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“Construction of Language through Conflation of Identity: Little Red Riding Hood’s Bisexual
Approach to Breaking through Phallogocentrism”
Brooke Knisley
bknisley@ucsc.edu
760-685-4081
Winter Quarter 2015 - LTMO 190
Professor Kimberly Lau

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Construction of Language through Conflation of Identity: Little Red Riding Hood’s Bisexual
Approach to Breaking through Phallogocentrism
David Kaplan’s Little Red Riding Hood pairs visual images with the original oral tale of
Little Red Riding Hood. Because the images on screen give agency to the character of Little Red
Riding Hood as the spoken language insinuates a lack of power, the medium allows a language
of its own to emerge and illustrate a more complex dynamic. Hélène Cixous’ article entitled
“Sorties” argues a language needs to develop in which both sexes exist in a bisexuality instead of
in the current phallogocentric state of language. Cixous’ proposed bisexuality suggests “every
subject...sets up his or her erotic universe” (Cixous, 156). It is the “location within oneself of the
presence of both sexes, evident and insistent in different ways according to the individual”
(Cixous, 156). Kaplan’s film attempts to construct such a language by relying on an affect which
invokes the time of Jacques Lacan’s Real, before the individual entered the Symbolic Order and
became subject to language. Harkening back to Cixous, this entrance into language marks the
beginning of purely phallogocentric thought. To access the Real, a break from the Symbolic
Order must occur, and the film attempts to do this by constructing a bisexual language. This
article will aim to explain the process by which the film constructs such a language and the
effectiveness of the film’s portrayal of gender in the process.
First, to understand the means by which Kaplan’s film subverts the identity formation
suggested by Lacan, an understanding of the original theory must be established. Lacan suggests
that around six to eighteen months of age, the child will recognize itself in the mirror and realize
the reflection it sees is a perfect or idealized version of itself. The physical body begins to
manifest itself as a mental “I.” This “imago” the infant sees is beyond its conception of its own
weakness and becomes the Ideal I it will always strive to achieve. The image the infant sees is

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whole despite his or her sense of internal fractures. Through interaction with others, the child
develops this self through language. The identity formation becomes an external process when
the child first gazes at itself in the mirror as the infant always strives for that external image of
wholeness. This marks a movement from the Imaginary, or what is observed and understood as
the self as object, to the Symbolic Order, built on language and an affirmation of the self as
subject. In short, a movement from images to language. Lacan continues to describe the presence
of the Real in the Symbolic Order:
Indeed, for the imagos—whose veiled faces it is our privilege to see in outline in our
daily experience and in the penumbra of symbolic efficacity—the mirror-image would
seem to be the threshold of the visible world, if we go by the mirror disposition that the
imago of one’s own body presents in hallucinations or dreams, whether it concerns its
individual features, or even its infirmities, or its object-projections; or if we observe the
role of the mirror apparatus in the appearances of the double, in which psychical realities,
however heterogenous, are manifested. (Lacan, 504)
Here, he explains in the “penumbra of symbolic efficacity,” or the shadows of the Symbolic
Order’s effectiveness regarding communication, the “imagos” peer through and offer a glimpse
back into the time before the Symbolic Order (Lacan, 504). Therefore, an individual’s gaze into a
mirror and a reaffirmation of the self’s physicality reestablishes the visual world as a whole. A
physical mirror and a mental mirror made from “hallucinations or dreams” act to produce a
recognizable image the individual recognizes, mentally, as a reality even if the images differ
slightly (Lacan, 504). Therefore, to construct a language different from the one formed in the
Symbolic Order, a fresh start must occur before the entrance into the Symbolic Order.

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David Kaplan’s short film plays with the concept of identity produced by Lacan’s theory.
The film begins with Little Red Riding Hood gazing at her own reflection in a stream. In this
instance, the stream serves as the mirror and, by extension, “the threshold of the visible world”
and a return to the Real (Lacan, 504). The camera enters the water to gaze back at her and she
strokes the water, disrupting the camera’s view of her as well as the image she sees of herself.
The conflation of the camera and stream serves to create a dual mirror; her disruption of both
mirrors is not only the rejection of the externalized image of herself, but of the audience’s view
of her. She remains in the realm of the Real, deciding internally how to construct her identity. As
such, the film takes the audience to a place in which a new language can be constructed. Little
Red Riding Hood wipes away the inherent male gaze and seeks not just to redefine it, but to
create a new vocabulary.
Feminist Kathleen Woodward suggests a second mirror stage exists after a
méconnaissance or misrecognition of self happens after the original mirror stage from Lacan’s
theory occurs. This second mirror stage happens after an individual ages and feels disconnected
from the socially constructed “self” created by the initial mirror stage during six to eighteen
months of infancy. Woodward views this disconnect as a process of aging which prepares an
individual for death, either literally or socially, and the second mirror stage as a recognition of
that inevitability of loss of one’s self permanently. Women associate themselves with their
mothers after the initial mirror stage and believe they will grow into their likeness as they define
themselves by “Others.” For a woman, watching the mother age or perish can cause a slip in self-
identity resulting in méconnaissance due to the mother’s place as the idealized object in Lacan’s
theory. Leni Marshall complicates Woodward’s original theory, arguing this second mirror stage
can act as an awakening and an opportunity to cultivate a new identity and empower one’s self as

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the méconnaissance exposes the illusions of the self’s boundaries. Much like Cixous’ rejection of
“a binary system, related to ‘the’ couple, man/woman,” Marshall’s second mirror stage allows an
individual to cultivate an identity based on more than just an acceptance or rejection of the
Other; they may identify with multiple individuals, regardless of gender (Cixous, 149).
Although Marshall focuses mainly on aging in postmenopausal women, she admits a
second mirror stage is plausible as soon as the first one ends, suggesting “méconnaissance also
opens up some possibilities for understanding and developing the lived self and the social self
that seemed to be permanent and sealed during the first mirror stage” (Marshall, 53). David
Kaplan’s film suggests a second mirror stage need not wait until an individual feels abject from
society by age, but by sexuality or societal produced gender norms. Little Red Riding Hood
gazes at herself delicately stroking a lamb, frequently associated with innocence, and disrupts her
own image, morphing into the figure of the pursuer who trades her relations with lambs for
relations with wolves. Just as actresses “can no longer use their youthful bodies to attract praise
for their characters, they find an awareness their youthful selves lacked, knowledge they had not
known was missing” by embracing their new identities (Marshall, 56). Such a notion suggests
that internal feelings regarding individual identity play as large a role as external factors,
resulting in agency over those identities and the ability to change them.
The wolf himself serves as figure undergoing shifts in identity. Later on in the film, the
wolf gazes into a mirror and strokes it, engaging in what appears to be a Lacanian moment,
directly before consuming Little Red Riding Hood’s grandma and donning her clothing. Does
this gaze suggest a reaffirmation of self before he takes up the guise of a different gender? The
wolf, already presented as a feminine and lithe figure in terms of his physicality, shows no
qualms clambering into the grandma’s clothes and does not disrupt his image in the mirror

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before doing it. However, the moment of a repeated mirror-stage presents itself when Little Red
Riding Hood arrives and sees the wolf in her grandma’s clothing. She does not fear the wolf until
he is in the grandmother’s clothes. Marshall suggests that “although self-misrecognition can be
frightening, accepting the countenance of age changes a person’s self-identification and can
modify that person’s vision of advanced age” (Marshall, 55). Little Red Riding Hood sees the
change in her grandmother, does not initially recognize it, and as she undergoes the
misrecognition, feels fear. Her grandmother, as an extension of herself, reflects Woodward’s
original idea of a woman fearing age in a woman she identifies with. Marshall’s idea suggests
this misrecognition can be reified into a positive experience regarding age. To expand on
Marshall’s theory, instead of age, could an instance of misrecognition and recalibration of self
not be attributed to something other than age, but of gender or agency? Marshall’s belief that
“when a person decides that the misrecognized face in the mirror does belong to him or her, this
decision can significantly impact the person’s self-image and social location for several,
interconnected reasons. First, in Western societies, visual appearance delivers a message,
genuine or misleading, about who a person is,” easily applies to more than merely age (Marshall,
58). Gender and sexuality are often inscribed on the body, and identity inherently stems from
such a practice.
The presence of the grandmother is an important element often overlooked in
phallogocentric renderings of the Little Red Riding Hood tale. Yvonne Verdier addresses this in
her article “Little Red Riding Hood in the Oral Tradition,” claiming Charles Perrault’s 17th
century version and the Brothers Grimm’s telling sideline the importance of the grandmother; “it
looks as though our authors, the very ones who studied the versions from oral tradition, not
knowing how to undo the weight of the written tradition, have thereby become deaf to the oral

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tradition. Fascinated by the wolf, they have forgotten the grandmother,” effectively trading the
importance of a feminine character for that of a masculine character more akin to the
phallogocentric project of Perrault and the Brothers Grimm (Verdier, 105). Therefore, it is an
interesting decision Kaplan makes to have the vocal narration of his film, performed by the
homosexual raconteur Quentin Crisp (his casting will be discussed later), recite the lesser known
oral tale entitled “The Story of Grandmother.” The decision reflects an attempt to return to the
oral tradition and reinterpret it visually without altering the original story as in the case of
Perrault and the Brothers Grimm.
Cristina Bacchilega’s article "Not Re(a)d Once and for All: Little Red Riding Hood's
Voices in Performance" further discusses the role of oration and action regarding written versus
oral/aural storytelling, as well as the presence of the grandmother. Bacchilega begins by
discussing her views on Angela Carter’s portrayal of the Little Red Riding Hood tale in her
collection of short stories titled The Bloody Chamber and various film incarnations based on the
source material. Bacchilega ultimately condemns Carter for reinforcing violence against women
and believes the films in question rely too heavily on Charles Perrault’s patriarchal version of the
tale. However, Bacchilega finds a personal story from Carter more compelling: Carter’s
grandmother would tell her Perrault’s version when she was a child, stopping to pounce at her
when the wolf attacks in the story. Perrault left the same cue as a line note in his own text,
harkening back to the oral tradition he cut out by allowing a grandmother to reverse the act of
consumption, effectively reimagining his work.
Bacchilega’s adamancy to return to the oral tradition of the story over the textual version
reflects Luce Irigaray’s belief in the phallocentrism of the seen: the phallogocentrism in the text
pervades through sight, while the grandmother’s telling relies on an exchange between women

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orally. She reenacts the story and allows herself to become the wolf, conflating the action,
orality, and the phallogocentric meaning into a hybrid version which defies situating itself only
as a patriarchal text. David Kaplan’s film follows the same trajectory by using the original oral
version of the text in a voiceover while allowing the action on screen to portray an interpretation
of the words which disrupts the patriarchal norms present in written versions of the tale. His
decision to use the original oral story also serves as an attempt to “undo the weight of the written
tradition” and, subsequently, the inherent phallocentrism (Verdier, 105).
The title of the tale itself, “The Story of Grandmother,” places the grandmother into the
titular role and, therefore, makes her a key player in the events which unfold. The story begins
with Little Red Riding Hood deciding between the road of pins and the road of needles in order
to reach her grandmother’s home. According to Verdier, these paths “constitute a language, a
sartorial language of pins and needles that can be understood when replaced in the ethnographic
context from which these versions come: the peasant society of the late nineteenth century,”
suggesting Little Red Riding Hood’s decision on which path to take does not exist as merely a
fantastical element, but as a conscious choice by the storyteller as to Red Riding Hood’s choice
of fate (Verdier, 105). Verdier’s ethnographic research on the subject indicates pins as women’s
blossoming sexuality and entrance into courtship and, as such, a common characteristic of most
Red Riding Hood tales – she chooses the path of pins:
When they reached age fifteen, both the winter with the seamstress and the ceremonial
entry into the age group consecrated to St. Catherine signified their arrival at maidenhood
(la vie de jeune fille), that is, permission to go dancing and to have sweethearts, of which
the pin seemed to be the symbol. It was by offering them dozens of pins that boys
formerly paid court to girls; it was by throwing pins into fountains that girls assured

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themselves a sweetheart. Finally, it is the biological phenomenon itself, menstruation,
making the girl into a "jeune fille," with which the pin is associated. (Verdier, 106)
Therefore, Little Red Riding Hood’s choice of the road of pins coincides with the ethnographic
belief that pins “would have been perceived as a symbol of the arrival at puberty, at
maidenhood” and the movement towards finding a suitor and reproduction (Verdier, 106).
However, David Kaplan chooses to utilize the version of the tale in which Little Red Riding
Hood chooses the path of needles, leaving the wolf to take the path of pins. Already emasculated
by not making the initial choice, the wolf further finds himself in the position of the maiden,
embarking on a path towards a suitor and, following the ethnographic context, towards his own
stage of pubescence. This is his time for sexual awakening normally reserved for Red Riding
Hood in the phallogocentric versions of the tale. The pins also serve the dual purpose of
protection, as well as attachment, in an ethnographic context; “they prick and are then weapons
of defense against too enterprising boy,” suggesting the path of pins inherently incites danger
(Verdier, 106). Any who embark upon it are at the mercy of “enterprising boy[s];” therefore, the
wolf becomes the bearer of the pins and the need for protection against sexual assailants
(Verdier, 106). As Little Red Riding Hood acquires the male gaze in Kaplan’s film, watching the
wolf dance and enjoy the forest, the reversal becomes apparent: she is the danger in the woods,
watching him instead of the stare of the predator normally reserved for the wolf in the
phallogocentric tales.
If the wolf becomes the effeminate figure heading down the path of pins, then we must
look at the repercussions of Red Riding Hood’s choice: what does the path of needles entail? To
return to Verdier’s research, the needle becomes conflated with the grandmother:

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The pins for dressing up are opposed to the needles associated with work and the
mending of torn dresses, and also with needles with large holes (worn? having already
served much?) used by old women, by grandmothers who no longer see clearly. This
precisely defines the state of the grandmother, since if the language of the pin and the
needle can be understood as we propose, the language of sight, the gaze, can be
understood in the same traditional rural context. To see in fact means to have one's
period; to no longer see is to no longer menstruation. (Verdier, 107)
Does Little Red Riding Hood’s choice to embark along the path of needles suggest, then, that she
has become as the grandmother, menopausal and asexual without sight? Irigaray’s suggestion
that sight falls into the realm of phallocentrism would lead one to believe such a proposal would
leave Red Riding Hood a lack of agency by choosing the path of needles: she has undergone the
méconnaissance of age proposed by Woodward, conflated herself with the grandmother, and
therefore, lost her sexual agency by being unable to see. However, Kaplan’s film seems to
complicate the strict equality of identification between Red Riding Hood and the grandmother
which an application of Verdier’s text would suggest.
In Kaplan’s film, Little Red Riding Hood chooses the path of needles, but is then seen
plucking a needle from a spider’s web. The camera focuses on the web as Little Red Riding
Hood remains out of focus directly behind it, causing the web to obstruct her image from the
audience. She reaches out, staring at the web, pulls out the needle, unravels the web, and the
camera comes into focus on her face as she gazes at the needle. Clearly, Red Riding Hood is able
to view the needle and, although the audience’s gaze is initially obstructed by the web, Red
Riding Hood’s deconstruction of the web brings her into sight and view; she deconstructs the
notion that the needle is merely an asexual or menopausal entity. In this manner, Red Riding

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Hood chooses not to be the maiden defending herself on the path of pins, but embarks upon the
path of needles and seeks to redefine when and how sexuality occurs. She secures the gaze for
herself and, although she arrives to her grandmother’s house after the wolf, still arrives to feed
upon the grandmother’s flesh, another conflation of the grandmother, Red Riding Hood, and the
wolf.
Just as Woodward suggests a daughter inherently identifies with the mother, therefore
seeing the mother figure age causes a misrecognition in self, often leading to a new formation of
identity, Verdier believes the consumption of the grandmother’s flesh to act in a similar manner:
Hence the motif of Little Red Riding Hood's macabre meal can be understood in terms of
feminine destiny played in three stages: puberty, motherhood, and menopause. The three
stages correspond to three genealogical classes: daughter, mother, grandmother. From
society's point of view, then, the reproductive cycle is completed when a woman becomes
a mother, and her mother thereby becomes a grandmother: the game is played by three.
(Verdier, 110).
It is important to note, Red Riding Hood’s act of cannibalism appears in neither the Grimm nor
the Perrault version of the tale. By feeding off of her grandmother, Little Red Riding Hood
travels through the phases of women’s sexuality and feminine roles all in one fell swoop by
undergoing “female biological transformation by which the young eliminate the old in their own
lifetime. Mothers will be replaced by their daughters and the circle will be closed with the arrival
of their children's children. Moral: grandmothers will be eaten” (Verdier, 110). This resounds
with Woodward’s idea of misrecognition leading to new identity formation: by identifying
herself with the aging grandmother through the path of needles and consuming her, Red Riding
Hood becomes both grandmother and daughter. The wolf’s consumption of the grandmother and

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donning of her clothing following his Lacanian mirror-stage suggests he undergoes a similar
transformation. It is no wonder Little Red Riding Hood does not initially recognize the
difference between grandmother and wolf.
Verdier suggests that with the wolf’s consumption of the grandmother, “[t]he tale is
clearly saying to girls: ‘You will be eaten by the man,’ moreover he (is not the wolf always
masculine?) will have already eaten (raw to be sure, and without much of an eye for the
difference) your mother or your grandmother” and, therefore, leaves the girl with no agency over
her fate (Verdier, 111). The act of cannibalism acts as “a kind of sexual initiation in passing for
the girl who, we recall, had just eaten the fricasseed sexual organs of her mother or grandmother”
and proves she will succumb to the same fate as she has conflated herself with their identities
(Verdier, 111). However, Kaplan’s film uses a distinct technique to suggest Red Riding Hood
holds more power over her fate than the story would have the audience realize. Verdier calls the
wolf “the origin of the choice; it is when she is face to face with him, under his gaze and at his
demand, that she incorporates her grandmother and undresses. This is as much to say that he
leads the game and conducts the girl toward each stop in her feminine destiny, which is realized
through him” and his sexual hold over her (Verdier, 112). But, Kaplan’s film gives Red Riding
Hood the ultimate choice. She is warned by the cat that she is about to consume her
grandmother’s flesh and willingly does so, turning her into both a sexual creature and predator,
just like the wolf, and subverting the fate bestowed upon her by the previous phallogocentric
texts.
The presentation of the wolf and Little Red Riding Hood as Others and identifiers of each
other illustrates Kaplan’s construction of a bisexual language. In Linda Williams’ article entitled
“When the Woman Looks,” she addresses the identification between women and monsters in

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horror films. Just as Mulvey suggests women suffer from the scopophilia inflicted upon them by
the male gaze, Williams furthers this conceit by saying monsters suffer the same fate, allowing
“a different form of identification and sympathy to take place, not between the audience and the
character who looks, but between the two objects of the cinematic spectacle who encounter one
another in this look—the woman and the monster” (Williams, 62). Kaplan’s film begins with
Red Riding Hood’s disruption of the male gaze and then proceeds to show Red Riding Hood
watching the wolf spring from the ground into a dance. His body serves as a site of both
femininity and monstrosity which Little Red Riding Hood both identifies with and desires. The
consumption of the grandmother furthers the association between the wolf and Little Red Riding
Hood as “the monster’s power is one of sexual difference from the normal male. In this
difference, he is remarkably like the woman in the eyes of the traumatized male: a biological
freak with impossible and threatening appetites that suggest a frightening potency precisely
where the normal male would perceive a lack” (Williams, 63). These “threatening appetites”
consume the same flesh which the cat’s warning equates to becoming a “slut” or sexual deviant.
Williams believes the “monster body in many classic horror films…should not be interpreted as
an eruption of the normally repressed animal sexuality of the civilized male (the monster as
double for the male viewer and characters in the film), but as the feared power and potency of a
different kind of sexuality (the monster as double for the women),” suggesting that, unlike the
original phallogocentric text of Little Red Riding Hood, Kaplan’s film creates an identification
between wolf and girl to highlight the power of the female form (Williams, 63). The normally
masculine wolf drops the “repressed animal sexuality of the civilized male” and becomes a
physical representation of Little Red Riding Hood’s own sexual appetite.

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Little Red Riding Hood’ initial disruption of Lacanian theory and her entrance into a
second mirror stage allows her to identify with the Other she views: in this instance, the wolf. As
such, a strict identification with her own gender becomes blurred just as the wolf’s relation to his
own gender blurs as he engages in his own mirror stage in the grandmother’s house. Then, he
assumes the old woman’s identity. The grandmother and wolf exchange identities, much how
“The Bette Davises and the Joan Crawfords considered too old to continue as spectacle-objects
nevertheless persevere as horror objects…the strange sympathy and affinity that often develops
between the monster and the girl may thus be less an expression of sexual desire…and more a
flash of sympathetic identification,” causing the wolf to identify with the grandmother.
(Williams, 63). The conflation of Red Riding Hood and her grandmother through the
misrecognition suggested by Woodward, the conflation of grandmother and wolf as horror
objects, and the conflation of Red Riding Hood and the wolf as they indulge in their “dangerous
appetites” suggest a layering and blurring of the self with the Other across multiple spectrums.
Identity becomes more than the hegemonic binary of male/female and instead takes on a
multiplicity of characteristics, such as a sliding scale of gender, age, and species. As Cixous
purports, “there is no invention possible…without there being in the inventing subject an
abundance of the other, of variety,” or a blending of multiple characteristics as opposed to
staying strictly on one side or another of a binary pair (Cixous, 155). The conflation of all of
these characters makes the invention of a language which satisfies all of the nuances of their
beings possible; variety brings forth innovation. The deconstruction of Lacan’s mirror stage and
the creation of the Other allows variety of identity to prevail, opening the possibilities to the
formation of a bisexual language.

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Williams cites The Phantom of the Opera as an example of this recognition and
identification in the context of the Lacanian mirror. In this scene, Christine, much like Red
Riding Hood, disrupts the traditional mirror to find an affinity with the monster or the Other.
Similarly, in The Phantom of the Opera, when Christine walks through a mirror that
ceases to reflect her, it could very well be that she does so because she knows she will
encounter a truer mirror in the freak of the Phantom on the other side. In other words, in
the rare instance when the cinema permits the woman’s look, she not only sees a monster,
she sees a monster that offers a distorted reflection of her own image. (Williams, 64)
Although the mirrors in Kaplan’s film serve as moments of identity formation and recognition
between wolf and girl, they do not present either entity as that of “the freak.” Unlike Williams’
example, Kaplan allows Red Riding Hood to view the wolf, identify with him, and desire
without fear. Instead of inscribing a transgressive sexuality on either of their bodies, Kaplan
takes the moment which should induce horror (i.e. when Little Red Riding Hood realizes the
bestial quality of the wolf’s body once climbing into bed with him) and turns the moment into a
flirtatious one. The horror attributed to female sexuality and the “repressed animal sexuality of
the civilized male” becomes a sexuality at a “location within oneself of the presence of both
sexes,” or an equal experience of both masculinity and femininity (Williams, 63; Cixous, 156).
This results in a creation of an Other outside of the purely male/female binary. A third, unnamed
gender manifests in which the two phallocentric constructs of gender merge.
Beyond the images depicted on the screen and the decision to use the female-affiliated
oral tale, Kaplan further strives to create a bisexual language by choosing a narrator who
identifies as queer and carries his own beliefs regarding the dualism of the body. Quentin Crisp,
a notable figure in the queer world, remains the only voice heard throughout Kaplan’s film.

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Although Little Red Riding Hood, the wolf, and grandmother all become blurred incarnations of
gender, reaching out beyond the initial stage of identity formation Lacan suggests to redefine
their inner-selves, they never succumb to the phallogocentric Symbolic Order by uttering a word.
Instead, Quentin Crisp, an embodiment of an alternative to heteronormativity, ties all of the
images and traditions together and acts as a catalyst for the bisexual language Cixous espouses.
In a short piece entitled “What Does It Mean To Be Human?,” Crisp describes his view on the
duality of human nature:
When I was younger and was not ill, I didn’t mind how long I lived. Now that every step
of my life is painful, I long for death. If being human has any other special aspect it is
that in every human being there are two people. One who sits in judgment on the other.
The worldly, the doing person, acts irresponsibly, or nobly, or wisely, or foolishly,
according to the mood or the situation. But inside him, further away, is an abstract
spiritual being who never changes and who sits in judgment on him.
This situation becomes evident when we hear people say, "I was ashamed of myself."
Who is ashamed of whom? It is this duality between the active living organism and the
contemplative inner-self that sits in judgment that constitutes the whole human being.
This is, I think, what constitutes a human being.
On the surface level, Crisp espouses a Cartesian division of mind and body; however, he goes on
to say both portions of an individual form a human being. The duality gives way to multiplicity
and variety. Attila Kiss’ article “Fantasies of Corporeality as the Other of the Subject in the
Theaters of Anatomy” states that “death and the body have become inseparably intertwined,” as
the body represents mortality, “result[ing] in the suppression and demonization of the body” in
response to such a notion (Kiss, 251). Crisp’s meditations on death and the duality of the mind

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and body initially fall in line with this course of thought. However, his movement towards a
union of mind and body subverts what Kiss believes the body came to represent before
postmodern thought: “transgression, sexuality, heterogeneity, incalculable acts and thoughts of
the subject” and “the ultimate target of social censorship and individual self-hermeneutics”
(Kiss, 251). Crisp questions the shame an individual feels for one part or section of themselves:
either through body or mind. His question “who is ashamed of whom?” confronts the
multiplicity of identity, but raises an interesting point: are these parts of a person mutually
exclusive? To Crisp, it would seem the collection of all parts creates the whole. Crisp’s narration
in Kaplan’s film adds another element of bisexuality to the constructed language as the text of
Little Red Riding Hood by allowing it to “be recomposed in other bodies for new passions,”
invoking a different aesthetic as the site of the body becomes a blurring of gender, age, and
species (Cixous, 156). This multiplicity breaks apart the steadfast belief that the mind exists
separate from the body, standing for the true and permanent identity while the body serves as
merely a temporary vessel. As Crisp states, “this duality between the active living organism and
the contemplative inner-self that sits in judgment that constitutes the whole human being”
(Crisp).
Kaplan takes Kiss’ notion that the body is a “point of reference in relation to which the
identity and the capacities of the subject have been marked out by the dominant ideologies of
society” and instead chooses to use the wolf’s body to signify a new ideology, one neither
dominant (patriarchal) nor purely static in the representation of a single gender (Kiss, 253).
Instead of inscribing this duality and sexuality on Little Red Riding Hood’s body, Kaplan takes
Kiss’ and Crisp’s sentiments and puts them onto the one traditionally masculine form in the text,
the wolf, and complicates his sexuality. In Perrault’s and the Brother Grimm’s version of “Little

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Red Riding Hood,” as well as most incarnations of the tale, the wolf stands as the sexual
aggressor, one half of the masculine/feminine binary and one half of the binary of good/evil. He
always does the looking and his masculine gaze always settles on the female form. Here, the
audience sees the wolf through Red Riding Hood’s gaze as he rises from the grass and moves in
dance-like movements. Despite being bestial, he comes in a humanoid form, unlike the other
animals in the film: the patriarchal cat, damning female sexuality, and the passive lamb,
representing the previous characterization of Little Red Riding Hood as prey. Because the wolf’s
body acts as a site for all of these multiplicities to occur, he becomes not merely human and
beast, but man, woman, predator, prey, lover, aggressor, mother, father, and grandmother.
Kiss takes up the postmodern notion of multiplicity to explore how the neglected
corporeal form affects identity and interpretation of the Other. He invokes Derrida’s question of
what comes after the subject in what he refers to as our “carno-phallogocentric order of our
civilization,” claiming the postmodern body starts as a site of fear and moves to one of attraction;
the body must be thought of as an entity that is flesh, but also consumes flesh (Kiss, 255). This
resonates with the woman’s affinity with the monster in horror films, moving from fear to
attraction. Of course, Kaplan’s film portrays this movement between the wolf and Little Red
Riding Hood both through their respective gazes and their joint consumption of the
grandmother’s flesh. As such, the body becomes conflated with the Other, becomes a place for
identity to be inscribed, and acts as a site for the fantastic or multiplicity to occur.
In the scene in which Little Red Riding Hood strips her clothes to enter the bed with the
wolf, the narration suggests Red Riding Hood truly believes it is her grandmother beneath the
covers. However, Kaplan’s film follows Red Riding Hood’s gaze towards the wolf and the
blatantly sexualized stare suggests both the Lacanian idea that the female will always identify

19. Knisley 19
with the mother figure and that Red Riding Hood conflates the wolf with this figure as well, just
as she initially takes him for her grandmother. At once, the wolf’s physical presence takes on
multiple identities, all of which are internalized by Red Riding Hood. This idea is furthered by
Red Riding Hood’s infantilization of herself in order to escape the wolf’s bed: she claims she
must go “peepee” and make “caca,” an act which would purge the consumed grandmother from
her system. The wolf implores her to do the act in bed, putting him in the position of parent and
causing Little Red Riding Hood to return to the Freudian anal state in which she chooses whether
or not she will obey authority. Her decision to deny the wolf and abstain from defecating in the
bed shows her subversion of the patriarchal order of the parent figure and her wish to retain the
flesh or identity of the individual she consumed. At once, she can be grandmother, child, and
wolf.
Once outside, Little Red Riding Hood hides among the trees and watches the wolf
discover her escape. Here, the narration stops and the camera cuts from Red Riding Hood’s eyes,
clearly watching the wolf, to the wolf, gazing sadly at the plum tree Red Riding Hood has tied
her tether to. In this moment, Red Riding Hood holds all of the agency. The wolf has stripped
himself of the guise of the grandmother; Red Riding Hood has full view of his body and he
cannot see her at all. She decides whether or not to make her presence known and decides to do
so by tossing a plum at him. The wolf spots her and follows after her as she runs home. Here, the
narration and the images seem to differ in meaning on the surface level. Red Riding Hood’s
actions invite him to become pursuer and gaze upon her, yet the tale says she absconds and
arrives home in time to “shut the door.” On the screen, however, we see the wolf inside her
home, running one long nail down her lips. In this scene, we see the wolf touching her as she
gazes upon him, but he remains off screen. The camera focuses on her gazing off screen at him

20. Knisley 20
as he reaches out to stroke her lips. Such a shot melds together the male and female gaze and
reconstructs the phallocentrism of sight. The audience gazes at the female subject, Red Riding
Hood, but does so only to watch her gaze upon a male subject with desire. The female sexuality
stays on screen and is not an object of horror as Williams’ article would have it shown. By this
point in the film, Kaplan has adequately conflated gender, species, age, and sexuality to the point
where neither Little Red Riding Hood nor the audience fears witnessing the implied union of the
wolf and girl, but a catharsis that both figures, as they are and as they have been, may drop
pretense and indulge each other in their own bodies.
Kaplan’s film takes Cixous’ definition of a bisexual language and attempts to construct
such a language. Having Little Red Riding Hood initially break the male gaze of the cinema and
the patriarchal Symbolic Order effectively “resets” the preconceived notions of the tale of Little
Red Riding Hood to create a new text in a new language. This new language strives to equally
represent all facets of the human: body, mind, gender, sexuality, and age. The film’s visual
images and the original oral tale of Little Red Riding Hood work to create the fissures necessary
in the written text to break away from phallogocentrism. The use of Quentin Crisp’s narration
and the layering of multiple identities reestablishing and reconstructing themselves invoke the
multiplicity Cixous believes is the basis for this new bisexual language. The film works
continuously to conflate the characters and various source texts to show that no identity is static
or meant to be boxed into a hegemonic patriarchy. David Kaplan’s Little Red Riding Hood
effectively takes the viewer back to the Real, before phallogocentrism, and shows a site where a
new language encompassing all of the facets of human representation can be constructed outside
of the confines of phallogocentric thought.

21. Knisley 21
Works Cited
Cixous, Hélène. "Sorties: Out and Out: Attacks/Ways Out/Forways." The Logic of the Gift: Toward
and Ethic of Generosity. New York: n.p., 1997. 148-73. Print.
Crisp, Quentin. "What Does It Mean To Be Human?" Dusty Answers. N.p.: n.p., 2007. N. pag.
CRISPERANTO.org: "What Does It Mean To Be Human" by Quentin Crisp. Web. 9 Mar. 2015.
Kiss, Attila. "Postmodern Fantasies of Corporeality: Identity and Visual Agency in Postmodern
Anatomy Theatres." Postmodern Reinterpretations of Fairy Tales: How Applying New Methods
Generates New Meanings. Ed. Anna Kerchy. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 2011. 251-67. Print.
Lacan, Jacques. "The Mirror Stage as Formative
Marshall, Leni. "Through (with) the Looking Glass: Revisiting Lacan and Woodward in
"Méconnaissance," the Mirror Stage of Old Age." Feminist Formations 24.2 (2012): 52-
76. Project MUSE. Web. 2 Feb. 2015.
Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory
Readings. Eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford UP, 1999: 833-44.
Williams, Linda. "When the Woman Looks" Ed. Mark Jancovich. HORROR, THE FILM
READER (n.d.): 61-66. Web.
Verdier, Yvonne. "Little Red Riding Hood in Oral Tradition." Marvels & Tales 11.1/2 (1997): 101-
23. JSTOR. Web. 1 Mar. 2015.