Carson Ellis is an amazing illustrator I have always admired, the way she uses watercolours, her colours and her naive characters are what I like the most about her work. Watercolour is a difficult medium to work with and control, her intricate detail and use of spacing shows just how great her abilities are in this medium. Carson Ellis has illustrated multiple books also an occasional maker of editorial illustration, having worked for The New York Times, Poetry Magazine, and The New Yorker, among others, and an even more occasional fine artist represented by Nationale in Portland.
The animation belong is a previous stop motion animation I have done on Little Red Riding Hood using handmade textile puppets and painted set designs. It highlights the problems of victim blaming and tells the story of what Little Red went through from her perspective.
The animation below is a role reversal of Little Red Riding Hood with Little Red as an empowered woman taking control of her own destiny and stalking the wolf in order to kill him before he harms anyone else. The animation was created using paper cut-out models and a screen printed, layered forest background.
A large, ugly, wet toad: In fairy tales, the toad is usually a malevolent creature, or a symbol of another character’s evil. These ideas exist outside the fairy tale genre as well.
In the fairy tale world, the concepts of beauty and ugliness generally reflect the good or evil natures of people. Thumbelina is beautiful, kind, and good, while the ugly toad has no qualms about kidnapping her.
The idea of Thumbelina as a siren and enchantress of males is here reinforced – she attracts the butterfly and then ensnares him for her own purposes, to facilitate her escape. The butterfly is drawn to her by her beauty, and in the end, as she realises, he may well die as a result of his attraction.
Thumbelina questions her own beauty. Given that a fairy tale woman is represented primarily or uniquely through her beauty, she is in effect questioning her very existence. She needs others to accept her beauty and so to be part of a society – otherwise she is desolate.
Thumbelina’s quest is ultimately to find a family, a society, and she is willing, at least initially, to consider all beings that she encounters.
Beauty and ugliness in fairy tales are often synonymous with the ideas of good and evil. Good characters, in particular the heroines and heroes, are beautiful. Beauty may also signify innate nobility, deserving of an elevated social position in the fairytale world. Thus unparalleled beauty sets the hero and heroine apart from the common man and woman. If a central character is ugly, it is usually either a temporary state of affairs, or a symbol of their evil nature.
The prince is clearly Thumbelina’s match because she finds him beautiful. The two mirror one another, in height and beauty, and are so destined to be together. As she looks into him, she looks into a mirror (arguably literally, for he is after all “transparent as if he had been made of crystal”) and sees a reflection of her own beauty. It is a very different moment from that in which she expresses despair at her own ugliness, having been rejected by the cockchafer. Her other potential husbands have been ugly in her eyes, and she could never have loved them.
The Little Mermaid is a princess in her own domain – feels very comfortable, has a family to back her up, she is equipped for that way of life (tail). She longs for a prince and the life of humans, their immortal souls. (Which both can be interpreted as wanting more, having idealistic picture of life someplace else, not necessarily another country, but another surroundings, occupation, set of circumstances: the restlessness that occupy most of us at certain age or stage in life. It is a trait of a curious mind, the one that needs to expand. That explains why would she leave a world she was so perfectly happy in).
To enter that other world, we have to pay the price, and we have to endure changes. Losing the tail signifies losing that ability to be functional in your surroundings – suddenly, all the things you knew are irrelevant (and it’s very much so in a life of an immigrant – you do feel out of your element, unable to maneuver through these new circumstances) . Every step is a pain you must endure if you wish to go anywhere. It is very much so with entering any other area in life that is new – adolescence, retirement, disability, new job, etc – any other expansion of your comfort zone into the unknown.
The prince is that element we feel we need to feel stronger. It can be a relationship, but it can also be occupation, money, status, children, special interest – any dream OUTSIDE of yourself. We need it to feel better about ourselves as we don’t believe we can make it without it.
The voice is a significant factor. When changing our circumstances, we don’t have the ability to communicate with those we meet in new surroundings. Not necessarily is this just a language barrier (immigrant issue, again), it is the difference in the mind frame and lack of ability to relate to new surroundings. Our frame of reference is different than the one of those we encounter in new circumstances. An adolescent has difficulties expressing herself in the world of adults she wants to be in. Newly disabled person needs a period of adjustment to be able to relate to the world in a productive way. Losing the voice emphasized the isolation in the new world – no one understands how we feel and we don’t know how to tell them.
So, atop everything else, the prince loves someone else (and that he thinks she saved him instead of LM just emphasizes her isolation and helplessness)! LM is losing that one dream that brought her into this new world, the one reason she endured all the suffering. Aside from the fact that happens more often than not, what is more significant is the way we deal with it. There is no going back – we have changed and living as we used to is not an option. We have to let go of the dream if we are to grow. So, finally, “death” (travel to a higher, happier state) means shedding the doubts, fears and desires of earlier stage and re-birth of a new person, one who does not need a dream somewhere outside herself. If we can see death as a transformation, not an end, we’d have the moral of the story.
Yukai Du is an illustrator and animator from China who is based in Brighton. He has worked with clients like Adobe / Wired UK / TED-Ed / Computer Arts / LINE / BBC / MIT Technology Review / The Washington Post / The New York Times / The Telegraph. I love this intricate and detailed style and his limited colour palettes. His style of drawing people is quite similar to my own and I find the way he has made them come to life via his animations very inspiring. I love the dots/patterns/dashes and scribbles he uses to create interesting composition and beautiful details in each of his pieces. Being able to look at his sketchbook is a real treat as well as I am able to see his start to finish process and how his ideas progressed.
The metaphor of “the wolf” is a great way to express all the possible dangers that might turn up unexpectedly in your life. The wolf’s arrival is a metaphor for any kind of crisis when you find yourself in trouble and need other people to come help you.
The Lesson
The story teaches this moral as a kind of practical lesson, showing you the actual value of telling the truth: you should always tell the truth, because if you lie, then people will not believe you, even when you are telling the truth. This fable presents a kind of argument or demonstration that is intended to convince you of the value of telling the truth.
The Sheep
The character who has paid the highest price in the story. A bit of fun for the boy that turned out to be a matter of life or death for the sheep.
Its representation of life is clear. The scarcity of bread is direct threat of death. Bread crumbles in Hansel and Gretel show how fragile and insecure is our position.
Oven t is a representation of a womb. It offers a possibility of birth (or in this case rebirth), but also death if an already born person gets back in (refuses to grow up).
The oven is a representation of a womb. It offers a possibility of birth (or in this case rebirth), but also death if an already born person gets back in (refuses to grow up).
It is a representation of a womb. It offers a possibility of birth (or in this case rebirth), but also death if an already born person gets back in (refuses to grow up).
Candy
The candy represents temptation which the children could not resist.
Rite of Passage/Coming of Age
When Hansel and Gretel’s parents decide to abandon them because they can no longer feed them, it is very symbolic that the children are abandoned in the forest. They are thrust deep into the woods and left alone. Essentially, this signifies a sort of rite of passage to adulthood, where they are forced to face the shadowy aspects of themselves and human nature, which can be dark and terrifying.
Hunger
Another symbol that figures prominently in the tale is hunger. Hunger is the most basic of instincts and drives the actions of all living things, even more so than sexual desire. Hansel and Gretel’s parents forsake their children because of hunger. It is a primordial need that can overpower all sense of reason and humanity. Greed/Instinct.
Cannibalism
They are then captured and are faced with the terrible realisation that humans, like animals, are meat and can be eaten. Cannibalism is the ultimate symbol of the dark, primordial state. It represents the animal instinct taking complete control of one’s psyche, where hunger overpowers all human reason.
When the girl reaches the age when she turns into a woman, her hair is one of her most powerful tools for attracting the opposite gender. With covering (or cutting) her hair, she sends a message she is not available yet (or anymore).
When she gets a hood from her grandmother, we can say the life forces are passing from older (going) to younger (coming) generation. The red color is, of course, the color of life and blood. It can be easily associated with menstrual blood.
The red color of the hood is an invention of Charles Perrault and we should know in the 17th century decent woman would never wear a red hood because red was the color of sin. Only ladies with really bad reputation wore red dresses and Perrault’s insinuations were obvious.
The Forest
In many fairy tales the main character (the protagonist) must go in the forest. It seems trees are an endless source of inspiration in folklore. There are many speculations why the forest is so important but we can also stick to the obvious: most of the people in medieval or pre-medieval times lived near forests.
People’s existence was closely related to wood from practically forever, but forests also represent unknown, although very serious, danger.
In psychoanalysis a forest symbolizes unconsciousness. Leonard Lutwack goes even further and he labels it as untamed feminine sexuality. Why? The forest is a very fertile place, but it is also wild, uncultivated, and unpredictable.
It is not a coincidence so many popular heroes and heroines (Red Cap, Snow White, Hansel and Gretel, Goldilocks) must get lost in the woods just to come back as more responsible (and we can say domesticated) persons.
Important character transformations within folklore always take place in the forest.
A Feminist’s View on the Story
20th century brought another interpretation of this probably most interpreted fairy tale of all. Feminists see a clear case of rape in The Little Red Riding Hood. It is a story about rape.
The aggressive and active male is preying on passive heroine and her granny. He is in the end defeated by another aggressive and active male. Case closed.
Well, not so fast. Feminists have some good points but we should not forget we are really talking only about two versions of Red Riding Hood here. Both were written at specific times by specific members of society with their own beliefs about roles of genders and passive heroine and powerless old lady fit well in their view of the world in the 17th or 19th centuries.
