The above is a link to a Little Red Riding Hood clip I found on you tube. The clip is very short but uses the symbolism of the narrative without telling the whole story. The first shot shows a girl walking in the forest with the tradition red tunic, white tights, and mary-jane flats. She is presented as a young, innocent girl- but that quickly shifts. Just before she enters the “grandmother’s” house we see that she is in fact a beautiful, made up young adult. Her lips are bright red and highly sexualized. As she enters the house, she turns around and scans the area. To me it seems like she is making sure she was not followed, or no one saw her enter the home. The music is playful and upbeat, it gives no indication that she is in any danger. The line that caught my attention in the song played as she approaches the bed, “you’re everything a big bad wolf would want.” Want how? Everything he would want to eat? Or everything he would want sexually? That question is quickly answered as she takes off her hood and slowly moves her hand along the bed to the figure lying in it. Suddenly, a wolf pops up and scares her, yet her expression quickly changes to a pleased even seductive gaze. She then removes her red tunic to reveal a skimpy dress and crawls onto the bed with the wolf- whose lower body we can see is a man’s. The wolf takes of his make to reveal a man, and the two fall into bed together and the scene closes. The end caption includes the phrase, “get primal.”
I love how this version of the tale speaks more to the clip we saw in class today than the story most of us grew up with. It shows her not as a naive lost child, but a sexual being who seeks out the wolf, who is happy to receive her. The caption at the end seems to refer to her more than the wolf. The animal is already primal, thus it is an invitation for this female to give into her desires. The removal of the wolf mask indicates that man and animal are one in the same.
I think that the best part of the clip is the song in the background. It replaces the narration setting her up as sexual, and then ending with “I don’t think little big girls should, go walking in the spooky old woods alone.” It acknowledges the theme or moral of the story, but then the singer’s howl at the end undermines it as if he is enjoying the sexualized, fantasy [not so] little red riding hood.
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