Last week I happened to see this picture of the
new version of one of my childhood favorites, “Lil Red Riding Hood”. The way
I’ve learnt it, Red riding hood is a petite girl of good values, taught to her
by her grandmother. But wait a minute! Why? Why is she shown with a rifle in
her hand!?!
Uhm that is the modern version of Red Riding
Hood! The American National Rifles Association has rewritten fairy
tales (Red Riding Hood being just one of them). Red is seen with a rifle cos
they wanted to teach children the lesson of ‘protecting themselves’ and
giving the fairy tale character a ‘rifle’ was apparently the best way to do so!
Be it the witch who ate children, or the goblin with dark magic, or the wolf ;the bullet can take care of it all.
Is this the right way to go? Teaching small
kids of weapons? Personally I don’t think so! But then, these days arming our
heroes have become a trend. Be it movies or cartoons, the more weapons
superheroes have more powerful they are! Like the new version of Batman has got
several super powers that he didn’t possess earlier.
Earlier in one of my articles I had written of
the outdated syllabus that we are following and how kids are not allowed to
think differently! Thanks for cryin out loud ! Change is about to cum but I
don’t think Gunning lil girls was my idea of a syllabus change! :P
Recently I started downloading cartoons from
tiny tv ( Oswald, Pingu, Hi-5, Miffy n ol) so that I could show them to my lil
neice.. Cos I wanted to show her what real cartoon is! I wonder now whether she would like my poor heroes who had
no rifles and bombs but only knew of love! Anyways I am DEFINITELY gonna have a
word with my sister about the bedtime stories that she is reading out to my
neice! We donn want her to learn the wrong story right? For who knows the fairy
tales that she might have to learn in school might be different!