Disney's Little Red Riding Hood

I decided to see if Disney happened to do his own version of Little Red Riding Hood and was not surprised when I found that he did in fact do his own version of the tale early in his career in 1922. This is one of seven Laugh-o-Grams with four of the originals still surviving. Walt Disney did this before he was "Walt Disney" and known worldwide for Snow White, Cinderella, and even the creation of the mouse himself, Mickey. I found his take on the story particularly interesting because it is so out of the norm for what we are used to seeing Disney produce.

Typically, Disney does adapt stories to fit his own needs and makes them more family-friendly. The first thing I noticed in this video was the complete replacement of an animal predator with that of an actual human. The wolf that preys on Red is now a full-fledged human next-door-neighbor type who noticeably doesn't have to do anything to get rid of Grandmother and does who knows what with Red inside of Grandmother's house. The predator element is still there but oddly, Disney chose to make it even more creepy and realistic.

The realistic aspect of Disney's take on it is even further enhanced through the modern (for the time) look of the characters and scenery. Disney's Red doesn't travel by foot. No, she's a modern girl who travels by car... pushed by her dog. The hunter who only appears in a few versions of the written tale rescues Red not with a gun but with wit and the help of his airplane. Also, in true Disney fashion, the tale has a happy ending and ends with Red and the hunter smooching on the airplane which is a new addition that follows the standard of guy getting girl in the end that we are used to seeing.

I also thought it was interesting that Disney spent a good portion of his story focusing on Red's mother who really isn't significant in versions of the story that we read in class. Disney also chose to add Red's father (I think that's who he was...) to the story. We see him hanging in what appears to be a portrait so either he's dead but able to talk or just an interactive picture that watches over Red's house. Either way, I think it's a bit funny that Disney chose to add him but portray him in such a creepy way.

Disney's version of Little Red Riding Hood is similar to James Thurber's version in that puts a modern twist on an old tale. It makes the tale a little more belieavable while still being eery yet fun. Although, I must admit that I find it easier to believe the idea of a pedophile existing and going to such extensive measures to capture his prey more believable in today's world than in the 1920s.

Red Riding Hood's Returns to Her Roots

As we have discussed in class, the story of Little Red Riding Hood originated as a sexual story for adults with implications of a bed scene between Red and the Wolf. It then begun its shift to a children's story with the intention of teaching children morals about how to avoid/ handle sexual themes (breaking the bottle a symbol of losing virginity, the explicit moral about avoiding "wolves" at the end of the Perrault version, etc.). Little Red then became just that, LITTLE RED. Society transformed the tale into one for children about a more child-like version of little Red herself, an innocent story about a little girl taking food to her sick grandmother, removing all sexual innuendos. That is the version most of us grew up with, but society is changing again.

At some point in time, society began openly returning to sexualized themes (i.e. buy this toothpaste and a random hot chick will walk up and make out with you). Now everything is about sex, even things that were not initially intended to be (such as toothpaste, clothing, gum, detergent, etc.), so the sexualization of fairy tales (especially those that lend themselves to it, like Little Red) is inevitable. When I searched on YouTube I found (well, several things, but...) one particular series that stood out to me. There were several cartoons from Tex Avery about Little Red Riding Hood. The cartoons came out in the 1940s and while there were several of them, they were all essentially the same. Each one had Red as a night club dancer, flirting with, but denying the wolf who was adamantly pursuing her. Many of the scenes overlapped, some songs were the same, and the wolf generally had the same reaction each time, not to mention that the characters were all the exact same (meaning drawn the same with the same voices, etc.).

What I found most interesting was that there were so many different versions of essentially the same thing? Why? The only thing I can think of is that there must have been demand for the topic, so Tex Avery would change it a little and re-market it. Sex sells in modern day America (and most other places around the world). Here is the link to the one that actually addresses the change to a sexier version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wn7Su0A-inA&feature=related

if that doesn't work type in "Red Hot Riding Hood (1943)-High Quality" on YouTube.

Additionally, I watched the Christina(?) Ricci version (posted on OAK) and again found it to focus on the original sexual themes from the early version of the tale (told for adults). To be honest, I had never heard of any reference to these themes in this story before this class, but you don't have to look too far to find this version making a comeback due to the demands of today's society. Unfortunately, I don't think we do as good of a job keeping this stuff out of the hands of children today (especially when we put it in cartoon form). Either way, looks like Red is returning to her roots.

Murder Most Fowl

Fairy tales are inherently unrealistic and contain illogical facets, but “The Juniper Tree” pushes the bounds of storytelling liberties for me. For one thing, although humans are often transformed into animals, this bird appeared out of a mist rising from a tree after the boy’s flesh and bones had been eaten and buried (respectively). Also, how exactly does the bird chirping convey such a complex message? And how did this “bird” carry a millstone around its little claws that took 20 men to lift, and was so heavy it could kill someone? The bird must be part human, part animal, part magical spirit to be able to do all of these physical things as well as think of a strategy to kill and be able to communicate. His song... I just love his song. I have a specific tune for it I like to whistle.

Clearly this fairy tale is taking advantage of our suspension of belief. Still, the Juniper Tree still contains some important connections with other tales, especially regarding the rampant problem in fairy tales with child abuse. In “Juniper Tree”, the stepmother slams the lid on the boy’s head and it rolls off, causing her to set his head back on with a kerchief. The mother in “Sweetheart Roland” takes a page out of this storybook and goes to chop off her stepdaughter’s head, but accidentally saws off that of her own daughter. And if this weren’t ghastly enough, the mother in “Juniper Tree” feels the need to feed the boy’s steamed body to his father! This is similar to the attempt of Sanna the old cook to eat Foundling after boiling him into good meat. The Juniper Tree shares a lot of plot characteristics with the other tales, but ultimately all of them end up transformed back into their normal, superior state.

Brothers as animals and defeating death

When I first read “The Juniper Tree,” I was struck by the similarity to another Grimms’ story we read, “Brother and Sister.” In both stories, there is a loving brother-sister relationship, a brother that is transformed into an animal, and the return of a person from death. I would say that, like the fawn in brother and sister, the brother in “The Juniper Tree” is mostly human, even as a bird. He still has the love of his sister and still plots his revenge on his stepmother. In “Brother and Sister,” the sister recognizes that the brother is the fawn, making him still seem very human. Though Marlene does not necessarily know that her brother is the bird, she does seem to have some idea. After the bird first appears, the story says, “Marlene was very happy and gay. It was as if her brother were still alive.”

I found the song to be very eerie in the story, and it bothered me that the people that the bird sings the song to seem overtaken by the beauty and ignore the lyrics. No one seems to even hear the lyrics except the stepmother. I think it bothered me because they understand him when he talks but ignore the chilling song lyrics.

I think in these stories we just have to accept that people come back from the dead. Clearly this is not an ordinary bird, as it can carry a lot of weight. Though the stepmother is never specifically called a witch, she seems to act like one, and in fairytales there is always the idea that witch’s magic can be reversed, as the sister in “Brother and Sister” is brought back to life even though the witch killed her. Also, in the Hansel and Gretel movie we watched in class, the eaten children come back to life. It seems as though murder committed by witches is not permanent, and can be reversed by the right actions.

The Juniper Tree: Boy, then Bird, then Boy

Over 2000 years ago, a boy was born out of his mothers’ blood and the white winter snow that sat beneath a juniper tree. The power of the tree, bodily humors, emotions and/or desires brought the boy into the human world. This formula brings forth the birth and rebirth of the boy two times in the Grimm version of the tale “The Juniper Tree,” first, at the desire and blood of his mother; and secondly, at the desire and weeping of his step- sister, Marlene.

The setting of this tale is at the apogee of Biblical occurrences and the themes present throughout it; such as immaculate conception, and rebirth, suggest to me that although there are times when the boy possesses human qualities, that he is never fully human but is in fact superior to humankind and a god-like figure with zoomorphic qualities that permit him to continue living and exact moral justice on others regardless of whether or not he exists in the human world.

We see the boy; or in this particular instance, the bird, execute his superiority to humankind every time he sings his song. His ability to enchant anyone from goldsmiths, to shoemakers, to mill-stone workers, to even his own family conveys his greatness over mere mortals just as his immaculate conception did, and just as his rebirth at the end of the story does as well.

Though we have witnessed transformations in other stories that we have read, they have not been in the style of complete birth, complete death, complete re-birth in a new form, and transformation to the original form as this tale is. Generally, transformations follow in a sequential and progressive order and are maintained within the same body until the very end when say for example an aesthetically displeasing character is rewarded with handsome features as the case with “Hans My Hedgehog.”

Causality

The transformation of the brother into a bird and back into a boy is important to the story of The Juniper Tree, but leaves a lot of questions. Where does he fall on a scale between totally human and totally animal? What about his song? And how can he come back from the dead? How does this transformation compare to others we've read about?

The boy's transformation into a bird in the visual medium of a film spoke to me more as a symbolic gesture than in the story. Odd, though, that when I saw the actual transformation, I was less inclined to believe it. As has been said in the earlier posts, I believe that the boy is in some sort of purgatory. This can't be the type of place we normally consider purgatory, though. The boy is not a causal agent of his own demise. Granted, he does not accept the new Stepmother as his family, but it can be argued (more so in the story than the film) that she is evil and the events could only occur one way. This place the boy is in, a metaphysical place, is mostly devoid of repentance. The way he is "rescued" back to life is by no account of his own. Neither the story nor the film ventures into his narrative territory. For all we know, he is fighting monsters and clawing his way back to the land of the living. Anyway, that just means that his resurrection has to be strictly symbolic. The bond of family over all else? Rid the world of some evil, receive some good? In the film, i'd say that the main focus is on narrative continuity--the boy has to be ok. In the story, the boy's resurrection is an afterthought. The heavyness of his departure is inherent in his song. He torments from beyond the living realm. As for this relating to other tales, his transformation back is pretty standard stuff. I like his character better as a bird, but maybe thats just me.

I agree with what has been said so far. It is difficult to determine where he would fall on the scale because no transformation takes place, but rather a resurrection/reincarnation of the boy's spirit into the form of a bird. Most stories we have read, boy figures transform into birds (The Seven Ravens, and Twelve Brothers), as a result of an ill informed wish/desire of the parents to have another child (a daughter). Here, the boy's fate is a result of a deliberate action taken by the commonly Grimm portrayed jealous, cannibalistic, evil Stepmother. What we can compare between Juniper Tree and the Seven ravens and Twelve brothers is that the guilt is always associated with the youngest daughter feeling responsible for something that happened through no fault of her own. Why do so many stories follow this trajectory in the Grimms?

The bird's song is very interesting, not from the actual lyrics or words sung, but by the underlying intentions of the song. I kind of got the idea that the boy (as the bird) was in a purgatory like state and needed to buy his way back to life. He uses his song to entrance the certain individuals (shoemaker, millworker) and to play off of their desires/greed to hear the song again so that the boy can "purchase" material things in order to resurrect himself. Once he has gathered up sufficient things, he uses them to return his soul from the in between stage of life and death, back to life itself

An Aerial Tangent

As for the human-animal continuum, I would say that the boy lands on the other side of it when he transforms. The boy is dead – only his spirit remains. That spirit is given to a bird. There is no in-between; the physical forms are perfectly clear. I read the bird and the boy as two separate entities, and the bird is a keeper of the boys spirit until the time that the boy can be restored. A physical purgatory, or a waiting form of sorts. I am reminded of Pinocchio in this way of thinking about the boy's transformation; was Pinochio on a puppet-boy continuum before he was made human? What about after? We hardly still call him "puppet boy" after he is made human. The difference in Pinocchio's states of being is in when he is an actual puppet and when he is a human boy. There is his preliminary time as a well-crafted chunk of wood, but then we have two distinct conditions: puppet with a spirt ("I got no strings!"), and boy with a spirit ("I'm a real boy!"). Completely different. The same, I feel, can be applied to the boy's change in "The Juniper Tree".

Author's Disclaimer: In re-reading this before positing, I realized that the above argument assumes that humans are the only spirited beings, and that birds (and other living things of similar natures) do not have spirits of their own. I am sure that Pocahontas would be gravely disappointed in me, and you can be assured that I am properly abashed for my inconsiderate oversight. However, I put a great deal of thought into what you just read, so it was still posted as planned.

On another hand, the boy's revival from the dead really emphasizes the "kill or be killed" concept we see in "Hansel and Gretel" as well. The inversion is interesting, though: first, the boy falls victim to the KOBK mentality, and was clearly the one who was slaughtered. But in his alternate life as a bird, it is as if he awakened to the idea, and so he goes on to murder his stepmother. His revelation is seemingly rewarded by the restoration to his life as a human.

Something completely unrelated to birds, transformations, and ressurections, but equally interesting/mind-boggling/troublesome, is the fact that the only named character in the Grimms' version of the story is Marlene. I know in class, we spoke briefly about the role of siblings, with particular emphasis on brother-sister combinations, but it seems that this focus is unwarranted. It almost makes the story about her, and that really caught my attention. Any thoughts?

Juniper Tree

I see the boy as falling into the same scale as the frog in "The Frog Prince." His soul is still in tact even though his physical form is in that of an animal. He does not have the same liberties as the frog, since the frog is able to still talk freely and is pretty much the same as he was when he was a prince, in spite of being a frog. The boy, on the other hand, was killed which means that he is "dead" but not completely since this is fairy tale world. Unlike the frog, the boy hasn't been placed under some sort of spell since he was actually killed but he does experience the sort of "grace" that is common in fairy tales. Fairy tale characters who have proven themselves to be "good"and "innocent" do not die. They either avert death or like the boy in "The Juniper Tree" are reincarnated. His speech, however, is severely limited and he only speaks in song. The boy gets to live but only so that he can attempt to regain his human form and to haunt his murderer. The good are always rewarded in fairy tales so the boy is killed but doesn't completely die, therefore, he is able to come back to life so easily after the truth behind his death is discovered and the evil have been punished.

If you compare the Juniper Tree movie to the written Fairy Tale, there is a fuzzy live between totally human and totally animal. Because, in the movie, he does not turn back into a boy, suggesting that he was totally animal all along and was just in a human form. But, because of the familial aspect of the story it seems strange to confine the boy into only an animal. In the story, the bird sings to all kinds of men and characters in the story such as shoemakers, and wives, etc. He will never repeat the song and he continues on his journey. In order for him to turn back into a boy, he brings Marlene new shoes. The mother was so unhappy that she did not have them she had to step outside, and in the meantime, the bird drops a stone on her head and kills her.

The song would not make sense to anyone except Marlene or the mother if they heard it. For they were the only ones who knew what had happened. Marlene especially would be the one to recognize the bird of all characters, and she did. She knew that the satin shoes were from him and rejoiced to her mother. This transformation compares to other bird stories that we have read about because it is usually the sister who saves the brothers from being birds their whole lives. In this case, the same is true, he brings her the shoes in which she makes the mother jealous, who then goes outside and is killed. While this story has many dramatic differences, the sister could still be viewed as the savior.