The Ever-Changing Little Red Riding Hood, the Eternal Little Red Riding Hood (A Reflection on the Translation of Innocenti’s Little Red Riding Hood)

You may like or dis­like Inno­cen­ti’s “Urban Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood”, but you have to admit that it is a mas­ter­piece that the pic­ture book mas­ter has poured his heart and soul into.

This is the sec­ond “Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood” book I have trans­lat­ed.

The pre­vi­ous one was “Alas, Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood!” by Col­in Mac­Naughton of the Unit­ed King­dom.Oops!It’s a cheer­ful, if some­what non­sen­si­cal, sto­ry: Lit­tle Pigle­tuner, a guest actor in a clas­sic fairy­tale, dons a coat with a red hat, car­ries a bas­ket of food, and jour­neys through the woods to vis­it his grand­moth­er. The Big Bad Wolf, who’s on his trail, finds this clichéd sto­ry incred­i­bly famil­iar, but can’t quite place it! When he over­hears the con­ver­sa­tion between Lit­tle Pigle­tuner and his grand­moth­er, he final­ly real­izes it’s his own line. But it’s too late to do any­thing evil: Dad­dy Pig, the guest wood­cut­ter, arrives with an axe…

From the French writer Bel­laud1697The first French edi­tion of Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood (includ­ed in Moth­er Goose Tales) was pub­lished in 1916.1812The Ger­man ver­sion of “Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood” adapt­ed from “Grim­m’s Fairy Tales” pub­lished in 1916 con­tin­ued to devel­op and be wide­ly cir­cu­lat­ed. For more than three hun­dred years, this sto­ry has become one of the most famous fairy tales in the world. As far as I know, in terms of the rich­ness of retellings and adap­ta­tions, “Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood” should be at the top of the list.

In her book, “Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood: The Evo­lu­tion of a Fairy Tale Over Three Hun­dred Years,” Amer­i­can schol­ar Kather­ine Oren­sine traces the evo­lu­tion of this clas­sic tale, attempt­ing to uncov­er the deep­er mean­ings behind the sto­ry’s evo­lu­tion through the per­spec­tives of writ­ers, artists, psy­chol­o­gists, folk­lorists, fem­i­nists, adver­tis­ers, film­mak­ers, and oth­er social fig­ures. Through her metic­u­lous col­lec­tion, com­pi­la­tion, and pre­sen­ta­tion, the image and sto­ry of Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood unex­pect­ed­ly become unfa­mil­iar, imbued with a sense of nov­el­ty and excite­ment, even a touch of dis­com­fort (per­haps even a hint of dis­gust). Yet, upon clos­ing the book and reflect­ing on it, a new kind of famil­iar­i­ty returns, as if the love­ly girl in the red hood­ed jack­et has stepped out of a time warp, appear­ing so vivid­ly with­in us.

Robert Inno­cen­ti pub­lished2012The 2016 edi­tion of Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood in the City adds a new and unique­ly styled mem­ber to the “ever-chang­ing Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood fam­i­ly,” sur­pris­ing read­ers famil­iar with this clas­sic fairy tale and some­what sur­pris­ing those famil­iar with Inno­cen­ti’s works. I imag­ine some will exclaim: Is this real­ly a sto­ry for chil­dren?

How­ev­er, what is cer­tain is that this ver­sion of Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood belongs to Inno­cen­ti. Although the text was writ­ten by Amer­i­can writer Alan Frisch, it is clear­ly stat­ed on the cov­er of the book that the work of sto­ry writ­ing and draw­ing was com­plet­ed by Inno­cen­ti, and many sto­ries in this pic­ture book are told entire­ly in pic­tures.

On the sur­face, “Urban Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood” shares struc­tur­al sim­i­lar­i­ties with the Broth­ers Grim­m’s “Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood,” as well as with humor­ous par­o­dies like “Alas, Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood!” They all appear to be metic­u­lous­ly pay­ing homage to a shared tra­di­tion. The gist of it is as fol­lows:

1The pro­tag­o­nist’s red hood­ed coat has remained unchanged for three hun­dred years and is usu­al­ly from the grand­moth­er’s hand;

2Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood’s mis­sion is to car­ry food across the for­est to vis­it her grand­moth­er on the oth­er side, who lives alone in a small cot­tage.

3, Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood was warned not to stray from the right path, and she must have vio­lat­ed this pro­hi­bi­tion inten­tion­al­ly or unin­ten­tion­al­ly;

4, the Big Bad Wolf stalks, spies on, and even con­vers­es with Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood;

5, Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood told the Big Bad Wolf her mis­sion and her grand­moth­er’s address;

6, the big bad wolf got to grand­ma’s house first;

7, Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood had fall­en into the trap of the Big Bad Wolf when she arrived at her grand­moth­er’s house;

8, Grand­ma and Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood were killed one after anoth­er;

9With the unex­pect­ed help of the wood­cut­ter, Grand­ma and Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood were res­cued, and the Big Bad Wolf got the pun­ish­ment he deserved.

In fact, if you have mas­tered the above points, you can make up a new ver­sion of the Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood sto­ry by your­self. How­ev­er, please note that in the orig­i­nal and mod­ern ver­sions, the first9The first point is uncer­tain. At first, Bel­leau’s Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood end­ed when Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood was killed.1996The Amer­i­can film High­wayFree­way), the hero­ine did not wait for oth­ers, but chose to save her­self.

 
  In Urban Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood, Inno­cen­ti basi­cal­ly fol­lowed the above points, but made some spe­cial treat­ments:

The for­est is still called a for­est, but it has become a cold city of steel and con­crete;

The cen­ter of the for­est is still “Lin” (the
Wood), but it is a huge and bizarre shop­ping mall “Linzuo”, which may remind peo­ple of the shop­ping par­adise in Flo­rence.the Mall;

Sophie’s grand­moth­er lives in a shack made from a used bus car­riage near a scrap yard on the edge of the city for­est;

Sophie lost her way while vis­it­ing the for­est and end­ed up on a path she should­n’t have tak­en, putting her in a dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion.

A hunter in black res­cued her, and Sophie told every­thing to this “good man”, who was actu­al­ly the sin­is­ter Big Bad Wolf in the sto­ry;

The Big Bad Wolf arrived at Grand­ma’s house first, and soon Sophie arrived too. The result is obvi­ous;

Just like in most real­is­tic crime movies, when the police, armed to the teeth, arrive, they are always one step too late…

In order to com­fort read­ers with nos­tal­gic com­plex­es, Inno­cen­ti spe­cial­ly arranged an alter­na­tive end­ing, which hap­pened to adopt the afore­men­tioned9The key point is: “A wood­cut­ter sees a wolf prowl­ing out­side his cab­in. He makes a phone call. The police arrive quick­ly, swoop­ing down in the fad­ing light. The wolf is cap­tured; the fam­i­ly is saved…” How­ev­er, this mas­ter of hyper­re­al­ism, known for his metic­u­lous atten­tion to detail, fails to tell us where the wood­cut­ter came from in such a con­crete city. Com­par­ing the final, hap­py end­ing with the ear­li­er scenes where the police’s search is in vain, the atten­tive read­er will notice that the large signs on the build­ings in the back­ground have all van­ished, as if a care­less direc­tor hasti­ly over­looked an obvi­ous detail.

It’s just that a painter like Inno­cen­ti would nev­er make a mis­take in such details. He delib­er­ate­ly left this “omis­sion”, per­haps just to tell us: such an end­ing, believe it or not, he him­self is deter­mined not to believe it.

If you read the sto­ry in the paint­ing care­ful­ly, you will find that this is a painter who pays great atten­tion to details. He has hid­den many hints in the paint­ing, and what he wants to tell here is a tru­ly dan­ger­ous sto­ry. Here are a few exam­ples:

Detail 1: When Sophie leaves home and walks down the stairs with her bag on her back, there is a paint­ing on the wall to her right: a shark’s mouth with sharp teeth and a lit­tle man in it;

Detail 2: In the dou­ble-page spread of Sophie cross­ing the road, there is a black dog in the pas­sen­ger seat of the jeep in front of her left side, but with sharp teeth and red eyes, it is clear­ly a wolf;

Detail 3: On the next page, Sophie is cap­ti­vat­ed by all sorts of won­ders. She walks past the police, who are sur­round­ed by a crime scene with emp­ty bul­let cas­ings and vic­tim marks on the ground.

Detail 4: After Sophie was “res­cued” by the man in black, she went with him to the room where the motor­cy­cle was stored. On the door was a tri­an­gu­lar warn­ing sign with a white back­ground and a red bor­der, with a line of bold cap­i­tal let­ters below it say­ing “DANGER”(Dan­ger);

Detail 5: In the series of paint­ings where the hunter drops Sophie off on his motor­cy­cle, we see a trapped black dog resem­bling a wolf on the road Sophie pass­es. In the paint­ing where she runs, a row of bul­lets is point­ed at her in the low­er left cor­ner. Above her is a black sign of extreme dan­ger on a yel­low back­ground. A dag­ger gleams on the ground. Sev­er­al peo­ple shel­ter­ing from the rain appear to be mourn­ing. The black dog barks, its teeth barked, and above her is a vicious wolf in black, gal­lop­ing away…

I think these details all hint pret­ty def­i­nite­ly at a tragedy that’s about to hap­pen.

Through­out the book, the shack where grand­ma lives and its back­ground appear four times. The first three times are in the trag­ic sto­ry. The top of the build­ing in the back­ground is a strik­ing “KING” (King’s Build­ing), the com­pa­ny’s large sign reads “GOLD CO.
INC.”(Gold Co., Ltd.), look at it, it’s even more con­spic­u­ous com­pared to the garbage dump and mis­er­able shacks below! But by the fourth per­fect end­ing, in the bright sun­set, these signs were gone. Can you believe it?

 

I think that this ver­sion of Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood by Inno­cen­ti is not suit­able for chil­dren who are too young to read.8This makes sense for read­ers aged 18 and above. But I think it might be eas­i­er for old­er read­ers to accept it, per­haps read­ers who can accept the slight­ly dark and scary sto­ries of Har­ry Pot­ter. Because read­ing this Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood does require a bit of a cold and hard heart.

At this point, Innocenti’s fans may be con­fused: Why did this old man sud­den­ly tell such a sto­ry?

Frankly, I can’t find much reli­able back­ground infor­ma­tion on this new book, which was pub­lished last year. Per­haps we can ask the artist him­self if we have the chance. How­ev­er, you have to under­stand that even the artist’s own words are not nec­es­sar­i­ly trust­wor­thy, so read­ers must explore it them­selves.

Regard­ing the cre­ative inten­tion of “Urban Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood”, I can only try to make some spec­u­la­tions based on Inno­cen­ti’s life and cre­ative expe­ri­ence.1940The mas­ter illus­tra­tor was born in Flo­rence, Italy in 1916. His child­hood was spent in the war.13He dropped out of school at the age of 19 and went to help out in his fam­i­ly’s steel mill. Because he loved paint­ing and taught him­self dili­gent­ly, he grad­u­al­ly switched to the illus­tra­tion indus­try. After many years of hard work in this indus­try, he final­ly42At the age of 18, he co-authored his first pic­ture book, Lit­tle Flow­ers on the Barbed Wire. How­ev­er, it is no exag­ger­a­tion to say that this debut work is already a mas­ter­piece, which is prob­a­bly the result of years of hard work.

The works of Inno­cen­ti that we are famil­iar with can be rough­ly divid­ed into two cat­e­gories: one is the col­lab­o­ra­tion with oth­ers, which includes “Flow­ers on the Barbed Wire”, “Star of David”, “House”, “Last Resort”, etc.; the oth­er is the illus­tra­tions of clas­sic works, such as “The Adven­tures of Pinoc­chio”, “A Christ­mas Car­ol”, “The Nut­crack­er”, “Cin­derel­la”, etc. These are all illus­tra­tions for the clas­sic texts of the pre­de­ces­sors. Even so, Inno­cen­ti still won numer­ous awards for his hyper­re­al­is­tic illus­tra­tions with extreme­ly exquis­ite details, and even2008He won the Hans Chris­t­ian Ander­sen Award in 2002, and his achieve­ments and rep­u­ta­tion have reached the pin­na­cle of his field. He cur­rent­ly lives in his home­town of Flo­rence, and should be liv­ing a care­free life.

How­ev­er, for a true artist, there are still some regrets. I think the biggest regret is that he has not been able to ful­ly express his own voice.

In the works list­ed above, Inno­cen­ti was already eager to exper­i­ment, con­stant­ly chal­leng­ing and inno­vat­ing with­in his pic­to­r­i­al nar­ra­tives, pow­er­ful­ly artic­u­lat­ing a dis­tinc­tive voice that wres­tled with the nar­ra­tives of the text, cre­at­ing a pow­er­ful ten­sion that com­pels read­ers to revis­it and reread. For exam­ple, even in the clas­sic fairy tale “Cin­derel­la,” he suc­cess­ful­ly incor­po­rat­ed mod­ern and local ele­ments, achiev­ing a har­mo­nious recon­struc­tion with­out alter­ing the text, a tes­ta­ment to his excep­tion­al skill. How­ev­er, this clear­ly was­n’t enough for his pro­lif­ic cre­ativ­i­ty.

In his view, retelling the sto­ry of Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood may be a chal­lenge to sur­pass him­self, and it may also be an oppor­tu­ni­ty for him to ful­fill his child­hood dream.

 

You see, he did­n’t retell the sto­ry direct­ly, but used the help of a mag­i­cal old lady, who was weav­ing and mak­ing up the sto­ry at the same time. This kind of nar­ra­tion cre­ates a lit­tle dis­tance, so that nei­ther the nar­ra­tor nor the audi­ence need to be too involved in it. Maybe the sto­ry is dark and dan­ger­ous, but at a safe dis­tance.

The sto­ry is set in the present day, per­haps2010You can notice that Sophie has a younger sis­ter who seems to have just learned to walk and is bab­bling, but she is already sit­ting in a baby chair and play­ing with a lap­top very skill­ful­ly. The sto­ry takes place before Christ­mas. San­ta Claus can be seen every­where in the pic­ture (coin­ci­den­tal­ly, he also wears a red coat and a red hat), and there are many Christ­mas trees. Per­haps because of the pres­ence of Christ­mas trees, the city has a bit of a “for­est” fla­vor. Espe­cial­ly when enter­ing the cen­ter of the for­est, there is an adver­tise­ment for a San­ta Claus girl on the left, which reads “LOTTERIA
di NATALE”, which means “Christ­mas lot­tery” in Ital­ian. Inter­est­ing­ly, the San­ta Claus in the book looks vul­gar and even a lit­tle vul­gar, and the one by the pool in the cen­ter of the for­est looks more like a thief (it is said that you should be wary of pick­pock­ets when trav­el­ing and shop­ping in Flo­rence).

By the way, per­haps the set­ting of this sto­ry is a cer­tain aspect of Flo­rence. The Christ­mases in the sto­ry don’t seem too cold, and often rain, quite like the weath­er in the south­ern coastal areas. Lux­u­ri­ous shop­ping malls and high-rise build­ings are adja­cent to slum-like apart­ments and aban­doned fac­to­ries. Traf­fic is boom­ing but con­gest­ed, and peo­ple jos­tle shoul­der to shoul­der, expres­sion­less and indif­fer­ent to each oth­er. In such a big city, “you have to always be lis­ten­ing and pay­ing atten­tion. Every­one can see you, but no one is look­ing at you.” Of course, this sit­u­a­tion applies to many major cities, not just Flo­rence. After all, “Firen­ze” also has a unique and quaint side.

Inno­cen­ti presents us with a quin­tes­sen­tial­ly indus­tri­al­ized, mate­ri­al­is­tic metrop­o­lis, its cen­ter tru­ly encom­pass­ing every­thing, with near­ly every glob­al brand rep­re­sent­ed. A clos­er look at the world-renowned brands fea­tured here reveals a ver­i­ta­ble hodge­podge, with the most strik­ing items being: food, alco­hol, lin­gerie, toys, adult prod­ucts, cell phones, watch­es, cars, motor­cy­cles, weapons…

The dou­ble page spread of the shop­ping mall exte­ri­or is par­tic­u­lar­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive:THE WOOD(Linzuo), with a huge neon Christ­mas tree below, food and toys on the right, jeans and wom­en’s under­wear on the left, and a large spot­light on the top that looks like a sign20Cen­tu­ry Fox Film Cor­po­ra­tionLOGOIn the near dis­tance there is con­gest­ed traf­fic and filth all over the ground, in the dis­tance there are tall build­ings, and on the left side, just across the wall, there is an apart­ment build­ing that looks to be aban­doned (if it were in Chi­na, there might be a big word “demo­li­tion” on it).

Eat­ing, drink­ing, play­ing, sex, vio­lence, lux­u­ry, pover­ty, extrav­a­gance, filth, insa­tiable desires, per­va­sive media, and pol­i­tics mixed in… This is the “urban hodge­podge” that Inno­cen­ti pre­pared for us, which can also be giv­en the beau­ti­ful name of “urban cul­tur­al land­scape.”

By the way, speak­ing of pol­i­tics, is there real­ly any pol­i­tics in this book? Of course not. Please look at the huge adver­tise­ment on the upper right side of the Linzuo Hall. Just to the right of the bright red word “Lin”, there is a pho­to of a per­son on a blue back­ground with the words “YOUR
CANDIDATE AM I”(I am your can­di­date). What par­tic­u­lar­ly intrigued me was what kind of per­son could hang his cam­paign ad next to the sign of a shop­ping cen­ter? And the more I looked at him, the more I thought this guy looked quite Japan­ese.

   
In this large dou­ble-page spread, there are sev­er­al Japan­ese cul­tur­al sym­bols, such as the father and son in the low­er right cor­ner who look quite typ­i­cal Japan­ese; there is a line of katakana in the upper cen­ter of the pic­ture “ィル·ボスコ”, most like­ly a famous Ital­ian wine brand“IL BOSCOThe Japan­ese name of the brand with the Eng­lish name actu­al­ly appeared on the page where Sophie was cross­ing the road, next to the traf­fic light and on the road sign on the left; the most hid­den one was the one on the wom­en’s under­wear brandTri­umph(Tri­umph) The famous Ital­ian wine on the rightMar­ti­ni(Mar­ti­ni) brand adver­tise­ment, at first glance it looks like Mar­ti­niLOGOHow­ev­er, a clos­er look reveals that it is actu­al­ly a repli­ca, with a pat­tern clos­er to the Japan­ese flag. It’s dif­fi­cult to guess Inno­cen­ti’s true inten­tions. How­ev­er, it’s worth not­ing that “林” (Lin) is a Chi­nese char­ac­ter, and also a Japan­ese char­ac­ter, mean­ing the same thing.

If the blue-back­ground por­trait cam­paign ad only appeared once, it would prob­a­bly be a coin­ci­dence. But keep turn­ing the page and you will see it twice more: once in the back­ground when the men in black “res­cue” Sophie, and after the light­ning, you can see a large bill­board with a por­trait that looks like a mafia fig­ure, and next to it is a big let­ter “I AM THE
BEST”(I am the best); one is a pic­ture of a man in black rid­ing a motor­cy­cle and answer­ing a phone call. In the back­ground is a high-volt­age pow­er line tow­er in the dis­tance. The man in the adver­tise­ment is wear­ing a scarf and looks kind. He stretch­es out his fin­gers to sign “I love you”. The text next to it is incom­plete“LIB…“Sus­pect­ed to be “free­dom” or some­thing like that. The fol­low­ing two polit­i­cal ads seem to be tied into the devel­op­ment of the plot. But the com­bined impres­sion of all three ads is a kind of inex­plic­a­ble bluff­ing, which, mixed in with the tempt­ing ads of “food, sex and human nature”, is a kind of har­mo­ny.

Through­out, Inno­cen­ti nev­er expressed his own opin­ions or eval­u­a­tions. I imag­ine if some­one had asked him, he might have said that the painter’s mis­sion was sim­ply to record. How­ev­er, through such a sharp per­spec­tive, can’t read­ers still grasp his crit­i­cal intent?

 

Some might wor­ry: Is this view of the world safe for chil­dren to see? Is this grim sto­ry safe for chil­dren to hear? This is indeed a ques­tion.

Please turn to the first page, where the mag­i­cal old woman begins her sto­ry, and look at the toys chil­dren today are play­ing with. Yes, they shed tears when they hear this ver­sion of Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood, prov­ing they are still chil­dren, with ten­der hearts deep down. But have you ever noticed? What toys do they play with? What pro­grams and sto­ries do they encounter in the media? What kind of world do they see as they walk down the street or into the shop­ping mall? Today’s chil­dren, like us adults whose hearts have become quite hard­ened and numb, live in this hodge­podge of “eat­ing, drink­ing, play­ing, sex, vio­lence, lux­u­ry, pover­ty, extrav­a­gance, filth, insa­tiable desires, the per­va­sive media, and the pol­i­tics that are mixed in…” Isn’t that right?

Pay spe­cial atten­tion to the scene where Sophie gazes at her toys in the “mag­ic win­dow.” “Before her, there were mon­sters, princess­es, doom, and ‘they lived hap­pi­ly ever after.’ ” Sophie gazes intent­ly at the icon­ic Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood. She’s not dis­obey­ing her moth­er’s warn­ing; she sim­ply can’t resist pick­ing a flower from the for­est, a pure daisy. Can a girl who loves beau­ty resist such an inno­cent temp­ta­tion? This is the real Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood, per­haps the beau­ti­ful and pure girl Inno­centes dreamed of in his child­hood. No mat­ter how the world changes, she still believes in the fairy tale’s promise of eter­nal hap­pi­ness.

But the world has tru­ly changed. Look at all the dolls and toys sur­round­ing Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood: weapons from land, sea, and air, ter­ri­fy­ing mil­i­tants, sav­age and bloody mon­sters, volup­tuous women of the night, espe­cial­ly the one below, clad in red lin­gerie, wield­ing twin guns, a sul­try and fierce fig­ure… Yes, this is the imag­i­nary world in which today’s chil­dren often immerse them­selves. Remem­ber, today, before they’re even a year old, they’re already play­ing excit­ing games on tablets and phones. And yet, we adults still strug­gle in vain: Do we dare tell chil­dren about this Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood?

Well, let’s get back to the world of sto­ries. Toys are fun, but good sto­ries are mag­i­cal.

Sto­ries are like the sky… Help chil­dren learn to look up at the sky.

 

Ajia … Writ­ten on2013Year9moonBei­jing