Little Red Riding Hood

Chaperon Rouge - Supinfocom

I was really entranced by this animation.  The colours are lovely and the wolves are pretty much perfect.  Game players have probably seen all of this before......... 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqrPAoS9Py4&feature=results_main&playnext=1&list=PL09426036CF9E1853

Starting with the end of fairy tales

It's hard to know where to begin witha blog about monsters, and we've looked at quite a few fairytale monsters.  But there is one character we havn't talked about yet who haunts these tales, and he's Death.   I'm never quite sure why death is a 'he', but he is.  Often, in Fairytales he works out of sight, like a stagehand in the wings, taking mothers and fathers before their children have a chance to know them, or whilst they still need them.  

Death and The Newly Married Lady

I read somewhere (and now I can't find it) that the reason why Fairy tales all end with a wedding is because the next stage of a young womans life was bearing children (especially important if you've married a prince) and risking death in childbirth. So my first images come from Hans Holbein's series of woodcuts entitled The Dance of Death (1538) where Death cavorts around Kings, Abbots, Nuns and Pedlars et al.    Holbein's prints were to remind people how Death lurked at every turn and could take the rich and poor at a moments notice. 

The Newly Married Lady might be dressed in her best and smug about her change of status, but Death is there in front of her gleefully beating the time down to her confinement. 

Death and the Knight

Death is a lot more direct in his dealings with the knight.  The Knight kills, and Death deals him a body-blow back.  I do love the twist and turn of this image, although The knight does not really have a place in fairy-tales. So just imagine he's the Prince and fathered his first child, and has now provided us with another stock character for Fairytales - the Widow.