Little Red Riding Hood Revisited

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fineartamerica.com

We seem to be constantly haunted by fairy tales. They’re old, dusty, witty but not at all rusty. We all had an encounter with them at some point, we passed them by and thought they would be just another literary memory. But they are back. Red Riding Hood and others resurged in modern suits. If it suits them well or not, it’s not for me to judge, I just acknowledge their subtle arrival. Wanda Gag’s take on the red-capped girl takes the reader into the crude whirling reality of an urban nightmare. The home is no longer a safe haven for the child, but the center of her utmost unhappiness. Emotional and sexual abuse is what Gag pictures in her “Wolf”. Additionally, she deconstructs a couple of myths associated with fairy tales. She depolarizes characters, and in doing so, we have a sense that human complexity is being honored at a higher extent than the rather simplistic view that fairy tales usually adopt when filtering characters through the tight good/evil dichotomy. However, we do have a clear sense of the pure evil figure, the abusing “wolf”. The urban Red Riding Hood is now at a watershed: she needs to decide her own faith. Unlike Perrault's passive feminine figure, the renewed Riding Hood asserts herself through reason, processing and the ability to make a decision that will result into escape from the “evil”. Grimm’s hunter is not there to rescue her, let alone the prince whose charm doesn't suffice to make him appear. Whatever happened to both of them, the reader is left adrift. An entire mythology of the golden age fairy tale is left behind, and rightfully so. 

Wanda Gag abandons a long held tradition of the fairy tale narrative only to follow the same path that Perrault first took when he collected the story of Little Red Riding Hood. Gag may not be addressing the French aristocrats of the 19^th century, but she is essentially faithful to the function of the text, that is appealing to the audience through an honest reflection of the contemporary social background. She doesn't punish Red Hood like Perrault did, but she offers her redemption. Not only is Red Hood rescued, but she comes to a safe shore through her own doing, which to the patriarchal ear of Perrault would have been a pretty jarring idea. Gag celebrates the female hero and in doing so, a feminist undertone floats around the text, leading the audience to both a nightmare tale, but also a redemption tale that empowers the woman. 

“Dude”- The Curious Case of a Fairytale of Words

So, after having a conversation with one of my classmates on fairy tales, I discovered we are both enthusiasts of the mentioned genre. We both agreed on the intrinsic value fairy tales carry with them and that’s practically how this blog post was born. It occurred to me that “fairy tale” is a pretty flexible category and under the “right” molding, it can be used to suit the purpose of the writer/speaker. Thus, I think each word is a fairy tale in itself, and I've probably written a couple encrypted fairy tales up to now. Some call it etymology, cultural background, etc. or other technicalities, but to me each word is a fairy tale. Why? Well, just as simple as that. Because I like words and I believe in their whimsicality. I like to mold them, bend them, make them cry, make them shout out loud, or just make them be. Because each word renders a universe, a frozen instant of thought and it carries an invisible story that gets to be uttered in one breath. That’s all it takes to let it out.

But does anyone ever think of the birth of that word, of how people carved it moment by moment? It’s as if words are witnesses to all the cultural and historical movements. Most of all, words are witnesses of people, of personalities. They can be anything you want. They mimic the human universe to the point of merging with it. And maybe in the making of an universe, we think of words as our own property, a good granted through birth whose importance is less diminished unless it honors ours. But to grant them the importance of their existence is to honor our existence as humans. The conscience of a word is the conscience of a thinker. And what better opportunity to treat words right as being in another country? My love for English kept my enthusiasm alive and maybe where some saw the ordinary, my world painted itself in the whimsicality of the meaning. “Every day a new word” was a pledge I found it hard to keep but it was the one rule animating my fairy tale of words. Those fickle words that eluded me so often, that fooled me with their make-believe attire.

Because sometimes they did. I've grown to know how shifting the sands can be in the informal language. An assumed mask tells the opposite fairy tale or marries two fairy tales of meaning, subject to human creativity. “Dude” spelled out for me the tale of the young male, coming out of the mouth of youngsters. It just exuded pure masculinity to me, assigned in slang-ish contexts. I was extremely puzzled to find out it might as well be applied to the feminine representative of the human species. The fact in itself had a mind-boggling effect on me, but in the process of rationalizing the findings, the view seemed less incongruous. I mean, there wasn't anything that exclusively masculine in the poor word. An amazing return to the “wordy” senses! To make matters worse, a fraction of the same underground issuing power decided that there should be a proper feminine version to the unisex “dude”, namely “dudette”. Now, this does sound like a vindication of words’ rights – a masculine word should naturally have its feminine counterpart. In the process of the word creation, retort to French word formation is naturally inevitable. I guess it just adds some of the romantic mystery of less spoken language in the Anglo-Saxon scenario, or is there another reason that eludes me?

The curios case of “dude” is nothing but a mere example of word mobility in a language displaying severe symptoms of offhanded, but welcome creativity. Word on, dear friends!