Little Red Riding Hood
Essays

Intertextual approaches to the Little Red Riding Hood story are examined in the 2005 film "Hard Candy", as well as original versions of the narrative by Perrault and the Brothers Grimm. The argument is that intertextuality requires not merely an allusion to an earlier story, but a credible way of viewing that earlier story---it requires a text and an accepted reading. In "Hard Candy" the accepted reading of Little Red Riding Hood is Freudian--it sees the story as being about a girl's experience of sexual maturation during puberty, at which point she might experience "predators" not literal (like wolves) but figurative (like older men).

Once there was a boy who lived with his mother in a town called Alamo. The boy, named Red, was a kind son to his mother. Every time his mother tells him to do something, like watering the plants in the garden, or…