Big Bad Wolf


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"
  • "Little Red Riding Hood"
  • "The Wolf and the Seven Young Goats"
  • "The Three Little Pigs"
  • "Peter and the Wolf"

    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 does not 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, he was accompanied by three just-as-carnivorous sons. The fourth cartoon featuring the Three Little Pigs and the Wolf, The Practical Pig, was released in 1939. During World War II, a final, propaganda cartoon followed, produced by The National Film Board of Canada: The Thrifty Pig.
At the end of each short, the Wolf is dealt with by the resourceful thinking and hard work of Practical Pig. In the original short, he falls into a boiling pot prepared by the pigs. In The Big Bad Wolf, Practical pours popcorn and hot coals down his pants. In the final two shorts, Practical invents an anti-Wolf contraption to deal with the Wolf, who is shown to be powerless against the marvels of modern technology. The "Wolf Pacifier" in Three Little Wolves entraps him, chases him with a buzz-saw, hits his head with rolling pins, kicks him in the butt with boots, punches his face with boxing gloves, and finally tars and feathers him before firing him out of a cannon, all accomplished automatically and in time to a version of "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?". In The Practical Pig, the wolf falls into Practical Pig's trap and is subjected to the Lie Detector, which washes his mouth out with soap, whacks his hands with rulers, or pulls down his pants and spanks him when he tells a lie. The machine's punishment grows harsher and harsher the more he lies, until it is finally spinning him around, smacking his head and scrubbing his bottom. When he finally tells the truth, he is shot away by a rocket stuck up his shirt.
The Big Bad Wolf also made appearances in other Disney cartoons. In Toby Tortoise Returns, Practical and the Wolf made cameo appearances during the boxing match between Toby Tortoise and Max Hare. The Wolf also appeared in Mickey's Polo Team, as part of a game of Polo between four of Disney's animated characters and four animated caricatures of noted film actors.
He also appeared in Mickey's Christmas Carol, dressed as a streetcorner Santa Claus at the beginning of the featurette.
The Wolf made a couple of brief cameo appearances in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, first hiding behind a lamppost in Toontown, and later at the end of the film when all the toons are gathered, wearing a sheep costume and mask which he instantly stripped off to reveal his true wolfish features. He was voiced by Tony Pope in this one.
The Wolf made a couple of brief cameo appearances in The Lion King 1½, first along with many silhouettes of Disney title characters coming into the theater in the green screen of the ending scene.

Comic books

In 1936, Disney's Big Bad 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 Big Bad Wolf comics arose. From 1945, the original WDC&S series Li'l Bad Wolf nominally starred Big Bad Wolf'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 Wolf his proper name of Zeke and Turner supplying his middle name of Midas.
In the comics, Big Bad Wolf generally wants his son to become a bad guy like himself; but, unlike the three little wolves who appeared in the shorts, the gentle Li'l Bad Wolf does not live up to his father's expectations. Indeed, Li'l Bad is friends with the Pigs, Thumper, and other forest characters whom the comics portray as Zeke's intended prey. A running gag in the comics typically comes when in trying to catch the Pigs, Zeke runs afoul of Br'er Bear, who ends up pounding "Br'er Wolf" for one offense or another. Another gag is that Br'er/Zeke Wolf never succeeds at anything such as camping or stealing farm products; once he actually caught a duck for dinner but it ended up tasting awful and later he ended up with a whole pack of ducks-which turn out to be mud hens! Another time even when he twice caught chickens he still loses as usual! In Disney's comics his appearance is a little different than original: he usually wears an all-blue clothing but white gloves; and his son follows the same pattern of his father clothes, but he uses red instead of blue.
Disney's Li'l Bad Wolf
Li'l Bad Wolf is Zeke "Big Bad" Wolf's son. In spite of his name, Li'l Bad Wolf wants to be a good little wolf; badness is really the domain of his father. Zeke wants his son to be just as bad as he is, but the kindhearted Li'l Wolf, despite wanting to please his father, cannot bring himself to do others harm. Even worse for Zeke, Li'l Wolf's best friends are the Three Little Pigs themselves, and he constantly saves them from his father's appetite. Despite disappointing his father, Zeke Wolf was shown to be very fond of his son, and Li'l Wolf of his father.
Li'l Wolf debuted in his own self-titled series, beginning in the comic book Walt Disney's Comics and Stories #52. The first story was written by Dorothy Strebe and illustrated by Carl Buettner. The feature ran regularly through 1957, when it temporarily moved to the back pages of Mickey Mouse. Li'l Wolf returned to Comics and Stories in 1961, after which he continued to appear there frequently through 2008. Li'l Wolf has in fact starred in more issues of Comics and Stories than any other character except for Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck.
Apart from Comics and Stories and Mickey Mouse, Li'l Wolf has also appeared in many different Disney anthology comic books, including a number of giant-size specials and a series of one-page text stories in Donald Duck.
Li'l Bad Wolf's only comic strip appearance was in the Disney Christmas Story for 1963, "Three Little Pigs Christmas Story". This sequence was drawn by Floyd Gottfredson, who reinstated Li'l Wolf's sharp teeth.
From 2003 to 2008, reflecting a trend initiated in European Disney comics, Zeke Wolf increasingly often featured as the title character in new stories himself, although Li'l Wolf continued to play a minor role.
Li'l Wolf's first animated appearance was in the Raw Toonage short "The Porker's Court". However, he later appeared, in a more traditional role, in a self-titled short on House of Mouse. The voice for the animated Li'l Wolf in House of Mouse was provided by Sam Gifaldi. Li'l Wolf is not to be confused with the Three Little Wolves, Big Bad Wolf's three mischievous sons who appeared in the cartoon shorts The Three Little Wolves and The Practical Pig, although he closely resembles them.