NationStates Jolt Archive

I'm taking psychology this year through a college-credit-in-high-school kidna thing, and right now, we're studying consciousness.

For some reason (I'm not *entirely* sure how it's relevant) there is a weblink in the course (an online course) and it's about hidden meaning in Little Red Riding Hood.

The link was to an article about various people like Freud, Bettelheim et. al. finding deep, hidden, and sexual meanings in LRRH. Quite disturbing, frankly. How the hell does a fairy tale created to scare children into obeying their parents have deep hidden meanings? it's what I (a 16 year old high school junior taking college courses online) call Interpreting Things to Death. I believe in hidden meaning to fairy tales, but saying LRRH is one big rape fantasy is going too far. :eek2:

Anyone here have any entertaining/disturbing stories about people interpreting things to death (literary works/movies/songs/dreams)? I know Harry Potter's been beaten time and time again with this, and other fandoms...

I want links.....I got to see how people can get "Rape Fantasy" from LRRH.

...Pancake, have you seen the musical "Into the Woods"?

I want links.....I got to see how people can get "Rape Fantasy" from LRRH.

Agreed.

Pancake... I think it's the fact that I remember reading one version where the wolf does more than eat Red Riding Hood. it was rather graphic in nature. oh and both her and the grandmother are not rescued in the version I read.

the Brother's Grimm tales were not meant for children in our modern veiwpoints. nowadays, you'll be hard pressed to find the orignials.

even then the fairy tales are being re-written to be even more friendlier. you try telling some child the original version of the "Little Mermaid".

...Pancake, have you seen the musical "Into the Woods"?
that Red was just plain scary.
"Trust me... you can't frighten her."

there is a reason why these stories have lasted hundreds of years.

and how can you NOT see the rape fantasy of lrrh? go through the story in your mind.

Well, to be honest I've never read any of the originals.

I've always grown up with the "friendly" fairy tales.

The only perverted part of LRRH I can really get is the "My, what big ____ you have, grandma!"

Maybe I'm just trying to apply them to the "modernized" fairy tales, where it really doesn't work at all.

there is a reason why these stories have lasted hundreds of years.

and how can you NOT see the rape fantasy of lrrh? go through the story in your mind.

Errmm

Little girl puts on red cape and goes into the forest to see her gramma.

Meets big bad wolf.

BBW convinces her to take the long way to gramma's house.

BBW takes short cut and eats gramma.

BBW meets girl at gramma's house and eats her.

I get it, the big bad wolf forces little red and her grandmother to have unwilling oral sex with him!

If your not looking for it its not there.... if you are looking for it your either confused or you are one sick puppy (but the again Freud was a coke addict and a sexual frustrated mo-fo)

...Pancake, have you seen the musical "Into the Woods"?

Ugh. Hated that play. One of my required English classes at Uni made me write an essay on the structure of two contrasting songs in the play.

If you really want to know how a fairy-tale would have worked out in real life, you would be better served by any of the Shrek films.

Regard the innocence of a name such as Pancake now mutilated into Darknovae, heralding the loss of youth and the corruption of her soul as she leaves behind childhood and enters the adult world. An act of self-rape, the light fluffy nourishment now turned to a dark star, a black hole, sucking the pain of her universe inside, waiting to explode into....

It's easy if you try.

Regard the innocence of a name such as Pancake now mutilated into Darknovae, heralding the loss of youth and the corruption of her soul as she leaves behind childhood and enters the adult world. An act of self-rape, the light fluffy nourishment now turned to a dark star, a black hole, sucking the pain of her universe inside, waiting to explode into....

It's easy if you try.

I've been Darknovae longer than I have been Pancake.

But you do get points for effort. :tongue:

Errmm

Little girl puts on red cape and goes into the forest to see her gramma.

Meets big bad wolf.

BBW convinces her to take the long way to gramma's house.

BBW takes short cut and eats gramma.

BBW meets girl at gramma's house and eats her.

I get it, the big bad wolf forces little red and her grandmother to have unwilling oral sex with him!

If your not looking for it its not there.... if you are looking for it your either confused or you are one sick puppy (but the again Freud was a coke addict and a sexual frustrated mo-fo)

This post is hilarious when you realize BBW also stands for Big Beautiful Woman.

I remember about eight or so years ago I found a Pokémon fan website that painted Ash Ketchum as some sort of messianic figure. Too bad it was so long ago, because I can't remember much more than that.

I've been Darknovae longer than I have been Pancake.

But you do get points for effort. :tongue:

So where is the link that tells us LRRH was a Rape Fanasty?

This post is hilarious when you realize BBW also stands for Big Beautiful Woman.

Oh I know...

So where is the link that tells us LRRH was a Rape Fanasty?

Right over.... here. (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2843/is_5_24/ai_67691833)

I'm taking psychology this year through a college-credit-in-high-school kidna thing, and right now, we're studying consciousness.

For some reason (I'm not *entirely* sure how it's relevant) there is a weblink in the course (an online course) and it's about hidden meaning in Little Red Riding Hood.

The link was to an article about various people like Freud, Bettelheim et. al. finding deep, hidden, and sexual meanings in LRRH.

Good old Sigmund Fraud could find deep, hidden, sexual meaning in his cereal bowl. Well, in your cereal bowl. In his case he's probably tell you "Zometimes zereal iz just zereal."

A perfect example of people interpreting things to death ... (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=565491)

Right over.... here. (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2843/is_5_24/ai_67691833)

This might be a easier to digest read (http://www.msmagazine.com/summer2004/danceswithwolves.asp), from which...

Once upon a time, “Little Red Riding Hood” was a seduction tale. An engraving accompanying the first published version of the story, in Paris in 1697, shows a girl in her déshabille, lying in bed beneath a wolf. According to the plot, she has just stripped out of her clothes, and a moment later the tale will end with her death in the beast’s jaws — no salvation, no redemption. Any reader of the day would have immediately understood the message: In the French slang, when a girl lost her virginity it was said that elle avoit vû le loup — she’d seen the wolf.

Penned by Charles Perrault for aristocrats at the court of Versailles, “Le petit chaperon rouge” dramatized a contemporary sexual contradiction. It was the age of seduction, notorious for its boudoir histories and its royal courtesans, who rose to power through sexual liaisons and were often celebrated at court; those who made it to the King’s bed might earn the title maîtresse-en-titre, official mistress.

:eek2:

This be close reading from a literary perspective. (http://waste.typepad.com/waste/2005/11/this_be_close_r.html)

Anyway, I've heard of LRRH as a telling of a girl's first sexual experience, the rape is new on me. I guess it might be there, but it sounds more like projection on the part of rape-crazed professors. And all professors are rape-crazed, you can count on this.

Yeah, it's worth noting that in some early versions of Little Red Riding Hood, the wolf had her take off her clothes and burn them in the fire before getting into bed with him. The really overt sexual metaphor has been edited out of modern children's versions, but the underlying story of an innocent young girl being tricked into some sort of encounter in bed with a big, powerful beast who is always portrayed as male is still intact.

Ignore it. It's all crap made up by people who don't have anything legitimate to justify their use of oxygen.

It's a global world. Nobody gives a shit about your knowledge of literature. Learn something useful.

On this note... (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EveryoneIsJesusInPurgatory)

....also, if I remember correctly, the Perrault version ends with an explicit note by the author explaining that the moral of the story is that attractive young women shouldn't trust "wolves," even the ones who were quite charming and seemed nice and who'd chat them up in the streets, because these handsome, charming "wolves" still wanted to "eat" them WINK WINK NUDGE NUDGE. :tongue:

Huh. Martin Gardner's interest in literary analysis extends beyond the math-games of Lewis Carroll. What a (polymath) nerd.

....also, if I remember correctly, the Perrault version ends with an explicit note by the author explaining that the moral of the story is that attractive young women shouldn't trust "wolves," even the ones who were quite charming and seemed nice and who'd chat them up in the streets, because these handsome, charming "wolves" still wanted to "eat" them WINK WINK NUDGE NUDGE. :tongue:

Well apparently that lesson never took root, because I'm an ugly wolf who sits at home drinking scotch. *nod*

.......then there's always the fact that a young girl in a red hood (menstruation) walking into the woods (adolescence) and meeting up with someone she thought she could trust but could not (loosing her innocence) and in the end is devoured by a close approximation of someone she looked up to........it's rather depressing.

Listen to your mother children, she knows the horrible things the world holds for you.

Little Red Riding Hood is an interesting one.

If you want even more fun, there's the suggestion that Alice in Wonderland is a story either about insanity or about a little girl abusing drugs and the interesting hallucinations she has. In particular, you get constant images that suggest both, from the Mad Hatter to a certain caterpillar. And the entire thing reads like the logic of a drug trip as well.

Little Red Riding Hood is an interesting one.

If you want even more fun, there's the suggestion that Alice in Wonderland is a story either about insanity or about a little girl abusing drugs and the interesting hallucinations she has. In particular, you get constant images that suggest both, from the Mad Hatter to a certain caterpillar. And the entire thing reads like the logic of a drug trip as well.I think the author was a pedophile too.

The version of Little Red Riding Hood in which the lumberjack saves the girl and her grandma from the evil wolf with the help of his trusty axe is also telling. Whereas the wolf is the archetypical wrong choice when looking for a suitable partner, the lumberjack is the kind of man that is considered marrying material.

I will interpret things to Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air—
I will interpret things to death Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath—
It may be I shall pass him still.
I will interpret things to Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow-flowers appear.

God knows 'twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear...
But I'll interpret things to Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail to interpret.

Cookie to anyone who can name what poem I butchered.

Has anyone else seen the Little Red Riding Hood with Christina Ricci set to the Debussy music? That's very sexual, and violent. It's not incredibly graphic, but still pretty weird. I can't find it on YouTube, but I'll post a link if I come across it somewhere else.

As for overinterpretation, I suggest Leonard F. Wheat's "triple allegory" theory of 2001: A Space Odyssey. When I first saw this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_2001:_A_Space_Odyssey#Wheat.27s_triple_allegory) on Wikipedia, I thought it was vandalism. I'm still not completely sure.

EDIT: I found it on Google Video. Enjoy (http://video.google.com/videosearch?emb=0&aq=f&q=little+red+riding+hood+ricci#).

Cookie to anyone who can name what poem I butchered.

Even if I knew, I still wouldn't want that cookie, for it's probably a metaphor for something lecherous...

Cookie to anyone who can name what poem I butchered.

I´m afraid, having been creeped out to death by you on another thread, to speculate who´s poem you butchered. Besides, that cookie you offer must´ve been already somewhere else on your body. And I bet it´s a naughty somewhere. *nod*

Pancake... I think it's the fact that I remember reading one version where the wolf does more than eat Red Riding Hood. it was rather graphic in nature. oh and both her and the grandmother are not rescued in the version I read.

the Brother's Grimm tales were not meant for children in our modern veiwpoints. nowadays, you'll be hard pressed to find the orignials.

I agree.

It's not so much that the Grimms were sickos, so much as kids had to look out for themselves a lot more in those days -- economic necessity of extended families, and kids often had to work so they were at the mercy of employers (who would have power over their parents as well in all likelihood,) and you wouldn't get much help from law enforcement.

It would not suffice to tell kids not to get in stranger's cars or to take candy from them. It was in a kid's best interest to scare the crap out of them about real dangers so they'd be always alert.

Has anyone else seen the Little Red Riding Hood with Christina Ricci set to the Debussy music? That's very sexual, and violent. It's not incredibly graphic, but still pretty weird. I can't find it on YouTube, but I'll post a link if I come across it somewhere else.

As for overinterpretation, I suggest Leonard F. Wheat's "triple allegory" theory of 2001: A Space Odyssey. When I first saw this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_2001:_A_Space_Odyssey#Wheat.27s_triple_allegory) on Wikipedia, I thought it was vandalism. I'm still not completely sure.

EDIT: I found it on Google Video. Enjoy (http://video.google.com/videosearch?emb=0&aq=f&q=little+red+riding+hood+ricci#).
Nice video.

And Pancake, you'll get used to that kind of close reading pretty quickly, esp. once you're in college and then it won't seem so crazy and over-interpreted anymore.

Cookie to anyone who can name what poem I butchered.

"I Have a Rendezvous with Death" by Alan Seeger, 1917.

Mind you, I'd never heard of it or him ... but Google makes us all experts. Give the cookie to some poor street urchin.

And Pancake, you'll get used to that kind of close reading pretty quickly, esp. once you're in college and then it won't seem so crazy and over-interpreted anymore.

Just like LRRH itself, the point of over-interpretation is to make you think critically.

I agree.

It's not so much that the Grimms were sickos, so much as kids had to look out for themselves a lot more in those days -- economic necessity of extended families, and kids often had to work so they were at the mercy of employers (who would have power over their parents as well in all likelihood,) and you wouldn't get much help from law enforcement.

It would not suffice to tell kids not to get in stranger's cars or to take candy from them. It was in a kid's best interest to scare the crap out of them about real dangers so they'd be always alert.

*nods*

not only that, but nowadays, we want our children to have stories with the happy ending. where the hero/ine wins it all.

The first time I saw the Little Mermaid it was close to the orignal Hans Christian Anderson version. where she ended up turning into sea foam (and yes, they showed her diving off the ship as a human but landing in the water as a spray of foam.)

I can tell you... it took a loong time for me to watch the Disney version.

Just like LRRH itself, the point of over-interpretation is to make you think critically.

except, sometimes the car is just a car and not a metaphor about the flow of life.

except, sometimes the car is just a car and not a metaphor about the flow of life.

My feeling on that is that a writer who puts random elements into a story to add "realism" but DOESN'T consider the allegory others will try to find in it ... isn't a very good writer.

Lookin' at YOU, J. K. Rowling. :tongue:

I think the author was a pedophile too.

Huge can of worms. He took pictures of naked girls. But so did lots of people in Victorian times, it was consdered asexual and artistic. The rest is rumour and hearsay.

Side note, is allegory only in the author's meaning? Can you have unintentional allegory?