Speaker 3: we have this, you know, stout hearted, strong, true, brave,
Speaker 3: capable male character as well. And it's an interesting reframing
Speaker 3: because the grimms are sending a very clear, distinct message.
Speaker 3: It's no longer framed as a warning story. It's more
Speaker 3: framed as a here's how the world works story. We
Speaker 3: still get that message of don't stray from the path,
Speaker 3: don't get led astray, but we're also told you're gonna
Speaker 3: get saved if that does happen. There are mechanisms of
Speaker 3: society by which you might be rescued.
Speaker 1: Although these variations present different morals, doctor McNeil says the
Speaker 1: overall symbolism of the character of Little Red stays the same.
Speaker 3: Scholars have suggested that the red hat or the cloak
Speaker 3: is a symbol of puberty of maturity, that it represents
Speaker 3: maturation or even specifically menstruation, the beginning the onset of
Speaker 3: a young girl menstruating, becoming sexually viable as an adult biologically,
Speaker 3: and that, of course when she sets out in the
Speaker 3: world with this new adult status, that's when the wolves come.
Speaker 3: There's other schools of thought, though, and an old line
Speaker 3: of academic thinking, the school of solar mythology, had that
Speaker 3: all stories in the end boiled down to some element
Speaker 3: of the sun struggling against the devouring night, in which
Speaker 3: case Red riding Hood cloak becomes a solar symbol, and
Speaker 3: she's representing the warmth and the safety of daylight, and
Speaker 3: the wolf is the dark, devouring night coming after her.
Speaker 1: As if Little Red Riding Hood wasn't complicated enough, Throughout
Speaker 1: the years, each retelling changes why the young girl strays
Speaker 1: from the path, and the tales we heard about it's
Speaker 1: because she's picking flowers or gathering pine needles. But then
Speaker 1: during the nineteenth century Victorian era, Little Red veers off
Speaker 1: the trail because she wants to disobey her mom. But
Speaker 1: what makes her stray from the path these days? In
Speaker 1: almost all the Little Red riding Hood stories, a little
Speaker 1: girl takes a detour in the woods, and today's versions
Speaker 1: Red is still taking a detour, but it's not as literal.
Speaker 1: Doctor McNeil explains.
Speaker 3: The initial setup that we get really was pigeonholing these characters.
Speaker 3: You know, a young girl is going to be vulnerable
Speaker 3: and in danger, and a scary wolf is going to
Speaker 3: be a predator and evil, and those binaries are really
Speaker 3: inherent in fairy tales, but the door is open now
Speaker 3: for us to comment on them. And this is something
Speaker 3: that as we as a society move forward, we want
Speaker 3: to nuance. We want to understand these things. We don't
Speaker 3: want to see evil as an absolute. We try and
Speaker 3: put things like crime and punishment in a human context. Now,
Speaker 3: what causes this, what leads people to make choices? That
Speaker 3: the choices might be bad, but that doesn't mean people
Speaker 3: are inherently bad, And that nuanced understanding of humanity is
Speaker 3: something we see reflected in how we handle fairy tales now,
Speaker 3: the fact that we want to say, well, what does
Speaker 3: this look like from the wolf perspective? The wolf has
Speaker 3: a past, the wolf has a context, The wolf has
Speaker 3: instinctive drives.
Speaker 1: Like with Rumpelstilskin today, we want to know the motivations
Speaker 1: of all the characters, even the villains. And doctor McNeil says,
Speaker 1: the wolf is a perfect anti hero.
Speaker 3: We love that. The idea of the anti hero now
Speaker 3: is something that we want to run with and we've
Speaker 3: got this perfect character with which to do it, The
Speaker 3: big bad Wolf, right, and so we get to play
Speaker 3: with these ideas because they're still relevant to us, but
Speaker 3: in these totally different, totally nuanced ways, and we get
Speaker 3: things like Hoodwinked, things like Into the Woods that turn
Speaker 3: these ideas on their heads on purpose that wouldn't work
Speaker 3: if we didn't all know the original story.
Speaker 1: Hoodwinked is a two thousand and five feature length cartoon
Speaker 1: movie and crime procedural that tells a story through the
Speaker 1: perspective of four different characters, Little Red, Granny, the Wolf,
Speaker 1: and the Huntsman, and revolves around trying to discover who
Speaker 1: the goodie bandit is. The twist it isn't the Wolf,
Speaker 1: but a cute little bunny named Bongo who's a mastermind criminal.
Speaker 1: The moral is simple, don't judge a book by its cover.
Speaker 1: But these retellings aren't just about the wolf. They also
Speaker 1: turn the tables on Little Red herself. Like with Into
Speaker 1: the Woods, which doctor McNeil talked about above. It's a
Speaker 1: musical that was turned into a film in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 1: The story follows several characters set in a fairytale world
Speaker 1: where things don't go quite right and Little Red isn't
Speaker 1: as sweet. She steals pies, from the Baker. But Into
Speaker 1: the Woods isn't the only time that Little Red is
Speaker 1: portrayed as more than an innocent young girl.
Speaker 3: Angela Carter's poem in the Company of Wolves plays into this,
Speaker 3: where it's not a directory telling of Little Red riding Hood,
Speaker 3: but it's the themes of womanhood and sexuality and predatoriness
Speaker 3: where the woman in the end chooses to welcome in
Speaker 3: that predatory male. And we see it in even more
Speaker 3: contemporary instances, like the film Hard Candy, a young girl
Speaker 3: is groomed online by an older man. We encounter it
Speaker 3: through their online discussions and when they meet up in person,
Speaker 3: and it's very ominous, very chilling, And through the entire
Speaker 3: opening half of the film, the young woman is wearing
Speaker 3: a red hoodie and that's it. That's the entire reference
Speaker 3: to Little Red riding Hood. But just in that one act,
Speaker 3: even maybe unconsciously, for a lot of viewers, we have
Speaker 3: those themes predatory masculinity and vulnerable femininity, and youth and
Speaker 3: age and all of those binary oppositions that fairy tales
Speaker 3: include in ways that make them a shorthand for those
Speaker 3: ideas today.
Speaker 1: The part doctor McNeil doesn't mention about hard Candy is
Speaker 1: that in the end, the twist is at the girl
Speaker 1: as a true predator. The guy had photographed her friend
Speaker 1: being murdered. She forces him to confess before blackmailing him
Speaker 1: into killing himself. Another take comes from an essay by
Speaker 1: Neha Patel. In it, she points out that many book
Speaker 1: adaptations have one basis in common. A woman is put
Speaker 1: into a perilous situation and must face something bad, whether
Speaker 1: it be a demon, a monster, or a wolf. The
Speaker 1: books she lists to back her point are Scarlett by
Speaker 1: Marissa Meyer, Crimson Bound by Rosamund Hodge, for the Wolf
Speaker 1: by Hannah Whitten, and Sister Read by Jackson Pierce. Her
Speaker 1: essay connects back to the original moral of Pirot, and
Speaker 1: she says that although the modern world might seem see
Speaker 1: for women, it isn't. She uses crime statistics to illustrate
Speaker 1: her take, but she says that unlike the Grimms version,
Speaker 1: there are no societal mechanisms that might rescue you. But
Speaker 1: then again, you have modern variations like the twenty eleven
Speaker 1: Little Red Riding Hood movie with Amanda Seifred, where she
Speaker 1: saves herself. In the film, a town is descended upon
Speaker 1: by a werewolf. Valerie, who is a little Red, gets
Speaker 1: caught up trying to figure out who the wolf is.
Speaker 1: The werewolf turns out to be her father, and she
Speaker 1: ends up killing him, but her love gets scratched. Since
Speaker 1: Valerie can communicate with werewolves since she was born into it.
Speaker 1: Although in the movie you still have to be turned,
Speaker 1: she is able to stay in touch with her love
Speaker 1: while he ventures off to learn to control his impulses. Here,
Speaker 1: unlike the variations of the past, Red is more than
Speaker 1: capable of defending herself. Yes, she does have help from
Speaker 1: her love, but it is ultimately Little Red who kills
Speaker 1: her father. You could say these stories present a shift
Speaker 1: in power dynamics, or possibly women taking their power back.
Speaker 3: I think that the vulnerability of young women has been
Speaker 3: and kind of always will be a hot topic in society,
Speaker 3: but in wildly different ways. For a long time, the
Speaker 3: instinct was shelter and protect, and now the instinct is
Speaker 3: educate and empower. Let's do something different with that. So
Speaker 3: we're going to keep our vulnerable young woman character, but
Speaker 3: she's gonna start kicking ass, you know, like she's gonna
Speaker 3: take on this incredibly different mode of being. Will still
Speaker 3: need a way to talk about that, but we're going
Speaker 3: to talk about it in wholly different ways.
Speaker 1: Little Red riding Hood has been around for centuries with
Speaker 1: endless different ways to tell it, and it looks as
Speaker 1: if it will stay with us for centuries more, just
Speaker 1: maybe without Little Red eating her grandmother's teeth. Next time,
Speaker 1: a beautiful Princess sleeps for one hundred years. The Deep
Speaker 1: Dark Woods is a production of School of Humans and
Speaker 1: iHeart Podcasts. It was created, written, and hosted by me
Speaker 1: Miranda Hawkins. This episode was produced by Mike hal June
Speaker 1: with senior producer Gabby Watts. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott,
Speaker 1: Brandon Barr, Elsie Crowley, and Maya Howard. Stories were voiced
Speaker 1: by Julia Christgau. Theme song was composed by Jesse Niswanger.
Speaker 1: This episode was sound designed and mixed by Chris Childs.
Speaker 1: If you enjoyed the show, please leave a review and
Speaker 1: you can follow along with the show on Instagram at
Speaker 1: School of Humans