The Big Bad Wolf in popular culture

In the 20th and 21st centuries, many works of fiction have been created including the Big Bad Wolf as a character, differing slightly from his incarnation in the folk tales.

Disney's Big Bad Wolf (Zeke Wolf)

Walt Disney's version of the Bad Wolf first appeared in the animation "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. This version had a taste for disguising himself, but both the audience and the Pigs could easily see through the Wolf's disguises. The short also introduced the Wolf's theme song, "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?", written by Frank Churchill. The short was so popular that Walt Disney produced several sequels, which also featured the Wolf as the villain.

In 1936 Disney's Wolf came to Sunday newspaper comics, which were reformatted and reprinted in the monthly "Walt Disney's Comics and Stories" in 1941. They were popular enough there that a demand for new Wolf comics arose. From 1945, the original "WDC&S" series Li'l Bad Wolf nominally starred Big Bad's good little cub, but "Pop" repeatedly stole the spotlight. Carl Buettner, Gil Turner and Jack Bradbury were among the noted creators to work on the series in its early years, with Buettner giving Big Bad his proper name of Zeke. Today, new Disney wolf comics continue to be created around the world.

MGM/Tex Avery's Big Bad Wolf

Created by animation director Tex Avery, this variation of the Big Bad Wolf's cartoons included many sexual overtones, violence, and very rapid gags, and never became as popular as the Disney incarnation, but was more popular with an older crowd (especially soldiers in World War II). He appeared in "Red Hot Riding Hood" (1943), in which he was heavily aroused by The Girl's song and dance performance. Variations of this wolf were also seen in "Wild and Wolfy", "Swing Shift Cinderella" and "Little Rural Riding Hood". The wolf was voiced by Frank Graham in "Red Hot Riding Hood", with famed voice actor Daws Butler providing the howling. Afterward, Daws Butler took over as the wolf's new voice actor in most cases.

This version of the Wolf was referenced in the movie The Mask (1994), when Stanley/The Mask (performed by Jim Carrey) briefly turns into him while watching Tina Carlyle perform (who looks and acts very similar to Red Hot Riding Hood), howling and whistling at her and then banging his head with a mallet. The Mask also changes into this wolf-like form on occasion in the spin-off animated series of the same name, particularly in the animated crossover featuring "".

A similar wolf was also used as a foe against Droopy Dog in various Droopy shorts in the late 1940s and the 1950s, as well as on the "Droopy & Dripple" segments on "Tom & Jerry Kids" by Hanna-Barbera in 1990. This wolf was voiced by Frank Welker.

Nu Pogodi!

In the Soviet animated series "Nu Pogodi", the wolf, commonly translated into English as "Volk" ( _ru. Волк), is portrayed as a hooligan who eagerly turns to vandalism, abuses minors, breaks laws and is a heavy smoker. His adventures revolve around constant failures to capture a Hare. On the other hand, many of Wolf's attempts to catch Hare are often characterized by uncanny abilities on his part (including figure skating, ballet and waltzing) which demonstrate his more refined side. Wolf can also play the guitar very well and ride the powerful rocker motorbike, making his character more sophisticated than a normal hooligan.

In the first episode, while climbing a high building to catch Hare, Wolf whistles the popular mountaineer song, "Song of a Friend" (the signature song of Vladimir Vysotsky). In spite of these talents, most of Wolf's schemes eventually fail or turn against him. The character was originally voiced by Anatoli Papanov.

References in other media

In the Marx Brothers film, Duck Soup, a sequence involves Harpo Marx activating a music box that plays "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?", which he accompanies on the harp.

In the Frank Capra movie, It Happened One Night, Clark Gable sings the song to Claudette Colbert.

A James Patterson novel in the Alex Cross series is named "The Big Bad Wolf", though it only minimally references the Disney character.

Edward Albee's Tony award winning play, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, is an obvious play on words of the song title. It was turned into a film, starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, with Taylor winning an Academy Award for her performance as Martha.

Stephen Sondheim's musical Into the Woods features the Big Bad Wolf as a lustful and well-endowed character whose appetite for Little Red Riding Hood is more sexual than victual.

In the M. Night Shyamalan movie Lady in the Water a girl sings "Who's afraid of the big bad wolf?"

The 1966 hit song "Lil' Red Riding Hood" by Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs takes the wolf's point of view.

Other Bad Wolves

Several versions of the Big Bad Wolf have appeared in Warner Bros. Animation's "Looney Tunes" and "Merrie Melodies" cartoons, particularly those of director Isadore "Friz" Freleng. In two Bugs Bunny cartoons directed by Robert McKimson (the second of which, "False Hare" (released in 1964), was the last cartoon of American Animation's Golden Age to feature Bugs Bunny), the Big Bad Wolf had a cheerful nephew.

In the theme park Busch Gardens Europe, there is a suspended roller coaster named Big Bad Wolf.

Kiefer Sutherland played a (human) character representing the Big Bad Wolf in the 1996 movie "Freeway".

The band Cartoons released an album in 2001 called "Toontastic!", in which there is a song titled "Little Red Ridinghood". The Big Bad Wolf is the song's narrator, and he is telling the story of "Little Red Riding Hood" in the first person form.

The 2005 series of "Doctor Who" on the BBC contains many references to "Bad Wolf", and this is carried through in the websites the BBC has set up to accompany the series. The various references in the television series have been listed at the BBC's [http://www.badwolf.org.uk Bad Wolf website] (along with many inaccurate references to folklore and mythology). The 2008 series also contains references to Bad Wolf in the episode "Turn Left" where the Doctor associates these references with the end of the universe.

The Big Bad Wolf is a card used by Leonhard Wilson, whose deck is mostly composed of fairy tale monsters, in the second series "Yu-Gi-Oh!" anime. This card does not appear in the real "Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game".

The name of one of the bosses in the Karazhan Tower in the World of Warcraft universe is named the Big Bad Wolf.

In a dark webcomic called "Everafter," the Big Bad Wolf is the name given to a sentient mass of "Grimm" energy that roams the island on which the story's asylum is built—aptly so because of the creature's notable likeness to a gigantic black wolf.

The Big Bad Wolf redeemed

Several recent interpretations of the Big Bad Wolf show him as being a character with relatively good intentions, mostly considered "Bad" due to a misunderstanding. Arguably, this practice started with the 1989 children's book "The True Story of the Three Little Pigs". However, the best well-known "good" adaptations are from films, where it is mostly used for a comedic effect.

hrek's Big Bad Wolf

The popular computer-animated "Shrek" films of 2001 and 2004 reversed many conventional roles found in fairy tales, including depicting the Big Bad Wolf from Little Red Riding Hood as a friendly misunderstood crossdresser (apparently still wearing her grandmother's clothes) and on good terms with the three little pigs. This depiction, along with a seemingly transgendered bartender (who the crew deny on the DVD commentary as having any sort of gender confusion) and Pinocchio's expansive nose in "Shrek 2", raised the ire of some conservative groups who objected to the film's sexual content. However, these concerns were widely ridiculed in the media.

In the fighting game Shrek SuperSlam, released 2005, Big Bad Wolf is a playable character and appears as "Huff n Puff Wolf".

Hoodwinked's Big Bad Wolf

The Weinstein Company's computer-animated 2006 film "Hoodwinked!" which was a spin-off from Little Red Riding Hood, features the wolf from that story, as a misunderstood Fletch-type wolf. He goes undercover with his squirrel companion, Twitchy, and they record stories for the newspaper called The Once Upon a Times. Along with Red, Granny, and the Woodsman, he is a suspect of the recipe-robbing crime, which is wreaking the forests he lives in. He is voiced by Patrick Warburton.

Bigby Wolf

The comic book series "Fables" by Bill Willingham features a reformed Big Bad Wolf as a major character, commonly referred to as "Bigby". In order to pass for human (the other animal fables want nothing to do with him), he has been infected with lycanthropy, making him, in essence, a werewolf. He acts as sheriff for the Fable community, going by the name of Bigby Wolf. He is often portrayed as a typical film-noir-style trenchcoat-wearing detective. In the context of the series, he earned the name "Big Bad" after his (much larger) siblings sarcastically noted his drive to be ferocious, particularly after his father, the incarnation of the North Wind, left his mother due to being bored with the relationship. Due to his unique parentage, his infamous "huff 'n puff" is a form of wind control that has been shown to be powerful enough to smash trees down, blow out an army of flaming animated puppetmen, and Bigby once conjectured that even a brick house would most likely be blown to bits by it.

Wolf from The 10th Kingdom

In the 2000 eight-hour movie (broadcast as a mini-series) "The 10th Kingdom", Scott Cohen plays a character called Wolf, which is based on the Big Bad Wolf and there is some speculation to whether he may even be the Big Bad Wolf's descendant (mainly owed to the fact that most other characters in the mini-series are descendants of many well-known fairy tale characters). Wolf recognizes he has a sort of obsessive-compulsive disorder towards eating lamb meat, rabbit meat, or little-girl meat, which he tries to overcome when he falls in love with Virginia, the main character. (Note that her married name would be Virginia Wolf.)

Other "good" Wolves

The Big Bad Wolf has become a regularly recurring puppet character on "Sesame Street", appearing usually in purple fur (although he originally had blue shaggy fur, as he was a variant of Herry Monster). He is generally puppeteered by Jerry Nelson (particularly the blue version) and occasionally by Kevin Clash and Marty Robinson.

In the animated series "Drak Pack", Howler, the werewolf, has super-breath powers, apparently derived from the Big Bad Wolf's "huffing and puffing" to blow the pigs' houses down.

In the Swedish cartoon and television short films, Bamse, The Wolf is, as his name suggests, a black wolf who had a thing for pulling pranks on the protagonist as well as his friends (he even won a diploma as "the master of evilness"). He eventually turned out to be a nice guy at heart and was only "evil" because of a problematic life where the only way for him to gain recognition from others was to do bad things.

In the Netherlandic series 'De Fabeltjeskrant', was the role as the Big Bad Wolf portrayed by the short tempered Bor de Wolf. He was, however, very bad at being bad since he wasn't really bad, as explained by the owl, Jacob: The other animals were afraid of Bor because he always got so mad, that's why he was always left out, and that's why Bor got so mad. After being well met by the host at Martha Hamster's birthday party, he got remarkably nicer, but had still some problems with his short temper.

An uncomfortable deconstruction of the "big bad wolf" archetype occurs in "Witches Abroad" by Terry Pratchett. In this novel, a rogue fairy godmother, intent on making stories come true, has magically molded a little girl's life to follow the plot of Red Riding Hood. As part of the tableau, a wolf is reconditioned to act as humans perceive it, its mind clouded with human motivations to murder and destroy. Upon being found by the novel's heroines, a trio of good witches, the wolf begs for release from its madness, whereupon it is mercifully killed.

Another interesting interpretation of the Wolf can be found in The Sisters Grimm series by Michael Buckley. In the books, the Wolf is the alter-ego of Mr. Canis, an elderly caretaker for the two heroes and their grandmother. Canis fights with the monster for control over his body and as the series progresses the war is a losing one. Mr. Canis continues to become more wolf-like and in the most recent books is on the verge of losing his identity entirely to the savage beast.

The Big Good Wolf from Timothy Groen's cult short animated film series (16mm, very rare) The Little Pigs and the Big Good Wolf is another example. In this ironic retelling and its sequels, a philanthropist wolf donates money to the town of the pigs in order to develop a central housing authority and safety standards. It is eventually revealed that the big good wolf is actually the brother of the Big Bad Wolf, and is only exacting revenge against his brother for an unsettled debt. The safety standards he develops and implements end up turning the town into a locked-up pigfarm for his own exclusive use, but he has in the meantime developed friendships with the pigs and ultimately becomes their sworn friend and protector.

The Big Bad Wolf of Jon Scieszka's The True Story of the Three Little Pigs is another example.

External links

*Internet Movie Database's [http://us.imdb.com/Name?Bletcher,%20Billy profile of William Bletcher] , his voice actor
* [http://users.cwnet.com/xephyr/rich/dzone/hoozoo/badwolf.html Zeke Wolf's HooZoo Profile]