By Victoria Moser
As we have seen throughout the semester, stories change depending on who is telling them. The same basic story, when told by different authors, can leave audiences with different impressions about the characters, takeaway themes, and reactions to the tale – all while maintaining nearly the same plot points.
A classic example of this is the many versions of the tale “Little Red Riding Hood.” Most who are familiar with the classic tale would identify the Wolf as the obvious villain, and Little Red Riding Hood as the hero. As we have seen from the many adaptations and variations of the story, however, every version of the tale is not this clear in the distinction between the hero and the villain. The line between hero and villain has become blurred in some adaptations of the tale, and in others, the roles completely reversed from their original designation. Most of these extreme differences can be traced back to the author’s intentions – what they wanted you to take away from their version, and their motive for telling the story. Charles Perrault, for example, who wanted to assign his own moral to the story about exercising caution with strangers, portrays Little Red Riding Hood as naïve and childish, and in essence, blames her misfortunes on her own poor decisions – supporting his motive of teaching children, especially young girls, to be cautious of those they meet.
Through examination of the circumstances in which these tales were written and an analysis of the variations within each, we have learned to become responsible readers of fairy tales – to use everything we know from outside the tale to inform our reading of everything inside the tale. Considering that stories exist all around us, this skill does not just apply to our reading of fairy tales. We are constantly interacting with different types of stories throughout our day – in the news, in ads on television, in conversations with friends. But just as we learned how to be responsible readers of fairy tales, we must also be responsible “readers” of these other types of stories in our lives – the news story that’s biased, the ad that’s selling us something, the friend’s story that has another side we’re not hearing – because all stories have authors, and all authors have motives.
Leading up to the 2020 election season, I, like everyone, was inundated with constant political ads, showing up seemingly everywhere I turned. I soon began to realize that just as with fairy tales, these ads represent variations of the same story being told by different authors and for different motives, where details are highlighted, inserted, or removed in order to change the audience’s perceptions in support of a specific goal. Each ad turns one candidate into the hero, while declaring the other the villain, and just as with the tale of “Little Red Riding Hood,” when these variations begin to contradict each other, it can seemingly blur the lines between hero and villain.
To demonstrate how our reading of fairy tales can translate to our reading of the world around us, I have created two political campaign advertisements for a fictional race for the position of Mayor of the Forest between Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf. For these ads, I have pulled from the facts and events of the same tale, but from two different perspectives and in support of two different motives. I created these ads to showcase the power of spinning a story in support of different goals, with the hope that seeing this power in action will protect us from falling victim to it in our own worlds. Then, we can all be responsible “readers” of the stories that exist all around us.
