Author: breadcrumbs

By Madi Grant

The gendered language within fairy tales is predominantly focused towards heteronormative relationships, creating a dangerous environment for women who engage in partnerships that follow those guidelines. Understanding the ways in which fairy tales perpetuate toxic masculinity through romantic and sexual narrative structures is important because they attach harmful lessons about love and sexuality to morals that audiences are meant to replicate.  Fairy tale relationship dynamics create a false narrative of mutual understanding, while in reality, relationships like the ones in these stories are detrimental to women.  Some of these tales that we glorify that maintain these dynamics include “Beauty and the Beast”, “Rapunzel”, “Cinderella”, “Snow White”, and “The Little Mermaid”, all of which idealize misogynistic dynamics that were once warnings, not blueprints.  The Beast forced Belle to stay in his home, asserting his dominance over her when he had no right to and then called it love.  Rapunzel was twelve years old and was impregnated by a grown man, who also called this an act of love. In several versions of Cinderella(Tatar), her father cut her breasts and tongue off when she refused to marry him, actively punishing her for his own pedophilic desires. The Little Mermaid praises female passivity and introduces the idea that women need to repent for their mistakes while men are allowed to live and learn.  The messages in these fairy tales that romanticize the mistreatment of women by men create space for men to be violent towards women in the real world. By examining portrayals of romance and sexuality in the fairy tales we show our children, we can gain a better understanding of how fairy tales impact audiences as well as how exposing children to sex early in life changes development. Romance narratives in fairy tales — specifically Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont’s “Beauty and the Beast,” Friedrich Schulz’s “Rapunzel,” the Brothers Grimm’s “Snow White”, and Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Little Mermaid” — perpetuate toxic masculinity by portraying male expressions of love as justification for physical possession, emotional manipulation, and dominance over women. These representations of toxic masculinity take shape in three primary ways — the male figure or prince physically trapping or controlling the female protagonist, sexuality being portrayed as liberating for male characters while simultaneously being what is deemed the root of all issues if the sexuality or desire is being presented by a woman, and the male figure essentially becoming the paramount feature of the female protagonist’s life at the end of the tale. By rewriting the narrative in fairy tales and encouraging healthy and mutually beneficial relationships that aren’t based on some guy and some girl in some three page long story, we can work to minimize the damage that these stories have had a hand in causing.

Historically, women have been unable to speak outwardly about sex and sexuality due to societal and patriarchal pressure, however there have also been ways women have been able to combat this.  One example of this is storytelling, and the themes of female sexuality and how it is viewed in society are still present in the stories we tell today.  Many of these stories, or fairy tales, consist of warnings for young women against the sexual pressures they would face from men as they got older(Butterworth).  One example of this is Charles Perrault’s “Little Red Riding Hood”(Perrault).  While this tale was written by a man, it was one that was passed from woman to woman for many years before he penned it.  This story contains a warning about men in high social standing taking advantage of women, or the “wolf in sheep’s clothing” trope, which is just one of the many messages like this we see within fairy tales that urge women to be wary of the men they meet.  Other themes like this include women needing to be submissive for their own safety, such as Snow White’s relationship with the seven dwarves as their maid and Rapunzel’s first encounter with Prince Charming in Friedrich Schulz’s version of her story.  These classic fairy tales may be based in lands far away, but the warnings they contain are incredibly important in our society, which villainizes women the same way all of these stories do.  However, the warning messages have long been long forgotten, and instead the relationships in these stories are being romanticized, creating a harmful basis for what children are told is “true love”. 

One issue that the audience encounters within these stories is the justification and entitlement for physical possession by the male figure towards the female protagonist.  This generally takes place at the beginning of the tale, when the male figure physically traps or controls the female character, though, it can really happen at any time in the story.  Three popular tales where this occurs are “Rapunzel”(Schulz), “Beauty and the Beast”(de Beaumont), and “Snow White”(Grimm).  In Rapunzel, while the fairy trapped her in the tower initially, the prince traps her in the tower while she is at his mercy while also physically dominating her.  When the prince entered the tower, twelve year old Rapunzel “was afraid and screamed pitifully” due to the prince’s advances until she yielded and agreed to marry him, when he then decided “he wanted to have her right away. She said yes, without knowing why it was happening and without knowing how, and she didn’t really want to know where.”(487)  The prince not only trapped Rapunzel, who was a child, but he also raped her, believing that he had the right to her and her body, simply because he was the one who found the tower.  This is also, probably most obviously, present in Beauty and the Beast, where the Beast forces Beauty to stay with him after her father took a rose from his garden, making her trade her life and freedom for his.  The Beast shows a sense of entitlement to her and her company, as he shut her into his house and was then her only means of socialization, effectively removing her from the rest of the world.  After closing her off from the rest of the world, he then believed he had a right to her and her time.  Another instance in these fairy tales where this happens is within Snow White, although, it is at the end of the story.  After the prince takes Snow White’s coffin from the dwarves and she becomes conscious again, she asks where she is and the prince replies “You are with me… I love you more than anything else on earth. Come with me to my father’s castle.  You shall be my bride.”(101)  Not only does the prince make the decision for Snow White about being his bride, but he also feels the entitlement to even make that statement specifically because he tripped and the apple happened to fall out of her throat.  The sense of automatic entitlement that is displayed by these male characters in regards to the female protagonists is an issue, as it leads to real men believing that this is what is right when trying to seduce or court a woman in real life.  These themes also don’t teach men how to deal with rejection in a healthy way, leading to men like incels, as written in Shannan Palma’s “Entitled to a Happy Ending: Fairy-Tale Logic from ‘Beauty and the Beast’ to the Incel Movement”(Palma), in which Palma describes the real world repercussions of not teaching men to be better than the men they read about, especially within misogynistic stories that preach and reward sexist entitlement. 

Another main issue with so many of these stories is the normalization of emotional manipulation and its close proximity to sexuality.  In these tales, sexuality and desire for men is shown as something that frees them, and they are alternatively used as a way to villainize women, either saying that female desire is something that is the root of all the issues within the tale, or saying that desire is something women have to repent for.  This hypocrisy and manipulation is prominent within “Rapunzel” and “The Little Mermaid”(Anderson).  In “Rapunzel”, there are several times when female desire is villainized throughout the entire tale.  Initially, Rapunzel’s mother wanted the food from the fairy’s garden, which ended in her child being taken away.  Then, the fairy puts Rapunzel in the tower when she begins puberty, showing that her blossoming sexuality and womanhood is something that is dangerous, and after that, the fairy blames Rapunzel and casts her out of the tower after the prince raped and impregnated her.  The emotional manipulation by the prince towards Rapunzel happens all throughout this.  First, when he forces her into marriage and then takes her body from her, and then it happens again after he finds her at the end of the story, when she cures his blindness and they go live “happily” in his castle.  While Rapunzel’s (not even) sexuality got her into trouble, the prince’s manipulation and violation of her body ended happily for him.  In The Little Mermaid, she trades her tail and voice for legs, even though she would be in immense pain every time she took a step, so that she could be with the man she “loved”.  Her desire is immediately punished by the sea witch with these curses, however, once she is on land, the prince spends every waking moment with her.  He is rewarded with her presence through her suffering. At the end of the story, the prince is rewarded further by getting married to a beautiful princess while the little mermaid dies and is forced to travel on the wind for 300 years in order to gain a human soul as penance for what she did while she was living.  The message of praising female domesticity and passivity when it comes to their relationships with men is incredibly toxic, as it encourages young girls to rely on men in real life, while they should be making decisions for themselves.  The villainization of female desire is also another major issue, as it furthers the narrative that women should not want things for themselves, instead they should work to make the men in their life happy.

The final big issue with fairy tales is one that comes at the end of each tale.  While the male enforcing his dominance over the female protagonist is something that happens throughout each of these stories, the male figure becoming the paramount feature of the female protagonist’s life is something that always waits til the end, usually rearing its ugly head in the phrase “happily ever after”.  This happens in almost every fairy tale that features a female protagonist.  In “Snow White” the prince takes her after she wakes up and immediately marries her, taking her to his castle, where she’ll live out the rest of her life, most likely popping out heirs to the throne.  In “Beauty and the Beast” the beast threatens to kill himself if Beauty doesn’t return (talk about emotional manipulation) and he almost dies before Beauty saves him.  She then decides that she’ll marry him to save him from himself, even though she only ever felt friendship towards him.  Beauty lives with the Beast forever, giving up her life in her village with her family in order to protect her captor.  In “Rapunzel”, she becomes pregnant with twins and then has to raise them on her own for years while the prince is wandering around like a dumbass in the woods until she saves him. Then, she commits to going to live in his castle and, like Snow White, will probably just get bred like a prized animal, as is what happened to real royalty.  In The Little Mermaid, she loses her life and has to pay for loving the prince, making him the ultimate deciding factor in her existence.  All of these instances of men asserting their dominance and women losing their individuality after submitting is a toxic dynamic that no one should base their relationships off of or romanticize.

There is a danger that comes with idolizing one dimensional characters in any capacity, if it lines up with sexuality or anything else.  In this specific instance, however, girls are taught that they have to be submissive to men for their own safety, and boys are shown that the way to win someone else’s affection is through these toxic behaviours.  The characters in these tales have no depth, and while it’s healthy for children to identify with fictional characters, it isn’t healthy if they have no development or only display the toxic gender roles reflective of the time when they were written.  A fairy tale from the seventeenth century should not hold the same weight when it comes to learning about yourself and others or learning about identity as current franchises like Percy Jackson, or even Star Wars, which feature more modern and more complex characters that children can identify with in healthier ways, as opposed to wanting to be “beautiful” or “helpful” like the female protagonists in these fairy tales or “manly” and “charming” like these toxic male figures.  There is also the issue of consent or lack thereof within these tales.  The narrative of men taking what they want and that making them manly or heroic is absolutely detrimental to women’s health and safety as well as the mental health of the men who are exposed to these gender roles and don’t want to abide by them.  Setting up these rigid guides for what men and women “should” be is toxic in and of itself and leads to children having identity issues(Brown).  The narratives in these stories need to be rewritten to reflect the time we’re currently in.  As gender roles continue to shift and change, as do the stories and the morals we teach our children about how to act towards others.  Yes, be kind, be helpful, and be brave, but also, be whatever makes you happy, don’t live based on what other people tell you to do, especially if it’s because of your gender.

            Tricksters are seen all throughout different types of stories- from Greek mythology to fairy tales to young adult novels. It is a common character trope because it serves both moral purposes and makes fantastic villains. However, the trickster trope can also be used to identify real life people. They can even be used to identify politicians, especially since politicians are often seen as real-life tricksters. Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, is the politician of focus for this paper. Because he uses shapeshifting^[1], disguise, and false motivations, I argue that the portrayal of the wolf in the Brothers Grimm telling of Little Red Cap informs us about Democratic politicians; specifically, Gavin Newsom’s healthcare policies in response to the COVID-19 pandemic reveals a harmful neoliberal agenda. This is significant because the governor’s job is supposed to have the people’s best interest in mind, yet he let so many people die and lose their jobs in order to save his reelection and his donors. Little Red and the wolf helping to define political tricksters is helpful to understand pro-corporate agendas and how the most charismatic people can be the most harmful. 

            Tricksters are characters that rely on deceit and manipulation in order to advance their personal agenda. They are intelligent, cunning, and power-hungry. The wolf in Little Red Riding Hood is also classified as a trickster. Like Coyote^[2], he is a shapeshifter. Not in the same way Coyote is a shapeshifter^[3], but the Wolf has the ability to shift into the Grandmother in order to trick Little Red; he changed himself and his characteristics to the best of his ability in order to look like Little Red’s grandmother. A trickster is also defined by their cunningness^[4]; the wolf knows exactly what to say that will get Little Red to disobey her direct orders to deviate from the path. This idea of shapeshifting is common amongst trickster characters, and ultimately is what defines both Gavin Newsom and the Wolf. 

While it is true that Newsom does not dress up as a little girl’s grandmother, he does disguise himself as the “perfect” politician in order to encourage Californians to support him. He has the seemingly perfect family, his relative is the speaker of the Senate^[5], and his family members are very rarely the subject of tabloids and are all in very high-ranking schools and universities. Newsom himself is the only one in his immediate family ever involved in major controversy. He has crafted a perfect family so that when the focus is on him, it is only ever on his policies and never on his personal life. Except, that intention is not always realized. He is often in scrutinized for his personal choices, especially his choices during the pandemic. He closed in-person dining but that same day he goes out to eat at an exclusive Napa Valley restaurant. He presents himself in such a way that allows for people to trust him, but he does what he pleases. He crafts a disguise of the “perfect” politician yet does things that directly contradicts this image. His crafted image reflects the wolf’s crafted image for his audience, which is Little Red in this case^[6]. In Newsom’s case, this image is of a liberal politician, while the Wolf’s aim is to make a small girl trust him, which is not too far off from the Governor’s tactic. The Wolf acts very similarly in this shape shifting ability to get what he wants. They both act as tricksters in their ability to create an image that the general population takes as the universal truth, when in reality they are crafting an image that best suits their personal motivations. 

            Gavin Newsom’s response to COVID may not seem all that bad, but in reality, it was mismanaged because of his pro-corporate and neoliberal agenda. At the beginning of the pandemic, he created a stay-at-home order and a mask mandate in all public spaces. This was how many liberal governors reacted to the pandemic because this was the recommended course of action from the CDC and the Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the chief medical advisor to the president. At the start, when everyone assumed the pandemic would not last more than a month, most government officials were on board. However, once it became clear that the pandemic was not ending any time soon, states were getting pressure to lift the stay-at-home order, even though the health risk was so high. When the government closed non-essential businesses, Republicans wanted their lives to return to normal, even though the hospitals were still using operating rooms as ICUs. Back in June, when there was no vaccine and cases in larger cities like Los Angeles were rising, Newsom announced a plan to start opening the state again. He did this in hopes of his recall petition to be revoked. This, in fact, did the opposite. Because the stay-at-home order was being lifted, COVID cases in almost every county skyrocketed. Once again, hospitals were overrun like they were during the beginning of the pandemic and thousands of people were dying every day. This led Democrat and liberal leaning Californians to see how mismanaged the government and where Newsom’s true priorities are at, which led the Democrats to join Republicans in the recall petition. He wanted to keep his corporate investors, but he also wanted to make sure he kept his job. Both Newsom and the Wolf use false motivations to get what they want out of people. In order to better manipulate people, they create false images and false promises. This is a cornerstone of politics in general and is also employed by the Wolf when he sends Little Red for flowers. This ability to use false narratives to manipulate people and how they view you is a trait shared by both the Wolf and California’s governor. 

            Neoliberalism is the capitalist agenda created by democrats and disguised as liberal, progressive policies. Neoliberalism is disguised as a utopian society if the free market, but in actuality politicians are putting corporate interests above the people’s interest. Neoliberalism is nothing more than a radicalized form of capitalist imperialism^[7]. It is how politicians keep capitalism alive during social movements, especially movements towards equality. Neoliberal Democrats condemn Republicans for “only focusing on the economy” or “caring only about the bottom line” even when they are focusing on those exact same things. Democrats just hide their pro-corporate agenda and use marginalized communities while they are doing so. Gavin Newsom is considered a neoliberal because of his money motivated decision-making. Everything he does is for political gain and to better his image. For example, (this is pre-COVID) he announced that he is giving millions of dollars to help the houselessness in major cities, mainly San Francisco and Los Angeles.  However, the mayors of each city were not given the money he announced and could not implement any of the programs he set. Houselessness is a hot topic in California, especially in major cities, so him talking about giving money and plans to solve this issue is a huge deal. This boosted his approval by a lot. But, by the time people realized that all of these promises were empty people did not even realize; people did not care all that much. People have a very low opinion of politicians anyways, so by Gavin not fulfilling his promises no one was all that surprised. Announcing to help the top issue in the state is a major political gain and was a planned tactic to help boost his image. The better his approval, the more money and political backers and sponsors he receives. This similar situation happened with his COVID policies as well. Even when people were dying, and hospital workers were overrun, and yet in June and July of 2020 he was beginning to lift the stay-at-home ban. Even though the CDC did not recommend it, he did it anyways because there was a recall for his position. This recall was his motivator, not the loss of life and loss of jobs. Like the wolf, he is acting as if he has other’s best interest in mind^[8], but it is all a show for their own gain. Like the wolf knowing he is eating people, Newsom knows what he is doing will ultimately hurt people. But neither Gavin nor the Wolf care because they end up better in the end. For them, the only thing that matters are that they are better off in the end, even at the cost of the greater good. They are not unconscious to the harm they are causing, but it is worth it to them because they are ultimately doing better.   

            Comparing any politician to a fictional villain may seem like an outlandish claim, but using tricksters as a trope to categorize politicians, especially in terms of neoliberals works int his case. The act of masking one’s true motives in order manipulate is large group of people is what both politicians and tricksters do. Newsom’s personally motivated response to the pandemic mimics the actions of the Wolf in their ability to manipulate and shift their perceived perceptions.  

Works Cited

Duggan, Lisa; “Neoliberalism.” NYU Press, 2014, pp. 181–183. JSTOR, www.jstor.org.electra.lmu.edu/stable/j.ctt1287j69.50. Accessed 2 May 2021. 

Grimm, Wilhelm, and Jacob Grimm. “Little Red Cap: Brothers Grimm.” The Classic Fairy Tales: Texts, Criticism, edited by Maria Tatar, W.W. Norton Et Company, 2017, pp. 18–20. 

Hyde, Lewis. “Slipping the Trap of Appetite: The Bait Thief .” The Classic Fairy Tales: Texts, Criticism, edited by Maria Tatar, W.W. Norton Et Company, 2017, pp. 456–459. 

Shannon, Chelsea. “A Timeline of California in the Coronavirus Pandemic.” abc10.Com, 12 Mar. 2021, www.abc10.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/covid-19-timeline-pandemic/103-03046184-ed02-498b-b6d0-795a60646c6b. 

^[1] Shape shifting in the sense of changing an image on the spot, not the magical ability to physically change one’s appearance. This is a metaphorical shape shift.

^[2] Coyote is the Navajo trickster god and is most known for the ability to shapeshift. 

^[3] Hyde gives an example of a story with Coyote on page 457.  Hyde, Lewis. “Slipping the Trap of Appetite: The Bait Thief .” The Classic Fairy Tales: Texts, Criticism, edited by Maria Tatar, W.W. Norton Et Company, 2017, pp. 456–459.

^[4] Hyde, Lewis. “Slipping the Trap of Appetite: The Bait Thief .” The Classic Fairy Tales: Texts, Criticism, edited by Maria Tatar, W.W. Norton Et Company, 2017, pp. 456–459.

^[5] His relative is Speaker of the Senate, Nancy Pelosi.

^[6] “The wolf thought to himself, ‘That tender young thing will make a dainty morsel. She’ll be even tastier than the old woman. If you’re really crafty, you’ll get them both’.” (19 Grimm). Here, “both” is in reference to Little Red and the Grandmother. 

^[7] Duggan, Lisa; “Neoliberalism.” NYU Press, 2014, pp. 181–183. JSTOR, www.jstor.org.electra.lmu.edu/stable/j.ctt1287j69.50. Accessed 2 May 2021. 

^[8] “He walked for a while beside Little Red Cap. Then he said: ‘Little Red Cap, have you seen the beautiful flowers all about? I don’t think you’ve even noticed how sweetly the birds are singing. You are walking along as if you were on the way to school, and yet it’s so heavenly out here on the woods’” (19 Grimm). 

By Garett Collins

            The tale of Little Red Riding Hood has, since its earliest literary conception in 1697 at the hands of Charles Perrault, become inexorably linked to the concept of fairy tales as a genre. Enduring in a near-universal capacity for its timeless morals, the story of a little girl and a voracious predator has appeared in numerous derivations across Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. Traditional fairy tale derivations of the little red riding hood archetype were often directed at children, utilizing the anthropomorphic “wolf” to symbolize the vast unknown, and the concept of the dangerous stranger. In this way, the wolf often represents temptation, desire, and broadly speaking, all that is evil. The “red hood” in turn represents innocence, order, and the concept of good. While the fairy tale medium proved sufficient to convey the binary predator-prey relationship central to many iterations of ATU (Arne-Thompson-Uther index) 333 to its intended audience, the natural limitation of such a narrative choice is that the story cannot effectively present its morals without defining the predator and prey figures as fundamentally opposite, incompatible entities. The practical result of this literary structure is that it cultivates an extremely linear, simplified interpretation of the message. Fairy tales often carry the connotation of being exclusively for children because of this genre-defining simplicity, however, the dissemination of fairy tale archetypes, including the Little Red Riding Hood template, into broader types of media has allowed such stories to become more accessible to adult audiences, resulting in more complex and introspective interpretations of fairy tale elements. Both Jin-roh: The Wolf Brigade and Perrault’s Little Red Riding Hood serve to cultivate virtues and contextualize macroscale fears such as fear of the unknown and loss of control by reflecting elements of their native cultures, however, Jin-roh is particularly significant in that it challenges the notions of definitive systems of values by presenting them to adults as ambiguous and multifaceted things, in turn forcing its audience to confront their perceptions of morality on a personal level as opposed to the definitive, linear depiction of morality present in Little Red Riding Hood, which was specifically designed to appeal to children.

            The Rashomon effect is the concept that eyewitness accounts are innately unreliable or incomplete, and that the perception of any event is impacted by the observer’s frame of reference. This idea is apparent both in the narrative structure of much of modern media, with notable plot points being depicted from multiple perspectives to recontextualize the greater scope of the subject, and on a metatextual level due to its implication that the reception of a work is inherently affected by the audience’s frame of reference. This latter point manifests both on an individual and cultural level. In their 2013 paper discussing the applications of the Rashomon effect on Jin-roh: The Wolf Brigade, Pauline Greenhill and Steven Kohm of the University of Winnipeg assert that the movie presents a postmodernist perspective on the ambiguous nature of truth, storytelling, and a nonlinear concept of justice by manipulating the audience’s preconceived notions about the little red riding hood type story to continually subvert their expectations as more layers of the story are slowly revealed (Greenhill. 90). In this way, Jin-roh forces its audience to confront the notion that there simply is no definitive concept of truth, or binary systems of good and evil. This narrative decision itself is the product of the predominant global sentiments during its production in 1998, stemming from a post-World War II Japan wracked with the destruction and subsequent reconstruction efforts that heavily influenced several successive generations, and global tensions at the end of the Cold War; both of which contributed to the popular deconstruction of the hero and villain archetypes and helped cultivate morally ambiguous characters.

            In stark contrast to the multifaceted reality depicted in Jin-roh, Perrault’s Little Red Riding Hood instead thrives on the extreme simplicity of its plot to convey an objective understanding of truth. There is a wolf, who is evil. There is a girl with a bright red coat who is innocent, and who does not know the danger of speaking to wolves. The short story, totaling only two pages from start to finish, is accompanied by a “moral” which states the author’s precise intention and, in doing so, functionally eliminates any narrative ambiguity the story might have otherwise contained. Perrault expressly states that his fairy tale targets “young girls, pretty, well bred, and genteel”, and was meant to teach them that wolves can wear many faces, and that if they were not wary the wolves would devour them (Perrault. 44). This absolute description made the story more consumable for younger audiences and proliferated in the collective consciousness because it presented eternally-relevant lessons that all children should be acquainted with; such as the value of skepticism, and that good little children should listen to their parents. The wolf is made to be scary, alien, and venomous to frighten children into internalizing values that will serve them as they develop, and the subtextual references to obedience and punishment for disobedience endeared the story to parents.

            Even tales that are defined so clearly by the author are, however, subject to change alongside the society that observes them. Time and the analysis of many geographically and temporally varied cultures has given rise to many alternative interpretations of Little Red Riding Hood. Cynthia Jones, a specialist in French literature and artistry, posits that the strangeness that Perrault’s wolf was meant to represent was the seductive allure of the eponymous Little Red Riding Hood’s own innate animalistic nature, which she dubs the “anima”. The wolf’s consumption of the little girl would therefore represent the shedding of her purity (Jones. 130). Her red coat, which has become integral to the archetype, was also first described in Perrault’s version as a possible symbol of the young girl’s innocence, literally shrouding her from the darkness of the world but ultimately incapable of protecting her from the wolf’s jaws. Jones’s analysis is particularly significant in that it implies that the wolf and the girl are facets of the same individual. Still notably incompatible elements, as evidenced by the destruction of one to feed the other, but with significant implications for the later development of the story archetype. Maria Tatar, recognized as the preeminent authority on the matter of fairy tales and myth, expands on this principle in her lecture The Big Bad Wolf Reconsidered by charting the progression of Little Red Riding Hood-like tales through various mediums, demonstrating the profound effects of broadening fairy tales from exclusively child-oriented subjects into media designed for adults. One common avenue by which this transition is explored in adult media is through the rise of erotic film, Tatar explains, observing the predator-prey dynamic that serves as the focus for much of that narrative niche (Tatar. 31:10). Though sexual expression is considered a definitively adult act, such stories are not notably different from those fairy tales and books made for children, in that they present their story in a traditionally superficial way. Because the audience engages with these types of media with a specific intention in mind, social education in the case of children and sexual gratification in the case of adults, the narrative is better served by presenting itself in the most direct, comprehensible way, providing a notable example of traditional “wolf” and “red hood” archetypes being adapted providing a distinct benefit for heavily divergent audiences. This reflects the notion that audiences and their social and cultural niches shape media.

            Tatar does, however, expand on the inverse notion that media can affect and reflect society as well. Peter Paik of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee discusses the effect of using the visual medium of animation to magnify the emotional impact of Jin-roh’s plot. Hiroyuki Okiura, who directed the movie, is largely known for utilizing a grounded, hyper-realistic style of animation. Immaculately detailed set pieces frame each shot and characters move through them with a sense of realistic weightiness, and expressions are depicted proportionally to their stimuli. With the exception of a singular scene occurring in the latter half of the film, “Jin-Roh would have worked just as well as a live-action thriller of political conspiracy and inter-governmental espionage” (Paik. 110). Why, then, was the movie produced as an animation? Animating the story in such an intimate, meticulously real manner allowed Okiura to achieve a sort of hyper-reality where his characters were made more tangible than if they were portrayed by living, breathing humans. Fully animated characters have the additional benefit of disconnecting the roles from visible, possibly recognizable actors, shifting the focus from the characters themselves toward what the characters represent.

            Jin-roh: The Wolf Brigade is a story of monsters, certainly, but it reminds its viewers that not all monsters are external. The story revolves around an elite counter-terrorism operative, named Kazuki Fuse, struggling to come to terms with his role in a chaotic post-World War II Japan. After witnessing a little girl commit suicide-by-bombing during an anti-government riot, Fuse begins to question his role as a “wolf” and is overcome by guilt for what he views as his greatest failure. It is not until he meets Kei Amemiya, who claims to be the young terrorist’s older sister and appears in a cherry red coat, carried over from Perrault’s rendition and the later adaptation by the Brothers Grimm, that he apparently begins to come to terms with himself. The pair bond over their shared strangeness in a society that was never really their own, and what seems to be the first flicker of love begins to bloom. As the story progresses, however, it is revealed that Kei was planted by a rival police faction to incriminate Fuse in a political scandal that would destroy his organization. Betrayed, Fuse falls into what appears to be Kei’s trap. After a brutal confrontation, Fuse takes Kei and flees back into the tunnels where the young terrorist had killed herself, pursued by the remains of his opponents. Only upon entering the tunnels is it revealed that Kei had been coerced into incriminating Fuse, and that the latter had known for some time, having been instructed by his own superiors to bring the rival faction there. What follows is a brief but spectacularly bloody and tense slaughter at Fuse’s hands. Kei, broken both by the guilt of her own actions and the sudden realization that she had apparently been used by her mark and the man she grew to love, doesn’t resist when she is taken out of the city to be executed. Fuse at first resists this notion arguing that her death would serve no purpose, but is firmly denied as his superior places a gun in his hand. They embrace one final time as Fuse pulls the trigger.

            Jin-roh is largely unique in that both of its main characters are simultaneously the “wolf”, and the “red hood”. Fuse is, by nature of his position in a paramilitary organization known for its brutality, presented as a predator and a monster, yet he refused to fire on the young terrorist despite her attempt to murder him. Kei, at first appearing as an innocent third-party, agreed to manipulate Fuse’s apparent weakness to reduce the punishment for her own criminal history. Fuse’s final act of killing Kei, the wolf ultimately devouring Little Red Riding Hood, serves a sort of absolution of the latter’s sin. In pulling the trigger, Fuse rendered his own humanity and fully accepted his nature as a wolf while also letting Kei die as a casualty of war, rather than a perpetrator of violence. Written for a primarily Japanese adult population still intimately aware of the incredible potential for human violence in the wake of World War II and the difficult reconstruction that followed, Jin-roh embraces the notion that people have within themselves the capacity to be both predator and prey, perpetrator and innocent, good and evil, and that finding the balance between these forces is what defines the human condition.

            Perrault’s Little Red Riding Hood is a simple story. It’s definitive, linear narrative and clear accompanying moral were ideal for reaching his intended audience of young children. To most effectively teach his young audience the danger of strangers with silver tongues and the importance of obeying one’s parents, it is logical to present the wolf as a foreign entity that could attack Little Red Riding Hood. Jin-roh: The Wolf Brigade, by contrast, thrives on the complexity of its narrative to keep its audience off balance and unsure of what is come in a way that feels uncomfortably like the ever-shifting nature of real life. It rejects the notion of a singular perception of truth, and forces its observers to confront the fact that “the wolf” is not simply a foreign entity that can avoided or escaped, but an intrinsic presence in all people. The choice Jin-roh presents is not in whether a person is a “wolf” or a “red hood”, but rather how they choose to balance those two facets within themselves. Because Jin-roh was geared toward adults and the murky, complex, and ambiguous ponderances they have likely encountered, it was able to push the theme in uncomfortable and deeply introspective ways that would not have had the same potency and impact under different genre constraints or contemporary experiences.

By Jasmine Franklin

As young children, the idea of success was drilled into our minds; work hard, get good grades, go to a good high school which will get you into a good college and will land you a good job with good pay. Then you can call yourself successful. This idea of success as based solely on how hard you work and how much you plan for the future is flawed because it does not take into consideration your background, your privileges, or your experiences. Fairy tales such as the Three Little Pigs contribute to the toxic messages of success, more specifically the expected success of Asian people as the Model Minority in connection to the expected laziness and unsuccessfulness of Black people. The Model Minority Myth “characterizes Asian Americans as a polite, law-abiding group who have achieved a higher level of success than the general population through some combination of innate talent and pull-yourselves-up-by-your-bootstraps immigrant striving.” This points us to the question, “How does the idealization of “hard work” narratives in Joseph Jacob’s the Three Little Pigs perpetuate the Model Minority Myth in the U.S., specifically racial stereotypes used against Asian and Black people?” The idealization of hard work narratives in the Three Little Pigs perpetuates the Model Minority Myth regarding racial stereotypes by justifying harm as the only alternative to hard work. The narrative perpetuates this toxic message in three ways: 1) the two opposite extremes of hard work or death 2) the idea of every pig for themselves rather than teamwork, and 3) how labor is idealized on a hierarchical scale, presenting the idea that your success is solely in your control and how you take advantage of the material means of production. This is important because it helps us understand the negative effects, such as tension, it has on the relationship between the Asian and Black communities.

In Joseph Jacob’s version, “The Three Little Pigs,” three young pigs are sent by their mother into the world to fend for themselves. The first little pig builds their house out of straw, the second out of sticks and the third out of bricks. The wolf comes to the straw house first and these infamous words are exchanged:

The wolf is able to blow the first two pigs’ houses down and eat them, however, he is not able to with the third little pig. After failing to blow the third pig’s house down, the wolf tried many different ways to lure the pig out. However, the third pig was clever and planned ahead and was able to outsmart the wolf every time. The wolf became fed up and decided to go through the pig’s chimney but the pig set up a boiling pot and in fell the wolf for the pig to eat for supper. In the end the prey became the predator and the predator became the prey.

The two extremes in the Three Little Pigs of hard work or death perpetuate the stereotypes in the MMM of hard-working Asian people and lazy Black people by ignoring interlocking systems of oppression, namely capitalism and racism, which support the idea of hard work leading to success as a fiction, a myth, or better put, a lie. On one end of the extreme, there is death, which is described when the wolf “blew the house down, and he ate up the little pig[s]” (Jacobs, 69). On the other side of the extreme is a good life as a result of hard work which is portrayed through the ending words in which the third little pig “lived happily ever afterwards” (Jacobs, 72). This moral perpetuates the unfair idea that if you do not work hard there will be dire consequences and it is nobody else’s fault other than yours. This idea is detrimental when applied to minorities’ realities because it completely neglects the circumstances of peoples’ lives and the forces, like capitalism, working against their success that are out of their control. 

In Jason Kirby’s article, “The Crisis in Capitalism,” an award nominated columnist and editor at Maclean’s argues that capitalism is a system working against the success of poor people, predominantly people of color. Kirby notes that, “American capitalism has not lived up to its promise to a lot of people” (Kirby, 68). Kirby goes into depth about the inequalities and failures within capitalism as he writes, “in terms of wealth, the top 10 percent of Americans hold nearly 70 per cent of all household wealth, up from 60 per cent in 1990, leaving the bottom 90 per cent with a shrinking size of the wealth pie, according to the U.S. Federal Reserve” (Kirby, 69). Kirby quotes Robert Reich, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley who served under both Clinton and Barack Obama. Robert states, “Most people in America have given up on the idea that they or their children are going to do better in the future. That was the essence of the American dream under capitalism, and it has disappeared” (Kirby, 68). Robert’s statement supports the idea that capitalism is a system built to keep the rich rich and the poor poor; it is a system built to keep minorities in their place at the bottom of the class and education system. The Three Little Pigs allows audiences to completely ignore these systems of inequality, such as capitalism, by making the idea of hard work or death as simple as black and white. This simplification excludes the oppressive outside pressures that play a role in success which perpetuates the MMM idea that Black people do not work hard enough like Asian people do. In reality, hard work does not always mean success in a society built to ensure certain people do not succeed.  

The Three Little Pigs encourages individual success, perpetuating the MMM by putting different pressures on individual Asian and Black students in schools and creating tension among the two communities. The fairytale starts off with the words, “There was an old sow with three little pigs, and as she had not enough to keep them, she sent them out to seek their fortune” (Jacobs 68). The story did not say “to seek out their fortune together,” and as the fairy tale continues it is obvious each pig went on their different paths and only one pig ended up alive in the end; this idea of the success of the individual or a certain community over others perpetuates the MMM and is also explored in the article, “Demystifying Americanness: The Model Minority Myth and The Black-Korean Relationship,” written by Se-Hyoung Yi and William T. Houston who are professors in the Political Science department at the University of Houston-Clear Lake. They claim the Model Minority Myth, which “stratifies different racial and ethnic minorities and encourages them to compete with and marginalize one another,” is a result of trying to reach “true Americanness” and sustains the strained relationship between African Americans and, specifically, Korean immigrants (Yi and Houston, 72). To help explain how these tensions started, the authors use the 1960s article, “Success Story, Japanese-American Style,” by William Petersen who was a professor of sociology at University of California Berkeley. “He attributes the success of Japanese Americans to their willingness and eagerness to internalize the dominant norms and culture in the United States, which other racial and ethnic minorities and even some Whites had yet to emulate. At the end of his article, he drew a stark contrast between Black Americans and Japanese Americans” (Yi and Houston, 73). This was written during the Civil Rights Movement where Black people were painted as violent, a stark opposite to Asian people, which contributed to the tension between the two communities. Not only does the Model Minority Myth, perpetuated by The Three Little Pigs, create tension between the two communities on a broader scope, it creates stressful experiences for Asian and Black college students. In his article, “The Model Minority and the Inferior Minority Myths: Understanding Stereotypes and Their Implications for Student Learning,” Samuel D. Museus, a professor at the University of California San Diego, goes into depth about how the Model Minority Myth puts immense pressure on Asian Americans students in school because they feel they need to reach peoples’ high expectations. On the contrary, he explains how African Americans have internalized the stereotypes surrounding the Inferior Minority Myth, which puts pressure on them to disprove this stereotype in the classroom or keeps them from participating. The detrimental effects the Minority Myths have on Asian and African American students in school is also argued in the article, “Internalized Model Minority Myth among Asian Americans: Links to Anti-Black Attitudes and Opposition to Affirmative Action,” written by Jacqueline Yi and Nathan R. Todd who work in the Department of Psychology at the University of Illinois. In this article, they prove through their experiment findings that there are lasting effects of the internalized Model Minority Myth in the Asian community and this myth perpetuates racial inequality within college. They argue that this myth directly connects to anti-Blackness and resentment or opposition towards affirmative action. As a result of encouraging individual success over making sure everyone succeeds, as perpetuated in The Three Little Pigs, minorities are isolated and pinned against each other which helps uphold the existence of the MMM.

The idea that your success is in your control in the Three Little Pigs perpetuates the MMM idea that if Asian people can be successful, so can other minorities such as Black people, and if they are not successful, it is solely their fault. More specifically, the story implies that since the last pig was able to beat the wolf, the other pigs could have too if they had put more effort and planning into their houses. These ideas are also unknowingly perpetuated in the article title “A fractured fable: The Three Little Pigs and using multiple paradigms,” written Jamie L. Callahan, a professor at Northumbria University, and Andrew C. Hurt, a professor at Purdue University. In their article they use fables and fairytales, including the Three Little Pigs, to teach the concept of paradigms to professionals. They connect each of the four primary paradigms, “functionalist, interpretivist, radical humanist, and radical structuralist,” to each of the characters in the fairy tale in order to make their ideas more accessible to their audience (Callahan and Hurt, 27). The first little pig is the interpretivist paradigm and is described as seeing “the world as not having “real” structure and not governed by one absolute truth or set of laws” (Callahan and Hurt, 31). However, this pig’s perspective can be interpreted as not having a plan and not following the specific rules of success which is the reason his house fails. The second pig represents the radical humanist paradigms, “The pigs and non‐pigs are living under the control of the pig stereotype that has been generated by an elite group, in this case, wolves” (Callahan and Hurt, 32). This can connect to the Model Minority Myth and how Asian and Black people need to conform to a stereotype of success. In contrast, the authors describe the last pig as the radical structuralist paradigm, and how “His brick home symbolizes a structure where “all pigs can flourish” and it is a structure that can stand up to the oppressive forces around it” (Callahan and Hurt, 33). Although this seems like good messages, it can also wrongly inform issues such as the Model Minority Myth; perpetuating the idea that if one pig can do it, all pigs can, so there is no excuse. They conclude the article by explaining how fairy tales can help us understand ourselves and our own lives through different perspectives. To contrast this deep analysis of the Three Little Pigs, an article written by Barbara A. Bradley, Kelli Thomas, and A. Allen Bradley Jr., who are a part of the National Science Teachers Association, titled “A Home for Three Little Pigs: Preschool students learn about engineering through designing and testing homes” simplifies the story into specific steps; Day 1: Meeting the Three Little Pigs, Day 2: Researching and Planning, Days 3-4: Creating a Prototype and Testing, Days 5-8: Creating and Testing Houses, Day 9 – 10: Hosting an Open House. Throughout the 10 days of the project, the teachers helped the kids plan their houses step-by-step which ultimately led to their success. This taught the kids the importance of planning, but it also taught them that lack of planning would lead to failure as it did for the first two pigs. “Students learned about the engineering design process as they thought about the structural failures experienced by the first two pigs and success of the third pig” (Bradley and Thomas and Bradley Jr., 46). Although this project is understandably made simple for children, it is important to note that success and failure of this project are solely based on structure and the building of the houses rather than the situation the pigs were in. This project teaches the kids that success is in their control, simplified to black and white, and that there are no outside forces working against that success. This perpetuates stereotypes such as the Model Minority Myth which in turn informs anti-Blackness. These two articles, although written with good intentions, reinforce the negative stereotypes in The Three Little Pigs to their audiences, whether the audience is young kids or adults. 

In conclusion, the Three Little Pigs perpetuates toxic racial narratives such as the Model Minority Myth and anti-Blackness in the U.S. by reinforcing the ideas of hard work or death, the individual over the community and success as solely in your control. These narratives then create tension and distance between the targeted communities when really, unity is the only answer to overcoming them. To mend this issue of these toxic narratives, it is important that fairy tales such as the Three Little Pigs are called out and exposed for their harmful messages in order to transform the narratives into positive ones. 

Sydney Kelley

How has the development of ecology changed the way animals are portrayed in fairy tales/media, and what consequences does this have in the real world? Historically, predatory animals have been portrayed in a negative light in classic storytelling. However, as the science of ecology has developed and human understanding of the natural world has increased, we have gradually seen animals being used as more benevolent symbols. This is important because it creates a more positive public perception of said animals, which in turn creates more incentive for people to support conservation. More specifically, the relationship between ecology and the representation of predators in fairy tales from villains, to forces of nature, to victims of human development has created a social awareness regarding the consequences of eliminating apex predators from our ecosystems.

Early renditions of the Little Red Riding Hood Fairy Tale consistently showcase wolves as antagonists. If they aren’t depicted as predators in the natural sense, they are used as stand-ins for their more insidious human counterparts, such as in Charles Perrault’s version of the fairy tale. Stories such as this are telling of the common attitude towards hostile wildlife in this time period-because they were dangerous to people, they were considered a scourge before anything else. However, more modern tellings of Little Red Riding Hood showcase a more sympathetic wolf, even if only comedically. Toby Forward and Izhar Cohen’s “What Really Happened to Little Red Riding Hood: The Wolf’s Story” takes the wolf’s side in the classic fairy tale. While this version of the story can be read as entirely comedic, it is also telling of more modern perceptions of predatory animals that a story like this was even written.

 Early ecology and its relationship to fiction is especially prevalent in a time period such as the Victorian era. “Fairy Tales, Natural History and Victorian Culture.” discusses an era in which conservation was almost nonexistent. More importantly, it discusses the kind of literature which is produced in a world where animals are judged purely on their immediate use to mankind. This is even more important to notice in the case of wolves, because their attacks were so heavily documented at this time. The animals were viewed as nothing more than a danger, and as a result, hunting them was encouraged with no thought of their impacts on the ecosystem as a whole. This is an issue, especially in the case of wolves, because they are what is known as a keystone species. This means that the presence of wolves can create sweeping changes to a landscape, supporting entire ecosystems by filling their roles as predators. Despite this historical pattern, a more positive trend has emerged in modern and contemporary writings.

 Literature has always been able to function as a litmus test for the world’s general stance on certain subjects. It should go without saying that this principle applies to animals. For example, “Literary Fiction Influences Attitudes Toward Animal Welfare” posits exactly what the title suggests. Simply put, human beings are proven to use media in order to communicate complex ideas-it has even been argued “that it has been an important factor behind the global decline of violence against various minorities in the last centuries”(Wojciech, et al.). This growing body of research may hold a key to the future of conservation. While many animal welfare activists resort to scarring imagery in order to make a point about their cause, Folklore may offer a cleaner and more sustainable way of campaigning.

In Harold A’s “Animals, Archetypes, and Popular Culture: Tales from the Tabloid Press.”, the thesis of the discussion is that modern stories. And media that is a part of the current popular canon in general, have seen a positive trend in the depictions of animals. This conclusion was drawn from a study in which four tabloids were selected, and then 100 issues from each of them was sampled. Mentions of animals were noted and sorted into different categories. At the end of this study, it was found across the board that the most common role for the animals in the tabloids was “Loved One”. This study compiles concrete support or the idea that animals have become overwhelmingly positive symbols in the eyes of the average person. This is a major contrast to older animal representations in literature, where one would be lucky to see any animal that wasn’t domesticated being portrayed as benevolent.

This third article, “Dragons in Twentieth-Century Fiction”, speaks less about real-world animals, and more about one of their mythical counterparts-dragons. The main point of this article is to examine how dragons are used as stand-ins or metaphors for social and political issues. However, this still relates to the discussion of how animals are portrayed throughout history because dragons do still represent the natural world, albeit a mythologized version of it. Traditionally, dragons have been thought of as an amalgamation of several animals that our primate ancestors would have instinctively feared, namely the “snake, eagle, and panther…” (Unerman 94). In early depictions of dragons, this imagery was meant to function entirely differently than in more modern takes on the mythological beasts.

Each of these sources and their conclusions support the idea that fairy tales have the potential to have major impacts on the ways people view our ecosystems. For as long as humans have been passing down stories, orally or otherwise, we have  taken inspiration from our environments. It is true that, historically, animal characters have been used as negative symbols. However, this can be attributed to the human fear of the unknown. As societies have shifted from fear-based relationships with the natural world to promoting more curiosity about our surroundings, a shift in our popular culture has occurred as well. Folklore and pop culture have the power to impact people’s emotions, and to spread awareness of certain issues; this power can easily be extended into making people understand the importance of protecting predatory animals.

Works Cited

Herzog, Harold A., and Shelley L. Galvin. “Animals, Archetypes, and Popular Culture: Tales from the Tabloid Press.” Anthrozoös, vol. 5, no. 2, 1992, pp. 77–92., doi:10.2752/089279392787011494.

Małecki, Wojciech, et al. “Literary Fiction Influences Attitudes Toward Animal Welfare.” PLOS ONE, vol. 11, no. 12, 2016, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0168695. 

Unerman, Sandra. William H. Hannon Library Proxy Server Authentication, Folklore Enterprises, Ltd., Apr. 2002, www-jstor-org.electra.lmu.edu/stable/1261010?seq=1. 

Talairach-Vielmas, Laurence. “Fairy Tales, Natural History and Victorian Culture.” Google Books, Google, books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=5R-vAwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=nature%2Band%2Bfairy%2Btales&ots=r-la0oD3ue&sig=k5E1NQHwJO_ymlHDD2mHPUWjvts#v=onepage&q=nature%20and%20fairy%20tales&f=false.