Hello and welcome to Fairy Tale Friday. Are you
sitting comfortably? Good. Then I'll begin.
Last week we looked at a cartoon by Tex Avery with a
sexy Red Riding Hood and an oversexed Wolf and Grandma. This week we look at a
similar tale modelled after The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse.
Our tale begins with a stereotypical hillbilly version
of Little Red Riding Hood (complete with jug of moonshine) going to visit her
sick grandmother who lives on a country farm. We then see the wolf at the
farmhouse who confesses to the audience that he doesn’t want to eat Red, just
“chase her and catch her and kiss her and hug her.” Again, harking back to
earlier versions of the tale where the wolf wants to “consume” her sexually,
not physically.
Red Riding Hood is a comical, gawky bucked-toothed figure with
enormous feet and prehensile toes (she uses her bare feet to open and close the
doors.) The wolf chases her around the farm trying to steal a kiss and all the
time she cleverly avoids him—opening the door with her foot so he runs outside
and kisses a cow and then slamming the door (again with her foot) so he crashes
into it and flattens himself. At first you think she is rebuffing his advances,
but right at the end she finally lets herself be “caught” and puckers up for a
kiss. I really hate the idea of “playing hard to get” as I feel it sends the
message that no really means yes.
Anyway, she is just about to receive her big kiss when
the wolf receives a telegram. He drops her flat on the floor and reads the
telegram from his sophisticated city wolf cousin who offers him a chance to
come to the big city and includes a photo of Red Hot Riding Hood (from the film
we looked at last week). The wolf behaves much as the wolf in Red Hot Riding
Hood did—panting and howling as his tongue spools out if his mouth like ribbon—then drives straight to the big city.
His city cousin is much more suave and sophisticated and
admonishes him for behaving in such an animalistic manner. He reprimands him
and says, “But remember, here in the city we do not shout and whistle at the ladies.”
That evening they go to the club and watch Red Hot Riding Hood sing and perform
an erotic dance. Side note: The
performance is actually cribbed from an earlier Tex Avery film called Swing
Shift Cinderella where she had to be away by midnight because she was a Rosie
the Riveter sort of gal and she was working the night shift.
Anyway, the song she sings is called “Oh, Wolfie” and is
basically about how “all the chicks are crazy for a certain burly wolf” which just
reinforces the idea that “girls love a bad guy.” Her dance is quite erotic (for
a cartoon) and the country wolf is so overexcited that his eyes literally pop
out of his head. His more sophisticated cousin tries to hold him back from such
gross displays of affection. At the end when the country wolf rushes to the
stage to grab her, he is hit over the head by his city cousin with a mallet
that was conveniently just lying around and told that he is behaving inappropriately
and that “this city life is just too much for you.”
When they arrive at the farmhouse, they find the
country Red waiting for them. The city wolf, who up until this time has had impeccable
manners, becomes wildly attracted to her. He begins to imitate the behaviour his
country cousin showed in the city with his eyes literally popping out of his
head while a horn goes AR—OO—GA! Just as he begins
to chase after her, he is stopped by his country cousin with another conveniently
placed mallet. The country wolf promptly decides to take his city cousin back
home, exclaiming, “Sorry cousin, This country life’s too much for ya.” He then
drives back to the big city where he can sexually harass the city Red again.
The conveniently placed mallet that wasn't there a minute ago is a trope used over
and over in cartoons that really bugged me all my life, which is no doubt why I
mention it twice here. It is just lazy animating to pull a mallet out of thin
air when you need one character to clobber another character. /rant over/
There is a genuinely funny bit where after being hit
by the pulled from thin air mallet each wolf gets wheeled around like a
wheelbarrow with his head rotating like a squeaky wheel. This made me laugh.
The rest, not so much.
Like all of these early cartoons they are filled with
sex crazed characters who just harass their love interest like a sex pest. But
they also contain messages about women playing “hard to get” and “no really
means yes” which don’t sit well with me these days.
Watch it for yourself here.
Next week we look at a “how it should have ended”
version of our tale.
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