Hayles 1 Chauncey Hayles Professor Lewis English 114B April 29, 2014 Nothing Is What It Seems There are

thousands of fairytales told and re-twisted from all around the world and from all different time eras. These authors through the years, although they have created remarkable and original pieces of literature, pose similarities. Each contains its own ideologies about what the meaning behind the stories are really trying to tell the reader. In the film Hoodwinked! directed by Cory Edwards, Todd Edwards, and Tony Leech, there is an ideology that is made in order to show the different versions and points of views there are in the tale everyone knows as Little Red Riding Hood. This film is trying to portray an overall message that basically all of these authors such as Charles Perrault, Hans Christian, and the Brothers Grimm each have their own interpretations of the classic stories. The film Hoodwinked! shows and supports that in fairytales, the story can be conceived and exaggerated or even twisted at any time. This is the ideology or moral of nothing is really ever what it seems. There can be many different ideologies when it comes to not only the film Hoodwinked!, but the distinct stories of Little Red Cap by the Brothers Grimm and Little Red Riding Hood by Charles Perrault; the main moral that links all of them together is that nothing is ever what it seems. In Hoodwinked!, the film expresses its specific moral that everything is not what it appears to be. The story takes place with Red traveling to her grandmas house when she then is attacked by the wolf who wants to see if she stole her grandmothers recipes. The wolf believes she has and so he tries to stop her. Red doesnt understand that and sees the wolf as trying to eat

Hayles 2 her. Meanwhile the grandma is living a secret dangerous life in the background and gets tied up in the process of trying to escape these people that were hired to kill her. Then a man with an axe accidentally crashes through the house right when they are about to be eaten. After all of this they end up getting arrested and had to each share their sides of the story to the detective, finding out that its all a misunderstanding of what really happened and that the goody bandit or the villain in the story is the cute little bunny rabbit. No one ever saw that coming. With this story looked at after knowing the original version of Little Red Riding Hood, it is much different. The ideology is shown in each character because of their opposite persona starting with the wolf not really being evil, Red not being weak or ignorant, the grandma not being helpless, and last but not least the bunny being the culprit of an evil plot of the story. The film changes the way the characters are looked at by basically making everything that we have conceived of this fairytale as the opposite. The wolf for instance is not shown as a devious evil creature in the movie, but when red describes him in her side of the story hes a horrible killer. According to the actual wolf, he seems reasonable and smart, but not the antagonist as portrayed in the Perrault and Brothers Grimm versions. Red, although seeming innocent in the literature styles, is actually quite strong and smart, not weak or ignorant. She is not a defenseless little girl, but a confident person that can take care of herself. The role of the detective is to find out what really happened in the actual story of Red Riding Hoods journey to her grandmas house. The use of the detective plays the audiences role and understands that both stories are not adding up. The audience will then see them as both not telling the truth or biased at least, to give them a fair playing ground to tell their stories. In this film and in the stories there is never only one meaning to something, just like theres never one ideology or moral. Most fairytale structures are very

Hayles 3 concrete and show the reader what they want to get across. This film shows that there are many ways the story can unfold and bend. Revealing the ideology that everything is not what it seems. In the Little Red Cap by the Brothers Grimm, there is a similar approach; it can be looked at in Hoodwinked! and compared to its ideologies, specifically that appearances can be deceiving. This story is very different. Over all, its the tale of Red being fooled by the wolf and in the end she and grandma are both eaten. After that, the man with the axe comes in and cuts them out, filling the wolfs stomach with rocks and killing the big bad wolf. These characters are very different from the films characters because they all represent the various interpretations of each other. Red by the Brothers Grimm is very timid and foolish. She is easily tricked and needs someone else to save her and her family. The wolf also plays this interpreted role that he is the evil and the conniving villain. In this version, it is saying that the moral of the story is to listen to your elders because her mother did warn her not to stray from the path. This ideology of listening to the warnings given to the reader is shown in this version, as well as nothing is what it appears to be. To her, the wolf may have seemed harmless and friendly, but because she did not listen she fell for this twisted ideology and was fooled. The specific story by the Brothers Grimm portrays its hidden message, which is to listen to others warnings especially when it comes from your elders. With the Little Red Riding Hood version by Charles Perrault, it is pretty much the same story as the Brothers Grimm. She gets distracted and listens to the wolf. When she strays off the path and disobeys her mother, the wolf eats her and the grandma. The only difference with this story is that there is no happy ending. No one saves them or kills the wolf, but Red dies because of her bad decision and gets the full consequence. This ideology that is expressed shows how Hoodwinked! can also be tied in. The overall moral of this story was the fact that red and

Hayles 4 her grandmother being women, are distracted easily and are weak, they always rely on men to save them from their mistakes. This is one meaning that can be taken out of the context of this story. Another meaning also exists because of the wolf since men are seen and known as wolves when going after women and this is what the character of the wolf is portraying. This wolf is shown as a male and represents men out there in the world and what they can do to women who are shown as timid and naive. The movies ideology that nothing is what it appears to be supports this hidden moral in the Perrault version. The wolf is not shown as the average male in the story, but as an animal representing mankind. Red, being a girl, is representing the everyday women. Women cannot help themselves and therefore must always rely on being saved. This is the paradigm of the story in Little Red Riding Hood, and it supports how each character is not what they appear to be in Hoodwinked!. All these stories have a certain ideology in common towards the film Hoodwinked!, made to show the different backstories of Reds journey. This films moral shows that through each characters stories and personas, nothing is ever really what it seems. This meaning also incorporates the stories Little Red Cap by the Brothers Grimm and Little Red Riding Hood by Charles Perrault. These tales each reveal hidden meanings within the characters and specifically towards their roles and actions. Certain notions are implied and portrayed such as listening to others warnings and that women are seen as timid and useless when they don't have a man to save them. These conceptions can become twisted from what the story could actually mean just like in Hoodwinked!, when everything we know gets turned around. The film definitely re-contextualizes the structure of the fairytales in both Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm editions. The movie did an entertaining job of portraying that there are many more different ideologies within a tale and these journeys are never what they seem.

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Works Cited Grimm, Jacob, and Wilhem Grimm. Little Red Cap. D. L. Ashliman's Folktexts. Professor D. L. Ashliman, 1996. Web. 18 Feb. 2014.

Hayles 6 Hoodwinked! Dir. Cory Edwards, Todd Edwards, and Tony Leech. Perf. Anne Hathaway, Glenn Close, and James Belushi. The Weinstein Company, 2005. DVD. Perrault, Charles."Little Red Riding Hood. D. L. Ashliman's Folktexts. Professor D. L. Ashliman, 1996. Web. 18 Feb. 2014.