1 Kaitlin Cruz

Prof. Parvulescu
Intro to Comparative Literature
April 21st, 2016
Little Red Riding Hood
An Adaptation Study of Culture

The color red evokes a multitude of reactions, memories, culturally engrained ideas and

attitudes as well as subjective feelings. Red can be the color of warmth, it can incite hunger,

denote feelings of rage and anger, or, in the form of light, it symbolizes an urban district of ill

repute. Both historically and contemporarily the color red encompasses all of these aspects.

However, when the color red appears in literature, specifically the literary fairy tale, in the form

of a riding hood or cap(let) upon the back or head of a little girl, a whole new set of relations

appears. In the ‘original’ literary fairy tale Le Petit Chaperon Rouge by Charles Perrault, written

in the seventeenth century, the little red-capped girl on her journey to her grandmother’s

house through the forest invokes a historically captivating and frightening moment in French

and European history. During the years prior to Perrault’s literary adaptation of the oral folktale

version of the story, Europe and specifically southern France had been a hotbed of trials and

tribulations regarding witchcraft and werewolves and their subsequent inquisitions. Whereas

Le Petit Chaperon Rouge was the first literary example of Little Red Riding Hood and her

centuries long future worldwide success, the most well known version of the tale was collected

and written down by the Brothers Grimm, Rotkäppchen, in the early nineteenth century in

Germany. In the centuries that followed there has been a never-ending stream of literary,

artistic, and cinematic adaptations of the tale. These adaptations range from postmodern

parodies where the little girl shoots the wolf with an automatic weapon that she just happens

to keep in her picnic basket (James Thurber 1939), to cartoon films which attempt to stay as

true as possible to the original European versions, whether Grimm or Perrault.

2 Kaitlin Cruz
Prof. Parvulescu
Intro to Comparative Literature
April 21st, 2016
This essay seeks to compare two film adaptations of this traditional story, namely Hard

Candy (2005) featuring Ellen Page and Freeway (1996) starring Reese Witherspoon, alongside

the Grimm’s version from their 1812 Kinder- und Hausmärchen collection of fairy tales and

folktales, Rotkäppchen. However, according to the study Little Red Riding Hood and the

Pedophile in Film: Freeway, Hard Candy, and the Woodsman, that was conducted from a

perspective of understanding the pedophiliac cultural undertones in these two films as well as

The Woodsman, which will not be a subject of analysis here, Pauline Greenhill and Steven Kohm

(2009) state, “Freeway applies the oral French versions—Red, with female helpers is perfectly

capable of taking care of herself when wolves are concerned; and Hard Candy alludes to the

Perrault tale—Red is symbolically ingested by the wolf, and thus the distinction between them

blurs radically.” (38) Despite this finding, I will nevertheless adhere to the plan to compare

these two films with the Grimm Brothers’ version of the tale, mainly due to the depicted lack of

agency that Red has in the first half of their narrative, which then transforms into a narrative

where Red and her grandmother outsmart the wolf the second time on their own.

Themes of sexuality and gender, homicide and torture, manipulation and outright

vengeance encapsulate the figure of Little Red regardless of her narrative’s time and space.

While the above themes remain throughout nearly three hundred years of adaptation and

reworking, their cultural context(s) push and pull tropes within the story in a multitude of

directions, which leads to their distortion over time. Greenhill and Kohm believe that, “with

each reinterpretation, incorporation, or transportation of familiar stories, the teller creates a

new tale that serves contemporary needs.” (36) Distorted as they may be, the central narrative
3 Kaitlin Cruz
Prof. Parvulescu
Intro to Comparative Literature
April 21st, 2016
structures of the original version(s), or Ur-tale(s), are maintained with a high similarity in the

reworked versions. However, there is a clear break from tradition in the contemporary

adaptations of the Little Red tale. According to Arjun Appadurai (1996), through the modern

moment, this break has been “[r]eincarnated as the break between tradition and modernity

and typologized as the difference between ostensibly traditional and modern societies.” (3)

Furthermore, the cinematic adaptation of an oral tale requires its own type of distortion and

inherent distancing of the audience from the story itself, due to the staged nature of the filming

as well as the setting of the viewing.

In the pages that follow I will trace the story of Rotkäppchen from her Germanic oral

and literary roots through to her modern presence on screen in the United States as well as the

global stage. An analysis of the constellation of socio-political and socio-cultural contexts within

which the story itself evolved will shed light on just how central such contexts can be. In order

to fully understand why the figure of Little Red has been an essential figure in children’s tales

for centuries, the politics of socialization in each works’ contemporary contexts will be

conducted. The socialization of children is indeed a fundamental aspect of fairy tales, however

as will be shown, the more modern adaptations of the tale’s structures are focused less on a

youthful audience and more towards adolescents and adults who are already steeped in

sociological normative behaviors. To be sure, the older more experienced viewers of these fairy

tale films, both of which obtained an R rating by the MPAA, will have heard, read, or seen other

versions of the Little Red Riding Hood tale previously, whether as a child or throughout their

lives in differing contexts through television, film, and literature, whether consciously or
4 Kaitlin Cruz
Prof. Parvulescu
Intro to Comparative Literature
April 21st, 2016
subconsciously. This shift in focus from juvenile to adult allows for much more explicit content

and the further development of sexuality, gendered themes, and the injection of more modern

themes of social violence and manipulation stemming from technology. Furthermore, a

perspective of modernization will be integral in understanding and contextualizing the two

cinematic examples due to its ability to “interrogate, subvert, and transform other contextual

literacies,” specifically in an electronic/digital media context such as film for entertainment.

(Appadurai 3)

The imaginative minds behind the reworking of traditional tales were cultivated within

their own distinct cultural contexts; whereas the Grimm brothers were born and raised in the

late eighteenth through the nineteenth centuries in Germany and experienced the threat of the

Napoleonic wars, directors David Slade and Matthew Bright were steeped in a more modern

tradition of bright lights, big cities, and the dangers that came with the worldwide phenomenon

called the Internet. Given this framework, a comparative and relational approach to the cultural

analysis of these three examples of the traditional tale of Little Red will contextualize the

different shades of their adaptation. To be sure, the reworking of traditional structures can be

seen from two separate but similar theoretical perspectives; the first being a form of translation

in the literal sense of translating the text from German into English language and social

contexts, or figuratively through translating the themes and socio-cultural or socio-political

underpinnings from one context to another, inter-culturally across space and time; the second

perspective as a form of border crossing, or rather border dissolution, through the permeability

of the tale to cross the space-time divide from the bourgeois/proletarian social contexts of the
5 Kaitlin Cruz
Prof. Parvulescu
Intro to Comparative Literature
April 21st, 2016
nineteenth century in Germany and Europe as a whole through to more modern contexts in the

United States and the global stage.

Throughout the ages the tale of Little Red Riding Hood has been adapted and

readapted. In the introduction to the anthology The Classic Fairy Tales, Maria Tatar (1999)

writes:

In France, Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother are devoured by the wolf. The
Grimms’ version, by contrast, stages a rescue scene in which a hunter intervenes to
liberate Red Riding Hood and her grandmother from the belly of the wolf. Caterinella,
an Italian Red Riding Hood, is invited to dine on the teeth and ears of her grandmother
by a masquerading wolf. A Chinese “Goldflower” manages to slay the beast who wants
to devour her by throwing a spear into his mouth. Local color often affects the premises
of a tale. (ix)

Each differing version of the tale as described above already begins to unfold the social gender

contexts within which they appeared. The French tale stems from an aristocratic desire to place

blame on the young girl for having disobeyed her orders to stay on the path and to keep to

herself and not talk to strangers. The little red cap is an obvious symbol of French aristocracy

and the social norm for young aristocratic girls to wear such an item of clothing. This item was

not present in the peasants’ oral version, however, Perrault’s Red remained a peasant girl, and

by wearing a red cap associated with aristocracy would have been understood as a highly

rebellious figure in its time. The original oral version of the tale originally depicted a werewolf

as Little Red’s foe, further commenting on the hot-topic social situation. This shape shifting

ambiguous creature fell out of fashion once the witch and werewolf trials were over, and thus

the werewolf became just a wolf.

6 Kaitlin Cruz
Prof. Parvulescu
Intro to Comparative Literature
April 21st, 2016
According to Jack Zipes (1983) in his book The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding

Hood, Perrault’s tale “was one of the few literary fairy tales in history which, due to its

universality, ambivalence, and clever sexual innuendos, was reabsorbed by the oral folk

tradition.” (14) Perrault’s intent was to socialize, educate, and civilize the masses, not just his

intended aristocratic audiences, but also the bourgeoisie and, indeed, the world. Therefore, it is

significant that at the time of writing the understanding that childhood was an important place

to begin socialization processes had recently taken root. “Special attention was now paid to

children’s manners, clothes, books, toys, and general education.” (Trials 12) The subjects of

clothing and manners were of utmost import and indeed became rather strict in a short

timeframe. “Though not conspired, the rational purpose of such social pressure was to bring

about an internalization of social norms and mores so that they would appear as second nature

or habit.” (Trials 12) The goal of internalization was most definitely successful as seen in the

above quote regarding the reintegration of the literary tale back into the oral peasant tradition.

The German version, in a subversive gesture to the original French political structures,

reworks the tale to depict the gender and class struggles between the bourgeoisie and the

proletariat in the German social context. The temporal context out of which the German

version grew contains widespread national fears related to the impending Napoleonic invasion

as well as the strict social expectations of the Biedermeier period regarding etiquette and

proper behaviors for children, specifically young girls. Even though Perrault had removed a

portion of the sexual undertones that permeated the original oral folktale in France, for the

Grimm brothers the tale was still far too “cruel, too sexual, and too tragic.” (Trials 14) In order
7 Kaitlin Cruz
Prof. Parvulescu
Intro to Comparative Literature
April 21st, 2016
to render the tale in a more contemporary culturally German context, the Grimms changed the

ending to a happier scene whereby the hunter/woodsman rescued both the little girl and her

grandmother successfully, while ultimately murdering the wolf by filling his belly with stones.

Furthermore, the Grimms added a second shorter story onto the end of Rotkäppchen, which

indicated that Red had learned her lesson not to wander from the trail and go directly to her

grandmother’s house, thereby affording her the opportunity to remain safe and thwart the

dastardly plans of the wolf. The sexual undertones in the tale persevere through the ingestion

of the grandmother and Little Red by the wolf, i.e. they literally find themselves in the belly of

the wolf, a process that is akin to rape, which symbolizes Red’s broken social contract not to

indulge in sensual experimentation by talking to strangers and roaming from the path. Michel

Foucault refers to this process as the ‘pedagogization of children’s sex’, which indicates that,

once the social contract is broken, the juvenile must be punished.

The influence on the tale by the Napoleonic Wars, as Zipes describes, permeated Kassel

and the Rhineland during the French occupation from the beginning of the nineteenth century

through to the year after the Grimms published their Kinder- und Hausmärchen, i.e. 1813. “The

stark opposites of the woods and path, nature and school make this apparent…Thus the conflict

between freedom/wilderness/nature on the one hand versus school/straight path/order on the

other is set up very early in the narrative to illustrate a socio-political situation.” (Trials 17)

From this perspective it is simple to imagine how throughout the centuries up until the present

the tale of Little Red Riding Hood can be reworked and adapted to fit ever changing socio-

political situations around the world. Whereas the original oral French tale indicated a toxic
8 Kaitlin Cruz
Prof. Parvulescu
Intro to Comparative Literature
April 21st, 2016
moment in French history, namely the witch and werewolf trials, Perrault’s tale adapted the

structure of the narrative in order to better suit the aristocratic commitment to socialize and

educate children regarding proper behavior and clothing, and the Grimm’s version further

reworked these structures into a less sexual commentary both on the bourgeois/proletarian

social conflicts as well as the invasion and occupation by the French of German territory.

Applying these conclusions to Freeway and Hard Candy, one can begin to understand

the socio-cultural and socio-political contexts within which these films were created. Although

referring to the literary versions of the tale, Zipes indicates the shifts that occurred during the

modernization of the tale in more contemporary contexts, i.e. the twentieth and twenty-first

centuries. According to Zipes:

Many writers of the 19th and 20th centuries believed that Perrault and Grimm were too
cruel, and they were afraid that children might be upset by the sexual undertones and
violence in the original versions. References to Little Red Riding Hood being touched or
swallowed were deleted. More stress was placed on obedience. Many bowdlerized
versions indicated a Victorian-minded censorship, which feared that Little Red Riding
Hood might some day break out, become a Bohemian, and live in the woods with the
wolf…However, Riding Hood did break out, and her various rebellions are indicative of
the real changing social views of children, women, and political and sexual domination
in the 20th Century. (Trials 20)

While the historical socio-cultural concern of bohemianism in the Victorian era in Germany was

worrisome at that time, in the modern and globalized context of the twentieth and twenty-first

centuries, feminism became the focus of apprehension. The rebellions indicated in the above

quote are clearly worked through in Freeway and Hard Candy, albeit through the use of

differing techniques of narration and cinematography. Censorship, however, changed from a

social process to an institutional one with regards to these films. For example, Freeway was re-
9 Kaitlin Cruz
Prof. Parvulescu
Intro to Comparative Literature
April 21st, 2016
edited after being given an NC-17 rating by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA),

which, the directors felt, would hinder the potential size of their viewing audience. After the re-

editing the film was downgraded to an R rating, which appeased both the MPAA and the

director Matthew Bright. However, the film still retained a significant portion of its on screen

violence, sexual situations including prostitution and discussion of Vanessa’s (Little Red Riding

Hood) rape by her stepfather, drug themes, and overwhelming adult language. According to

IMDB the ‘f’ word is used at least twenty times within the first fifteen minutes of the film, not

including the racial slurs and other extraneous profanity throughout the film. The final version

of the film that was premiered rated forty-four out of fifty in terms of its inappropriate content

regarding children’s ability to watch. (IMDB.com)

Maria Tatar writes, “Fairy tales register an effort on the part of both women and men to

develop maps for coping with personal anxieties, family conflicts, social frictions, and the

myriad frustrations of everyday life.” (xi) For the cinematic adaptations of Little Red Riding

Hood, the protagonists, i.e. Vanessa Lutz (Reese Witherspoon) and Hayley Stark (Ellen Page),

have led lives that are partially normal depictions of a twentieth/twenty-first century girl’s life,

while also having aspects of those lives magnified for dramatic effect as well as for maintaining

viewer interest in the films. For Vanessa Lutz family conflict, social frictions, and everyday life

frustrations go hand in hand. Vanessa’s mother is a prostitute who is also an addict and is

married to Vanessa’s drug- and sex-addicted stepfather, who are both taken away to jail

towards the beginning of the film.

10 Kaitlin Cruz
Prof. Parvulescu
Intro to Comparative Literature
April 21st, 2016
To begin with, in the modern socio-cultural context of southern California, in a

seemingly poor and lower class neighborhood, fifteen-year-old Vanessa is already taking on the

responsibilities of an adult woman. Unfortunately given the location and the circumstances of

her ‘accident of birth’, to invoke Gayatri Spivak, Vanessa is illiterate. Furthermore, she is an

outsider in California; she was born in Texas and lived there long enough to pick up an accent

before being forced to move to California after her birth father’s death. Not only is she an

outsider in her surroundings, but she is an outsider in her family as well. Prior to her birth an

incident occurred between her mother and her father’s mother, the grandmother she is

attempting to find and live with in the film, whereby her mother ‘accidentally’ burned the

grandmother’s face with acid or something similar. Therefore, Vanessa’s existence is actually

unknown by her grandmother and the two have never met. She simply has a photo with an

address that she found in her mother’s photo album, which she used in order to drive to the

would-be safe haven.

Her grandmother’s house, or rather a single-wide trailer in a trailer park some hours

north of the motel where Vanessa and her family were living, is the destination that mirrors the

trope in the original German tale. Vanessa’s would-be savior, the figure of the

woodsman/hunter, is an African-American man named Chopper Wood (Bokeem Woodbine).

Even though Chopper is significantly older than Vanessa, the two find themselves in the same

remedial English class at school where they are both attempting to learn how to read. Indeed,

the film begins with the teacher calling on Vanessa to read “The cat drinks milk” written on a

chalkboard, a request that she fulfills with great difficulty. Her illiteracy, the obviously lower-
11 Kaitlin Cruz
Prof. Parvulescu
Intro to Comparative Literature
April 21st, 2016
income neighborhood where she lives and goes to school, and the conflicts Vanessa faces make

up a commentary on the broader social problems of the 1990s. When Vanessa gets home from

school that day with her boyfriend/fiancé Chopper in tow, she finds her mother soliciting on a

corner, obviously benumbed by some type of opioid because she asks Vanessa what she is

doing home so early, to which Vanessa responds, “it ain’t so early Ma.” Both Vanessa and her

mother are wearing red outfits. Vanessa’s outfit is inappropriate for the classroom as well as for

a fifteen-year-old girl more generally, however the color red denotes that she indeed signifies

the figure of Little Red Riding Hood, whereas the red outfit that her mother is wearing indicates

her unsavory ‘career’ choice, i.e. prostitution, to keep up with her and her husband’s drug

habits. Ramona Lutz (Amanda Plummer) and her husband, Vanessa’s stepfather Larry (Michael

Weiss) have both been taken to jail several times in their past, which led to Vanessa’s multiple

previous foster home placements. As a young girl in ‘the system’ her supposed caretakers

molested her.

The unfortunate refrain of foster home molestation and pedophilia is not a new one,

especially not for Vanessa. The film Freeway comments on the social problems of foster homes,

of caretakers and family members with reprehensible (pedophilic) behavior, which are every

day problems for the less fortunate members of American society. Furthermore, these issues

are the cause for Vanessa’s on screen horrific adventure to her grandmother’s house, which

lands her in the hands of the I-5 freeway serial killer Bob Wolverton (Kiefer Sutherland).

Towards the beginning of the film Vanessa finds herself on the couch with her stepfather in the

family’s rented motel room. Larry is in a dazed state due to the drugs he has taken and is
12 Kaitlin Cruz
Prof. Parvulescu
Intro to Comparative Literature
April 21st, 2016
attempting to get Vanessa to touch him inappropriately, as had happened numerous times

previously. However, this time Vanessa fights back and tells Larry to get his hands off of her

“anatomy”. Meanwhile, a news report appears on the television describing the I-5 killer’s

murdering spree, which is where the viewer first encounters the figure of the wolf as well as

the policemen/detectives who are supposed to stand in as the woodsmen/hunters that would

attempt to aid Little Red/Vanessa later on. Larry comments that Vanessa’ mother, if picked up

by the I-5 killer, would “kick his ass”. This line of narration does not come to fruition because

Ramona is picked up by the police and taken to jail for solicitation and drug paraphernalia. The

police learn that Larry and Vanessa are in the motel room together and that Larry is on

probation, so they enter the domicile in order to conduct a welfare check. Once inside, they

find pornography playing on the television in the living room while Larry and Vanessa are in the

bedroom together in a compromising position. Instead of being elated that the police put an

end to the molestation before it could start this time, Vanessa becomes angry and upset that

the “pigs” have once again taken away her family and destroyed her life by attempting to send

her back into foster care. The anger and frustration that Vanessa displays is a modern

reworking of the Little Red Riding Hood theme; indeed, in the Victorian era of the Grimm’s

version of the tale, letting one’s emotions run wild in a public setting was distasteful. However,

according to Ramona, Vanessa does not “know a goddamn thing about nothing”, which is a

sharp commentary on her own mothering skills, or rather the fact of years of her neglecting her

daughter. Vanessa does not know better than to react with rage and strong disappointment in

the heat of the moment of her family members’ arrests because it has happened several times
13 Kaitlin Cruz
Prof. Parvulescu
Intro to Comparative Literature
April 21st, 2016
before and most likely will in the future. She just wished that the police would leave her family

alone because they were doing ‘just fine’.

While Vanessa maintains a level of naiveté seemingly appropriate for her age, she has

also been emotionally hardened by her experiences on the streets of southern California as well

as her necessary self-reliance. This self-reliance is demonstrated in Vanessa’s quick wit, fast

thinking, and ability to outsmart members of authority, such as her social worker Mrs. Sheets

(Conchata Ferrell). When Mrs. Sheets arrives at the motel room to transport Vanessa to a new

foster home, she is distracted by Vanessa’s request for a blanket from her bed and ends up

handcuffed to the bed while Vanessa escapes. Post escape Vanessa takes her extremely run

down vehicle to go see Chopper Wood one last time before she begins her journey over the

river and through the woods, as it were, to her grandmother’s house. Chopper scolds Vanessa

for punishing one of the only people in her life who is attempting to help her and tells her that

he cannot go with her on her journey because he has a court date for sentencing on the

following day; a sentence that he says is sure to be at least six months due to mandatory

sentencing measures in the state of California. Although her would-be hero cannot travel with

her, Chopper gives Vanessa a 9-millimeter pistol from Spain as an exotic token of good luck and

protection. In return Vanessa gives him a beer and heads on her way. Vanessa’s last view of

Chopper as she drives away is through her rear-view mirror, a reflection of what remains

behind her in her past. This reflection also foreshadows Chopper’s murder by a Mexican gang

almost immediately after Vanessa drives away by showing an image of the man as opposed to

his actual physical body, indicating that he has already begun to fade away. Once Chopper is
14 Kaitlin Cruz
Prof. Parvulescu
Intro to Comparative Literature
April 21st, 2016
murdered, Vanessa is entirely alone in the world, except for her idealized grandmother known

only through an old photograph.

Predictably, Vanessa’s jalopy of a car breaks down on the freeway, the same freeway

where the serial killer nicknamed the I-5 killer poaches his young female victims. Bob

Wolverton pulls over to help and seems to be a Good Samaritan type, or a would-be knight in

shining armor for Vanessa. He agrees to drive her as far as Los Angeles on her journey to her

grandmother’s house. However, his name and attire (strange looking oversized glasses and

almost too neat clothing) indicate to the viewer that this man is not to be trusted; he is most

certainly the wolf. Perpetuating the Little Red Riding Hood stereotype, Vanessa confides

personal information in the wolf figure. He gains her trust by portraying himself as a child

psychologist who helps under-privileged boys. Indeed, Vanessa admits to Bob that she trusts

him more than she had trusted anyone before in her whole life. Under these pretenses,

Vanessa divulges her entire life’s story beginning with her mother’s prostitution, the ongoing

molestation by her stepfather and two men in a previous foster family, as well as the fact that

both her mother and stepfather had recently been imprisoned for what promised to be a

lengthy amount of time. Bob presents questions to Vanessa regarding her abuse and forces her

to relive the oral rape perpetrated by her stepfather, which was conducted under the pretense

that ‘massage’ and oral stimulation were her mother’s ‘chores’ that then fell under Vanessa’s

‘chores’ while her mother was away. Vanessa cried out that at that time she did not even know

that what they were doing was wrong, let alone illegal, because she was just a child. During the

discussion Bob’s line of questioning grows disturbing to the point that it becomes obvious that
15 Kaitlin Cruz
Prof. Parvulescu
Intro to Comparative Literature
April 21st, 2016
Bob is getting a sick fetishistic enjoyment out of making Vanessa relive her trauma. She admits

that she feels like she has “daddy’s little fuckhole tattooed on her forehead” and that at the

moment of climax during the oral rape she felt as if she had been “transformed into a human

urinal”. For Vanessa, the smile on Bob’s face after the description of her dehumanizing

traumatic experience crossed the line. All trust crumbled away and Vanessa came to the

realization that Bob Wolverton was the serial killer she had heard about on the local news.

Diverting from the Grimm’s storyline, Vanessa takes matters into her own hands. In a

move that any steadfast feminist would champion, Vanessa turns on Bob, grabs the steering

wheel to get him to pull over but realizes that he has removed the inside door handle and that

she is trapped in the vehicle with him. Bob pulls a knife on her, cuts off her long blonde

ponytail, and tells her to take her clothes off because, once he kills her, he plans to rape her

corpse. In a move that mirrors the storyline in the Perrault version of Le Petit Chaperon Rouge,

Vanessa pretends to untie her knee-high boots, which afforded her enough time to reach into

her picnic basket (yet another allusion to the literary fairy tale) and pull out the 9-milimeter

pistol that Chopper had gifted her earlier. In an instant the power relation shifted from Bob, the

affluent cisgendered privileged white male to Vanessa, the under-privileged illiterate white

female. In an attempt to regain power, Bob argues that, due to his affluent status and his white

male privilege, he will never go to jail and that the police will never believe her word over his

that he is the I-5 killer. As Greenhill and Kohm rightfully point out:

“just before she shoots him, Vanessa articulates the sentiments of victims outraged at
criminals who try to wear the mantle of victimhood. Countering Wolverton’s sobbing
pleas that she should spare him because he is a ‘profoundly sick man,’ Vanessa retorts: I
know there’s a lot of sick guys that get hard thinkin’ about messin’ women up. Hell,
16 Kaitlin Cruz
Prof. Parvulescu
Intro to Comparative Literature
April 21st, 2016
that’s all you ever see on TV. But when a guy goes and does that for real like you were
plannin’ on doin’…When a guy goes and hurts someone who never hurt them, that
makes them a criminal first and a sick guy second. It’s like being sick has to take second
place to being crooked. And Bob, you’re crooked.” (55ff)

Thus, becoming not only a vigilante but also, in a sense, a social justice warrior, Vanessa

metamorphoses her role as both the figure of Little Red Riding Hood and her own helper, i.e.

the woodsman/hunter. The predator figure of Bob Wolverton, the wolf himself, has become

the hunted, especially once Vanessa shoots him several times. Significantly, Vanessa asks Bob a

very important question (twice) prior to shooting him: “Do you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord

and personal savior?” When he affirms his faith in Jesus, Vanessa shoots him execution style,

which does not kill him but severely disfigures him. Acting as a protector of countless other

potential victims that may have been endangered by Bob, Vanessa’s attempted murder was an

act of vigilantism rooted in good intentions. However, she knows that what she did was

“wrong” under legal terms and therefore she prays to God to forgive her; “Dear God, that was

so fucking bad. Please bless Mama, Larry, and Chopper. Amen.” Forever selfless, Vanessa prays

to a God that many others in her position may have believed to have had forsaken them, in

order to save the souls of the people she loves, regardless of their previous indiscretions or

indifference towards her. Vanessa’s naiveté continues when she strolls into a small town diner

covered in Bob’s blood (with her ever-present picnic basket in tow). A concerned citizen calls

the cops and Vanessa is apprehended.

While under interrogation by the two incompetent police officers who were supposed

to play the role of her helpers, Vanessa’s lurid past comes to light. The long list of infractions for

which she was previously convicted of included seven shoplifting arrests, anger problems
17 Kaitlin Cruz
Prof. Parvulescu
Intro to Comparative Literature
April 21st, 2016
leading to three arrests for arson, and one for soliciting while she was in the sixth grade. Bob’s

prediction that he would not have charges brought against him proves true, and Vanessa is

tried as an adult due to the obvious lack of remorse for her actions. She lacks remorse because

she knows in her heart that Bob is the I-5 killer, whether the police and the judge believe it or

not. However, due to her actions in court, for example declaring “look who got hit with the ugly

stick” as Bob walked in with half of his face missing and his spine stabilized in a sort of cage, the

judge sides with the defense calling Vanessa’s crime heinous, and remands her to the

Bridgewater Jail. The name of the jail is yet another allusion to the literary fairy tale, the

thematic element of over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house, indicating

that the jail will in some way help Vanessa on her journey forward. She ends up beating up

another female inmate, which gains her respect, respect that was also found deeply rooted in

the friends back at her school who were interview by the two police officers. The respect that

Vanessa had earned with all those she has met, outside of authority figures, mimics the very

first lines of the Grimm’s version of the tale: “Es war einmal eine kleine süße Dirne, die hatte

jedermann lieb, der sie nur ansah, am allerliebsten aber ihre Großmutter…/Once upon a time

there was a sweet little maiden. Whoever laid eyes upon her could not help but love her. But it

was her grandmother who loved her most. She could never give the child enough.” (Grimm

84/Trials 124) Everyone loved Vanessa, except her mother and stepfather who had strange

ways of showing their ‘love’ if indeed it existed. Everyone loved Vanessa, except for society. She

was one of “those low-type people,” someone to whom soliciting apparently came naturally, or
18 Kaitlin Cruz
Prof. Parvulescu
Intro to Comparative Literature
April 21st, 2016
at least that is how Bob Wolverton the serial killer, the African-American detective, and her

stepfather, to a certain extent, saw it.

According to Gayatri Spivak in Can the Subaltern Speak?, “the networks of

power/desire/interest are so heterogeneous that their reduction to a coherent narrative is

counterproductive- a persistent critique is needed; and second, that intellectuals must attempt

to disclose and know the discourse of society’s other.” (23) Vanessa is an “other” in society, an

outcast due to her ‘low-type’ status, as she calls it. Her subalterity makes it impossible for her

to be heard, her speech is silenced and cast aside as ignorance and as an attack against the

privileged man whom she has permanently disfigured to the point of requiring a colostomy bag.

However, the entire structure of the power relations within the societal construct of the justice

system is blown open when Vanessa escapes prison with the help of her fellow female inmates.

She obtains yet another gun from Mesquita (Alanna Ubach), the inmate who she previously

assaulted to gain respect while institutionalized, a move that further critiques “stereotypes of

race, class and gender and [mocks] the fairy tale even as it carries on the tradition.” (Greenhill

and Kohm 54) The group of women who helps Vanessa escape directly alludes to the

washerwomen who aid Red in Perrault’s version of the tale. However, the fact that Vanessa is

armed both times she goes out into the world on her own is a commentary on modern society

and the associated dangers that being a woman or a girl within that context bring to mind. The

oafish actions of the detectives investigating Vanessa and the I-5 killer’s case critique the

overwhelming inability of the criminal justice system to bring offenders to justice because their

focus is trained on the under-privileged citizens like Vanessa who perpetrate petty crimes due
19 Kaitlin Cruz
Prof. Parvulescu
Intro to Comparative Literature
April 21st, 2016
to the psychological effects of their socio-economic status. Vanessa has no voice because she is

not afforded one by the systems of power, whereas the unsuspecting figure of Bob Wolverton

is broadcast on live television alongside his wife in their enormous and well-manicured

backyard in Orange County pleading for Vanessa to be given the death penalty for what she has

done to their family. Bob is no longer a man; Vanessa has taken his virility from him. While he is

still alive (at this point) he is powerless and forever emasculated.

Eventually the police decide that they need to search Bob’s house again, where they

find an entire garage full of child oriented pornographic magazines and possible human remains

buried in the backyard. Bob’s wife, Mimi Wolverton (Brooke Shields) is overcome with disgust,

manages to circumnavigate the police presence in her house long enough to run upstairs to her

private bathroom and shoot herself in the head. The realization that her upstanding affluent

psychologist husband has been a pedophiliac murderer right under her nose was too much for

her to bear, and she takes her own life to escape from the disturbing reality of the situation.

Once again, the police were unable to do their job, i.e. watching over a potentially unstable

character witness, and she slips through their fingers just as Bob does when he arrives at the

house to find it swarming with police, immediately turns around, and heads to Vanessa’s

grandmother’s house in a last ditch effort to save himself. In the end, Vanessa finds her

grandmother’s house in a quiet trailer park north of Los Angeles in Stockton, California. Upon

entering the house, Vanessa notices that something is amiss, much like the Grimm’s version of

the tale. “Ei, du mein Gott, wie ängstlich wird mir’s heute zumut, und bin sonst so gern bei der

Großmutter/ Oh, oh my God, how frightened I feel today, and usually I like to be at
20 Kaitlin Cruz
Prof. Parvulescu
Intro to Comparative Literature
April 21st, 2016
grandmother’s.”(Grimm 86/Trials 125) Once again Vanessa invokes the name of God to settle

her frightened spirit. When Vanessa nears her grandmother’s bed she immediately comes to

the realization that Bob is laying there in her grandmother’s nightgown. She skips over the

famous back and forth line of questioning found in most versions of the Little Red Riding Hood

tale and goes directly to the part about the mouth/teeth; “Them’s some big ugly fuckin’ teeth

you got, Bob.” A firefight ensues, which ends with Vanessa choking Bob to death with a rope

after stomping on his chest and banging his head into the floor multiple times.

During the firefight, the police arrive on scene but are unable, or unwilling, to help

Vanessa and remain outside until the coast is clear. They do not seem to notice that a neighbor

has been shot in the chest in the crossfire, even as he walks right past them outside of the

trailer. The police finally acknowledge that Vanessa was right about Bob the entire time,

especially when they find her grandmother inside, hanged, raped, lying dead and naked on the

floor with Bob lying next to her, also dead, wearing her nightie. In the end, Vanessa laughs, asks

for a cigarette, and the scene fades away while dystopian carnival music plays in the

background. While this may seem at first glance to represent a happy ending, one must ask

what happens to Vanessa once the curtains close. Her family is imprisoned, her boyfriend is

dead, she is still illiterate, and she is now a murderer, albeit a heroic and well-intentioned

murderer out of self-defense.

For Vanessa, her entire life had seemingly been run and ruined by men. According to

Zipes, “Little Red Riding Hood is a male creation and projection. Not women but men—Perrault

and the Brothers Grimm—gave birth to our common image of Little Red Riding Hood…[and she]
21 Kaitlin Cruz
Prof. Parvulescu
Intro to Comparative Literature
April 21st, 2016
reflects men’s fear of women’s sexuality—and of their own as well.” (Trials 56ff) This innocent

figure originally created by men continues to be reworked by men even in contemporary times.

Both Freeway and Hard Candy were written and directed by men, and the central Red figures

continuously have problems with men and have to fight for their right to exist in society

without being defined, manipulated, or having their existence projected onto them, by men. In

contrast to Vanessa, Hayley comes from a more privileged background. She has a computer

with Internet access, which allows her access to the whole world’s wealth of information, but

also the associated and related dangers. In an interesting turn of events, a character-based

complication of relationships and associations occurs between Hayley (Ellen Page) and Jeff

(Patrick Wilson). Jeff is engaged in a predatory conversation with the fourteen-year-old girl, or

at least she presents herself as such, in an online chat-room. However, it comes to pass that,

although Jeff is found to have pedophiliac tendencies, it is actually Hayley who performs as the

more wolf-like of the two figures.

According to Edward Said (1982):

“Like people and schools of criticism, ideas and theories travel—from person to person,
from situation to situation, from one period to another. Cultural and intellectual life are
usually nourished and often sustained by this circulation of ideas, and whether it takes
the form of acknowledged of unconscious influence, creative borrowing, or wholesale
appropriation, the movement of ideas and theories from one place to another is both a
fact of life and a usefully enabling condition of intellectual activity.”(Reader 195ff)

With regards to Hard Candy, the idea of unconscious influence indicates the travel and

translation of the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale theme and structure, specifically the color of

the hoodie that Hayley wears within the film. To be sure, the director did not intend to create

an adaptation of the fairy tale with his film. However, given the deeply engrained global idea of
22 Kaitlin Cruz
Prof. Parvulescu
Intro to Comparative Literature
April 21st, 2016
Red and her riding hood, the audience made the connection to the fairy tale regardless of

cinematic intent. Rebecca Walkowtiz’s theories on translation in Born Translated (2015) state

that, “changing the context…can be a way of changing the work.” (5) While the words

themselves, the location, and the socio-cultural and temporal contexts have all been translated

into a more modern setting, the central structures of Little Red Riding Hood are still there, one

only has to know where to look.

In Hard Candy, the translation that has occurred is not inherently lingual, but rather

cultural and temporal. Hayley is a modern girl of the age of technology, a dangerous world full

of potential predators, millions of people who can be reached through a computer screen, and,

more importantly, who can present himself or herself as anyone. The computer screen and the

Internet act as a mask behind which any individual can remain hidden and/or masquerade as

anyone else they so choose. The ambiguity that comes with not knowing the reality of the

person on the other end of the keyboard is highly critiqued in the film. Jeff, the thirty-

something single white male photographer living in a modern open-plan ranch home in

southern California, is without a doubt a predator. The chats between himself and Hayley are at

best mildly explicit, at their worst disturbingly pedophilic in nature. Indeed Jeff has sought

Hayley out, continuing a conversation over the period of a couple of weeks, a getting-to-know-

you period, before he asks to meet her, knowing that she is underage. This two-week-long

conversation is a form of what is known as grooming, a well-known technique employed by

pedophiles, rapists, and manipulative molesters. However, what Jeff doesn’t know is that there

is more to Hayley than she lets on. Their entire conversation turns out to be a ruse to get Jeff to
23 Kaitlin Cruz
Prof. Parvulescu
Intro to Comparative Literature
April 21st, 2016
take Hayley back to his house so that she could drug him, tie him up, and interrogate him about

a missing local girl. The coffee shop where the two meet has a “Missing” sign posted on the

window, a subtle hint about the future progress of the narrative.

Greenhill and Kohm note that in Hard Candy:

“the lines between nurturer/aggressor, victim/rescuer, and even

psychopathology/sanity are ambivalently drawn. The two primary characters, Hayley
the Red/wolf (as victim/aggressor) and Jeff the wolf/Red (as aggressor/victim) regularly
exchange positions throughout the film, and viewers find themselves alternately rooting
for Hayley and feeling just a bit sorry for the vastly overmatched and manifestly tortured
Jeff.” (57)

Vanessa is strong and wise beyond her years. She lures Jeff into drinking a mixed alcoholic drink

that he did not mix himself, something that Hayley warned him about just moments previously.

Having grown up in an era of date-rape drugs, Hayley knows better than to drink anything she

did not see prepared, no doubt from countless exposé pieces on the local news regarding GHB

and other similar substances. Jeff passes out from the drugs in his drink and awakens to find

himself tied to a chair while Hayley paces back and forth across the room in a wolf-like manner.

Already the power relation between the pair has shifted from assuming that Hayley would be

the victim of a pedophilic encounter with an older man whom she met online, to a depiction of

Jeff as the victim while he maintains his innocence.

Hayley searches the house from top to bottom looking for evidence that Jeff is a child

rapist and potential murderer of the missing girl from the advertised poster at the coffee shop.

Since his home is his studio, and his sexually risqué if not explicit photography is plastered all

over his home’s walls, Hayley assumes that he would have a treasure trove of even more

explicit items tucked away. Perhaps led by an adrenaline rush caused by her new-found sense
24 Kaitlin Cruz
Prof. Parvulescu
Intro to Comparative Literature
April 21st, 2016
of vigilantism, Hayley works hard at figuring out the code for the safe that she finds underneath

a rock Zen garden spread out in the middle of Jeff’s living room floor. She correctly guesses that

the code is his supermodel ex-girlfriend’s birthday and teases him for being so sentimental.

Sentimentality in men is a complicated topic since, historically, in order for men to be

considered strong and authoritative they had to shun all outward appearances of such

emotions. The emasculation of Jeff continues after Hayley finds out that Jeff took part in

‘watching’ whatever happened to the missing girl when she performs an actual castration of

Jeff’s manhood. The scene where the castration takes place is especially poignant in the film.

Hayley sets up an operation table, numbs Jeff’s nether region with ice for a long period of time,

and even places a video camera angled directly at the site of operation so that Jeff can ‘watch’

yet again. However, the castration is a mere performance; Hayley brought previously extracted

testicles to the operation and only clipped the area off so that Jeff would think that the

operation was actually taking place. Yet again, Hayley has the upper hand and has outwitted

someone who was supposed to have been an upstanding member of society. The psychological

torture that Hayley performed continued when she placed the anatomical pieces in the sink’s

garbage disposal system and turned it on.

Greenhill and Kohm’s analysis applies to this dynamic as well stating that, “she is clearly

entirely consumed by the conventional wolf’s role as (sexualized) attacker, so much so that

their characters morality become nearly indistinguishable.” (58) Her use of technology to

manipulate her victim mirrors the social fears that were prevalent in the early years of the

2000s. Children’s access to the Internet has been, since its inception, problematic and highly
25 Kaitlin Cruz
Prof. Parvulescu
Intro to Comparative Literature
April 21st, 2016
contested due to the ambiguity and the inability to distinguish the figures on the other end of

the computer. However, in Hard Candy this dynamic is problematized and complicated by

shifting the roles of victim and aggressor back and forth in a fluid manner between Hayley and

Jeff. Jeff seems to be the more honest of the two, whereas the viewer is never really sure of

Hayley’s motives nor the portrayal of herself as a fourteen-year-old girl. She certainly seems to

be wise beyond her years, especially in terms of the manipulative measures that she inflicts on

Jeff. In the end, Hayley tells Jeff that the man he watched abuse and possibly murder the

missing girl already killed himself after having been subjected to similar torture tactics from

Hayley. Hayley called Jeff’s ex-girlfriend while posing as a policewoman on the phone

requesting that she come to his house because something terrible had happened. Jeff’s choices

narrowed; either his ex-girlfriend would find him out as a pedophilic murderer and his career

would be ruined, or he could kill himself and Hayley would ‘take care of everything.’ The stigma

surrounding pedophiles, not only in day to day society but also within justice institutions,

meant that if Jeff lived the prognosis for his future quality of life did not look to be positive.

Based on Hayley’s promise that she would get rid of all of the evidence before the police

arrived, Jeff puts a noose around his neck and jumps off of his roof, hanging himself. Once he

jumps she says, “or not” effectively taking back her promise to clean up the mess that the both

of them had made. She wipes off the gun that she had been threatening him with, removing

her fingerprints and therefore any trace that she had ever been at Jeff’s home, and casually

walks away from the scene of the crime.

26 Kaitlin Cruz
Prof. Parvulescu
Intro to Comparative Literature
April 21st, 2016
While the tale of Little Red Riding Hood (Le Petit Chaperon Rouge, Rotkäppchen) was

originally intended as a means for the education and socialization of children in the

seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, the tale has been adapted throughout the ages to serve

as a social commentary on myriad social problems and situations that evolved alongside

society. As was shown in Rotkäppchen (1812), Freeway (1996), and Hard Candy (2005) “women

are at once victims of male violence even as they must position themselves as beneficiaries of

male protection.” (Tatar 8) The power relations in each one of these adaptations changes to fit

the needs and the motives of the directors and writers working within a particular social

context. The weak little girl unable to care for herself as presented in the Grimm’s version of

the tale shifted to suit more modern contexts of the rise of feminism, the flawed American

criminal justice system, and the creation and rapid spread of the Internet and all of its related

dangers. Indeed for Vanessa and Hayley, male protection as such seems to have fallen away,

and the girls are left to fend for themselves in a globalized world full of wolves (often in sheep’s

clothing). The sexual anxieties of society are clearly critiqued within both films regarding both

the sexuality of women/girls as well as the questionable sexuality of men who turn out to be

pedophiles, rapists, and murderers. However, if these analyses have taught us anything about

the modern age and the role of women within it, it’s that no one can take care of girls except

for other girls and that the age old tradition of male heroism is on its way out if not already

gone forever. Female agency reigns supreme in Freeway and Hard Candy, but questions

regarding their righteousness and their underlying intentions remain unanswered, i.e. is

vigilantism and violence really what is required for women to be safe in a modern world? Since
27 Kaitlin Cruz
Prof. Parvulescu
Intro to Comparative Literature
April 21st, 2016
these films premiered twenty and ten years ago respectively, their social contexts are no longer

entirely relevant to 2016, which means that newer adaptations may shed more light on the

current global situations, which will require further investigation.

28 Kaitlin Cruz
Prof. Parvulescu
Intro to Comparative Literature
April 21st, 2016
Works Cited

Appadurai, Arujn. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis, MN:

U of Minnesota, 1996. Print.

Freeway. Dir. Matthew Bright. Perf. Reese Witherspoon and Kiefer Sutherland. Republic

Pictures, 1996.

Greenhill, Pauline, and Stephen Kohm. “Little Red Riding Hood and the Pedophile in Film:

Freeway, Hard Candy, and The Woodsman.” Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures

1.2(2010): 35-65. Project MUSE [Johns Hopkins UP]. Web 27 Apr. 2016.

Grimm, Jacob, and Wilhelm Grimm. Ausgewählte Kinder- und Hausmärchen. Stuttgart:

P.Reclam, 1984. Print.

Hard Candy. Dir. David Slade. Perf. Ellen Page and Patrick Wilson. Lionsgate, 2006.

Said, Edward W. “Traveling Theory.” The Edward Said Reader. Ed. Moustafa Bayoumi and

Andrew Rubin. New York: Random House, 2000. 195-217. Print.

Spivak, Gaytri Chakravorti. Can the Subaltern Speak?: Reflections on the History of an Idea. Ed.

Rosalind C. Morris. New York: Columbia UP, 2010. Print.

Tatar, Maria, ed. The Classic Fairy Tales: Texts, Criticism. New York: W.W.Norton & Co., Inc.,

1999. Print.

Walkowitz, Rebecca L. Born Translated. New York: Columbia UP, 2015. Print.

Zipes, Jack. The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood: Versions of the Tale in

Sociocultural Context. South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey, 1983. Print.