Big Bad Wolf (Gary Hughes)

The Big Bad Wolf is a fictional wolf appearing in several cautionary tales, including some of '' Grimms' Fairy Tales.'' Versions of this character have appeared in numerous works, and it has become a generic archetype of a menacing predatory antagonist.

Interpretations

" Little Red Riding Hood", " The Three Little Pigs", " The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids", " The Boy Who Cried Wolf" and the Russian tale '' Peter and the Wolf'', reflect the theme of the ravening wolf and of the creature released unharmed from its belly, but the general theme of restoration is very old.

The dialogue between the wolf and Little Red Riding Hood has its analogies to the Norse '' Þrymskviða'' from the '' Elder Edda''; the giant Þrymr had stolen Mjölner, Thor's hammer, and demanded Freyja as his bride for its return. Instead, the gods dressed Thor as a bride and sent him. When the giants note Thor's unladylike eyes, eating, and drinking, Loki explains them as Freyja not having slept, or eaten, or drunk, out of longing for the wedding.

19th-century Folklorists and cultural anthropologists such as P. Saintyves and Edward Burnett Tylor saw Little Red Riding Hood in terms of solar myths and other naturally occurring cycles, stating that the wolf represents the night swallowing the sun, and the variations in which Little Red Riding Hood is cut out of the wolf's belly represent the dawn. In this interpretation, there is a connection between the wolf of this tale and Skoll or Fenrir, the wolf in Norse mythology that will swallow the sun at Ragnarök.

Ethologist Dr. Valerius Geist of the University of Calgary, Alberta wrote that the fable was likely based on genuine risk of wolf attacks at the time. He argues that wolves are in fact dangerous predators, and fables served as a valid warning not to enter forests where wolves were known to live, and to be on the look out for such. Both wolves and wilderness were treated as enemies of humanity in that region and time.

Folkloric appearances

* " The Boy Who Cried Wolf" ( Aesop)
* " Little Red Riding Hood" (Charles Perrault\ Brothers Grimm)
* "The Wolf and the Seven Young Goats" ( Brothers Grimm)
* " The Three Little Pigs" ( Joseph Jacobs)
* " Peter and the Wolf" ( Sergei Prokofiev)

Modern standard adaptations

Disney version

The Big Bad Wolf, also known as Zeke Midas Wolf or Br'er Wolf, is a fictional character from Walt Disney's cartoon short ''Three Little Pigs'', directed by Burt Gillett and first released on May 27, 1933. The Wolf's voice was provided by Billy Bletcher. As in the folktale, he was a cunning and threatening menace. The short also introduced the Wolf's theme song, " Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?", written by Frank Churchill.

The Wolf is shown as wearing a top hat, red pants, green suspenders and white gloves. However, he doesn't wear a shirt or shoes. The Wolf has a taste for disguising himself, but both the audience and the Practical Pig can easily see through the Wolf's disguises. With each successive short, the Wolf exhibits a fondness for dressing in drag and, even "seduces" Fiddler and Fifer Pigs, who become increasingly clueless as to his disguises with each installment, with such disguises as "Goldilocks the Fairy Queen", Little Bo Peep and a mermaid.

In an interview with Melvyn Bragg in the early 1980s, the British actor Laurence Olivier said that Disney's Big Bad Wolf was supposedly based on a widely detested American theatre director and producer called Jed Harris. When Olivier produced a film version of Shakespeare's ''Richard III'', he based some of his mannerisms on Harris, and his physical appearance on the wolf.

The short was so popular that Walt Disney produced several sequels, which also featured the Wolf as the villain. The first of them was named after him: ''The Big Bad Wolf'', also directed by Burt Gillett and first released on April 14, 1934. In the next of the sequels, '' Three Little Wolves'' (1936), he was accompanied by three just-as-carnivorous sons. (These three sons were later reduced to just one who, in contrast to his father, was full of goodness and charm and a friend of the Three Little Pigs.) The fourth cartoon featuring the Three Little Pigs and the Wolf, ''The Practical Pig