Re-telling the classic short stories of
the Grimm brothers or Charles Perrault with a different tone or view
has been a kind of “subversive tradition” in the children’s and
young adult literature, since the end of the 20th century,
and it has even affected movies like Shrek. From different
points of view, either dark or hopeful, an enlarged sense of humour,
and all kind of literary resources such as metafiction, these stories
have energized the antique genre of the fairy tales, and have made us
look at the past with different eyes.
A good example is the picturebook, The
girl in red, written by the American author Aaron Frisch and
illustrated by the Italian Roberto Innocenti, both of whom, with a
great literary quality and in an innovative way take up one of the
most well-known tales, Little Red Riding Hood, once more. Although
it's originally created for 8-year-old children, its complex
pictures, full of social critique, jokes and soulless and filthy
places, offer a great realism through the details of the environment
and the characters and its ludic text, which guide us step by step,
can enchant readers of all ages.
In a rainy night, a small granny, like
a self-illuminated toy, tells a story to a group of children in what
seems like a neglected day-care centre:
One day, Sofia, a girl who lives in a
poor and unsafe neighbourhood in a big city, is sent by her mother to
take cookies, honey and oranges to her sick grandmother, who also
needs company. Unfortunately, on the way she runs into some jackals
(a motorcylec gang) who surround her and harass her.
When everything seems lost, someone
known as “the hunter”, a young and strong man saves her and
offers her to take her to her grandma's house. On the way, however,
he receives a call which means he must drop her off on the way. While
Sofia makes her own way to her grandmother’s house, the “hero”,
who is actually the wolf, overtakes her and waits to finish her off.
However, given the listener’s horror and tears at this sad ending,
the little storytelling granny, knowing that the stories are magical,
offers her audience an alternative, happy ending.
This reminds us the term
“eucatastrophe”, coined by J. R. R. Tolkien in his essay “On
Fairy-Stories”:
But
the “consolation” of fairy-tales has another aspect than the
imaginative satisfaction of ancient desires. Far more important is
the Consolation of the Happy Ending. Almost I would venture to assert
that all complete fairy-stories must have it. At least I would say
that Tragedy is the true form of Drama, its highest function; but the
opposite is true of Fairystory. Since we do not appear to possess a
word that expresses this opposite—I will call it Eucatastrophe. The
eucatastrophic tale is the true form of fairy-tale, and its highest
function.
The
consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending: or more
correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous “turn” (for
there is no true end to any fairy-tale): this joy, which is one of
the things which fairy-stories can produce supremely well, is not
essentially “escapist,” nor “fugitive.” In its fairy-tale—or
otherworld—setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to
be counted on to recur.
The happy ending offered as other
possibility in The girl in red is important, because it allows
this consolation mentioned by Tolkien. It should be pointed out that
this eucatastrophe is not like the deus ex machina given that
the eucatastrophe appears from the elements in the story, there isn't
any magic or sudden appearance.
As we read Frisch and Innocenti's book
with the students in our study, we found many surprises. It was
alarming to discover that the stories, specially the fairy-tales, are
seldom told. In the fast world we live in there's no time to tell or
to share stories. It's easier to watch a movie. Memory is also
affected, as shown in the illustrations by Innocenti, in what Frisch
calls “The Wood”: a huge shopping mall covered with images that
incite us to buy, to live and to think in a specific way.
Our research highlighted that among the
fairy tales and other stories that were mentioned in the survey as
having being told to the students as younger children, the two most
cited were Little Red Riding Hood (57 times) and The Three Little
Pigs (67 times). However, it turned out to be quite difficult for the
students to reconstruct the story of Little Red Riding Hood, because
they only remembered a few bits of the story and weren't able to
distinguish between the different versions. There were details that
were clear, like the fact that the mother sends the little girl to
her sick grandmother's house, and that the wolf intercepts the girl
in the forest. Other details, such as what the girl was taking to her
granny, whether the wolf eats her, or if there was a hunter or a
woodcutter caused them more trouble.
It's also important to mention that,
instead of the versions by the Grimm brothers or by Perrault, the
actual cinematographic versions of they story were more frequently
referred to, such as Hoodwinked! (2005) and Red Riding Hood
(2011).
In the session on this picturebook, we
first analyzed the cover, then the back cover, and finally the first
pages. For the urban teenagers it was easy to identify Innocenti's
urban landscapes, because they belong to their reality, to what they
know, to what they see when they walk in the streets or watch
the TV. Despite the aggressive images, they assimilated the visual
text, perhaps because for them the walls covered in graffiti, the
bars and the barbed wire seem nearer than Red Riding Hood's original
wood. The different social classes, the filth and the violence are
part of their own reality. They raised many questions from the
observation of the images, but also unique and personal ideas,
explanations for the world created by Frisch and Innocenti, which are
at the same time explanations of their own world, of their fears and
of what they see.
Tolkien, J.R.R. “On Fairy Stories”.
Rivendellcommunity.org. Web. PDF File.
Elisa Lamothe
Georgina Lamothe
Joselyn Silva
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