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Daniel Rosales
Kimberly Lewis
English 114B
February 19, 2014
Everything is not what it seems
When I was young I remember reading never ending stories and adventures of many
characters. I was introduced to the world of mystical creatures with talking animals and moving
trees. I was thrown in endless adventures of heroes defeating bad guys and rescuing princesses
and at the end of every story I would learn something that the story itself was trying to teach me.
I would carry those words of wisdom in my heart forever. These faery tales become legends that
are told and re-told throughout the ages. One of my favorite stories is Little Red Cap by the
Brothers Grimm, which is the story of the sweet girl with the red cap that is deceived by the big
bad wolf. It is a story many of us are familiar with. Things change as time passes, we view things
differently than we did one hundred years ago. And the faery tale we are very familiar with can
also change, but still be as good story as the old one. Hoodwinked a movie by Cody Edwards
takes the elements from the original Little Red Cap and twists it around, making it a whole new
story with the same moral and some new ones. The Faery Tale ideology is what gives this two
stories the special touch, even though they are slightly different stories.
The Faery Tale ideology consist of many variables; the first being faery tales must be
mystical. There needs to be some sort of magic in faery tales, because they are stories of hope
that appeal to the innocence of children. There are speaking animals capable of reasoning like
humans and there are faeries and unicorns and many other mystical creatures. Evil is always
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present in the Faery Tale Ideology, there has to be an obstacle or a villain in the faery tales that
the main character overcomes, the villain is usually depicted as mean, ugly and scary. There is a
duality between good and evil, gentle and mean, beautiful and ugly. In some stories where the
main character is female the villain, whether male or female, has opposite traits to that of the
female main character. Faery tales must have a happy ending and most importantly the moral
which is a lesson that is taught behind the story and it promotes qualities like the ones learned by
the main character by the ending of the story. Some older faery tales did not have a happy ending
though, but it does not affect the purpose of the story. The faery tales that did not have a happy
ending taught the children the moral through fear, and those faery tales who had a happy ending
taught children to do the right thing and good things will happen to them. Little Red Cap by The
Brothers Grimm, is a faery tale that follows the Faery Tale Ideology.
Little Red Cap is a classic very well-known faery tale of a little girl, called Little Red
Cap. She is sent by her mother to deliver some cake and wine to her grandma, her mother tells
her to not run off the path. As she is walking in the path she meets the wolf, and he tricks her into
walking off the path. As a result Red Riding Hood and her grandmother are devoured by the
wolf, afterwards the Huntsman passes by and saves both of them by cutting the wolfs belly. The
Faery tale ideology is present in the story, because we have the main character, the obstacle or
villain and most importantly the moral of the story. The big bad mean wolf is the physical
manifestation of evil and he is the obstacle in Red Riding Hood. The mystical factor is present in
the story and is found in the wolf also, because he is able to talk and communicate with Little
Red Cap. There is a happy ending when the hunts man that cuts open the wolfs belly and saves
both Red Riding Hood and her grandma. Little Red Cap and her grandmother are safe and the
wolf is defeated. Little Red Cap disobeyed her mother and talked to the wolf, a stranger, nearly
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got herself and her grandmother killed. Reading this children learn that talking to strangers is a
bad thing and obeying your parents rules will prevent bad things from happening to you. That is
the moral of the story. Little Red Cap follows her individual ideology as well, in fact every
female main character in faery tales do. An ideology which I call The Princess Ideology.
The Princess Ideology follows a certain pattern: the female character is sweet, gentle,
innocent, beautiful, and she is loved by everyone. They are damsels in distress, which means
they need a male figure to rescue them from evil. Little Red Riding Hood follows the Princess
Ideology; the first line of the story describes her as a dear little girl who was loved by everyone
who looked at her. She is innocent, which is seen when she first encounters the wolf she did not
fear him, because she had not seen one before, and she did not fear him. However there is one
story that twists every ideology that we have discussed so far.
As time passed the story of Little Red Cap has been told and retold by everyone and
many modern versions of the story have been written. However there is one version that stands
out of the crowd because it is not a usual faery tale and that is Hoodwinked!; a computer
animated film by Cory Edwards, Todd Edwards, and Tony Leech. The film twists The Faery
Tale Ideology and blends in all the elements from the story of Little Red Cap with a twist,
creating an entire new faery tale. During the first five minutes of the movie everything seems in
order. We have the sweet, innocent looking Little Red Riding Hood, referred to as Red in this
particular story. There is the big bad scary Wolf dressed as a granny ready to eat the poor Red.
However when the huntsman comes in to rescue Red, he is clumsy and does nothing more than
create a chaos in the room. The characters are then transported into a detective scene with the
various characters describing their own side of the story. The story although twisted leaves us
with a moral, don not judge anyone by how they look.
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Red is portrayed as sweet with a twist; she is tough and can defend herself. She is seen
using karate to defend herself from bad guys, she even mentions that she is a black belt. Red
does not need a male figure to rescue her. Her character challenges the Faery Tale Ideology and
the Princess Ideology by giving her a more aggressive personality in contrast with Little Red
Cap. Red is not naive like Little Red Cap in the Brothers Grimm story where she is deceived by
the Wolf; Red is much more mature because she does not fall for the lies of the Wolf and does
not fall in his trap. Red is strong and does not need to be saved, she does not need the help of the
huntsman to save her from the big bad wolf. This breaks the old stereotype that women are weak
and cannot defend themselves and, like in most faery tales, they need to be saved by a man.
The Big Bad Wolf in Hoodwinked! is not even a villain. The villain is most of the time
depicted as a mean, deceiving creature, because they are the manifestation of evil. His
personality is the opposite to that of the Wolf in the Brothers Grimm version. He is clumsy and
he is not very clever, he lacks what makes a villain a villain, its cleverness. He is not a threat.
Because of his appearance it makes him the prime suspect of the goodie-bandit. However when
he approaches Red to get information from her, he is attacked by Red and is not able to defend
himself, it shows that he is very pathetic. At first glance you would want to put all the blame on
him just because he is a wolf and in the Faery Tale world, wolfs have a bad reputation, because
they have a keen personality. However, He is just a Journalist who wanted to be the first one to
write an article on the goodie-bandit, in fact he is very pathetic since he loses to Red in a fight
and she manages to escape. But if the Wolf is not the villain of the story, who is?
Everyone in this story is not who you think they are, and the villain of the story is no
exception. The bunny, named bongo, is the mastermind behind the evil scheme. He makes a
great villain because he succeeds in deceiving everyone in the story. However he is not the usual
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villain because he does not follow the Faery Tale Ideology. Bunnies are usually depicted as cute
innocent animals. Most villains are ugly, but he is cute and that gives him an advantage over his
enemies because nobody would ever suspect of a bunny being a criminal mastermind. However,
despite the lack of the looks of, Bongo he is still a true villain because he is very smart, and he is
a liar. He was able to deceive everyone in the town and nearly almost succeeded in stealing all
the recipes. He gains everyones trust by feeling empathy for everyone in the story, but mostly
his physical appearance is what does the trick for him. The moral of the story: never trust
bunnies.
Faery tales have taught us what school cannot. School may teach how to get the square
root of a negative number using imaginary numbers, but school will never be able to teach
people how to live life. Stories and adventures of characters teach people how to live, and it does
not matter where they came from; we carry faery tales in our hearts and that is what is most
important, more important than knowing how to square negative numbers honestly. The morals
teach us how to live our lives. These stories are not just words written on paper. They are the
teachings of old passed on to the younger generation. Those teachings will forever define my
generation and the future generations to come.





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Works Cited
Brothers Grimm. Little Red Cap. Grimm 026: N.p., 2 Sept. 2002. Web. 11 May 2014.
Hoodwinked! Dir. Cory Edwards, Todd Edwards, and Tony Leech. Perf. Anne Hathaway, Glenn
Close, and James Belushi. The Weinstein Company, 2005. DVD.