Cultural Product: Red Riding Hood (Political Economic Analysis)

Red Riding Hood 2011

I have chosen the movie “Red Riding Hood” as my cultural product subjected for analysis. First of all, what is the movie all about?

As we all know, there is a similar fairy tale brought about by the Grimm’s tales. This 2011 movie is the modern adaptation of the fairy tale but it has a different twist in the story. This movie is about Valerie, a pretty young lady who is torn between two men. She loves Peter, a simple woodcutter but her parents have arranged her to marry Henry, a wealthy ironman. Wanting to stay together, Valerie and Peter have decided to run away until they learn that Valerie’s sister Lucie has been killed by a werewolf. Over the years, the Daggerhorn village has maintained a truce with the werewolf beast by sacrificing animals. However, under the blood moon, the werewolf has decided to take away human life. To catch this horrible beast, the people have summoned Father Solomon, a werewolf hunter/priest. Father Solomon told them that the werewolf is just in the village and could be one of them that results to unintended consequences. Moreover, Valerie discovers that she can talk with the werewolf and it wants her to run away with it. This unique connection between she and the werewolf makes Valerie think that the werewolf is someone she loves. Finally, one day, when she visits her grandmother who gives her the red cloak, she finds out that her father is the werewolf and she is entitled to be the next beast as she is the heir of the bloodline but because of Peter rescuing her, Peter got the curse as they have killed her father.

The approach that I use to analyze this movie is a combination of feminist-post modern theory. For the feminist approach, the film is directed by a woman, Catherine Hardwicke who is also famous as the director of the viral yet mushy Twilight movie. Moreover, red riding hood is also a lady, Valerie portrayed by Amanda Seyfried. The movie incorporates a woman as someone so strong and can stand with her own words like a man. She is also willing to fight on what is right, seeming like a hero but someone who can also drive a man to rescue. The combination is very great. I think these inputs have challenged the existing image of a woman because today, we are all aware that a woman is more or less accepted as an equal to a man. Working moms, firewomen, policewomen are just some of the roles of woman today. Thus, the movie seems to offer that although the setting is the time when woodcutters, witch and black arts exist, it has presented that woman can fight on her own and is willing to take risks like superheroes who are actually men.

For the post-modern approach, the story is not the usual happy ending because Peter, the one whom Valerie loves, ends up being a werewolf. People at first may think that this will be just a story in which they kill the werewolf and they just live happily ever after. But here, we find the father of the protagonist as the werewolf making her lover suffer the curse, prolonging their happiness. One may not notice or realize that Valerie, being the pretty, kind and strong girl would be the daughter of the werewolf but in fact she is. This challenges what the society usually thinks of as something good which may be really something bad or may tend to have bad side in them. Like what the movie presents, “everyone has their own secrets.” 

*image from Google