The brief for this project asked me to re-interpret a classic fairy tale and place it in a contemporary environment, without magic or fantasy; but still demonstrate the key narrative and moral conclusions of the original story.
The fairy tale I was given was Little Red Ridding Hood.
I began by taking apart the key components of the story so I could outline the basic plot-line, this would help me when planning my own narrative.
Perrault's intended moral was : Children, especially attractive, well bred young ladies, should never talk to strangers, for if they should do so, they may well provide dinner for a wolf. I say "wolf," but there are various kinds of wolves. There are also those who are charming, quiet, polite, unassuming, complacent, and sweet, who pursue young women at home and in the streets. And unfortunately, it is these gentle wolves who are the most dangerous ones of all.
Which in short teaches children to never talk to strangers, it also seems to warn young girls about sexual predators; The wolf being the predator, as towards the end of the story the wolf invites Red Ridding hood into bed with him, she then takes off her clothes and does so, which I found a bit weird for a children's fairytale. However this does imply there is an underlying darker message behind the story.
Next I looked into how I could implement this moral into my own narrative and I came up with some scenarios (shown below)
My favourite idea was the story of someone being catfished.
A girl (Red Ridding Hood) meets a guy (The Wolf) online and they begin to talk, everything seems fine until he begins to ask weird questions and pesters her about where she lives/if she will come to his house. Eventually she stops talking to him, but her friend (the grandmother) see's a picture of the guy and asks the girl if it's okay to talk to him instead. Despite her suspicions she allows this and doesn't even warn her friend. The friend and the guy get talking and the guy begins to ask similar questions, however the friend agrees to meet him. When she arrives at the house she knocks on the door, only to discover it's not the guy she thought she was talking to. He grabs her and slams the door shut, and she's never seen again.
I feel that my version of the story gives across the same intended moral as the original story, as the girl began talking to someone she met online and did not know their true identity, and ended up in a bad situation due to this. I also added my own twist whereby the first girl who talked to the guy had her own suspicions, but still allowed her friend to go ahead and meet him. This is similar to how Little Red Ridding Hood told the wolf exactly where her sick Grandmother lived without a second thought, if she hadn't of done that they could've both survived.
