The 2005 animated film Hoodwinked, directed by brothers Cory and Todd Edwards and their friend Tony Leech, has become a forgotten film in the era of Ice Age and Shrek (to say nothing of the Pixar films). One reason for this is that the people responsible for it never became associated with one specific studio or company. Hoodwinked had trouble getting released because the original producer only really had the money to finance the film's making and did not have the resources to distribute it, eventually selling the rights to the Weinstein Company. (This move left the producer, financier Muarice Kanabar, in a difficult position when the sequel was being made and distributed.) It received very mixed reviews, but was very successful at the box office, relative to its cost. (Most critics complained that the animation was cheap.)
I only saw this the other night with the kids. I was amazed. No, not by the animation effects. Not by the heartwarming story of a sheltered girl who gets a crack at adventure, and not even by the amusing homages to police procedurals and Rashomon (yes, that's right: the Kurosawa drama with the same event told from multiple perspectives; don't be shocked, other cartoons do it, hell, I even saw a Johhny Bravo toon that did it).
What stunned me was the way that the film captured the growing economic crisis that we have suffered now for years, and especially its depiction of one specific industry in particular, the food industry.
After the initial setup of the Red Riding Hood fairy tale -- kid discovers Grandma is really Wolf, Grandma tied up in closet, huntsman comes blasting through with his ax -- the action stops: the woods police enters the scene and begins asking questions. And as Red tells her story first, we learn that the woods is in crisis: local goodie shops are closing because of the Recipe Bandit, who is stealing their recipes for their special treats. As Red rides on her bike through the woods, and sees the shops closing and disappointed woods creatures, with heads bowed, leaving their businesses, I was struck by the images of economic malaise of our time. You can do the same shot of most major and minor U.S. cities and see lots of shops closed with "for rent" signs in the windows. Some saw this as an allegory of Wal-Mart shutting down Mom and Pop stores (the film-makers don't really buy that interpretation), but one could also argue that in the Information Age where data travels so quickly, businesses are also affected by people not having to rely on knowledge only held by those companies. (This reminds me of the mythic e-mail of the Neiman Marcus cookie recipe. Or the classic "Soup Nazi" episode of Seinfeld, where Elaine obtains the recipes for the soup man's soups and he retaliates by closing up his shop.)
That said, the Wal-Mart allegory does gain some steam as the villain reveals his plan: he is going to use all the recipes to make his own brand of goodies and be the only game in town. (That's kinda Wal-Mart-ish, no?) And to ensure he stays on top, he's adding a special ingredient that will keep people addicted to his snacks.
When I saw that revealed, I thought: holy crap this bastard is working for Kraft Foods! Or Nabisco, or any of these snack food or fast food companies, who do work very hard at making food that will keep customers hooked. This is no fairy tale. The former CEO of Kraft has spoken out against his own industry. What the villain is plotting to do do is exactly what this industry has done for decades. And dammit we all know how effective it is.
So in this sense we should not compare Hoodwinked to the films of its era, like Ice Age or Shrek or Cars. But rather, we might want to compare it to documentaries like Super-Size Me or Food Inc. These are sobering films about the damage that Corporate Food does to the environment and to the body, of course, but sometimes the fairy tales can cut closer to the bone. Like Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, whose story of the demise of public transportation in L.A. has its roots in what supposedly did happen, Hoodwinked gives us a picture of an industry driven by only by greed.
This being a Hollywood cartoon, the villain is defeated and the principal characters find their next careers working as special agents (the sequel setup is painfully obvious). That brings us back to the fairy tale. In the real world, the villain does get to make us all hooked. And the system is left off the hook because it is represented by one character; benign capitalism benefits all. Talk about hoodwinked.
No comments:
Post a Comment