Andrés Felipe Valderrama Pineda

February 2019

This blog is an example of how to use a simple structure to analyse a narrative using a basic contrasting principle. Many of the narratives about technological development that circulate in lay and learned media are predicated over current paradigms, which are all unsustainable. Imagining new sustainable narratives can only be done by breaking away with current narratives. This might be difficult as it requires becoming critical with accepted, taken for granted stories. So, to exemplify how to do this, I will tell the standard story of Little Red Riding Hood, I will explain what’s wrong with it, and then retell the story in a new way.

1. Little Red Riding Hood: the Standard Story

The standard story of Little Red Riding Hood is that of a little girl who is sent out in the woods by her mother to take food to Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother. The whole task is endangered because a male wolf tricks Little Red Riding Hood and eats her and the grandmother. But they are all saved when a male hunter suddenly appears in the scene, kills the male wolf and saves Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother.

• What is wrong with this story

The fundamental problem with this story is that all female characters are weak, threatened and victims of violence. Those who exert violence are all male characters: the wolf who attacks the females and the hunter who saves them. In 2019 this way of structuring narratives is outdated because it is based in a chauvinistic story line that builds on an old paradigm of patriarchy that has two main elements present in this story. The first one is that human males are superior to females and thus have to protect and save them, even if the males themselves are absent most of the time. And the second one, is that human males have the right to dominate and destroy other males, specially if they are part of nature, like the wolf.

• What could be different

To write a different version of Little Red Hood we could choose to subvert the paradigm and invert the elements of the story just mentioned. So in the new structure human females will be strong and independent. And the non-human male, the wolf in this case, will be a victim. Additionally, we can choose to make the hunter the main threat instead of the saviour.

• Little Red Riding Hood: the subverted story

Little Red Riding Hood sets out to take food to her sick grandmother. The food was made by her mother. The father is absent because he believes to be entitled to freedom despite being married and fathering a courageous daughter. On her way to her grandmother, Little Red Riding Hood meets a wolf who is hiding because it is being hunted by an evil man, who just wants to kill him to show to other men that he is such a manly man. Little Red Riding Hood takes as her mission to protect the wolf and to deliver the food to her grandmother: after all she is a courageous girl, and, unlike men, she can take up several responsibilities at the same time without feeling entitled to a disproportionate amount of privileges. When they arrive to the cabin in the woods, they realise that the hunter has taken the grandmother as a hostage. It is a typical manly act to achieve leverage. The hunter offers an exchange: the grandmother for the wolf, so he can kill it and show it to his male friends. Being courageous, Little Red Hood has no option but to throw a stone to the mans face, with incredible accuracy, and tell him off for being such a coward. The man runs away holding his bleeding nose, wailing and cursing. The grandmother, the wolf and Little Red Hood make a party to celebrate and regain their strength because they know that the idiot man is probably going to come back with more of his kind.

• Conclusion

This is a very simple example of how being critical towards a standard narrative can provide the elements to create a different narrative. In this case, I have chosen to be critical towards the patriarchal structure of Little Red Riding Hood. Additionally, I have also picked up on the idea of nature as a threat, which is what the wolf represents in the standard story. This structure allows the human male to be the hero by killing the wolf, which can be seen as his entitlement to domesticate nature by any means necessary, a trait that is central to Western modernity. The subverted story portrays the human male as the threat to a balance that can exist between nature and humans if the idea of domination is abandoned. In this sense, the traditional story represents the current non-sustainable paradigm of modern economic growth, while the new story explores the idea of harmony between humans and nature. By linking these two ideas, this blog also explores the links of un-sustainability and patriarchy. 

Note the structure: in part 1 I retell in very few words the standard story; in part 2 I explain why do I find it wrong making reference to the elements of patriarchy I see at play in the standard story; in part 3 I take those principles and turn them upside down and I explain why it makes sense to do this, I am honest about my contrasting strategy; and in part 4 I retell the story based on these subverted principles. In part 5 I summarise my reflections and link them to sustainability. Note also that I am concentrating in the main storyline, I leave out a lot of details which, I consider, do not add to my argument. This is how I make up a short strong argument.