Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Dahl/Hard Candy

Roald Dahl's versions of both “Little Red Riding Hood” and “The Three Little Pigs”, in my mind, extract humor from the contrast between roles of women today and the women that exist in fairy tales. In fairy tales like Little Red Robin Hood, the female characters tend to not have any logic-guided sentience. Instead, they exist only to present morals that explain the outcomes of their stupid mistakes.
The Little Red Riding Hood in Dahl's tales is strong and independent. She sees danger, and she takes care of the problem immediately. She is also cruel, as seen in “The Three Little Pigs,” where she kills both the Wolf and the Pig. The line about never trusting “young ladies from the upper crust” makes me think that Dahl is slightly bitter, and is attacking the materialistic, self-serving tendencies of some women.
Dahl's Little Red Riding Hood reminds me of a movie (that I have yet to see) called Hard Candy ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0424136/ ). It's a movie about a girl (wearing a red hoodie) who meets a sexual predator online, and feigns foolishness to arrange a meeting at the man's house to ultimately torture him. Both of these stories illustrate a type of modern violence not present in fairy tales (guns and online predators), and both also seem to contain morals that suggest tackling problems head-on instead of avoiding bad situations altogether.

1 comment:

  1. I agree that the Dahl's version and the movie you describe illustrate modern violence and advocate tackling problems head on. These stories also seem to have similarities to the early versions of the tale like "The Story of Grandmother," only with modern-day language and events.

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