As Told By Wolves: Little Red Riding Hood Films

the essay behind the video essay

"Aha! Little Red Riding Hood!" says the Big Bad Wolf, upon finding the girl in the woods. "Now I'm going to take off your little red cape, lift up your little red skirt, pull down your little red panties and fuck your brains out!"

"Oh no you're not, Mr. Wolf," Red Riding Hood retorts, pulling a pistol out of her basket and drawing a bead on the wolf. "You're going to eat me just like the book says!"

- “An Old Joke” found in Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked: Sex, Morality, and the Evolution of a Fairy Tale by Catherine Orenstein

Well, if you insist.

“Little Red Riding Hood” is a well-known tale to this day. Published by both Perrault and the Brothers Grimm among tales we all know like “Snow White”, “Cinderella”, and “Sleeping Beauty”. But, unlike those lucky princesses, Disney hasn’t touched Red. Perhaps even the Disney corporation, which built its legacy on retelling European fairy tales sans their sex and violence, could not reconcile the rape allegory into something appropriate enough for children?

Perhaps the tale is just too short for a strict adaptation. A girl heads through the woods to grandma’s house, meets a wolf, wolf eats Grandma, wolf eats girl, girl and grandma get rescued by a man. Not much to it- most adaptations and retellings take only the basic plot points or just motifs- the red hood, the wolfish predator, the hunger for young girls- to craft a new story that hardly resembles a fairy tale.

And yet, the story persists. We all know it. We recognize references to it in literature and film when we see them. But do we really understand what the story is about?

Maybe Charles Dickens understood. In his memoir essay “A Christmas Tree” he wrote about decorations going on the tree:

“She was my first love. I felt that if I could have married Little Red Riding Hood, I should have known perfect bliss. But, it was not to be; and there was nothing for it but to look at the Wolf in the Noah’s Ark there, and put him late in the procession on the table, as a monster who was to be degraded.”

Was the wolf a monster? Or was he just being a wolf?

Maybe A.P. Randolph was right to question who was really the monster of the story when he wrote the 1926 song “How Could Red Riding Hood” with the lyrics

“How could Red Riding Hood
Have been so very good
And still keep the wolf from the door?
Why was she dressed up in her bright flaming red
Unless she expected to knock someone dead?
Why did she ramble?
She knew it was a gamble
She was out in the woods for no good”

Was Red in control all along, baiting the wolf into a trap? Should we hear out the wolf’s side of the story?

Or maybe it’s the makers of the S&M porn video “The Punishment of Red Riding Hood” who really understand the tale. The video skips over the tale’s plot points and gets right to porn star Red Riding Hood’s “punishment”.

Was Little Red a victim? Or was she asking for it? She does tell the wolf exactly where her grandmother lives, after all.

There’s no denying “Little Red Riding Hood” is about sex. Either non-consensual, as implied by Perrault’s moral which warns young girls about the gentlemen wolves. Or consensual, interpreted as a young woman’s sexual awakening with the wolf she brings to her grandmother’s house.

Film adaptations have played with the sexual nature of the tale from the beginning. Be it a tease for adult audiences or the underlying threat that teaches children. But seeing as most of those films were written and directed by wolves- I mean men- I think it’s fair to question their interpretations…

In the 1862 play by Alphonse Daudet, The Romance of Little Red Riding Hood, Little Red tells a character who recognizes her as the famous fairy tale maiden,

“I want you to know, monsieur, that I've been devoured an infinite number of times, and each time it is my fault. There you have it! Four thousand years that I've had the same accident, four thousand years that I am revived, four thousand years, by an incredible fatality, I'm going to put myself inevitably in the paws of the wolf. What do you want? I always die very young, and when I return to the world, I only have a vague memory of my previous existences, very vague... Oh, how interesting it would be to write and peruse that Story of Red Riding Hood in all the centuries!”

It would be interesting. Let’s do that.

The Story of Grandmother

Before the Grimms, before Perrault, there was an oral tale being told among peasants of France called “The Story of Grandmother”. Of course, being an oral tale, we can’t be sure when or how exactly it was told each time, but in 1885 Paul Delarue included a version in his collection of Popular French Tales.

“The Story of Grandmother” begins the same as the “Little Red Riding Hood” we know, with a little girl being sent to her grandmother’s with a basket of food, taking a path through the forest. When she meets the wolf- werewolf, specifically- he asks if she is taking the path of pins or the path of needles. She says needles; he takes pins. As we know, he arrives at the grandmother’s house first and eats her. But he doesn’t swallow her whole, he saves some of her meat and a bottle of her blood in the cupboard. When the little girl arrives, the werewolf, pretending to be granny, tells her to eat and drink. A cat calls her slut for eating her granny. Then the wolf tells the girl to get into bed with him. The girl takes off each item of clothing and the wolf tells her to put each on the fire. Once in bed with the werewolf, she runs through some familiar lines like “what big ears you have” and responses like “the better to hear you with, my child” until the werewolf says “the better to eat you with” at which the girl suddenly has to “go”, the werewolf wants to her “go” in the bed, but she insists on going outside, so the werewolf ties a string to her. She of course unties it and runs away. When the wolf thinks she’s been out there too long “making a load”, he goes out to find her gone and runs after her only to arrive at her house just at the moment she entered.

Many of those details will sound unfamiliar and that is because when Charles Perrault published his story “Le petit chaperon rouge” (Little Red Riding Hood) in 1697, he omitted the gore of granny’s flesh and blood, the overt sexual actions of getting naked into bed with the wolf, and did not let the little girl escape. And so, this is the beginning of men telling Little Red’s story.

Oral tales were often told among peasant women while they tended to their household duties, and so included terms like pins and needles, which meant something to them. They also told tales of characters familiar to them like self-reliant, smart young girls who go into forests on their own and get themselves out of sticky situations. Perrault, who notably had a “low opinion of women” changed this tale into a lesson for how upper-class girls ought to behave. Perrault’s moralité, which is almost as long as the tale itself, specifically speaks to rich pretty girls and how they need to watch out for wolves who are mistaken for gentlemen. Because if you let these wolves into your “alcoves”, it’s your fault. Welcome to the 18th century, little girl. Fall in line. Accept your rape. It’s going to be your fault.

Perrault’s Little Red Riding Hood story became so popular over the next century that by the time the Grimms were going about collecting their traditional German tales in the early 1800s, Perrault’s “Little Red Riding Hood” had become an oral tale itself. One of the Grimms’ sources of oral tales, Marie Hassenpflug, who had a German and French background had a version of Perrault’s tale in her oral collection. The Grimms named theirs “Rötkappchen” (Little Red Cap), and of course, they did their thing of changing the tales they collected to reflect what they felt were German traditions and values (aka removing all the sexual innuendo). They added the mother’s warning to “stay on the path” which has become the most common lesson associated with the story. They also added the huntsman to save Little Red and Grandma, some traditional misogyny, thankyousomuch, and the idea of putting stones in the cut-open-but-still-sleeping wolf to kill him when he tried to get up. They also added a second encounter with another wolf for Little Red and Granny, this time Granny has the plan to kill the wolf with the temptation of sausage water. Mmm… So, good for granny, but Little Red still hasn’t handled a wolf on her own.

In looking at the history of the tale, there’s a lot of interesting stuff to learn about the werewolf trials of 16th century France and all the global versions of ATU tale type 333 including a tiger grandma from East Asia but looking ahead to film adaptations, which is why we’re here, it’s the Grimms’ version of the tale that most adaptations draw from.

To return to the scene from The Romance of Little Red Riding Hood, she continues,

“Monsieur Perrault has sketched but only one chapter. How fortunate is he who will write the others.”

Red Hot Riding Hood

The Big Bad Wolf character appeared in several Tex Avery cartoons in the 1940s. He debuted as Adolf Wolf invading the three little pigs. But in 1943 he met Red and was never the same. He ogled, fought over, and pursued Red through several stories.

In Red Hot Riding Hood (voted the 7th greatest cartoon of all time), the Wolf is a Hollywood swinger and Red is a showgirl. The Wolf pulls some classic eye bulges and dropped jaws while Red performs. After Red rebuffs his advances but directs him to her Grandma’s place, he goes there to find Red but instead finds himself the victim of a sexual predator; Grandma is hot for Wolfie. Cartoon hijinks ensue.

After that, the Wolf goes nuts for Red as “Lou” performing in Alaska (The Shooting of Dan McGoo, 1945), as a Rosie the Riveter performing in her Cinderella moment (Swing Shift Cinderella, 1945), and as a cowgirl performing in a saloon (Wild and Woolfy, 1945) But Wolfie never gets Red in the end.

Tex Avery was far from the first to tell the tale from the wolf’s point of view. I said Disney hadn’t touched the tale of Little Red, but that’s not quite true. In 1922, a young Walt Disney’s first animated short film was in fact “Little Red Riding Hood”. However, it doesn’t resemble the tale very much. The gentleman wolf isn’t even a wolf; he’s just a gentleman.

Many other cartoons, from the 20s through the 40s, tell the tale of a wolf pursuing Little Red Riding Hood, generally from his perspective as the pursuer, not Little Red’s perspective as the victim of sexual harassment. When the tale is told from the horny wolf’s perspective, Red becomes a seductress. Everything she does teases the wolf and suggests that she is DTF. Whether in the traditional setting of the woods, or the modern urban streets, the wolf is tempted by a red-hot Little Riding Hood. But his advances are rebuffed!

This new modern Red takes her suitor’s gifts but wants nothing to do with him. She gives him a literal cold shoulder as he compliments (or negs) her walking down the street. Even changing his face won’t draw her in.

This is the modern woman, these films say. A woman who doesn’t need a man! A woman with the choice to reject a man! A woman who drives her own automobile! A woman who can tease but doesn’t have to follow through. Ain’t being a wolf tough these days? You put in all this effort. You get all the signals that she wants it but in the end… You get beat up by an old lady.

Does the wolf really deserve it, though? Did he really do anything wrong? The wolf himself is almost always the victim of sexual harassment or violence in these cartoons.

In Red Hot Riding Hood, Red and Granny are portrayed as accomplices in an attempted sex crime. Red reels him in and sets him on his way to Granny’s where he has to try to hide from a horny old woman attempting to sexually assault him. And in The Wolf’s Pardon, the wolf, recently released from prison, is chased around by a horny grown-up Red attempting to get her hands on him.

Poor wolfie? More like- he can dish it out but he can’t take it. He pursues Red like she should be so grateful to get a wolf like him. But Red isn’t interested. And a woman never has to give a reason why she’s not interested! However, when the wolf is aggressively pursued, it’s clear that he’s averse because he’s not into old ladies or girls with glasses and big teeth. Therein lies the comedy! What self-respecting gentleman wolf would be sexually attracted to an older woman or a woman in glasses? Of course, he runs away! And they are wrong for pursuing him when he didn’t ask for it.

I can imagine audiences watching these films- the men cheering at red hot Red dancing on screen (seeing themselves in the wolf) and the women cheering when Red rejects the horny wolf (seeing themselves, or how they wish they could be, in her). Maybe that’s the balance they were trying to strike with these films- something for everyone. Make the big bad wolf not all bad and make Little Red a little bit “bad”.

With these films setting the stage for what “Little Red Riding Hood” could be used to tell adults about the world, I’m almost afraid to look at what filmmakers used “Little Red Riding Hood” to teach children about the world…

Foolhardy or Brave

When Perrault wrote his “Le Petit Chaperon Rouge”, fairy tales (contes de fées) were told among the aristocracy in the literary salons of Paris. They were not children’s tales. Perrault began the trend of creating them for a children’s audience with his invention of Mother Goose and adding morals to the end of all his tales.

Then, over a hundred years later when the Grimms published their collections, they were doing so to preserve German traditions, but they did name their collection Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children’s and Household Tales). And since then, fairy tales have been primarily relegated to the domain of picture books and cartoons.

Children’s media is never just entertainment. Media has become an important part of how children learn about the world and themselves. Not being a connoisseur of children’s media (I’d rather eat one whole than try to entertain one), I’m not interested in analyzing these movies and episodes for their cinematic merit, but I am curious about what lessons filmmakers are teaching when they change the tale, expand it, rework it, but make it for kids.

Lesson 1: Stay on the path

This is the lesson that most people associate with the tale. The tale is a perfect setup to teach kids the consequences of deviating from parental orders. Everything I watched for kids portrays this; it’s not “Little Red Riding Hood” if she just walks by the chatty wolf without saying a word to him, or just blows her rape whistle and runs home instead.

It’s a fine lesson. Young children are told things like “don’t stray from the path” and “don’t get into a stranger’s car” for good reason! There are real dangers in the world. Of course, adults don’t tend to tell the kids why they should stay on the path, so the real-life lesson often becomes “do as you are told without question” not “learn to avoid danger”.

But this leads to the next, related, lesson.

Lesson 2: Men Wolves are dangerous.

If a reason is given for why Little Red must stay on the path it’s because she might meet a wolf and any and all wolves she might meet will eat her. Without reason, without discrimination, and without mercy. Avoid them full stop, there are no good wolves.

Is that fair? All wolves are bad? Well, to teach the kids a lesson with this tale, she can’t meet the one nice non-human-eating wolf. Her mother’s warning has to be justified for her to learn her lesson.

Yet, despite most of these movies enforcing a blanket ‘wolves = bad’ statement, a few have a contradictory lesson.

Lesson 3: #NotAllWolves

Part of retelling a fairy tale is finding new ways to tell it and using it in different ways. Twisting the moral of the story is not unusual for fairy tale adaptations.

In the most recent episode of David Walliams’s After Ever After series imagining the further adventures of fairy tale characters, Little Red Riding Hood’s granddaughter, Boots (named after her red boots), learns an important lesson about not judging all wolves by the actions of one wolf.

In Hoodwinked, the 2005 sin against animation (that face haunts my dreams), we learn the wolf isn’t really a bad guy. Red misinterpreted all their interactions of the day. So, kids watching learn about considering other people’s perspectives, that there are many versions of “what happened”, and that Grandmas can be cool.

I think teaching kids to not judge an individual or a group of people by the actions of one person within that group or identity is a really good lesson. However, it totally goes against the key lesson of “Little Red Riding Hood”. I’m all for retelling a story but let’s keep “Little Red Riding Hood” the story where kids learn that there are bad people in the world and that they should stay away from them. (And that most of those bad people are men.)

Lesson 4: Girls need a man to save them

Most children’s “Little Red Riding Hood” retellings use the Grimm’s ending with grandma and Little Red being saved by a man- a woodsman, a hunter, or her father.

Being saved, and always by an adult man, teaches girls -all kids- that any trouble they get in can be fixed by an adult and/or can only be fixed by an adult man.

We get it- it’s the Patriarchy, thankyousomuch. However- most retellings also attempt to subvert this obvious patriarchal ending.

Lesson 5: Girls can save themselves

Despite often being rescued by a man, all of the movies and episodes I watched feature Little Red Riding Hoods, and some other female characters, that are independent, clever, brave, strong, and sometimes even the one who saves the day.

I really like the line at the end of the Fairy Tales for Every Child episode:

“That was not the last of Little Red Happy Coat’s adventures. She continued to be daring and inquisitive but she learned not to take foolish chances.”

I think it demonstrates what the modern “Little Red Riding Hood” lesson should be for kids. It’s not just a straight-up “do as you’re told or you’ll get eaten” which implies that girls should shrink up, stay in line, and accept their lot in life. Most of these stories celebrate a young girl who is daring and inquisitive but needs to learn a lesson about the dangers of the world so she can continue to be herself and help keep herself safe. At the end of Cannon Movie Tales’ Red Riding Hood, the girl learns the difference between being foolhardy and brave.

“One is facing trouble and the other is looking for it.”

She said those in the wrong order, but I think she gets it.

There’s one thing that these kid’s movies and episodes have done right- among a lot of stuff they’ve done wrong. They all created brave, smart, and curious Little Red characters for young girls to relate to or look up to, who just need to learn a bit more about the world before they go off on their own.

So, this three-hundred-year-old tale has lost all of its sexual innuendo but is continuing the same basic lessons of being obedient to parents and wary of gentlemen wolves. But most of them try to inject some “strong female character” into the tale for young girls.

Dare I say an attempt at… feminism?!

Nobody’s Meat

I mean, what even is feminism, right?

Is it women enacting violence against men? Is it women being sexual with men? Is it when the woman becomes the wolf?

The English author Angela Carter began an era of feminist fairy tale retellings. Among her published works, which include modern fairytale-like novels, her book of short stories titled The Bloody Chamber is often referenced in any discussion of fairy tale retellings and feminism in fairy tales. The Bloody Chamber, published in 1979, included three stories inspired by “Little Red Riding Hood”; “The Werewolf”, in which a girl’s grandmother is the werewolf; “The Company of Wolves”, which includes stories of wolf lore and the “Little Red Riding Hood” story; and “Wolf-Alice”, about a girl raised by wolves.

In 1980, Carter adapted “The Company of Wolves” into a radio play. For the play, she created the narrative structure of a granny telling her granddaughter all the lore she knew about werewolves (and men); stories within a frame story.

In 1984 the film The Company of Wolves was released. The script was co-written by Angela Carter and Neil Jordan, directed by Jordan and was primarily an adaptation of Carter’s radio play. The script introduced another layer of a frame story; a teenage girl in her bedroom dreaming the events of the film’s core story. And although the movie’s core narrative is of a girl named Rosaleen in a small medieval village, it also includes enactments of several stories that granny tells Rosaleen and a couple that Rosaleen makes up herself. It’s a lot of stories within one movie.

Angela Carter called the film a “menstrual movie.” But it’s mostly known now as a cult horror classic, in particular for a special effects scene of a werewolf transformation. There’s a reason why Angela Carter’s work, The Bloody Chamber collection in particular, is remembered among feminist and fairy tale writers and readers, while The Company of Wolves film is remembered as a cult b-horror movie. His name is Neil Jordan.

“Oh, there she goes, blaming men for everything wrong in the world!”

Look, even in this “feminist” section, I’ve only got one film co-written by a woman and one directed by a woman. Though there are plenty of literary “Little Red Riding Hood” retellings by women, in film, Little Red’s story has always been told by the wolves. And we’ve seen how that goes.

Men, and even women filmmakers sometimes, tend toward violence as the path to liberation, as they’ve seen in a century of films made by and for men.

Freeway gives Little Red a gun. The 1996 film written and directed by Matthew Bright (a man!!!) is a modernized and issue-centred retelling of “Little Red Riding Hood”. Bright turns victimized Little Red of yore into a modern street-wise tough teenage girl who has been around the South Central block and seen some shit.

Her boyfriend’s name is Chopper. Chopper Wood. She packs a literal basket before stealing a social worker’s car to get herself upstate to her Grandma’s house.

Following the beats of the tale, Vanessa meets the wolf on her way to Grandma’s house; a man named Wolverton who appears to be a good Samaritan giving a down-on-her-luck runaway a ride and a hot meal, but is, in fact, The I-5 Killer who likes to beat, kill, and rape his victims. In that order. Though Vanessa shoots Wolverton several times in self-defence, he survives and gets to play the rich straight white man card in court. In a commentary on class structure in America, the semi-illiterate child of a sex worker/addict/currently-imprisoned mother gets accused of attempted murder and sent to juvenile detention.

Vanessa is punished, like in Perrault’s tale. She is punished for speaking up, telling the truth, and not looking remorseful for her violent actions.

The film’s message is clearly trying to be something about an unfair justice system. And in the end, the male sexual violence repeat offender pays for his crimes with his life and his last victim is left alive and finally believed by the law. A “fairy tale ending” indeed.

Retellings like these, and other attempts at female hero films, seem to me to be men trying to “do feminism” on women’s behalf. It’s not that women don’t write violence or feel empowered by it sometimes, but here once again, men are empowering fairy tale heroines by giving them the strength of violent acts, while Angela Carter chose to empower her “Little Red Riding Hood” heroine with sexual liberation. Literary scholar Jack Zipes agrees that “women do not have to reproduce the violence of men to change the rhetoric of violence” (The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood).

In The Company of Wolves, Rosaleen is a 13-year-old girl on the cusp of womanhood.

After her older sister dies at the hands- or paws- of a wolf, Rosaleen’s Granny fills her head with many stories about werewolves; how men become them and the signs to watch out for.

Rosaleen is skeptical but curious. She seems to want to learn more about these wolves and men, not so she can steer clear of them, but so she can better understand them. Sure enough, when the movie’s plot finally reaches the beats of the “Little Red Riding Hood” tale, Rosaleen is more curious than afraid of the hunter-werewolf-man she meets in the woods. She spends time with him, getting to know him, and makes a flirtatious bet; if he gets to Granny’s house before she does, she shall owe him a kiss.

Earlier in the film, while Rosaleen asks her mother about the validity of Granny’s werewolf stories, her mother replies

“And if there’s a beast in men it meets its match in women too.”

Women can be sexual, too. Women can be bad, too.

“Little Red Riding Hood” retellings get most interesting when Little Red’s attraction to the wolf is explored. The wolf not only represents a man and sex, but also the concept of evil, or just bad behaviour. What if Little Red Riding Hood wants to be bad?

The 2011 film Red Riding Hood, directed by Catherine Hardwicke, missed an opportunity to focus the story on the moral ambiguity of its characters, including Valerie, our Little Red character.

In one short scene at the beginning of the movie, a young Valerie and a young boy trap a rabbit and it is Valerie who wants to kill the rabbit to see what will happen. It could be a scene that sets up some morally questionable beginnings for our protagonist. However, the scene is only used as to reference for a red herring clue in the who’s-the-werewolf mystery of the film. (It’s her dad!) The film spends most of its time giving us scenes which make us suspect just about everyone around Valerie of being the werewolf. It is… not smart.

It does however create a theme in the film of seeing everyone as capable of both good and bad. Yet despite her “this kid is going to grow up to be a serial killer” moment, Valerie herself is never shown to be potentially “bad”. Unless fucking your sexy boyfriend in some hay is this script writer’s idea of being a “bad girl”. Oh did I mention this one is also written by a man?!

As I explored in the 40s cartoons, women flaunting their sexuality was seen as bad behaviour. And even still, in this century, being sexy is conflated with being bad, naughty, nasty. Even when it’s all consensual and enjoyable.

Into the Woods does an excellent job of incorporating a young woman’s first explorations of sexual desire with the lyrics “he made me feel excited. Well, excited and scared” and “though scary is exciting, nice is different than good.” These lessons learned by Little Red feel like a step up from the lessons that children learn from the tale. While children’s lessons can be black and white, adults need to learn to judge what’s exciting and scary and what’s actually dangerous for themselves. While children are told not to talk to strangers, adults go out specifically to talk- and maybe more- with strangers. Because it’s exciting! But it’s a lesson we all must learn that nice people and nice actions are not always good people or good for you.

As a young woman experiencing her first sexual desire for a creepy wolf man in the woods, Little Red is able to express, through song, the duality of her desire that feels both good and bad.

Rosaleen tells a couple of her own wolf stories in The Company of Wolves. First, she tells her mother a story of a witch who crashes the wedding of her former lover who betrayed her, turning the entire wedding party into wolves.

Her second story is told to the wolf. Upon finding the wolf in her Granny’s house, clearly having eaten Granny, Rosaleen spends some time with the wolf, perhaps teasing him, drawing out the inevitable. But she also shoots him. He throws a hissy fit. But she comes to comfort him and tells him a story of a she-wolf. The she-wolf is misunderstood by the human world and punished for acting in her true nature, so she leaves. When Rosaleen’s parents come to save her from the wolf, they find she has become a wolf herself, and she runs off with the other wolves, to join her kind.

This is where the film’s narrative greatly changes from the short story and Carter’s radio play, evidently to Carter’s disapproval. In an interview with Channel 4 Visions (aired October 17, 1984), she skirted around addressing why the ending is so different and said “You’ll have to ask the director.”

In Carter’s story, Rosaleen ends up in bed “in the paws of her wolf”. She has not changed her form. She has accepted the wolf as he is and accepted herself as she is; a young woman with sexual desire. But at the end of the film, a pack of wolves breaks into the sleeping girl’s bedroom, and she screams in terror for quite some time. Neil Jordan says of the ending…

In conclusion, men ruin everything. Can men really “do feminism” on women’s behalf? Is a woman enacting violence against a violent man a “feminist act”? Is a woman pursuing sexual desire a “feminist act”? Are stories about characters doing so “feminist” stories?

Look, men can be feminists. And that’s great. Well, it’s not great, it’s a low bar. And filmmakers and storytellers should not be limited to telling stories only about people who share all of their identities. And yet… all of these “Little Red Riding Hood” films written and/or directed by men have the distinct feel of being told by the wolf. I’d just like to see a Red make her “Little Red Riding Hood” film.

Ever After

So, who had the right interpretation of “Little Red Riding Hood”? Charles Dickens, who loved the little rape victim but couldn’t separate her from the monstrous wolf? A.P. Randolph’s song which suggested Red was the real villain? Or the S&M porn that combines pleasure and pain?

They all seem to have predicted filmmakers’ interpretations of Red and the Wolf. The early American cartoonists wanted to show the wolf’s innocence. Children’s movies are still teaching children the same lessons of fear and obedience. And feminist retellings explore how a young woman can be good and bad and sexual.

The tale of “Little Red Riding Hood” belongs to no one; not Charles Perrault, not the Brothers Grimm, and not these male filmmakers. Not even to Angela Carter. However, I trust the story with Angela Carter, and other women writers, more than I do any man. Am I horribly misandrist and biased? Or… is the story of a girl being raped by a man not a man’s story to retell? Should a story of a victim and a perpetrator be told by someone who shares an identity with the victim or someone who shares an identity with the perpetrator?

Not all Little Red Riding Hoods escape the wolf and make it home to safety.

Who should tell their stories?