Little Red Riding Hood and the Pedophile in Film: Freeway, Hard Candy, and The Woodsman

"Little Red Riding Hood" is one of very few well-known fairy tales not to have come under "the Disney spell" (Zipes, "Breaking") that has ossified and Americanized so many others. Outrage at the revisioning of stories, like "Snow White,"¹ that many Euro North Americans associate with a purportedly innocent state of childhood, has never dominated reactions to alterations of "Little Red Riding Hood." Perhaps that's why creators have subjected it to such a tremendous variety of rewriting and reconceptualizing: not only films, but also novels, short stories, children's literature, comic books, television productions, cartoons, and advertisements (see Beckett, "Recycling"; Daniels; Mieder; Nodelman). Though some offer fairly straightforward tellings, others parody the story, alter its genre (from wonder to horror, for example), and/or place it in a contemporary setting. Discussing tellings of "Little Red Riding Hood" in particular, Sandra Beckett comments, "[T]raditional motifs are transfigured and generally subverted to convey new messages and present modern social problems. … [A]uthors nonetheless achieve their goals through the use of archetypes, characters, motifs, and narrative structures of an age-old genre. … [R]e-versions of folk and fairy tales … reveal shifts in social values and ideologies" ("Once" 489).

Most film audiences familiar with "Little Red Riding Hood" may not know it as an international traditional tale. Versions of type 333 in the Aarne-Thompson-Uther index (henceforth ATU 333)² have been collected from some 35 ethno-cultural-linguistic groups (Uther 225). North American audiences usually know the version published in Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm's collections,³ in which Little Red Riding Hood (or Little Red Cap), bringing a basket of food to her grandmother, meets a wolf in the forest. He asks where she is going, and then precedes her to the house, where he swallows the grandmother. By the time the girl arrives, the wolf has installed himself in the grandmother's bed, in her clothes. Little Red Riding Hood comments, in a formulaic series, what big ears, hands, and mouth the grandmother/wolf has, and then the wolf eats her, too. A passing hunter shoots the wolf and rescues both grandmother and girl. They place stones in the wolf's belly so that he dies when he tries to escape. In a less familiar coda, Little Red Riding Hood returns and meets another wolf, but runs and tells her grandmother. They lock him out, but he jumps on the roof. They trick him into falling into a pot of water in which sausages have been boiled, and he drowns.

This version is only one of at least three European forms of the narrative, distinguishable by their endings. In the French text published by Charles Perrault in 1697 (Heiner), no saviour delivers Red and her grandmother, and the appended moral prefigures some of the films we discuss:

Children, especially attractive, well bred young ladies, should never talk to strangers, for if they should do so, they may well provide dinner for a wolf. … [T]here are various kinds of wolves. There are also those who are charming, quiet, polite, unassuming, complacent, and sweet, who pursue young women at home and in the streets. And unfortunately, it is these gentle wolves who are the most dangerous ones of all.

(Ashliman)⁴

A third ending, found in oral French versions, involves Red's self-rescue, with female helpers. She recognizes that the wolf is not her grandmother, but goes along with the plot, removing her clothes and getting into bed. Then she tells the wolf she must relieve herself. Suspicious, he ties a string to her leg, but she unties it and runs away. When he discovers her ruse, the wolf runs after her. When Red reaches a river, washerwomen on the other bank throw sheets across and pull Red to safety. They make the same offer to the wolf, but let go when he is in the middle of the river so that he drowns (see Douglas; Verdier).

It takes some familiarity with folktale types and folkloric motifs, and comfort with...