Little Red Riding Hood 2

The lecture focuses on two less common ways "Little Red Riding Hood" has been adapted in literature and media.
- The Heroine's Transformation: The first category focuses on the heroine herself transforming into the wolf.
- Mutual Desire: The second category imagines the relationship between Red Riding Hood and the Wolf as one structured by mutual desire.
Tanith Lee’s “Wolfland”:
- An early adaptation where both the heroine and her grandmother are the wolf.
- Motivation: In this specific case, the bargain with the wolf goddess is explicitly motivated by domestic abuse.
- Context: This story remains more closely aligned with "avenging-woman" adaptations than the more recent examples being considered in this lecture.

Starring: Kim Cattrall, who in $2000$ was widely known for her role as Samantha in the television show Sex and the City.
Symbolism: Cattrall was a cultural symbol of empowered female sexuality. The commercial relies on identifying her with that specific persona.
Script/Dialogue:
- Kim (Internal Monologue): "My, what big calories you have. My, what low calories you have. My, my, my, this one is just right."
- Man: "What big eyes you have."
- Man: "What big eyes you have."
- Kim: "You have no idea."
- Voiceover: "Great tasting one calorie Pepsi One - this one's just right."
Implication: This commercial briefly hints at Red Riding Hood as the wolf through Cattrall's predatory/empowered sexual performance.

Structure of the Show: The series alternates between an unspecified traditional fairy tale time and contemporary time. In the contemporary setting, characters do not remember their fairy tale lives but retain core characteristics.
Fairy Tale Plot Summary: A giant wolf, described as being as "big as a pony but a lot more bloodthirsty," is terrorizing Red’s village, killing livestock and a hunting party.
Key Dialogue and Exchange:
- Mary (Snow White): "Red, you know me. I know it's not you really but I think it's using your body… Maybe it makes you forget."
- Red: "My gods. Those men… they died. If I did that—"
- Peter: "I'll stay with you all night and for all the nights to come."
- Granny: "I paid a wizard for that cloak, keeps her from turning but she doesn't wear it… Her mother was one too before a hunting party killed her."
The Revelation: Red discovers that she is the wolf. Her grandmother reveals the condition is hereditary; Red's grandfather "turned" Granny, and Red's mother was also a wolf.
The Red Cloak: Granny obtained a magic cloak from a wizard to prevent Red from turning, but Red had found a way to leave the house without it.
The Tragic Outcome: Red (as the wolf) kills her lover, Peter, because she mistakenly believed he was the beast and had him tied up for safety.

Reappropriation: These adaptations align with third wave feminism's response to rape culture by reappropriating cultural signs (like "provocative" clothing or makeup) that second wave feminists often viewed as oppressive.
Comparison to the Slut Walk: Red's representation is "in-your-face, transgressive, and subversive," similar to the Slut Walk activism.
The Sexual Subject: In this reading, Red is a sexual subject who acts on her own desires, challenging patriarchal ideologies that suggest a woman's consent is implied by her attire.

The Fine Line: There is a tension between Red as a "sexual subject" and as a "sexual object." Filmic conventions often position her as a subject of the male gaze.
The Danger of Female Sexuality: When viewed as sexual objects, these "wolves" represent the idea that women's sexuality is dangerous and must be contained to prevent the toppling of civilization.
The Biological Connection:
- Granny notes that the transformation started when Red was $13$ .
- Freudian Link: $13$ is the start of the genital phase.
- Metaphor: The transformation is described in language similar to the onset of menses (menarche).
- Menopause Connection: Granny, who is no longer fertile/sexual in the popular imagination, has lost most of her wolfishness except for her sense of smell.
Societal Threat: In Once Upon a Time, the wolf threatens the foundations of society (livestock and the men of the hunting party). This suggests a backlash against strong, independent women who challenge hegemonic gender ideologies.

The Challenge of Heterosexuality: Heterosexual relationships are often the most constrained by patriarchal understandings of sex, gender, and power.
The Missing Element: Most versions of "Little Red Riding Hood" (oral and literary) hint at mutual desire but never allow it to be fully realized.

Features from Oral Tradition: Includes the "path of needles" versus the "path of pins."
The Ritual of Undressing: The girl undresses and, at each step, the wolf tells her to throw her clothes (apron, dress, stockings, petticoat, bloomers) into the fire, saying "you won't be needing it anymore."
The Escape: The girl uses the "kaka" (bathroom) excuse to go outside, tying a woolen rope (attached to her ankle) to a plum tree to escape the wolf.

Explicit Union: This version draws on oral tradition but makes the mutual desire explicit.
"Nobody’s Meat": When the wolf says, "All the better to eat you with," the girl laughs because she knows she is "nobody’s meat."
- Meaning: This removes her from the realm of patriarchal pornography and the male gaze.
- Sexual License: She enters a world of "absolute sexual license for all the genders."
The Act of Seduction:
- The girl undresses the wolf and burns his clothes.
- Folk Belief: Burning human clothing condemns the wer-wolf to remain a wolf forever.
- Savage Marriage Ceremony: Carter describes her laying his head on her lap and eating the lice from his pelt.
The Animal Erotic: Carter uses this image to unveil the hegemonic order of heterosexual relations, proposing instead an eroticism that emerges from deep, animal drives rather than dominant social constructs.

Question (Implicit in Lecture Content): How do we imagine mutual desire within the context of relationships so heavily structured by patriarchy?
Response: The lecture suggests that adaptations like Carter's provide a way to imagine a "happily-ever-after" where Red is a desiring subject as bestial as the wolf, sleeping "sweet and sound… between the paws of the tender wolf." This highlights the political significance of desire that has been submerged in the tale's history.